The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin

by Michael Craven

  I thought: That’s known as a sociopath. “So eventually you ended it?”

  “Yeah, or he did. Or we did. I don’t remember. But I definitely wanted out.”

  I thought, It’s so hard for someone to say the words, to actually say the words: “I got dumped.” Yet hearing someone say those words always makes me like them.

  I said, “So how long had you been broken up when he was shot?”

  “Several years. Three without any contact.”

  “Meaning you saw him some even after you had broken up?”

  She looked at me, trying to hold on to her challenging visage but showing some shame. “Yeah. A few hookups here and there. I guess to see if there was any hope.”

  For what, I wanted to say. So I did.

  “Recapturing our love,” she said defiantly.

  Oh, right, that. I moved on. “So do you know whether he ever moved on to someone else? I mean, someone who stuck?”

  “I don’t know. And after a while I stopped caring. Because a year or so after Keaton and I were done-done, like no hookups, nothing, I found my true love. Keaton in some way led me to Geoff.”

  I thought: Kind of like how photography led you to film, which led you to fake karate.

  And then I thought about Geoff. Another guy with a lot of money, coincidentally. I mean, Geoff had to be the one in this setup with the dough. Right? How did he get it? Who knows? Family money? Luck? One of those jobs you sometimes hear about where you don’t have to do much but somehow make a lot of money? Whatever the way, how else could he have gotten this one? She’s annoying, but she’s beautiful. And Geoff could barely put together a sentence. He had literally not been able to get through an entire sentence when he’d made his exit. Half a sentence had worn him out. I pictured him inside, eyes half lidded, mouth hanging open, staring at the TV in his karate uniform. Yeah, and with this cat, Sydney’d found a guy who was a little easier than Keaton Fuller to handle, to control. Who was willing to buy her a house and play pretend karate in the yard if he got to sleep with her. Well, in his defense, she was sexy. I didn’t like her. I might go crazy if I had to live in that house with her. But if I didn’t have a girlfriend, and I do have a girlfriend, I’d definitely sleep with her if the opportunity presented itself.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that.

  I said, “So what do you think happened? In terms of his murder? You have any guesses? Any people, situations you saw him get in, anything that could have led to something like that?”

  “No. I really don’t. All I can say is that it didn’t surprise me. Well, when I first heard, it surprised me. No, it shocked me. But it didn’t surprise me. People were always mad at him. Always. From the moment I met him. His friends, his family, me. But like I said, in the years leading up to his murder I’d totally lost touch with him. But I’m sure he’d found new people to upset.”

  I nodded. And for some reason, I have no idea why, I said, “So how’d you meet Geoff?”

  She smiled and looked at me with that defensive, seductive stare and started to tell me. Almost instantly I tuned her out and looked over at the nice ripples on the water. I pictured myself walking over to the neighbors’ yard, then out onto their little dock, then getting in their canoe and slowly, steadily paddling away.

  11

  I was back in my car, emerging now from the canals onto Washington Boulevard. As I passed the In-N-Out Burger, I gave the big neon sign a longing look. A look that said, We will dance again soon, friend.

  I thought: What next, what next? Craig Helton, the ex–business partner, hadn’t called me back, and it didn’t look like I’d be able to talk to him today. Hmm. I decided to head home.

  I live in Mar Vista, a modest, but to my eye beautiful, neighborhood filled with treelined streets and Craftsman houses just inland from Venice Beach. Mar Vista is underappreciated, a hidden gem—qualities I love in a neighborhood, and in a person. It sits at just the right place in the city too. I can take Venice Boulevard to the beach, or the other way, to the freeways, or all the way downtown, if I need to, say, go talk to a perfect-haired, granite-faced police detective and I don’t feel like dealing with the 10.

  I pulled into my house, a Craftsman at the end of a cul-de-sac, that I’ve remodeled over time. I knocked down lots of walls and vaulted the ceiling so that now I have essentially one room, spacious in both square footage and height, that serves as most of the ground floor, encompassing the kitchen, a living-room area, and a dining-room area. A small guest bedroom and a bathroom are the only other rooms downstairs. My bedroom sits above the garage, the only room on the second floor.

  I’d knocked down the walls in my house mostly to provide enough room for proper play at my home Ping-Pong table. It occupies, beautifully and perfectly, one corner of the big downstairs room. But I also knocked down the walls because I just like the way a room looks and functions when it’s open, with various areas within it, like a hotel lobby.

  I got the feeling that my girlfriend was inside my house. After twelve or so years as a detective, you can sense certain things. That, and her car was in my driveway. Oh, and I’d called her and told her to come over as well. And she’d texted me when she’d arrived . . .

  Her name is Nancy Alvarez. She’s an ER nurse at the Santa Monica Medical Center. She’s half Mexican. Her father emigrated from Mexico City, her mother from Kansas City. Nancy grew up in the Valley not far from where I grew up, but I never met her as a kid. I met her when I was in the ER after getting the shit kicked out of me by two heavies who didn’t want me to find out what their boss did for a living. Old case.

  Nancy has long brown hair and brown skin and brown eyes and a very calm demeanor. But if you catch her eyes just right you can see that underneath that calm demeanor, some kind of storm is raging. But not in a bad way, or an angry way. In a way that is good. In a way that tells you she has intense feelings about things, and an equally intense sensitivity. But her demeanor almost always remains calm, and she’s calm in her delivery of statements too. And that, combined with the thoughtful, articulate way she expresses things, always makes me like her more. That’s important. The way someone expresses themselves, the way someone says things, articulates things, can have a lot to do with whether you like them, or love them.

  I find her really funny too. Sometimes she says things, calmly, that kill me. And of course other times she gives me shit when I deserve it. Which I enjoy as well. Not right when it’s happening but later, when I think about it. But back to that intensity-lurking-underneath thing. That quality is connected to something else I really like. She’s often serious and is, at her core, quite responsible. I know, so romantic, right? But it’s true. There’s something about that that I’m really drawn to. When she gets her bills, she opens them up and pays them. When we meet somewhere, she’s always there, right on time. Which, obviously, I appreciate. When she has things to deal with at work, she doesn’t avoid the problem. She goes in and deals. I guess what pulls me in about this is that it means she respects herself. She’s not a mess, some kind of pretty picture with a disaster lurking underneath. And she’s not pulling that unimaginative act where people confuse certain types of cavalier behavior with being charming. Nancy cares about doing something right simply because she just innately feels it’s the way to go. All of this, for me, heightens her sexiness. Amplifies her foxiness. Makes me think she’s even more attractive.

  I found Nancy in the big main room. She walked toward me as I walked in and we kissed. But before we could even speak, my phone began buzzing in my pocket. Nancy nodded, like, It’s okay, get it. I looked at my phone. Craig Helton, the ex–business partner.

  “John Darvelle,” I said cleverly.

  “Hi, John. This is Craig Helton calling you back.”

  I explained who I was and then what I wanted, to talk to him in person. He said, fine, come to his office tomorrow. Tomorrow was a Sunday. Craig informed me that he was an insurance agent—health insurance—and he liked to go in on weeke
nds to catch up on things when no one else was around. Needless to say I understood, and I told him that. We made a time. He gave me the address. We hung up.

  Later, Nancy and I were having dinner at my little dining table. She’d brought over some chili that she’d made. It was outstanding. Delicious. And I love meals that are all in one bowl, as a general rule, which perhaps made it more delicious.

  She said, “A guy came in today who had run over his own foot with a lawn mower.”

  I said, “I’m working on a case where a guy was walking out of his house one morning and took a bullet that blew his whole chest open.”

  Nancy looked at me and said in her calm, sexy voice, with absolutely no smile, “Pass the salt.”

  I laughed really hard.

  After we were finished with dinner, I sat on a chair in the bathroom of my bedroom and Nancy zipped my head down with my Oster head shaver. She’s really good at it, better than I am. Makes it even, crisp, perfect. And, involuntarily, she adds a sensual touch, her left hand resting on, sometimes lightly squeezing, my left shoulder. I sat there, closed my eyes, and listened to the buzzer as she moved it all over my head.

  BZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZ.

  Later, back in the main room, sitting on the couch, Nancy having a glass of red wine, me having a Budweiser, she said, “So you think that taking the case with the old lady somehow led to you getting the case you’re on now? Shot-in-the-Chest-in-the-Morning Guy?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “You don’t think that when you get started on something, literally anything, you’re just making yourself busy, so you’re not thinking as much about what’s not happening, and that way, when something good does happen, it just sort of seems like the initial thing caused it?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “I don’t either,” she said calmly and smiled.

  And then she asked, “So how do the two guys who came to your office to threaten you fit in to your theory?”

  “They don’t. That happened because I decided to let Heather Press be.”

  Nancy thought for a second and asked, “Well, do you think the mean-old-lady case is connected in any other way to the one you’re on now?”

  “Now that’s debatable,” I said. “No, that’s more than debatable. That’s unlikely. Very unlikely. But I guess, like a lot in life, you never know.”

  “Right,” she said. “You never know.”

  12

  At eleven the next morning, I hopped on the 405 North and took it over the hill to a depressing section of the Valley. I’m okay with the Valley. As I mentioned, I grew up in the Valley. There are, in fact, some nice, really nice, downright beautiful, sections of the Valley.

  Where I was now simply was not one of them.

  I drove the Focus down a bleak, treeless, sun-pelted, low-end-commerce-laden street. One depressing storefront after the next. A forgotten JCPenney. A ninety-nine-cent store. An abandoned building that I’m pretty sure used to be a RadioShack. Too bad, because I was in the market for an enormous Texas Instruments calculator.

  And there was traffic, semibad traffic, even on a Sunday.

  I found the little parking lot for Helton’s building. His office, Teamwork Insurance, was wedged between a sad-looking Italian restaurant and a Laundromat. I parked my car and got out. It was 140 degrees, and still. I walked in through the glass door that had TEAMWORK INSURANCE stenciled on it.

  Inside, there were six desks and one guy. Craig Helton sat at the back left desk. As I entered, he stood up and waved me in, waved me back. He was wearing dark, sort of mom jeans and a black sport shirt, tucked in. He had on a braided brown leather belt, and his loafers, which I could see under the desk, were new but cheap.

  Fashion did not appear to be his thing.

  Craig had dark hair that he’d kind of spiked up a bit and a brown goatee, and he was about five-ten. We shook, and he gave me what I believed was a genuine smile.

  He motioned to the chair in front of his desk and said, “Have a seat.”

  As we both sat down, he said, “So the family’s looking back into it, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “And I’m the guy Keaton burned in business, so you gotta talk to me.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

  I nodded again and said, “Yeah. So, you know, I read all the police reports. I know the basics of your story with Keaton, the business, the bar, the falling out. And I also know where you were at the time of the murder, and that you were never a suspect.”

  Craig had been at home with his wife and two kids, not too far away from where we were right then. And he, like everyone else, had all sorts of verification. He had his wife, of course, and his two kids, ages six and seven at the time. All of them were home, awake, eating breakfast at 6 a.m., the time of the murder. This was also verified by a neighbor, a single mom named Sandy Simpson who lived right next door. Sandy had been having plumbing problems at her house, so she and her daughter, Zola, had been using the Heltons’ bathroom and shower. And they were at Craig’s house that morning at 6 a.m. as well. Craig was covered.

  I continued. “If you don’t mind, can you run me through your relationship with Keaton? How you met, the situation with the bar. Anything else you think might be helpful.”

  Craig started right in, no problem. “Keaton and I met because he started hanging around some people I knew who were in a band called the Test. They broke up, they’re not around anymore, but they were kind of a popular band for a while around here. I knew them from growing up. Keaton knew them from going to their shows and partying with them. And, you know, everyone loves Keaton. At first. So that’s how we met. We were twenty-six, twenty-seven. Keaton and I were the same age. We became friends pretty fast. We both weren’t afraid of a good time. After a while, I told him I wanted to start a bar. Knew of a great location, thought I could run it well. And let me tell you, you get a bar up and running, you can print money. Print it. Sure enough, a couple years after we met, we ended up doing it together. It was here in the Valley, not too far away, near Laurel Canyon. I took out a big loan—the loan was in my name, but we had agreed, we’re partners. I’d hire everyone, run the bar, do all the work, but Keaton would make half the payments on the loan.”

  He gave me a look that said: You know where this story is going.

  Craig said, with a heartbroken fire in his eyes, “You get a bar up and running and you can print money. Print it. Anyway, long story short, Keaton started drinking way too much at the bar, giving away a ton of free booze, and then eventually not making his payments. And telling me, ‘Hey, man, I told you I’d help you get started, that’s it.’ Which was total bullshit. We had talked over and over about how you have to keep funding a business, any business, until it catches on. And that you need capital to persevere. And that he was going to continue making the payments for as long as we needed. Two years, minimum. Anyway, eventually he just disappeared. As did all those random people he’d invite to the bar. So then I started having to put too much of the bar’s money back into the loan payments, I was stressed out of my mind, some people quit, we had a few bad months in a row, I didn’t have Keaton’s promise in writing, and, you know, I defaulted on the loan and the bank took the bar. It totally fucked up my credit. And believe it or not, I’m still making payments on that loan. Still, to this day. Some four years later.”

  “What about the family? Phil and Jackie? Did you tell them the situation? Did they help you out?”

  “You know what? I did tell them. And they did help me out. A little. Mr. Fuller wrote me a check one time. Not for nearly what Keaton owed me, but it was nice, I guess. I don’t hold it against the family, really. Except for the fact that they didn’t instill any values in their son. Maybe they tried. I don’t know.”

  I looked at Craig. A nice, if naive, guy. Probably saw something of a ticket out in his wealthy, fancy friend. Only he didn’t know it was a ticket to being a health insurance agent in the Valley wearing mom jeans, a
Marathon Bar belt, and morbidly depressing loafers.

  I said, “Where’d you grow up? Around here?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Right near here.”

  I said, “I grew up not too far from here too.”

  Craig shrugged a bit and said, “I’m not from a neighborhood like Keaton’s, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Do you think that’s why he didn’t keep his promise to you?” I asked. “Because he thought you were beneath him or something?”

  He didn’t have to think about my question to answer it. Not even for a split second. He said, “I don’t. I think he would have done it to anyone.”

  He continued, because he wanted to. “It didn’t matter who you were. You said you’ve read the police report. And you’ve probably talked to other people. I’m sure you’ve heard similar stories. Not necessarily on this scale, or for money, but he let down all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. I found all that out too late. And not just people from the Valley, like me. His brother. He was always letting Greer down. Keaton tried to get in with him after his marina started doing okay, and I heard that Greer just said no. No way. I actually heard this story before the bar—Keaton told me, actually. And he convinced me that Greer was jealous of him and didn’t want to get outshone at the marina. I bought it at the time. I’ll tell you, there’s a guy, Dave Treadway, he was in Keaton’s crowd, or from his neighborhood—he was really Greer’s friend, I think, and not a prick. A pretty good guy, as I remember. He came by the bar a few times. But then later I ran into him randomly, after all this shit went down. He gave me some good perspective on Keaton. He was the one who made me realize that my getting screwed over had nothing to do with me. Told me a story that Keaton had fallen out with some guys from USC, right after college, some other rich kids, over some movie one of them was trying to get funding for. Over some promise Keaton broke. Point being, Keaton would shit on anyone. And then I heard later that after the bar, Keaton got into the tropical fish business for a while, and that didn’t work out, you know, for some reason. Keaton bailing in one way or another, I’m sure. The guy was just a douche, man. Just a douche.”