The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin

by Michael Craven

  “This is John,” I said.

  “Hi, John. My name is Elana,” said a soft, sexy voice. “I’m with Prestige Fish, returning your call.”

  “Hi, Elana, thank you for calling me back.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.” You don’t always hear that when you say “thank you.” You often hear “no problem” or “absolutely” or something. “You’re welcome.” Something about it felt direct, confident, like the website.

  She said, “You’d like to come in and discuss what you’re looking for?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Great,” she said. “How did you hear about us?”

  What to say, what to say? Keep it short, keep it simple. I said, “The web.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We don’t do orders under five thousand.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “We can do two o’clock Monday, tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” I said again.

  She gave me the address and we hung up. Then I closed up my office and went home.

  15

  When I got home, I went for a five-mile run around Mar Vista. Not too fast, not too slow. Just a nice, steady pace. When I finished my run, I went into my garage. I don’t park my car there, ever. It’s where I work out. I have a hanging punching bag, a bench press, some arm weights, and some floor mats.

  I worked the bag for forty-five minutes. First punches: jabs, and hooks. Then elbows: elbow jabs, and elbow hooks. Then kicks: front kicks, back kicks, roundhouse kicks. At knee level, groin level, chest level. Then a series of knees to the bag. Thigh level. Groin level. For each section of the workout, I’d start slow and loose. Then I’d build to a finish, striking the bag as hard and as precisely as I possibly could.

  I learned how to fight from a neighbor I had as a child, an ex–Green Beret by the name of Jim Douglas. Jim’s a black belt in karate, but formal karate is not what he taught me. He taught me a more street-style form of fighting that encompasses some karate, some boxing, and some down-and-dirty, do-whatever-you-have-to-to-win bar fighting. Having this skill really comes in handy when I need to defend myself, or hurt someone who just might deserve it. Jim is more than just the man who taught me how to fight, though. He was, and still is, a mentor of sorts to me. And you know what? You’re going to meet him later on in this very story.

  After working the bag, wiping myself out, I got down on the padded floor mats and stretched for thirty minutes. Then I went inside and drank a freezing Coors Light in four sips.

  The next day I woke up early and went for another run. Three miles. Took this one a little slower, just used it as a way to think about the various parts of my case, yeah, to relax a little, see if the old subconscious would throw me any new ideas.

  Around noon I showered, put on some jeans and a black James Perse shirt, cut tight. Look the part, Darvelle. Look the part. That’s what I told myself. Even though I had absolutely no idea what a guy who spends his life savings on fish is supposed to look like. At one, I was in my car.

  Prestige Fish was in Thousand Oaks, one of the really nice sections of the Valley. It’s far, far away from that strip of road where Craig Helton sits selling insurance. Both literally and figuratively. Thousand Oaks is some twenty miles northwest of Craig’s part of the Valley. A lush, upscale suburban area filled with lots of, you guessed it, beautiful oak trees. It’s far enough away from downtown, Hollywood, or Santa Monica that it really seems like it’s not connected to L.A. at all, and many of the people who live there act like it, rarely visiting the aforementioned areas.

  As I cruised up the 405, I thought: Kind of a strange location for a fish broker. Although I’m not sure why I thought that. Did I think a fish broker should be in Santa Monica or Malibu or Manhattan Beach because those areas are near the ocean? Maybe. Sadly, maybe.

  I followed my GPS directions and ended up in a nice town-center area, on a charming street lined with high-end commerce. A polished and pristine-looking Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a nice-looking Mexican restaurant with a big outside area and fire pit, an overpriced grocery store. I turned right off the main drag, onto a much smaller side street. About a mile down, I found a lone little building sitting on its own little corner lot. The structure was a fairly new-looking one-story redbrick building with white shutters that could have been a small law office in Memphis. Hmm. Prestige Fish.

  I rounded the corner, put the Focus in a spot up a ways, out of sight, walked back around through the little front yard and up to the white door.

  I carefully opened it and walked in. A simple, sparse room, a Turkish rug covering much of the hardwood floor. A few sleek chairs in one corner, a pristine glass desk in front of the wall facing the door. Behind it sat a striking, beautiful woman with black hair, pale skin, and bright red lipstick.

  The woman said without getting up, “You must be John.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m Elana. We spoke on the phone. Can I offer you a cup of coffee or a cocktail?”

  She was like a beautiful stewardess in the first-class cabin of a plane floating above the world.

  “Sure,” I said. “Thank you. I’ll have a cup of coffee. Black.”

  She disappeared down a hallway behind her, then reappeared with a cup of coffee in a tall porcelain mug. As she handed it to me, she said, “Lee’s going to be a few minutes. Lee Graves. That’s who you’ll be talking to about what you are interested in acquiring.”

  “Acquiring,” the word I had used in my message.

  She said, “Would you like to see the fish we have here while you wait? They’re not for sale, but our customers usually enjoy seeing them.”

  I looked at her. Hospitable, but not overly so. She operated with a deft, delicate, and reserved touch. Not an ounce of pushiness. And she spoke quietly and precisely, in a soothing voice. I wanted to close my eyes and just listen to her talk for a while. But instead I said, “Yes. I’d like to see the fish.”

  “Follow me,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  “Yes,” I said oddly.

  We walked down the hall behind her desk, past a shut door on the left, then a little kitchen on the right. Just beyond the kitchen, we reached what I thought was a closed door. But it wasn’t a door. It was the entrance to an elevator. And I knew from the outside of the building that we weren’t going up.

  We got in the elevator and went slowly down one floor.

  We exited into an empty foyer. The lights were very low and the room was cool. We then walked into a room about the size of a big master bedroom, also softly and very dimly lit.

  Like the main room upstairs, this one had a beautiful Turkish rug covering a big chunk of the hardwood floor. On the right wall were two large aquariums, bright and beautiful and humming, and there were two more on the left wall. One of the two on the left had multiple fish in it, but the other three contained just a single fish.

  We walked over to one of the tanks on the right, one of the tanks with just a single fish inside. It was a wild-looking pink and yellow fish with a large mouth and white stripes running vertically down its body. Not exactly beautiful, but definitely unusual, interesting, exotic.

  “Our Neptune grouper,” Elana said. “Very rare.”

  I watched the fish move through the tank. Its big, frowning mouth. Its big, never-blinking eyes. It didn’t seem to mind that two large creatures were watching its every move.

  As we walked over to the tank next to it, I heard the elevator open. I turned to see a man stepping out of the foyer.

  He was probably thirty-five, about six-one, totally bald—a slick, just-shaved bald head—and in very good shape. Not bulky good shape. Sinewy. Wiry. He had one of those big, expensive watches that people wear these days. Enormous. Just enormous. You could serve dinner on the face of it. For seven. And everyone would have plenty of room. He also wore tight, expensive, but terrible designer jeans and a tight, fitted black V-neck T-shirt with some kind of dragon print on it.

  He w
alked over and said, “Hi, John Dean. I’m Lee Graves.”

  I nodded, and we shook. He looked suspicious, and suspicious of me.

  Elana said, “I showed John the Neptune grouper, and we were just about to look at—”

  I interrupted as I walked closer to the tank we stood next to and said, “The clarion angelfish.”

  It was a risk. But I was pretty sure I was right. Turns out, I was.

  Graves said, “One of the most beautiful fish, I think. Pretty rare these days—not that rare, but pretty rare.” And then he looked at me, gave me a devilish grin, and said, “I can get you one.”

  Graves had deep-set eyes, and his skin was really tight on his face. He was one of those people who look like skeletons, his clean-shaven head and clean-shaven face adding to the image.

  I turned to look at the clarion angelfish. I’d seen a picture of it online, but now I was seeing it for real, seeing it move, seeing it glide. Graves was right. It was beautiful. A small blue mouth, big eyes, a feminine quality. A deep orange with those deep blue vertical stripes that almost looked like gashes in its body.

  I turned back to face Elana and Lee Graves. And Graves said, “Elana.”

  And Elana left. One word, gone. Into the foyer, into the elevator, gone.

  Just me, Lee Graves, and the fish now. Graves had an energy that made it seem like he was moving even when he wasn’t. And he had a wild, unpredictable look in his eyes. The combination gave the impression that he could strike at any moment. Like a snake. I could see us coming to blows someday—I wasn’t exactly sure why. But I was exactly sure that I was looking forward to it.

  I’d wanted to get a look at this place before revealing myself as a private eye. I told you that already. Sometimes it’s better to do that. You often get a more accurate impression of something. I basically told you that already too. And now that I was here, as John Dean, I was glad I had made that decision. There was something strange about this operation. And not just the fact that an entire business was set up around finding people expensive, colorful, gilled creatures. However, when you’re in a situation under an alias you can sometimes end up in a spot where you don’t know exactly what to say in order to keep up the act. Which, I’m afraid, was where I was. So at that point, it’s either tell the people you are lying to who you are, or figure out a way to get out of there.

  Before Graves could ask me just exactly what it was that I wanted to acquire, I said, stalling, as I gestured to the tanks, “Who takes care of these?”

  “See that door right there?” he said, pointing to a door at the other end of the room, opposite the foyer and the elevator. “That’s the door my staff uses. They come in from the back of the building. Down a service elevator. When we moved in, the elevators were already here. A paraplegic stock trader used to work out of this building. This room was filled with screens that he stared at all day. I liked it for my fish. Elevators provide more security than stairs. And I’ve had some very valuable species in here over the years. My staff comes in twice a day. They keep the tanks clean and temperate, feed the fish, keep them healthy and happy. The clarion angelfish is my baby. She’s lived here for three years.”

  Graves had answered my question, and in doing so had told me blatantly that he knew what he was doing. I’ve had some very valuable species in here over the years. And: She’s lived here for three years. Now he was ready to get down to business.

  He said, “What are you looking for, John?”

  I had gotten an idea. I’d decided to go for the get-out-of-there route as opposed to the tell-him-who-I-am route. I said, “Lee. I’m just getting started. So I really don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. I know I love exotic fish. I know that when I look at that clarion angelfish it does something to me. Moves me. So I’m going to put an aquarium, a beautiful aquarium, in my new house. When I buy it, that is. I found you on the web, and now that I’ve met you it’s cool to know that when I’m ready to make some purchases you’re one of the people I can call.”

  I could see the slight deflation in his eyes. Just what I wanted. To him, now, I was a flake. I was a flake who wasn’t serious. Who wasn’t really going to shell out ten, twenty, fifty Gs. Shit, I didn’t even have a tank yet. I didn’t even have a house yet. Graves looked, just for a second, like a real estate agent who’s just realized that the person he’s been driving around the really nice part of town for the last ten days isn’t serious and doesn’t really have the dough he pretended to. But like any business pro, Graves didn’t overreact. He just shot me a sinister smile out of that skeleton head and said, “I’ll be right here when you’re ready.”

  And I looked at him, right at him, and said, “Good to know.”

  16

  I think it should be hard to get a gun. Really hard. Much harder than it is. Because too many people get their hands on them who shouldn’t. It’s that simple. In my business, I have to use a gun sometimes, there’s no getting around it. But the truth is, I don’t own just one. I own two. When I’ve got one physically on me, which is pretty often, it’s usually my Colt Delta Elite. A powerful ten-millimeter gun that holds eight rounds. I wear it on my hip in a holster, usually under a jacket or shirt. Or sometimes I pin it on my back with my belt. I also have a Sig Sauer P229, which is a powerful gun as well, but it’s smaller, easier to conceal, despite the fact that it actually holds ten rounds. I wear my Sig less often, and almost always totally out of view, in a holster on my ankle.

  For some reason, my meeting with Graves prompted in me the desire to practice my shooting. There was something about him. He was . . . serious, maybe even threatening. And being in close proximity to that made me want to get active, to actively pursue getting better at one of the parts of my job. I’ve practiced a lot over the years, and I’m a good shot with both guns. But like most things, shit, anything you’re trying to do well, you have to keep the sword sharp, you have to do that thing that Sydney Scott hated to do at photography school. You have to practice.

  Right then, I had both guns with me in a black canvas carry bag that also houses a few other things I often need. I drove to Northridge, an area of the Valley not too far away from Thousand Oaks. Northridge is a neighborhood closer in personality to the one where I grew up, and closer to what most people associate with the Valley. Look, we’re not talking as depressing as where Craig Helton works. No. Not that bad. Northridge is okay. Fine. Bit less upscale than where Graves brokers deals for clarion angelfish and Neptune groupers. Fewer beautiful oak trees. More not-so-beautiful strip malls.

  There’s an indoor shooting range in Northridge that I’ve been to a lot over the years, that I like, the Firing Line. I’m pretty sure it was the first indoor shooting range in L.A.

  I got there, got a spot for the Focus, went in, bought some ammo, and got another spot, this time for me and my carry bag, in a firing booth twenty-five yards away from a target that looked like the silhouette of the top half of a man.

  I fired twenty-four rounds out of my Colt, changed the paper target, and fired twenty rounds out of my Sig.

  Afterward, I looked at both targets in the booth. My chest shots and my head shots, out of both the Colt and the Sig, were solid. But not great. I’d improved as I’d continued to fire, but even still, I was a little rusty. Definitely a little rusty. But that’s okay. Because I’d be back here at the Firing Line before it mattered. I hoped.

  I headed back to my office. Embarrassingly, I hit some pretty bad traffic, but I eventually made it to Culver City, to my space. I opened up the slider and went and sat at my desk.

  I put my feet up, laced my hands behind my head, watched a distant UPS truck make a delivery to one of the warehouses across the lot.

  Cold. Yes, the case I was on was cold. And now I’d brought another piece, a new piece, into the puzzle, even though I had no clue whether that piece would fit. Why? Because that’s what I had to do. I had to shake some bushes to see if anything crawled, or swam, out.

  So what next? What next?

&n
bsp; Dave Treadway. Keaton and Greer’s friend who Craig Helton had mentioned. The one he’d said “wasn’t a prick.” The one who helped him see the light about Keaton Fuller’s character. Treadway was mentioned in the case file along with a few other friends, people who weren’t as close to Keaton. Harrier and Martinez had talked to him anyway, shaking bushes just like me. And Treadway, like Greer and Craig Helton and Sydney Scott, had spoken openly about not particularly loving Keaton. And like the rest of them, he had a tight alibi. Talk to him anyway, I told myself. Go to La Jolla, where he lives, that charming coastal town that sits right on top of San Diego, and talk to him anyway.

  La Jolla. Hmm. So I was going to go to the greater San Diego area. I realized that this would give me the opportunity to talk to someone else I needed to talk to who lives down there. Someone who might be able to shed some light on my new puzzle piece, Prestige Fish. His name is Marlon Pucci. He’s an ex–New Jersey and New York City mob guy who now lives on a sailboat in a marina in Oceanside, California, a great little seaside town north of San Diego and La Jolla.

  When he quit the crime business and moved to Oceanside, Marlon had never been to California, had no boating experience, knew nothing about sailing or the sea, literally didn’t have a single clue about how to buy a boat, sail a boat, or care for a boat. Much less live on one. He simply had a romantic notion about living on a sailboat in a California marina. So he did it and never looked back. And you know what? He and his wife, Fran, who also had zero prior boating knowledge, are happy as fucking clams. Sitting on their deck in the evenings, going to parties and get-togethers on other people’s boats, drinking in the sun, and, of course, just drinking, period. And never, I mean never, actually sailing their boat. It doesn’t move.

  Where did he get this romantic notion? What planted the seed? Well, a murder. Way back when, Marlon whacked a guy and dumped his body in the Atlantic. His mobster buddies nicknamed him Marlon the Marlin. They were razzing him, ribbing him, about his seafaring adventure, but Marlon liked the name. It stuck. What’s more, it placed in him—this Jersey born wiseguy—the desire to own the nickname thoroughly and to one day be a full-on boat-living man. Which now he is. And loving every minute of it. And, by the way, getting the last laugh.