The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin

by Michael Craven

  “Send me the paddle back.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “You fuck off.”

  We hung up at the same time. I thought: I love that guy. I really do.

  I got out of the Focus and walked into Craig Helton’s insurance office. I caught his eye and he waved me back, gestured for me to sit in front of his desk. He was on the phone, telling me now with his index finger and his eyes to hold on one sec. I nodded, looked around the bleak little room now populated with agents, a stark contrast to the empty one I’d experienced the first time I’d been there. Each desk had an agent sitting behind it. Some desks had a person in front of it, like me, only probably an actual customer. At the desk to Craig’s left and my right sat a female agent, no one in front of her, working on her computer. She was wrapped in a blanket to fight off the air-conditioning.

  I thought: There’s one of them. A member of a strange and bizarre club. The People Who Wear Blankets at Work. This member happened to be a woman, but men do it too. How do you become one of these people, I wondered. Do you just wake up one day and say: Today’s the day—I’m going to take part of my bed to work with me. You know, I worked briefly for a big detective agency before I left to start my own thing. There were a few members of the club at the agency. And since then, I’ve been in lots and lots of offices. And there’s almost always one member present. If not two. Yes, an adult, at work, fully wrapped in a blanket, a quilt, a duvet. And all you see is a little face poking out the top of it.

  Craig hung up the phone and looked at me. “Sorry about that. How are you, John? How’s the case? What’s happening?”

  I said, “The fish people you mentioned.”

  He produced a snarky laugh. “Yeah. Prestige Fish. What about them?”

  “Did you ever hear anything about what Keaton was actually doing? His role?”

  “Man, no. Not really. You know, we weren’t speaking at that point. So I wasn’t going to hear anything from him.”

  “I understand. But do you know if he really worked with them? Or was it something he was going to get into, then didn’t? What I’m asking is, did it fall through before it got started, or did he work with them for a bit and then something happened? Do you know?”

  “I think he did work with them. Because when I would hear about it, from people who knew him around that time, they would say he was saying all the usual Keaton stuff. ‘I’m killing it. Crushing it.’ You know, that macho shit.”

  “Right. He indicated to others that he made some real money working with Prestige Fish?”

  “Yeah. I think so. I think that’s how I remember it. Right after he started working with them. But I have no idea if it’s true. Could all just be a lie. Keaton. Totally full of shit.”

  And then he looked at me and said, “Why? You getting somewhere with the whole tropical fish thing?”

  I looked back at him and said, “Maybe.”

  I got up, shook his hand, headed for the door. Before I left, I looked back, took one last look at the woman in the blanket. She was eyeing me from beneath a swath of plaid. I turned around and left.

  My next stop in the Valley was to pick up my old friend and mentor Jim Douglas. The guy I told you about earlier. The guy who taught me to fight. I was headed right to my old neighborhood, where I grew up. A perfectly nice, suburban section for middle-class Angelenos. My family doesn’t live there anymore. My dad died, my mom moved to Idaho, my older brother moved to Arizona. I told you before, Jim was a neighbor when I was a kid. I also told you that he’s an ex–Green Beret and a seriously advanced black belt in karate. But I didn’t tell you that he still lives right where he always has. Right in the old neighborhood. Jim has four daughters who have all left the house. Graduated from college, started lives and families of their own. Nowadays it’s just Jim and his wife, Candy. Back in the day, Jim loved it when I used to come down and hang out with his family. He loved his daughters more than anything, but he also loved that I was a boy who he could teach things to. And I loved that he was a man who knew about the things I wanted to know about. Stuff my dad didn’t have a lot of knowledge about. It was pretty much a match made in heaven. Or, more accurately, a match made in a middle-class neighborhood in the Valley.

  The things Jim taught me over the years I use almost every day in my professional life. And when things start to ratchet up on a case, I sometimes call on him to help me. Like now.

  I got to his house, got out of the Focus, and walked up to his door. As I was about to ring the bell, Jim opened it. I looked at him. Jim’s black, pretty tall, about five-eleven, and very thick and stout, with thick arms, thick thighs, a thick neck, and a big, solid-as-steel gut. Standing there, he filled up the door entrance almost entirely.

  “John, my boy.”

  “Hi, Jim.”

  We hugged.

  Jim wore a tight white army-style T-shirt and maroon Riddell coaching shorts, the kind Little League baseball coaches wore in the seventies. He also wore army-issue gold aviator sunglasses and a hunter green, un-broken-in baseball cap with a big high front emblazoned with some kind of military logo. Jim seemed to have a number of hats like this. On his feet, lightweight black combat boots and bright white athletic socks.

  “That’s a fantastic outfit,” I said.

  Jim didn’t answer.

  “Where do you even get shorts like that? Do they still sell those? At Big 5 or whatever? Those look pretty new. Or did you buy a bunch back in the day? That’s what you did, I bet. You have a stash of them.”

  “Son, are we going to go look at what you want to show me, or are we gonna stand here and talk about my shorts?”

  “I thought we could do both. I mean, I honestly want to know where you get shorts like that. What are they made of? It’s, like, stretchy material. Is it rayon? They look flammable.”

  “You through?”

  “I guess.”

  We got in my car and buckled up. Jim filled up the seat entirely.

  “What kind of car is this one?”

  “Ford Focus.”

  “You really can’t remember these cars you drive. That was a good idea, John.”

  “Hey, thanks, Jim. You can move the seat back a little bit if you need to.”

  Jim said, “Clean in here too. Clean and nice.”

  Right. I was still in the phase of my car ownership where I kept it pristine. I hadn’t reached that moment when you decide it’s okay to trash it a bit. That moment, it’s a big one. The one where you say to yourself, Yeah, okay, I guess I’ll leave a little trash in the cup holder. Or you look at an empty soda can on the floorboard in front of the backseat, and you think about it long and hard, you stare it down, and then . . . you get out of the car and shut the door, leaving it there.

  No, I wasn’t there yet, and I was fighting, fighting hard, to never arrive.

  Jim said, “Please turn the AC on. Hot as shit in here.”

  “Balls. That’s how you say it now. It’s hot as balls. It’s no longer hot as shit anywhere. I used the phrase earlier today, in fact. So, you would say: ‘Please turn the AC on. Hot as balls in here.’”

  Jim looked at me, his gold aviators covering his eyes, and said, “Just turn it on, John.”

  I nodded, cranked up the Focus, and blasted the AC. A smile stretched across Jim’s face.

  We headed south, took Laurel Canyon over the hill into Hollywood. We hit Sunset Boulevard and went right until we got to Keaton’s old neighborhood, Sunset Plaza. We cruised by clusters of Hollywood glitz, trendy restaurants, bars, and coffee shops.

  We saw a very skinny woman walking a very small dog down the boulevard, an iced latte she’d just gotten at Coffee Bean in her left hand, the dog’s strained leash in her right. She wore big glasses, cutoff jeans, high heels. Some people would think she was attractive. Not Jim.

  “Where’s her ass?” he said.

  “Not sure.”

  I turned right off Sunset and went up Rising Glen Road. You could take a quick right and go to Keaton Fuller’s
old house, but I didn’t. I headed up a bit farther, to the little embankment off the road where you could pull over and stretch your legs. Or get a straight shot right down into the driveway of Keaton’s old place.

  We got out of the Focus and stood in the little clearing, and I explained the case I was on to Jim. I took him through it, from start to finish. He listened, without interrupting, as I gave every detail. It’s a lost art, actually listening. Calmly sitting and really listening. Most people sit in front of you on edge like a dog waiting for a treat, lips and body quivering, barely able to contain themselves, barely able to wait to pounce, to tell you something they know. Not Jim. He just lit a couple of Benson & Hedges 100’s, took long luxurious drags, and listened.

  After I finished, Jim walked over to the edge of the clearing, got into a shooting stance, and held up an imaginary pistol. He stayed like that, still as a statue, for about thirty seconds. Then he stood up.

  He said, “The guy fired just once?”

  “No other bullets found. So, yes. Think so.”

  “Well,” he said. “Then the shooter most likely had training. That’s a tough shot. A very tough shot. And the Smith too. Might indicate that they knew what they were doing.”

  The Smith & Wesson M&P nine millimeter, that’s what he meant. Like we talked about, a gun used by lots of police and military forces. And, yes, a gun used by lots of civilians as well. And within that group of civilians were, of course, lots of ex-cops and ex-military. But also: pros. People who need a gun to be reliable because they use it a lot.

  So. Graves was in the meth business. Keaton had worked for Graves, at least for a little while—maybe, probably, in the meth business, because according to Craig Helton he’d told people he was killing it. And now Jim had confirmed for me what I had already thought to be true: that the kill shot was the kill shot of a pro.

  Jim and I walked back over to the Focus. Jim, who’d put both his smokes out on the bottom of his boots and was holding the butts in his left hand, produced a ziplock bag from the pocket of his coaching shorts and housed the butts in it. Then he put the bag back in his pocket.

  “Don’t want to leave the butts here, litter. Don’t want to accidentally light the Hollywood Hills on fire either, wind comes along, lights one of them back up. And, of course, I don’t want to mar the pristine beauty of the ashtray in your Ford whatever-the-hell-it-is.”

  “Thanks, Jim. Hey, because we’re here, let’s go down to Sunset Plaza and have a Hollywood lunch.”

  “You pay, I’ll go.”

  “You got it.”

  Typically, I choose restaurants by temperature. Not of the food but of the actual restaurant. Most restaurants get it so wrong. It’s just scorching inside them so often. Uncomfortable. Not pleasant to eat in. Pay attention to this next time you go to your favorite restaurant. Ask yourself: Is the temperature right in here? Is it exactly right? I’ll go to a restaurant whose food isn’t as good as the next guy’s if the temperature is more comfortable.

  Today Jim and I didn’t have to make that call. We sat outside at a chic Sunset Plaza joint. It was pleasant, always a bit cooler on this side of the hill. Out on the patio with us were skinny, tan people doing shots of wheatgrass, others chatting over strawberry soy smoothies, chickpeas everywhere you looked.

  Jim, looking at the menu, said, “What’s keeeen-wa?”

  He pronounced it correctly. But it took him forever to get it out, like it was the first time he’d seen the word.

  I said, “Quinoa. It’s—”

  He interrupted me. “I know what it is, my man. I’m just having some fun. I actually like some of this shit.”

  We both got Niçoise salads. As we ate them, I told Jim what I thought might happen with Lee Graves and company. And how I’d like him to be involved.

  Jim didn’t say anything. He just nodded. Took bites of his salad. Nodded some more.

  We finished eating. I paid the seventy-six-dollar bill and we got back in the Focus.

  I said, “Want to go get some hot dogs at Pink’s? I’m starving.”

  “Absolutely.”

  So we did. Two dogs each, with mustard, ketchup, kraut, and relish.

  Afterward Jim said, “I feel much better.”

  “Me too.”

  I took Jim home. I walked him to his door and said, “I think this is going to get hot, Jim. Soon. I’m going to need you on call.”

  Jim looked at me, his big, broad face behind the gold aviators, and said, “Phone’s never off, boy.”

  32

  After Jim went inside, I got in the Focus and sat there for a minute. I was thinking, I hope Graves calls me. I hope the spiderweb in his mirror gets him to call me.

  I decided to wait in the Valley and see if it happened. Because if he did call me, maybe he’d invite me to come see him as well. Or maybe I could get him to invite me. That was the real hope, a face-to-face conversation.

  I needed to kill some time.

  I drove down the street to my childhood home and looked at it. For quite a while. Just sat there and looked at it. It filled me with a mix of emotions, some happy, some sad, some somewhere in between. The house, this inanimate object, because of my history with it, had an energy to it. As I looked at it, I thought, It’s not really inanimate at all. It’s alive, sending me vibrations, stirring me up.

  I looked down at my phone sitting in one of the cup holders. Still no call from Graves.

  I drove over to Studio City, to the public golf course right there on Whitsett. I bought a bucket of balls, then grabbed two loaner clubs, a driver and a nine iron, and walked over to the driving range.

  I teed up a ball, grabbed the driver, got set, took a big swing, and shellacked the ball straight—280, maybe 290 yards. I looked up, around, down the line of other people at the range. No one had seen my drive.

  I thought right then, I really did: Maybe I’ll get great. Just practice constantly, and try out for the senior tour someday. I teed up another ball. I got set. I guided the driver back, then swung as hard as I could. I guess I hit just a sliver of the side of the ball closest to me, really hard. Because the ball slammed into the wooden partition in front of me, then ricocheted off it and came back and hit me in the right ankle. It stung. It stung bad. In two ways. The pain way. And the pride way.

  I looked up, and then down the line of other golfers. Two men and one woman were staring at me, judgment in their eyes. I stared back for about ten seconds, then teed up another ball.

  I finished off my bucket and returned the clubs.

  Still no call from Graves.

  I went into the little restaurant that bordered the driving range. I got a Bud Light and sat down. I enjoyed it at a very leisurely pace. Then I walked back out to the Focus. And that’s when my cell buzzed. Graves.

  “Darvelle, it’s Lee Graves.”

  “Hi, Lee.”

  “When you were here last, you asked me to call you if I thought of anything that might help you.”

  “That’s right, I did.”

  “Well, I thought of something.”

  “Oh, good. Stuff that helps me is good.”

  Before he could say anything else, I said, “You know, I’m not too far from you right now. Want me to come by?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure. Good.”

  “See you in thirty.”

  Thirty-three minutes later I was sitting in front of Lee Graves’s desk, his slick skeleton face in front of me, the Chinese high-fin smoothly swimming around to my left.

  I said, “So, Lee, what do you got for me?”

  He slid a piece of paper across his desk toward me. I picked it up, looked at it. It was a bill for a side-view mirror replacement on a Tesla Model S. It was expensive. I did my best Laurence Olivier. “Is this supposed to be some sort of clue that connects to Keaton Fuller that I’m not understanding?”

  Graves said, “You don’t know why I’m showing you this?”

  “Was I not clear a second ago? No, I don’t.”

 
“You broke my mirror.”

  I said, giving Graves a smug smile, “What are you doing, man? Is this your way of getting back at me because I pretended to be interested in your fish?”

  Lee Graves looked at me. He wanted it to be a casual look, but I could see the intensity. He was trying to tell whether I was lying. Trying to determine whether I had been looking around in the dark out at his farmhouse in Pomona. Trying, still, to determine whether I was trouble.

  Graves ultimately had to know that I would never admit it. Why would I? Why would anyone? I would be showing my cards, and admitting that I’d committed a small crime. No, he was using the mirror bill to see whether he could make out the truth under the bluff. That was his game. Which is just what I wanted.

  Graves said, “Someone broke my mirror. It wasn’t an accident. I didn’t run into something, or back into anything. Someone broke it. I don’t know when, exactly. But it was yesterday. My car was parked right out there.”

  He pointed out the window behind him.

  Here was my chance to tell him I’d done it, without telling him I’d done it. That was my goal. That and to make him think, through my performance, that I was a little macho, a little small-time, a little green. Somebody he could handle.

  I said, with just enough of a smarmy smile, “You sure it didn’t happen somewhere else?”

  Graves said, “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, if someone is going to break your mirror, why would they do it when your car is parked right outside your window?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s when it happened. Because I noticed it when I walked out of here and got in my car. It’s not the kind of thing that takes a while to notice. If someone keyed my car, I might not notice for a while. Might not see it. But because it’s the mirror, a place I look every time I’m driving, I noticed it right away. And the person who did it knew that. Knew I would know where the car was when it happened. I just think whoever did it wanted to piss me off. Do it right out there in my own parking lot.”