The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin

by Michael Craven

  “Yes. We had a few incidents where we caught Keaton with drugs.”

  “What happened? What kinds of drugs?”

  “Well, pot. Coke. We caught him with opium once. We didn’t know what it was. Phil took it to someone to find out. Can I ask why you’re wondering?”

  Again, I didn’t want to get into any theories I had. I didn’t want to give her that information. That some random fish seller might be a cover for some drug operation. And, specific to Keaton, that often people who get into drugs are the ones who want to start making a profit off them. So I just told her a half truth. Or a quarter truth. Or maybe less.

  “I’m putting together the people Keaton associated with. And now I’m seeing if they, or Keaton, or both, were into drugs. Drugs can lead to trouble. Not always, but sometimes. And sometimes that trouble can be very serious.”

  Basically true. A politician’s answer, but basically true. Jackie Fuller nodded.

  “Keaton had a couple of incidents in high school, a couple in college. It all started with this girl he hung around with a bit during both those periods.”

  “You’re not talking about Sydney?”

  “No, no. Not that gold digger Sydney.”

  I was surprised to see Jackie’s fangs come out. Although I thought her analysis was right.

  “Then who?” I asked. “What girl?”

  Jackie Fuller sighed and said, “A girl named Andrea. Andrea Cogburn.”

  “And Andrea is someone Keaton dated?”

  “Well, not exactly. It was never that official. But he did hang around her. She was a bad influence. I always thought that.” Switching gears a bit, she said, “She grew up not too far away from here, actually. Just south of the Pico–La Brea area.”

  This was Jackie telling me Andrea didn’t come from money. The Pico–La Brea intersection is pretty close to Hancock Park, but south of it lies a very different neighborhood in terms of bank balances.

  “Okay, so Keaton hung around this girl off and on during high school and college. And they did drugs together? Were they the same age?”

  Jackie shifted a bit in her chair and kind of half-nodded, and then added, “Same age, yes. But they went to different schools. Both for high school and college. Keaton went to high school here in Hancock Park. I’m not sure where Andrea went. And then Keaton, as you know, went to USC, and Andrea went to a small community college somewhere. Here in L.A. I can’t remember. I knew it at one time. Somewhere small.”

  I wondered, Is Andrea Cogburn the girl Sydney Scott had meant when she’d said Keaton might have had another relationship entirely? Might have been dating someone else while he was dating her? In a way, Sydney and Jackie talked about her in a similar way. Dancing around her. Downplaying this girl with their words but putting a spotlight on her with their subtext. It’s interesting how that happens. When someone or something is on someone’s mind and they don’t want it to appear that way, they say things and do things with their body language that end up achieving the reverse of their intentions. Jackie Fuller was presenting this girl as an afterthought, but the total communication was that she wasn’t one at all.

  I said, “Okay. So they went to different schools. But when they were together, high school, college, they did drugs together. And she’s the one who got Keaton interested in drugs initially?”

  Jackie nodded. “Yes. I think both those things are true.”

  “Okay. So where is Andrea now?”

  Jackie Fuller didn’t answer. She looked down and to her right and put her hand on the back of one of the dogs, who had positioned himself near her. And then she looked at me. I would never have thought her eyes could get more defeated than they already were.

  Then she said, “Andrea died.”

  I looked at Jackie and asked, “When?”

  “A few years, several years, after college. She and Keaton weren’t in touch anymore. But it was still very sad. Keaton, I remember, tried not to show it, but he was upset. And even though Phil and I weren’t particularly fond of Andrea, we were upset too. It was very sad.”

  “And how? How did she die?”

  “She overdosed. She’d gotten way more into coke and things. Again, this was after she and Keaton had stopped hanging around together. Well after. Yeah. Yeah. She OD’d. She OD’d on drugs.”

  “Is her family still here? Do they still live over near Pico and La Brea?”

  Some reluctance flickered in Jackie’s eyes. I thought, Here we go again. She’s asked me to find out what happened, but now she’s reluctant to give me the things I might need to do that very thing.

  To Jackie Fuller’s credit, she forged ahead and said, “Her dad was never around. I think I have an old number for her mom.”

  22

  Back in the Focus. I dialed up Andrea’s mom, Eve Cogburn. She answered and said I could come by whenever. She didn’t say it in a cheery way: “Sure, come on by whenever!” Nah, the opposite, in fact. Flat. Emotionless. Like, sure, come by whenever, I don’t really care. I said I’d be there in twenty.

  Well, I was on my way to talk to another parent about a child who had died. Not my favorite thing to do. Think I’d rather get a prostate exam while waiting in line at the DMV. Added to that, this was yet another trail that might not lead anyplace special.

  But, I said to myself, the case is cold, Darvelle. Edges. Examine the edges.

  Like Jackie Fuller had said, Eve Cogburn lived “not too far” from Hancock Park. And like Jackie Fuller had implied, and like I told you, it was a very different neighborhood. South of Pico, between La Brea and Highland. I was close to Eve’s now, taking in the neighborhood. There was a bunch of run-down apartments stacked too close to one another, some of them right next to a fast-food joint, a gas station, a dry cleaner. Look, it wasn’t as bad as some neighborhoods in L.A. We’re not talking rampant crime and daily drive-bys. It was just dreary. Lifeless. Depressing. Not a lot of trees, lots of wires in the sky, a sad-eyed dog looking at you from some sad steps leading up to a sad building. I got to Eve’s place, parked out front, took the stairs up to the second floor of her beige, beaten-down eightplex, and knocked.

  Eve Cogburn answered the door in an unusual fashion. She just opened it, then walked back to her chair. She didn’t say hello. She didn’t say anything. I guessed I was supposed to walk in. So I did.

  I sat down in a chair across from Eve Cogburn and took in the apartment. It was reasonably pulled together, not messy, a couch, some chairs, an antique-looking table or two, a TV. But everything felt beaten down, dead, just like the outside. Yeah, I mean, the old beige carpet, the low popcorn ceiling, the forlorn, forgotten kitchen.

  Eve looked at me and lit a cigarette, a Winston, out of a red and white pack.

  “Thanks for talking to me,” I said.

  She took a drag and nodded.

  I had already told her on the phone what I was up to, looking into the murder of Keaton Fuller, so I just got right to it.

  “So your daughter, Andrea, dated Keaton?”

  Eve nodded again.

  “I don’t know much about their relationship, obviously. But I get the impression it was off and on. More casual. Is that right? What was the situation?”

  Eve looked straight at me and said, “It wasn’t casual.”

  Sometimes when people lose a loved one, or lose hope, they talk in a very direct fashion. In its own way, it’s refreshing.

  “Okay. What do you mean?”

  “I mean they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Now, I don’t know if Jackie Fuller remembers it that way. She never liked that they were dating in the first place. But they dated for a couple of years seriously and then, to use your words, off and on after that. But even that was serious too. Their hearts were involved.”

  She blew out some cigarette smoke and looked right at me. Life had done a number on this woman. Her graying brown hair was thinning and dry. Her face showed the damage of smoke and alcohol. She wasn’t obese, but she had a stomach. And the legs that came out of her g
reen housedress were white and bloodless. But she was pretty. You could see a pretty face somewhere in there, somewhere back in time. And she had an intelligence about her. And her eyes. Her eyes held a similar feeling to Jackie Fuller’s, yet different. They held the tragedy but not the shame. Anger, helplessness, but not shame.

  She said, “I guess there’s no way to prove to you that my daughter and Keaton were serious because she’s dead. And so is he.”

  I nodded and said, “How did they meet?”

  “How far is Hancock Park from here? Two miles? And when you look like Andrea did, the boys from the nice families find you.”

  She got up, walked into the back bedroom, and came back holding a picture. She handed it to me.

  Andrea Cogburn. Blond, with big, slightly wide-set, bluish-green eyes. Stunning. A true beauty.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And how long did they date? And when did they stop dating?”

  “They dated in high school, even though they were at different schools. They dated in college some—he was at USC, she was at Santa Monica College. I don’t know when they broke up. Keaton was always breaking up with her. But a few years after college, it finally ended for good.”

  I really didn’t want to ask Eve Cogburn to explain to me in detail the exact circumstances of her daughter’s death. I could probably go to a friend of mine at the morgue and find that out. So I asked Eve Cogburn another question, one that I already knew the answer to, that ended up giving me the answer I wanted: “Your daughter and Keaton, were they into drugs?”

  “How much do you know about my daughter’s death?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Andrea overdosed.” Eve looked at me with those damaged, but direct, eyes. “That’s how she died. Was coming down from coke. Took some sleeping pills. Died. But, to answer your question. Yes, she and Keaton did drugs together. That’s probably when it all started. In high school with Keaton.”

  “Did he get her into drugs?”

  Eve shrugged. “Maybe. He had the money to buy them. But most of the time people do what they are going to do. He didn’t force the coke up her nose. Mr. Darvelle, have you ever done coke, smoked pot?”

  I didn’t have it in me to correct her and tell her to call me John. I just said, “Yeah. Both.”

  “Well, did anyone make you do it?”

  “No.”

  She took a drag off her cigarette and gave me a look that said: then you see my point.

  “Did you like Keaton, Eve? Like that he was involved with your daughter?”

  She answered, again, by asking me a question. “How much do you know about Keaton?”

  “Enough to know that most people didn’t like him much.”

  “Well, you can add me to the list. He was an entitled, rude used-car salesman with a big bank account who loved my daughter but was ashamed to admit it when he was on the other side of Pico.”

  “You have any thoughts on who might have killed him?”

  Another shrug, another question. “Who knows what Keaton Fuller got himself into? All I can tell you is, when I heard he was killed it didn’t surprise me.”

  I thanked Eve Cogburn for her time, got up, and headed for the door. Eve stayed in her chair, her back to me, as I walked out and shut it.

  23

  I still wanted more specific information on Andrea Cogburn’s death, so I called my friend at the morgue, guy named Elliot Watt.

  “Elliot, Darvelle.”

  “Yes.”

  “Elliot, the way you just said ‘yes’ didn’t sound like you were saying: ‘Yes? This is Elliot, what do you want?’ It sounded like you were saying: ‘Yes.’ Like, ‘yes’ as a definitive answer to a question. Like, as if I had asked: ‘Is the sky blue?’ And you had said: ‘Yes.’ But I haven’t asked you a question yet. And you still said ‘yes’ that way. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, Detective Darvelle, I do see what you are saying. And yes, you are correct in your hearing of how I said ‘yes.’ See, I know you are going to ask me for something, to come down and look at something, and I know that if I say no, you’ll just pester me until I say yes. So I just decided to go ahead and say yes to the question you haven’t even asked me yet—will I pull something for you—even though I’m not really in the mood right now to do it. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “Yes. And great,” I said. “I’m on my way to the morgue now.”

  “You’re lucky, it’s a reasonably slow day. For Los Angeles. If we were in fucking Boise, everyone would be going apeshit. But we’re not in Boise, so it’s a reasonably slow day.”

  “Please pull the file for a woman named Andrea Cogburn. White. Died between the ages of, I’d say, twenty-six and twenty-nine. Probably six, seven, eight years ago. Drug overdose. Is that enough info?”

  I could tell that Elliot was writing everything down. He said, “Yeah, that’s enough.” And then: “I’m too good to you, Darvelle. I really am.”

  “I’ll bring you a present. See you soon.”

  It really helps to have a friend at the morgue. Getting autopsy reports, coroner’s reports, Elliot Watt’s own personal opinions on stuff—it all goes a long way. Sometimes breaks open a case. I have to tell you, Elliot Watt is a bit of a strange cat. That being said, he’s the perfect guy to work in a morgue. He’s a bit of a loner. He has an analytical mind. He’s innately drawn to the macabre. And he looks the part. He literally looks like he belongs there. He’s got black hair, alabaster skin, big blue bug eyes, a big mouth with too many teeth. Almost like he himself is dead and has been embalmed. You see him walking around in the darkness of the morgue, sort of shuffling along. A bit like a zombie in a movie.

  And I think that’s a good thing. There are certain jobs where you want the guy holding them to look and act the part. The guy at the morgue is one of them. A lawyer, your lawyer, is another one. You want your lawyer to look and act a certain way, because it’s your self-interest he or she is usually protecting. But a doctor, that’s the top example. A doctor in charge of your health. In charge of whether you’re going to, you know, die. True story: One time I went to the doctor, new doctor, just for a checkup, and there was music playing in the waiting room. But it wasn’t terrible adult contemporary, or classical music, like it’s supposed to be. It was the Clash. “Lost in the Supermarket.” Great song. Amazing song. One of the best songs ever. But the wrong song for the doctor’s office. You know? I mean, at that point I didn’t want to go to that doctor anymore. I wanted to party with him. I mean, I definitely wanted to party with him. But I didn’t want to have him as my doctor anymore.

  I made a stop to buy Elliot a little something. Then I jetted downtown to North Mission Road to visit the L.A. County morgue.

  I walked in. There was Elliot sitting at his neat desk, ready for me, file in front of him—Andrea Cogburn’s file, I assumed.

  “Here’s her file,” he said, sliding it over to me.

  “Thank you, sir. I got you a couple of presents. Some magazines. A little reading for your downtime.”

  I presented each one to Elliot, pulling them out one at a time from a brown bag. “The new Popular Mechanics, because I know you like it. I have no idea why, but I know you do.”

  “Thank you,” he said as he placed it on his desk. “I have not read this one yet.”

  I pulled out the next magazine. “An Over Forty porn mag,” I said. “All the women inside are mature. Being the twisted bastard you are, I thought you might like this.”

  “Well, I really don’t read that kind of thing, but okay,” he said as he slid it carefully into a drawer and then closed the drawer very gently and quietly.

  I pulled out the next magazine. “And then I got you this too. Cranes Today magazine.” I handed it to him.

  He looked at it and said, truly confused, “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s a copy of Cranes Today magazine,” I said.

  “I don’t get it.”

 
; “It’s a magazine all about cranes. The machines, not the birds.”

  “Yeah, Darvelle, I can see that. There’s a crane on the cover. I still don’t get it.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be that guy who publicly reads Popular Mechanics, then why not take it all the way into true freakdom and read something like this. Just go sit in a park and be the guy who’s on a totally different planet from the rest of us.”

  “I don’t understand you, Darvelle. I really don’t. Is that an insult? A joke? What the eff? I mean, I’m helping you. I’m giving you material you otherwise couldn’t get.”

  “What the eff.” That’s what he said.

  “I think you might like it. Just read it.”

  Elliot didn’t have any chairs in front of his desk. He had two against the wall opposite his desk, a little coffee table as well, almost like a waiting room. I took a chair and looked through Andrea Cogburn’s file. There was a picture of her in her bed, dead. She didn’t look dead. She looked asleep. Sometimes when you see pictures of the dead, they look dead. I mean dead. Keaton Fuller looked dead. A giant hole in his chest and out his back. But Andrea Cogburn just looked asleep. She was in her nightgown, in her own bed.

  I focused in on the details. Andrea died six years ago, at age twenty-nine, with alcohol, cocaine, Valium, and Ambien in her system. Cause of death: She stopped breathing. Just that simple. You stop breathing, you die. Cessation of breathing isn’t the only fatal outcome of an overdose, though. Truth is, an overdose can mean lots of things. It can mean you had a heart attack. It can mean you had a brain aneurysm. Or, as in this case, it can mean your lungs stopped taking in air and pushing it out again.

  I looked up at Elliot. He was engrossed in Cranes Today magazine. Engrossed.

  “So,” I said. “Andrea Cogburn stopped breathing. What does that mean exactly, Elliot? In Andrea’s case? What happened exactly? Why did she stop breathing?”

  He lowered the Cranes Today magazine and peered over it at me. He then dropped it on the desk and started talking.

  “Basically, on the surface, it means that she was drunk and on coke and then took Valium and Ambien to come down. But she took too many and her throat relaxed too much and she stopped breathing and died. Now, essentially, that’s how people with sleep apnea die when they die. Sleep apnea. You know it? It’s pretty common.”