The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin

by Michael Craven

  That’s what I was thinking then. And that’s what I was thinking now. In Del Mar, at the edge of the ocean. Should I put Dave Treadway away? Should I put him away for gunning down a total scumbag who spent his whole life shitting on others? And, if you go by Dave Treadway’s assessment, who killed a girl and rendered her mother a zombie basket case?

  That was the question.

  Yep, that was the question. Should I put him away, or let it ride? After all, nobody would ever know. As far as anyone was concerned, we’d gotten our man.

  I took off my shoes, socks, shirt, pants, and underwear and carried them up to where the water wouldn’t take them away even if a big wave came in. Then I walked back down to the water. I got in, up to about my knees. The water was cold. But it was late summer, so it wasn’t too bad. I went for it. Ran through water, through white water, toward a distant, black horizon line. I reached a wave that was just about to break and I dove right into the heart of it. I glided through it and popped up on the temporarily placid other side.

  I swam farther out, past the point at which I still felt somehow anchored to the shore, still felt comfortable. Where I ended up, the waves weren’t close to breaking. They just came in as big black mounds and I’d float up, then down, as they moved through me.

  I lay on my back, floating, looking up at the sky, at the stars, at the clouds. Thinking: What should I do about my friend Dave Treadway?

  Ten minutes later I swam back to shore, got my clothes, jogged over to the Focus. I had a towel in the trunk. Grabbed it, dried off, got dressed, got in, cranked up the car, cranked up the heat till I was warm. Then I turned off the car, reclined the seat, and fell asleep again.

  At 5:30 a.m. I woke up. I was tired. I was exhausted. I got out of the car, used the public bathroom, then got back in, cranked her up again, and drove back to La Jolla.

  38

  Life is gray, decisions are black and white.

  I found a spot on the street right beneath Dave Treadway’s building. I got out of my car, walked around the front of it to the sidewalk, leaned on my roof, and looked up at the building, counting the balconies, trying to figure out which one belonged to Dave and Jill and Davey. Got it, recognized the furniture. I could see the cove down a ways to my right, and, down a ways to my left, yet another gas station. I walked over to the gas station and did something I hadn’t done in five years. I bought a pack of smokes. Marlboro Lights. I know, not the coolest brand. But the brand that gives me the most satisfying hit. People used to say to me: Marlboro Lights taste like chemicals, like tobacco mixed with chlorine or something. And I’d say to them: Right, exactly, that’s why I like them.

  Look, cigarettes are disgusting. But once they get their hooks in you, they’re amazing. Incredible. Taking a drag is like inhaling heaven. But they kill you, so you have to figure out how to quit, which I did. Except for the one I was about to smoke.

  I walked back over to my car, packing my smokes on the butt of my left hand. I got back to the sidewalk, leaned on my car the way I was before, opened up the smokes, lit one, took a big, hungry, powerful drag. The smoke hurt, but it was a good hurt. I blew the smoke out my mouth and my nose. I knew, I really knew, that I could be a dedicated smoker again by the end of the day. I could be a pack-a-day smoker by the end of tomorrow. And I could be a full-on prisoner by the end of the week.

  But I wasn’t going to let that happen. I promise.

  I took another drag, then scanned Dave Treadway’s building again until I got to their balcony.

  Standing out there now was Jill Treadway, holding Davey, looking down at me. I couldn’t see her eyes and she couldn’t see mine, but we were looking right at each other. And I could feel her eyes. I could feel in them a look that said: Don’t take my husband from me. We stayed like that, locked on each other, as I smoked my cigarette down. I took one final drag, one final drag, then put the butt out on my shoe. Like Jim Douglas had done. I had the butt in my hand. I looked down the sidewalk and spotted a trash can about thirty feet away. I flicked the butt at it, it went high in the sky, it looked like it was going to sail over the trash can, way over, but then a little gust of wind came in off the ocean and slowed it down, put the brakes on it. The butt dropped right into the can.

  Luck. Total luck.

  Jill Treadway wouldn’t have been able to see what I’d just pulled off, the butt was too small, but I looked up to see if she was still watching me anyway. She was gone. The balcony was empty.

  I pulled out my cell and dialed Dave Treadway. He answered.

  “Let’s talk,” I said.

  Five minutes later he pulled out onto the street in his X5, right in front of me. He pushed open the passenger-side door for me to get in.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  “Somewhere we can talk.”

  I got my backpack—wasn’t going to leave that in the Focus, no way—and got in. We drove ten minutes north, to Torrey Pines. Same road I’d taken the evening before. But we didn’t continue on to Del Mar. We went just past the Torrey Pines resort to the nature reserve, a beautiful sprawl of wilderness, trails, and pine trees that sits high up on stunning cliffs overlooking the Pacific.

  We parked in the public lot, then walked a trail straight west, through the pines and the brush, until we were at the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

  “Let’s walk down,” Treadway said.

  We did. Down a dramatic precipice that deposited us onto a secluded beach below.

  Six-thirty a.m., nobody around, a two-hundred-foot natural wall on one side, the ocean on the other. This would be a private conversation.

  “We can definitely talk here,” I said.

  “Yeah. And I wanted to get one last look at all this in case you decide to turn me in.”

  I looked at him. I liked him. And the thing was, he had a point. He did. His child molester example? I couldn’t really disagree with it. Put terrorists and crazy gunmen who level movie theaters on that list too. It would be a whole lot easier if some of those people just got taken out. We wouldn’t need to know who did it, it would just happen. Snap. Gone. For the sake of the victims, the future victims, for everyone else walking the earth as well. Everyone else just trying to live their goddamn lives. So Keaton Fuller—did he belong on that list? A guy who shot animals, raped women, assaulted his mother, broke every promise he ever made. And then there was Andrea Cogburn. Did he kill her? Yeah, kind of. Kind of killed her mom too. Does Keaton Fuller belong on that list? I think he belongs on that list.

  Dave Treadway said, “What’s it going to be, John?”

  “You’re going to jail, Dave.”

  He shook his head and backed up. “Don’t do it.”

  “I’m doing it.”

  Treadway pulled a gun from his jacket and pointed it at me. It wasn’t another Smith. It was a Ruger SR9. Another popular pistol. I looked at him and, involuntarily, I laughed.

  “You don’t think I’ll do it?”

  “You might,” I said. “But if I walked into your office and started telling you how to move people’s money around, you’d laugh, right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You have to have experience to do stuff like this. You’re on my turf. You’re not going to win this battle.”

  “I think Keaton Fuller would tell you differently.”

  “That wasn’t a confrontation. That wasn’t a standoff. That was you hiding and deciding to kill a guy. You know, I never asked you—how’d you pull off that shot? That’s a tough shot. Did you practice? Are you a good shot?”

  He looked at me and answered my question honestly. “I’ve fired guns over the years. The camp I went to as a kid had a shooting range. I even shot guns once or twice with Keaton and Greer. In their backyard. More recently, I’ve gone to shooting ranges and played around. Basically, I’m a decent shot. But that shot? That day? That was luck.”

  Luck. I pictured my cigarette butt flying high in the air, the gust of wind catching it and droppin
g it right in the trash.

  He continued, “Keaton walked out. I’d decided to do it. I aimed, pulled the trigger one time, and he just dropped. A perfect shot, right to the chest. If I had missed him, or gotten him in the arm or something, I probably would have left without finishing the job. But I didn’t miss. I got lucky. It was a perfect shot.”

  And then Treadway jumped right back to what really mattered. “Change your mind, John.”

  “You can’t just kill people, Dave. I agree with you—the world won’t miss Keaton Fuller. But that’s not your decision to make.”

  Treadway said again, in almost a monotone, “Change your mind, John.”

  “Can’t do it. I thought about it, but I can’t do it. I had to pick one way or the other, and I decided against you. You know, you never know where the line is. It’s case by case. The gardener who took the ring? I decided to let her off. Much smaller thing, but she did break the law. But you? Not going to happen. Put the gun down, Dave.”

  He shook his head no. “You send me to jail for life, you might as well kill me. And my family too. I can’t let you do it, John.”

  “I’m going to do it,” I said. And then, “What are you going to do about Jill? You going to lie and say she never found out about any of it? Tell them why you had her put the recording up to the intercom, so the staff would think it was you, but then lie and say she somehow never found out what really happened that morning, so she’s completely free of any blame? No way the cops could prove it. That’s what I’d do. There’s a line I’d cross. Put the gun down, Dave. You’re not going to get away with this.”

  He said, “I got away with Keaton. Almost. And I don’t think you’ve told anyone about me, about what you discovered. Have you?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “You end up dead on the beach, who’s going to bring that back to me? I’ll have the evidence. And there are probably plenty of people who’d like to see you dead. Past cases. Shit, you just busted a drug ring. How many people up that chain want you gone? Lots of reasonable doubt. If it ever got back to me.”

  Dave Treadway was a smart guy. He was. If he shot me right here on the beach, he probably could get away with it. It would be hard, like he’d said, for someone to bring it back to him. Eve Cogburn knew I was going to visit the grave site, but she didn’t know exactly why. Didn’t realize how it was connected to the question I’d asked her about Treadway. Or whether it was at all. The cemetery guys saw me dig up a gun, but there’d be no film of it. Treadway would have that, because he knew it was on my phone. Janet Falcone at the DMV knew I’d wanted to know whether Treadway owned a motorcycle, but, again, she didn’t know why I was looking into that. The gas station manager could come forward with another copy of the tape, if he discovered somehow that I was dead. But Treadway would have the hat that he was wearing in the tape. Beyond that, what was the tape without everything else?

  And, of course, there was the big one: the gun. Treadway would have the gun. The truly incriminating evidence. Not to mention the other big one: Treadway would be the only one with the knowledge of how all the pieces connected together to put the Keaton Fuller murder on him. Yeah, he probably could get away with it.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s say I change my mind.”

  And then, like that brutal evening in the woods of Calabasas, I was faced with another split second that lasted another eternity. Dave Treadway thought about that notion, about me changing my mind. I could see it in his eyes. And in that split second, my left fist came down hard on his right hand. As the Ruger fell toward the sand, I hit him in the nose, square. He staggered backward but, before he went down, I spun him and shoved him forward so he face-planted in the sand. I put my knee on his spine, then yanked both his hands back toward me. I cuffed his wrists. Then I pulled out some plastic restraining straps from my jacket. I wound them around his ankles and cinched them tight.

  Then I called Detective Mike Ott.

  When he picked up, I said, “Mike, you’re not going to believe this shit.”

  Life is gray, decisions are black and white.

  39

  Ott had a lot to deal with. First I gave him the top line. That while Lee Graves did in fact run a deadly, and highly illegal, drug operation, he had not in fact killed Keaton Fuller. The man I’d bound on the beach had. David Treadway, successful businessman, loving husband and father.

  And then I gave him the details of the story. And then the evidence. The tape from the gas station, the hat, the Smith, the video that the cemetery grounds manager had taken of me digging up the gun in front of two of his employees, two more witnesses.

  I also gave Ott the more macro responsibility of dealing with it all. Working with the La Jolla police, pushing through the paperwork that would eventually bring Dave Treadway to trial and then put him in prison.

  And after that? Well, I drove home. And on that drive home I thought, you know, I bet Lee Graves had initially told me the truth about Keaton’s involvement in his operation. In a way, at least. Graves had probably told Keaton that through the fish business, and just maybe some other stuff too, he could grow Keaton’s money. But before telling Keaton the whole truth, he’d gotten glimpses of his personality. And then, Graves gave the money back to Keaton, along with some walking papers, before Keaton caused him any real trouble. Which he would have. For sure. Now, was I right that that’s what happened? Well, I’d never know exactly.

  Happens sometimes.

  The next evening I was sitting on the edge of my pool with Nancy, our feet dangling in the cool water, the fronds on the palms above us moving just slightly, pushed around a bit by a late-afternoon wind.

  Nancy said with a real melancholy in her voice, “It’s too bad. You know?”

  “Yeah. It was kind of a tough call. Keaton Fuller was a terrible guy. A guy who nobody’s going to miss. But I had to do it. Treadway had to go.”

  “That’s not what I meant. He definitely did. You had to put him in jail. You can’t go around killing people you don’t like. I mean, there have to be some rules in life. Rules are kind of fun in a way. Because you obey most of them. But then you break some of them sometimes. The ones that are breakable. And it’s fun. Kind of liberating, in a way. But you don’t break the ones you just can’t break. And killing people you don’t like is one of them. If that’s allowed, you know, just because you feel like it, then we’re just like that alligator you always talk about.”

  “Which is ironic, because thinking about that alligator was what made me consider not sending Treadway away.”

  I looked at her. She wasn’t smiling, but there was just a slight upturn at the corners of her big full lips. I said, “So what did you mean when you said ‘it’s too bad’?”

  “Oh,” she said. “I said that because we don’t get to play beer pong and smoke pot with the Treadways anymore. And that was fun.”

  I laughed, genuinely surprised by the joke she’d laid on me.

  She stayed with it. “Seriously. It’s really hard to find other couples to be friends with. Good friends. Real friends. Where you like the dude and I like the chick. You know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It really is.”

  “Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. Even though we were playing beer pong and smoking pot with, you know, a murderer.”

  “Ha,” I said. “Right again.”

  Nancy said, “Well, I’m going to go make us some dinner.”

  She got up and walked inside.

  I took off my shirt and slipped into the pool. I was down under the water with my eyes open, looking around. I pushed off the deep-end wall and shot through the water. And I thought, You know, Graves was the high-fin, and then Treadway was the high-fin, but life can be the high-fin too. So much of life possesses the high-fin quality. The duality. Where you think something is one thing and then you realize it could be, might be, maybe even is, something else.

  Was Dave Treadway a ruthless killer—or is he a guy who avenged the death of a young girl dri
ven to suicide by Keaton Fuller and, who, in doing so, ridded the world of a sick, awful soul? Is it morally wrong for me to have a child when my going to work means I might die—or is it just fine, something that a kid could deal with, even if I did die? Are coincidences random—or are they meant to be? Are we all really here, walking around, playing Ping-Pong, drinking beer, going to Starbucks, going to work, going on vacation, mowing our lawns, stubbing our toes, shopping, seeing movies, visiting with friends, getting sick, getting better, looking for answers, falling in love—or is it all just an illusion created through a chip stuck in our brains by aliens two hundred million years ago?

  I swam down to the bottom of the pool and put my feet right in the center of the deep end. And then I pushed off and shot straight up toward the surface, headed for oxygen, for life. Which answers are right? Which answers are real? To those questions? To lots of questions? Well, I guess that just comes down to how you decide to look at it.

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Hannah Wood and Erica Spellman-Silverman for all your great work. Total pros, both of you.

  Also, thank you to Julie Hersh, the cover-design team at HarperCollins, and Tara Carberry.

  Finally, thank you to my family. My mom, my sister, Priscilla, and my brother, Rich. You guys are the best.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MICHAEL CRAVEN is an advertising writer and creative director, and is the author of two previous books, Body Copy and The Detective & the Pipe Girl, nominated for both the Nero Wolfe and Shamus Awards. He lives and works in New York City.

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