The Fallen

We drove past the Hidden Threat Assessment building before spotting the number, so McKenzie spun a U-turn and bounced my mushy Chevrolet take-home into the parking lot.

‘Look at all that mirrored glass,’ said McKenzie. ‘They don’t even put their name on the building, just HTA. And check over there – the Enzo. That’s six-hundred fifty horses you’re looking at. Sick. Oh, man, now that’s a car.’

It was a red Ferrari and the license plate read H-THREAT. I wondered if it had been parked briefly alongside Highway 163 the night Garrett was shot. I wondered how many red Ferraris there are in San Diego.

Hollis Harris met us at the security desk in the gleaming lobby. He was about my age. Thirty tops. He was small, slender, almost bald, and dressed in black – shoes, trousers, belt, golf shirt, watch. His face was trim, and his gaze was open and opinionless.

We stopped at a coffee-and-sandwich cart. Harris got a triple espresso, black.

‘I’m trying to cut back,’ he said.

‘How many a day?’ asked McKenzie.

Hollis ducked his head and frowned. ‘Three? Okay, four, but four max.’

‘I’d be bouncing off the walls,’ she said.

‘Maybe that’s why I only sleep five hours a night.’

‘How do you feel in the mornings?’

‘Actually,’ said Harris, ‘great.’

His fourth-story office was large, uncluttered, and bright with late-morning light. The floor was buffed maple, and his curved desk was stainless steel. Most of the fixtures were stainless steel, too. There were windows on two sides and white walls on the other. A huge painting took up most of one wall – it showed the back end of a Ferrari speeding away from you. A collection of photographs of Hollis Harris with various celebrities graced the other.

We sat at a suite of stainless and cream leather furniture in front of one of the big picture windows. Harris clapped his hands softly twice and a sun filter descended from the ceiling. As it lowered I watched the vivid optics of the Soledad Highway and San Clemente Valley soften and retreat.

‘I’d talked to Garrett Asplundh several times over the last two years,’ said Harris. ‘At first he was interested in HTA’s financial relationships with the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA and some of the casinos in Las Vegas and San Diego County. And, of course, with the City of San Diego. So I opened our books to him, everything from contracts to payroll. I didn’t see him for three months.’

‘I take it your accountants had done their jobs,’ said McKenzie, looking from her notepad to Harris.

‘Our books are as clean as this floor,’ said Harris. ‘HTA makes good money and there’s no reason to cheat, lie, or steal. I don’t have the time or interest for that.’

I was reading through Asplundh’s notes on HTA while Harris talked. ‘Garrett said you – HTA – donated a hundred and fifty grand to the Republican Party in 2003, trying to get the governor recalled.’

‘We did,’ said Harris. ‘We also donated a like amount to the Democratic Party, to help them field a good candidate of their own. We’re not a political company here. But we do believe in the state of California. I was born in this state. Lived here all my life. It means something to me.’

I looked into Hollis Harris’s steady eyes. ‘Garrett met you here at five o’clock the day before yesterday – the day he died.’

‘Right,’ said Harris. ‘We talked about developing Hidden Threat Assessment software for the Ethics Authority.’

‘What exactly is “hidden threat assessment”?’ asked McKenzie.

Harris sat forward on the edge of the cream-colored sofa, like he was getting ready to jump up. ‘The heart of it is a software system that lets databases talk to each other in real time. I got the idea back in high school. My dad worked for TRW and he was always complaining that the information was out there but he couldn’t get it in time. The information is out there but I can’t get it in time. So I designed him a program for my computer class and got an A on it. I sold it to TRW for half a million dollars when I was eighteen. That was enough to begin this company. We’ve gone bankrupt twice and bounced back twice. I’ve lived everywhere from ratty downtown hotels to mansions in La Jolla. Mansions are better but ratty hotels save you time on upkeep. Work ruined my marriage but I won’t make the same mistake again. I have a wonderful young son. Last year this company did over forty-five million and we’re on track to beat that this year. By a lot.’

‘How did you write a program like that as a high-schooler?’ asked McKenzie.

Harris shrugged. ‘I don’t actually know. It’s a knack. When I deal with coded information it becomes aural to me. Musical. I hear it, I hear ways that sounds – they’re not sounds actually, they’re megs and gigs and beyond – can be harmonious and advantageously cadenced. As soon as you stack information like that, massive amounts of it can be digitally fitted and synchronized. Then it can flow, literally, at the speed of electricity. It’s not all software. You need some special machines to run an HTA program. I designed them. It’s hard to explain.’

‘Guess so,’ said McKenzie.

I was half tempted to tell Hollis Harris that I could see the shapes and colors of emotions behind spoken words. But only half. It’s not a parlor trick. If news of that got back to headquarters on Broadway it would hurt me sooner or later. My advancement has been greased by my apparently miraculous recovery from the fall, and by my minor and unasked-for celebrity. I may be ‘different’ enough to see shapes and colors when people talk, but I’m not different enough to admit it to anyone but Gina.

‘How does it assess threat?’ I asked.

‘It finds hidden connections between people that could be threatening,’ said Harris. ‘It finds them instantly, in real time. Say that Person A applies for a job here. We run him through a basic HTA protocol. HTA discovers that his ex-wife’s former roommate’s brother is a convicted embezzler and that Person A and the convicted embezzler now share the same home address. It takes ten seconds. And guess what? We don’t hire Person A. We show him the door. From casinos to the federal government, everybody needs HTA. I call HTA ‘a symphony of information.’ But it’s more like twenty symphonies, crammed into the length of a sound bite.’

‘Impressive,’ said McKenzie.

‘Impressive, Ms. Cortez?’ asked Harris, smiling, then swallowing the last of his espresso. ‘It’s almost unbelievable. We’re currently running at five degrees of separation. We’ll be up to eight degrees by the end of next year. We’re doing a job for Border Patrol right now – you put your index finger into the scanner down at the border in San Ysidro or TJ, and guess what? I’ve got the following databases digging into your past like earthmovers on speed: Homeland Security, INS, the DEA, the Border Patrol, the San Diego Sheriff Department, the San Diego PD, the Interagency Border Inspection System, and the Automated Biometric Identification System – and that’s not all. Let me take a breath and continue: the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, the Deportable Alien Control System, the Port of Entry Tracking System, the National Automated Immigration Lookout System, and the San Diego User Network Services system. I get winded when I talk about my work, so let me take another deep breath and keep going: the Computer Linked Application Information System and the National Crime Information Center of the FBI, and I’m going to have these bases talking to each other as fast as electricity in a phone line. I’m going to be able to tell everything about you – physical, financial, criminal, social. I’ll have the name, address, and Social Security number of the doctor who pulled your tonsils when you were four, and I’ll know exactly how much your cell phone bill was last month, and I’ll have the name and address of your allegedly secret lover by the time you get your finger out of the scanner. If you are a threat, you will be exposed. If you might be a threat, you will be exposed. If you are only the reflection of a shadow cast by the memory of a possible threat, you will be exposed. Now that, Detective Cortez, is impressive.’

Harris was short of breath. ‘I know that sounds like bragging, Detective. It is.’

And sure enough, the orange rectangles of pride wavered in the air between us, then dissolved.

‘Will you run an HTA on Garrett Asplundh for us?’ I asked.

Harris looked at me but said nothing.

‘Maybe he already has,’ said McKenzie. She smiled, a rarity.

Harris went to his desk and opened a drawer. He returned with a manila folder and handed it to McKenzie. ‘Yesterday, after I heard what had happened, I ran an HTA on Garrett. It’s hard to get a lot on law-enforcement professionals because their employers have been playing this game for years. But the deeper background comes out. So Garrett was kind of skimpy by HTA standards. It came to one hundred and eighty pages of intelligence, all in this envelope. I included a CD for you also. I read it last night and saw nothing in there that might pertain to his murder. But I’m out of my element in that world. Your world. It may contain something you can use.’

‘Thank you,’ said McKenzie. ‘We appreciate it.’

‘Garrett wanted an HTA program for the Ethics Authority?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Harris. ‘But they can’t afford it. I explained to him that I could create the system, install it, train the users, and update it for two years for four hundred thousand dollars. Garrett’s budget for system upgrades was eighty thousand. He told me I should offer my services at cost to help protect this city that had brought me such prosperity. I agreed, which is exactly what the four hundred thousand was – my cost.’

‘How did Asplundh take that news?’ asked McKenzie.

‘I never knew with Garrett. I could never read him. I could tell he was preoccupied that afternoon. He wasn’t all here. Usually with him there was this focus, this intensity. When I saw him in this office…no…his attention was somewhere else.’

‘Did he say anything about that, about being distracted?’ asked McKenzie.

Harris shook his head. Then he looked at each of us.

‘What time did he leave here?’ I asked.

‘It was five-fifty.’

‘How was he dressed?’

‘Black two-button suit, white shirt, gold tie. Hand-stitched brogues. Nice clothes.’

‘The tie was gold?’ I asked.

‘Gold silk.’

Not blue. Not soaked in his own blood.

Harris looked down at his watch, sighed, stood. ‘I’m sorry. I’m out of time for this now. Maybe something in that HTA book will lead you in the right direction.’

‘How fast is the Enzo?’ asked McKenzie.

‘Top speed is two-seventeen, it goes zero to sixty in three point six-five seconds and ripples your face in first.’

‘Did you drive it Tuesday night?’

He looked at her, smiled. ‘I drove it home to Carlsbad around six. I took it out again to get drive-through with my son at about six-forty. He’s five. We were home with our burgers by seven. Reading in bed by eight. I didn’t drive the Enzo again until morning. I’ll let him vouch for me if you’d like.’

‘That’s not necessary right now,’ said McKenzie. ‘Does it feel odd driving a six-hundred-thousanddollar car into a drive-through?’

He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Yes. And it’s a long reach up to the window, too.’

Out in the parking lot she ogled the car. I must admit it was a beautiful machine. My dream car has always been a Shelby Cobra. Gina bought me a day at an expensive driving school in Arizona for my birthday one year. I listened to a lecture, then spent the rest of the day with an instructor in a souped-up stock car that hit 160 on the straights. Speed is marvelous, though I’m less enthused about it since my fall. It seems ungrateful to risk your life for a medium-size pleasure. That night at dinner Gina presented me with a small Shelby Cobra model that I still keep in a place of honor on my fly-tying table.

Before getting into the Chevy I tried CAM again and got an answer.

‘Carrie Ann Martier’s office.’

‘Robbie Brownlaw, San Diego Homicide.’

‘Please hold.’

It was a woman’s voice. She sounded assured and professional. I walked away from the car and waited almost a full minute. McKenzie eyed me from across the lot.

‘Mr Brown?’

‘Brownlaw.’

‘Yes? How can we help you?’

‘I want to talk to Carrie Ann Martier about Garrett Asplundh.’

‘I’m Carrie Ann Martier. But I’m not sure that I can help you.’

‘I don’t need your help. Garrett does.’

There was a long silence. ‘Okay.’

‘How about tonight at six-thirty, the foot of the Imperial Beach Pier,’ I said. ‘I’ll wear a Chargers cap.’

‘Spell your name and give me your badge number.’

I did both.

‘Be alone,’ she said.

‘Okay.’

Silence, then she hung up.

5

The fog rolled in around six as I drove toward Imperial Beach. To the west I saw the Silver Strand State Park campground, where not long ago a seven-year-old girl was taken by her kidnapper. Later he killed her. Her name was Danielle. I thought of her every time I made this drive, and probably will for the rest of my life. A lot of people will. I was thrown from the Las Palmas about three weeks after her body was found.

I didn’t need the Chargers cap. I stood alone at the foot of the Imperial Beach Pier and watched the waves roll in and the lights of the city coming on in the twilight. A public sculpture of acrylic surfboards glowed faintly in the fog. Imperial Beach is the southernmost city on our coast. You can see Mexico right across the Tijuana River. In some odd way, you can sense an end of things here, the end of a state and a nation and the Bill of Rights and a way of living. Then you think of Danielle and wonder if it all means what you thought it did.

Six-thirty came and went. I called Gina again and we talked for a few minutes. She said she felt bad about last night and I said I was sorry about breaking our date for tonight. Funny how two people can live together, have no children, but have so little time together. Sometimes it seems like I hardly see Gina. I’m not so sure she misses my company the way I miss hers, but then I don’t know how she could.

I retrieved a message from Samuel Asplundh, Garrett’s older brother and next of kin, who was due to arrive in San Diego this evening.

I retrieved a message from Patrol Captain Evers saying that they had collected three more witnesses who had seen a car parked off to the side of Highway 163 the night Garrett was killed. All said the car was red. One said it was a sports car, like a Mustang or maybe a Corvette. Another thought he saw a man loitering in the bushes nearby, which is what Retired Navy had told us early that morning.

Next I returned a call from Eddie Waimrin, our Egyptian-born patrol sergeant. He told me that the accent on the taped call to headquarters was probably Saudi. He said the speaker was almost certainly foreign-born. I asked him to put out feelers for Saudi men who drove red Ferraris, on the not-so-off chance that the caller was Mr Red Ferrari himself.

‘I know one for sure,’ he said. ‘Sanji Moussaraf, a student here at State. Big oil family in Saudi Arabia. Big, big dollars. Popular kid. I’ve got his numbers for you.’

‘Maybe you should talk to him first,’ I said.

Three of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were living here when the doomed jets took off. One of the hijackers had inquired about attending a flight school here. Several of the first arrests in connection with that attack were made right here in San Diego – two of the arrested men were held for nearly three years before being deported in 2004. There was some local trouble right after the suicide attacks, too – spray-painted insults on a local mosque, curses shouted at people who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, vandalism at restaurants and businesses, some very intense police questionings in the days and weeks that followed.

Eddie Waimrin – who speaks Egyptian, Arabic, Lebanese, French, and English – was often called in to conduct interviews and to translate words and customs. He came to this country when he was eleven years old, sent by his father to keep him from the strife and poverty of Egypt. Since then Eddie has brought his father, mother, and two sisters to the United States. He’s an outgoing officer, quick with a smile and active with the Police Union.

Since San Diego’s large Middle Eastern population has been watchful and very cautious ever since September 11, I didn’t want to spoil a good source if Eddie Waimrin had a better shot at getting information from him.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

I thanked him and punched off.

I was about to call Carrie Ann Martier when light suddenly hit my eyes and a woman’s voice came from the fog.

‘Brownlaw?’

I slid the phone onto my belt.

‘Robbie Brownlaw, Homicide?’

‘Put the light away.’

The beam clicked off and a woman stepped into the faint light of the pier lamps. She was small and pretty, mid-twenties. She had shiny straight blond hair not quite to her shoulders, and bangs. She wore a black down jacket over a white T-shirt, jeans and suede work boots. A small suede bag hung cross-shoulder so you couldn’t pull it off and run.

I showed her my badge and thanked her for coming. ‘You didn’t have to and I appreciate it.’

‘I don’t know if I can help you and I don’t have much time.’

‘We can walk,’ I said.

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Then we’ll stand. Did you see him night before last?’

‘We met here, at six-thirty.’

‘What was the purpose of the meeting?’

Carrie Ann Martier sighed and looked out at the surf. ‘Let’s walk.’

You couldn’t see the end of the pier in the fog. You couldn’t see the waves either but you heard them thrashing against the pilings underneath. I felt their strength and it unbalanced me in a way I did not enjoy. Overhead the light fixtures were studded with nails to keep the birds from nesting and the nails threw toothy shadows onto the stanchions. Through this joyless scenery walked Carrie Ann Martier, wholesome and fresh as a model for a vitamin supplement.

‘You know he was a detective for the Ethics Authority,’ said Carrie. ‘Well, a city employee was dating a friend of mine and my friend got beaten up. Pretty badly. This was a month ago. She wouldn’t file a complaint with the cops because she’s from a good family and the guy’s married. She didn’t want the scandal. I took one look at her and went to Garrett because he’s a watchdog, right? I talked to him. Someone had to. Two days later she received four thousand dollars in cash, a very nice set of pearl earrings and a note of apology in her P.O. box. Garrett told her that the jerkoff had “listened to reason.”’

‘Who’s the employee?’

‘Steven Stiles, the councilman’s aide.’

I remembered the name from Garrett’s handwritten notes.

‘And your friend?’

‘Ellen Carson.’

I didn’t remember hers.

‘Were you a witness?’

‘No. I saw her after it happened. Bad.’

We continued out over the invisible ocean. There were a few bait fishermen with their rods propped on the railing and their lines disappearing into the fog. I could feel the tiny drops of moisture on my face. A fish slapped in a plastic bucket.

‘Tell me more about Ellen,’ I said. ‘What does she do? What’s her profession?’

Carrie Ann Martier, hunched into her jacket, took a long and sharp look at me. I could see that she was deciding something. ‘She’s a student at UCSD. And a working girl, part-time. High end, fast dollars.’

‘Which is how she met—’

‘Stiles.’

‘Are you a student, too?’

‘English major, prelaw. And no, I’m not a working girl. I do proof-reading for McGrew & Marsh here in San Diego – we publish automotive-repair books.’

I watched the red squares of deception tumble from Carrie Ann Martier’s mouth. I’d already guessed that she was ‘Ellen,’ but it was nice to get a second opinion.

‘Those are good books on car repair,’ I said. ‘I bought the Volkswagen one years ago. The proofreading was excellent.’

‘Oh. Good.’

‘What was your meeting with Garrett about?’

‘A videodisc. Evidence of other men enjoying the company of Ellen and some of her coworkers. It was the third collection Ellen had given me for Garrett.’

‘How many other men?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen them.’

More red squares, bobbing in the air between us. I was barely aware of them. But I was very aware that Garrett’s interest in the videodisc could only mean one thing. ‘City people?’

She nodded. ‘That’s what Ellen and her friends say. All sorts – City Hall, cops, fire, politicians, administrators. And also the guys who do business with the city – contractors, service people, company owners.’

‘That’s a bomb waiting to go off.’

‘I think it did, with Garrett. That’s why I agreed to meet you.’

‘I need to talk to Ellen,’ I said.

‘No. She can’t risk that. It’s your job to put people like her in jail. She did her part for you, Mr Brownlaw. Don’t ask for more.’

‘I don’t care what Ellen does in her spare time. I care who killed Garrett Asplundh and I need to talk to her.’

She fixed me with a cool stare. Funny how she could appear so clean and fresh, but hard. ‘I knew you’d pull that.’

‘It worked on you once,’ I said. ‘And maybe it will work on you again because you liked Garrett. And you knew he was a good man trying to do the right thing and it probably got him killed.’

‘My time is valuable. Are you prepared to pay me for it?’

‘No.’

‘Garrett Asplundh did.’

I had to dodge the red squares.

I smiled at her because I really admire hustlers. Something about the courage to tell a lie and not know if you can get away with it. You run across some great hustlers in fraud, which I enjoyed immensely. Maybe because I could never tell the smallest fib without my face lighting up. Mom and Dad would just laugh and shake their heads.

‘Actually, he didn’t pay you for your time, Ellen.’

Her stare went from cool to cold. ‘Fuck yourself, cop.’

‘Well, okay. But what’s the difference between talking to Garrett and talking to me? Besides that someone blew his brains out two nights ago after he met with you?’

‘He was cute and sad and a totally great guy.’

I thought about that. ‘I’m not cute or great, but I’m sad sometimes. One out of three, though, that’s three-thirty-three, and if the Padres could—’

‘I hate people like you.’

I shrugged but didn’t take my eyes off her because I figured she might make a break for it.

‘Look, Carrie,’ I said. ‘Or Ellen or Marilyn or Julie – I don’t care what your name is. I don’t care how you make a living, though I hope you get health care and a decent retirement plan.’

She sighed, pulled her little suede bag around and unzipped it. ‘Your judgment means nothing to me. I do the same thing your wife does but I get paid cash up-front and I can say no anytime I want.’

‘Oh, man, do I have to respond to that?’

Her lips began a smile.

‘Help me out here,’ I said. ‘Help Garrett.’

‘Okay, o-fucking-kay. Just get me out of this fog and buy me drink, will you? I’m freezing. And to tell you the truth, maybe I need to talk to a cop.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m really kinda scared, Robbie.’

She pulled a pack of smokes from her little bag, offered one to me. I shook my head.

‘Light?’ she asked.

‘Sorry.’

‘Men were better in old movies.’

‘Our stock is down.’

‘Then, here. Learn something useful.’ She pulled a lighter from her bag and held it out to me.

I smiled but didn’t move.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Okay, whoever you are. I’ll learn something useful.’

I walked to her slowly but grabbed her wrist fast and gave it enough of a turn to smart.