Jefferson Parker - The Fallen

‘Wow, that’s quite a plan,’ I said. ‘Good luck.’

She shrugged and a faraway look came to her eyes, which were blue. ‘Whatever.’

‘No, I really mean it.’

She studied me. ‘I think you’d pop me in a second if you could get a raise or a promotion out of it.’

I sipped the beer. She had a point, though it had nothing to do with money or status. The law was just the law. Sometimes a cop could look the other way, for the greater good, you know. Sometimes not. I thought back to the white VW Cabriolet I’d seen outside Stella Asplundh’s place and the red one coming from the HTA parking lot earlier that day. Both driven by attractive young women.

‘Why were your friends mad at Jordan?’

‘For raising their meet tax to six hundred.’

‘Why’d she do that?’

‘To make room for the younger girls. The younger ones get a little lower contact charge to get them started and locked in. Young is what the Johns want. Cost of business goes up the older you get. Six, seven, eight hundred per meet. Pretty soon you’re either working all for Jordan or you’re not working.’

‘So you and your friends sneak the videos and make some discs. You give copies to Garrett for his investigation because you got beat up by a politician’s aide and Garrett has made it right for you. But what about the two other girls? What were they going to do with their copies? Blackmail Squeaky Clean for the higher taxes?’

‘It isn’t blackmail if you’re being ripped off.’

I thought about two young working girls trying to run a hustle on their own madam. It sounded perilous. ‘Does Jordan know about the videos?’

‘She couldn’t. If Jordan even suspected we’d done that, she’d have pulled the plug on us by now – she’d never call. Or worse.’

‘Chupa Junior?’

She looked at me and drank the last of her second Irish coffee. ‘Yeah. There’s talk. Always talk, you know? Then something happens. One day a girl is working, then she’s gone. Maybe she crossed Jordan. Shorted her one too many times. Tried to get the Johns calling her direct. Made a scene. Disappointed or pissed off somebody important. Chupa shows up here. Chupa shows up there. Like something out of a nightmare. It makes you wonder.’

‘Have you ever met Jordan Sheehan?’

‘Not face-to-face. Not many of the girls have, unless she recruited them personally. Those are mostly the spot callers. Maybe that’s why Squeaky Clean is still in business. She lives in La Jolla somewhere, running her little investment company. Ha, ha.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m curious,’ I said.

‘Trying to figure what I’m worth?’ She squared her shoulders, frowned, and shook her head once. Her shiny blond hair flared with light, then settled back into place.

‘I’m twenty-nine,’ I said.

‘You’re not selling.’

‘That must be kind of weird. Selling yourself. I don’t mean any offense by that.’

‘You can’t offend me, Robbie. You’ll wear out someday, too. We’ll both end up in the same trash pile.’

I thought about that, about everybody ending up in the same condition. I’d often had that thought and could never figure out if it was a reason to cry or to smile until I was thrown from the Las Palmas. Somewhere on the way down I realized that the fact that you’re going to die is a reason to smile. Every second you live, you’re getting away with the biggest prize there is.

‘You look familiar,’ she said. ‘TV or something?’

‘No.’

‘Magazine?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve seen you. I’m sure.’

‘A lot of people think that. I’ve got a common face. Sorry.’

She looked at me hard again and nodded. She began a smile, then turned it off.

‘I can take you back to your car,’ I said. I paid up and we walked into the foggy night.

‘I checked you out with the PD. And with some of my friends who do a little business with the PD once in a while. You came back clean. Bet you never thought a whore would run a check on you, but I didn’t know what I was going to run into on that pier tonight. Maybe someone who enjoyed Squeaky Clean girls. Maybe someone who knew what Garrett had. Maybe they figured I’d be better off quiet, too. That would make one less person to tell this wretched little story.’

I liked the way Carrie Ann Martier, or whoever she was, tried to take care of herself. I liked her aloneness and her bravery. Her foolishness worried me.

‘Don’t try to run a number on Squeaky Clean,’ I said, ‘You can’t win.’

‘I’m not suicidal.’ ‘Why don’t you just get out of this business?’

‘Stay off my side, Robbie.’

I drove us back to the pier. It wasn’t more than

a few blocks. The acrylic-surfboard sculpture still glowed in the darkness, its colors dampened by the fog. I could tell that Carrie Ann was looking at my profile, trying to locate a memory to go with it.

Her car was a yellow VW Cabriolet convertible, in keeping with her employer’s wishes.

‘When do I get my lighter back?’

I dug it out of my coat pocket and gave it to her.

‘You remind me of Garrett,’ she said.

‘I’m not cute and sad and a totally great guy.’

‘Yes you are. Even if you did get thrown out of that hotel. You lied to me. You’re the Falling Detective. You’re famous.’

Gina didn’t come to the door when I walked in. Lots of lights on, but no music. No sounds from the back. No smell of cooking. The house had an odd feel, like something had changed. I stood in the living room for a moment.

‘Gina?’

I hustled into the bedroom but she wasn’t there. The bed was made and it almost never was. There was an envelope on my pillow and a letter inside. I read in Gina’s cheerful, big-looped handwriting:

Dear Robbie,

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I hate myself and you deserve an explanation. I feel like my heart is shrinking down to almost nothing and I don’t know why. I often feel so unhappy. I do love you. It’s not that I don’t. But I need some space right now, so I’m with friends from Sultra. I need some time to think and to work through the problems inside me. I wish I could take out the unhappy parts and fix them and put me back together whole and happy like when we first got married. Hard to believe that was five years ago, isn’t it? I’m going to come back tomorrow while you’re at work to get a few more things. Please don’t come by the salon looking for me. I think I’d just cry and make an even bigger mess of things and if Chambers saw that he might toss me out and get someone lower maintenance. You know how Chambers is. I drove through Taco Bell so there’s two tacos and a Burrito Grande in the fridge for you. You got a little box of fishing stuff from The Fly Shop so maybe that will help take your mind off things. It’s on the kitchen table. I’m sorry I’m putting you through this. I’m so, so, so, so sorry. Maybe someday we’ll still be the best friends in the world and we’ll look back at this and laugh.

Love,

Gina

I stood there and read it two more times. The very first thing I thought was what a surprise this was. What a huge and horrible surprise.

My second thought was no. This was not a surprise at all. You saw this coming. You knew something was wrong and you did nothing about it.

I lay down on our bed and wrapped her pillow around my head. Clamped my arms across it. Listened to the throb of blood in my ears and smelled her perfume and imagined her face. For a long moment I felt like I was falling from the Las Palmas again, only slower.

‘No,’ I said. ‘This cannot happen.’

I jerked upright, sat there for another minute, then tossed the pillow against the wall.