The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin (15 page)

I
went back to my office, opened the slider, sat at my desk, called Detective Mike Ott, LAPD. As the phone rang I pictured Ott sitting at his desk, combing his perfect head of hair. Starting at the part and making nice long strokes one way, then nice long strokes the other way. I have no idea why.

“Ott, Darvelle.”

“Yeah.”

“Wondering if you can run a check on someone for me.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Man named Lee Graves, runs a company called Prestige Fish. White, I'd say thirty-five, lean, six-one, blue eyes, clean bald head now but who knows how recent that is. Curious if you have anything on him. Priors, any trouble in his past.”

“Yeah, might be a few Lee Graveses out there, but let me see if I can match something up. Gimme a day. Busy down here.” And then he added, “Prestige Fish, is that a restaurant?”

I laughed. “Sounds like one, doesn't it? No, it's a tropical fish business. Graves is a tropical fish broker.”

“Jesus Christ. That's where your investigation has taken you? To a goddamn pet store?”

“Not exactly. The fish this cat deals with sell for real money. Five, ten, twenty large a pop. Sometimes more.”

“It's a fucked-up world, Darvelle. It really is. I'll run a check on Graves.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“By the way, my niece got a part in some show. She's over the fucking moon. You made me look good.”

“I knew something was up. You were being way too nice to me.”

“Don't get used to it. Me running this check? This is thank-you.
This
is thank-you. Then we're back to square one.”

“Sounds good. And believe me, I would never get used to it. Because fundamentally, at your core, you don't like me that much.”

“That's true,” he said. And then he paused, and I could see a pensive look fall over his granite face, even though I couldn't actually see him. “That's very true.”

I said, ending the call, “All right, Ott.”

“I'll call you when I got something.”

After I hung up with
Ott, I got online and bought my friend Gary Delmore a present, a new Ping-Pong bat.
I bought him a Butterfly BalsaCarbo X5. I know, not a super-high-end bat, but, truth is, Gary Delmore can't handle a super-high-end bat. The BalsaCarbo X5 is just a really solid—hell, pretty damn nice—paddle. I had it shipped to him overnight. I have to say, giving Ott's niece a part was nice, really nice. And I know it meant a lot to Ott, which, in turn, will help me. Just now, sure, but probably again too. He'd said
this
was thank-you. But I'd get another favor or two out of him as a result of Delmore's string pulling. So Delmore deserves a little love in return. Got to give back, right?

A few minutes after I'd finished my online shopping excursion, my phone started vibrating on my desk. Shaking around, pulling the old spaz move again. My first thought, before I looked at it, was that Ott had forgotten to say something or ask me something and was calling me back. But when I looked, I realized I was wrong. It was Dave Treadway calling.

“Hi, Dave,” I answered.

“Hey, John. You've got me in your caller ID. Nice.”

“I do. What's up?”

“Well, Jill and I were talking. Wondering if you and your girlfriend wanted to come down for the day, day after tomorrow? Saturday? We're members of a little beach club down here in La Jolla, and we're going to have a beach day. Have lunch, swim in the ocean. Know it's last-minute, and I guess you're in the middle of a case, but we enjoyed meeting you the other day, so I thought I'd throw it out there.”

This I didn't see coming. A call from someone I'd talked to about a case that wasn't a call relating to the case
but was rather an invitation to do something social with another couple.

Some thoughts quickly hit me. One: I never do stuff like this, I'm always working. Two: If I were on anything other than a cold case there's no way I would, or probably even could, accept. Three: I had just put a fire under Graves, but I needed to let that fire build a bit, see what he would do with a little time to think. And four, the most important thought: the look in Nancy's eyes the other day when she'd said: “I like it when you hear me, John.” Saying to me, You are pulling away from me, and I'm hurt by it, and I will eventually pull away from you.

I know, I know, balance doesn't work. But I knew, somehow I knew, that I owed this to Nancy. I had to go against my belief here. I had to work a little at the relationship. I used to hate it when people would say: you have to
work
at a relationship. I used to think, Yes, you have to work at a relationship, but only in proportion to how much you compromised in the beginning. Meaning that if you don't compromise in the beginning, then you don't have to work that much. The relationship just sort of flows, always. But I've learned, I think, that that's not really true. Because I don't feel like I compromised at all with Nancy, and yet I know I have to put in work at times, make a conscious effort at times, to keep the magic alive. Now, is that
work
? Or is it just doing your part, not being selfish? I don't know. I'd say yes. But whatever you call it, I'm submitting that sometimes you have to do things purely in the other person's interest. Now, this? Going down to La Jolla for a little sun and surf? Yeah,
that sounds fun for me too. But I'd say no if there was no Nancy in the picture.

But there
was
a Nancy in the picture. So I said, “Dave, that's really nice. That sounds fun. And I think Nancy, my girlfriend, would really enjoy it. So you're making me look good.”

I'd made Ott look good. Now Treadway was making me look good. How nice.

Treadway chuckled. “Happy to help.”

“Let's do it,” I added, not believing that I was actually going to take a day off. Well, I thought, I will be with someone from the investigation, maybe I'll learn something. And maybe a day off will be helpful, will refresh my mind a bit.

“Yeah?” Treadway said. “Great. Cool. Want to meet at my place at noon or so on Saturday?”

“See you then.”

W
hen I told Nancy our plans, she gave me one of the smiles I love. The one where she can't even pretend she's not excited. That smile made me really glad I had accepted. Made me think that sometimes I can be smart.

Saturday morning, we hit the road at 9:30 a.m. The 405 to the 5, right into lovely La Jolla. At noon sharp, we pulled into Dave Treadway's garage. I had anticipated traffic, even on a Saturday, and I had been right. The traffic, man, the traffic, always.

We went up to the Treadways' apartment, and I introduced Nancy to everyone. Then Dave, Davey, Jill, Nancy, and I went back down to the parking garage, got into Dave's BMW X5, and headed out.

We drove to the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, a tennis and golf club right on the ocean and right in the middle of an upscale, but old-school and tasteful, La Jolla neighborhood full of pretty flowers—California poppies and, look, some black-eyed Susans—and Spanish-style houses. The club, too, had old-school charm. It hadn't been redone to look modern and state-of-the-art. It was still sort of a seventies country club. Tennis courts, a golf course, a pool, a couple of restaurants, all organized around a series of low-slung Brady Bunch–style buildings. And, of course, you had a gorgeous stretch of the Pacific running along the whole thing.

I loved it.

We were out by the pool under a parasol, eating salads and club sandwiches, Jill and Nancy drinking mimosas, Dave and I having beers, Davey having some pineapple juice.

Jill said to Nancy, “So, John told us you two met when he came to the emergency room. That's quite a story. Tell us more.”

“Yeah. He came into the hospital with some head trauma, claiming he had fallen down hiking, and I helped take care of him, even though I knew he was lying. And so did the doctor.”

“What had actually happened?” Jill asked.

Nancy, protecting the privacy of my job, another one of her very sexy qualities, kept it vague and said, “John meets some unsavory characters in his business.”

“Like you guys,” I said.

Dave and Jill seemed to enjoy that.

“Anyway,” Nancy continued, “when John was all taken care of and leaving the hospital, he asked for my number.”

“And?” Jill said, totally sucked in to Nancy's story.

“I made him stand there in silence and suffer while I thought about it for a pretty long time.”

Dave and Jill howled at this. I just sat there and took it.

Jill said to Nancy, raising her glass, “Good for you, girl.”

They toasted.

Later, as we were all sitting on the beach, a big blanket, a cooler, some chairs, all of us chatting, Davey digging away happily in the sand, Nancy said to Jill, “So how 'bout you two? What's the story there?”

Jill said, pouring some more champagne into her and Nancy's plastic glasses, “I think this is a good how-two-people-met story.”

Nancy smiled and took a sip.

Jill continued, “I was jogging on a running path in San Diego. Dave and I both lived in San Diego before we moved up here. So I was jogging along one day, it was a weekend, and, you know, it was 9:30, 10 in the morning, and this guy runs past me in the other direction.” She pointed to Dave. “
That
guy. Anyway, I barely noticed him. Next thing I know he's behind me, running now in the same direction as I am. And then he's right next to me, running along. I'm like, What is this guy doing? So he introduces himself as we're running along. And then he asked me out, right there, as we were running. It was . . . weird, really. I almost didn't know what to say, so I just told him how to get in touch with me. Gave him my name and the name of the
ad agency where I worked. And said, you know, call me at work, I guess.”

Nancy loved it, laughed out loud.

I said, as Dave poured a canned Budweiser into a red plastic Solo cup and handed it to me, “See, Dave. That's what you have to do. There's this conventional wisdom, which as a general rule I hate, that you're going to see someone you're interested in in a place where asking someone out is relatively normal, like a bar or a restaurant or whatever. But that doesn't always happen. Mostly you see people you'd like to say hello to in kind of random places. Like when you're jogging.”

Dave said, “Or when you're at the hospital.”

“Right! And you have to pull the trigger. It's up to us,
the guy
, to pull the trigger. And that's hard. That takes guts.”

I looked over at Jill and Nancy and said, “Let me tell you, ladies, what Dave and I did, it's not that easy.”

Dave added, “It is definitely not.”

Nancy said, a sparkle in her eye, “But look what you get if you go for it.”

She motioned to herself and Jill.

Dave and I couldn't disagree. Now we were the ones toasting.

We all went swimming. Nancy
and I went pretty far out. Dave and Jill stayed near the shore with Davey. The cool ocean, after a few cold beers, felt refreshing, rejuvenating, amazing. Nancy and I, in about ten feet of water, took turns swimming down and touching the ocean floor, an always exhilarating, and just a tiny bit scary, trip.

A few hours later, Nancy drifting off to sleep on the blanket, Dave and Jill a little ways down the beach playing in the sand with Davey, me sitting in a chair looking out at the ocean, I got the surge of dizziness again, the feeling I'd had on the Treadways' balcony a few days ago. But this time it was even more intense. My head was spinning. The battery taste reappeared in my throat, rancid and burning and strong. Holy shit, I thought, I'm going to throw up. This time, I'm
definitely
going to throw up. I stood up, thinking that might help. Nancy's body was still and her eyes were closed. Jill, Dave, and Davey were down the beach, smiling and laughing. Nobody seemed to notice that I had this crazy, uncomfortable feeling inside me.

I walked off toward the clubhouse, had to find a bathroom. I found one of the restaurants, classic club look, windows lining the ocean, then found the bathroom, walked in, got to the sink, turned the cold water on high. I cupped water in my hands and splashed it in my face. Over and over. It wasn't helping. I looked in the mirror as a fresh wave of nausea and vertigo came over me. I was going to puke. Or fall and hit my head. I dry heaved. And then I dry heaved again. But nothing came up.

I leaned down and drank some water from the sink, took one, two, three swallows, trying to get that battery taste out of my throat and off my tongue. Drinking water seemed to help. I stood back up. Yes, the feeling was fading. Yes, finally. I took a couple of deep breaths. In, out. In, out. I took another big sip of water. Then another big breath. Yeah, it was fading, fading, gone. I was back.

I walked out of the bathroom, through the restaurant, and back outside. The air, the breeze, it felt good. I crossed
over to a little grassy area that bordered the sand. I looked out at the beach and found Jill, Dave, and Davey, now back on the big blanket with Nancy. They were all talking, laughing, toasting. I looked at the group of them, at the water everywhere behind them, at the white sand. All the colors coming at me—the sky, the ocean, the bathing suits on the beach—seemed pushed, heightened, surreal. Nancy and Jill and Dave and Davey could almost have been characters in a movie I was watching. And standing there, that's when I knew where the sick feeling was coming from.

In Jill and Dave and Davey, I was seeing a life that I wasn't going to have. I was seeing a family, a normal life. A great, normal life.

A part of me wants it, has always wanted it, and, yet I had chosen a job that brings me in close contact with death. Often. I'd chosen a job where you have to be
willing to die
in order to do it well. Is that just an excuse not to have to face the responsibility of a family? I don't think so. After all, is it fair to a child, to children, to know that when you leave the house, if you're doing your job right, you might not come back?

Standing there, looking at Jill and Dave and Davey, and now Nancy, especially Nancy, I felt a certain longing. Like I was living in a world just slightly apart from them. And that evening on the balcony, and right here on the beach, my body was reacting to this reality in a way I'd never experienced. In a way that made me physically feel it. But I knew, standing there, that the life I'd chosen to live was the one for me. I
could
bring a family into it, but, knowing what I knew, I probably wouldn't.

I'd told Nancy this. And I'd also told her that if she left, I'd understand. But she'd said she was an adult and could make her own decisions. I understood that, I'd made a decision too. And I felt that it was the right one. Because of that, while knowing that I'd never have that
other
life gave me great pain, I knew the pain would be greater if I went into situations on the job and hedged a bit. Gave it less than I thought was necessary. It's a strange irony in a way, the fact that to do a lot of things well you have to put it all on the line. You have to be willing to fail in a spectacular way in order not to fail in a spectacular way. You have to be willing to lose everything to gain everything. Tough choice. And in my line, sometimes—not always, but sometimes—you have to be willing to die to find out what happened, what really went down, and who did it.

Does this mean I have a death wish? I don't think so, but I don't know. I hope not. I do know that what I'm saying is true. And I could feel the need to take one of those risks with this guy Lee Graves. I could feel a situation like that coming. And, yeah, I know that if I don't go all in, I might not find everything out. So I'm prepared to do it. Shit, I like doing it. In a way, my body telling me that I won't have this other life is also my body telling me that something's coming. It's saying: That dream has to die. Know it, feel it, so you can be fully prepared to face the possible nightmare ahead. It's saying: Are you ready? Are you
still
ready to do what you might have to do?

Is that why Dave and Jill and Davey Treadway entered my story? To show me a life I wasn't going to have, but also to say: Are you going to be ready?

I focused again on the beach, then looked beyond it to the ocean, where I could now see some sailboats way out near the horizon, moving steadily, catching gusts of wind. I walked back down to rejoin everyone.

A few hours later we
were all back at the Treadways' apartment. We had decided to have dinner together and were contemplating what to do. Make something, go out, order in? Had this day put the four of us on the verge of becoming real friends? Were Nancy and I going to be part of one of those groups of four, or even six or eight, people who were all in reasonably happy relationships, who hung out together, vacationed together, relied on one another? Oh my god, it was terrifying.

I walked down one of the hallways out of the main room, headed for a bathroom, when I noticed, in one of the back rooms of the apartment, a Ping-Pong table. The table sat in a man cave, a study-type room. Dave's hideout. Now, was the room big enough for actual Ping-Pong? Well, no. But the table did not have anything sitting on it. No papers, no pens, no backpacks. So that was good. Respect. And the room was definitely big enough for beer pong. Which the four of us were going to play, if I had anything to say about it. Remember earlier how I said there was some beer pong in this story? Well, it's about to happen.

I walked back out to the front room, introduced the idea. The Treadways and Nancy loved it. We ordered two pizzas and two cases of Bud Light, had them delivered. That's right,
two
cases of Bud Light. Beer goes quickly, very quickly, when you're playing beer pong.

This was shaping up to be my kind of night.

For the record, there are two kinds of beer pong. The kind where you attempt to throw a Ping-Pong ball into a cup full of beer at the other end of the table, and the kind where you are essentially playing a modified form of Ping-Pong, only instead of trying to win the point in the traditional way, you are trying to hit a Ping-Pong ball, with a Ping-Pong paddle, into a cup of beer at the other end of the table. Now, if you are playing beer pong the Ping-Pong way and you are playing doubles, like we were about to, each team has two cups of beer in front of them, and each team has two cups of beer to aim for on the other side of the table. So you start a point, you and your teammate take turns hitting back the balls that don't land in the cups in front of you, toward the cups on the other side, with the intent being to land your shot in one of their cups. When a ball does land in a cup, that's a plop. If you and your teammate get plopped, you both have to drink your beer. If you and your teammate plop the other guys—well, you get the gist.

That's it.

That's all you have to do to have the best time of your life.

Dave put Davey to bed and brought a viewing monitor into the Ping-Pong room. Everyone had a couple slices of pizza, and then we got to it. Nancy and I versus Dave and Jill. I took it easy, intentionally missing a lot, to make sure everyone got a chance to get into it, to sink balls, to feel the thrill of beer pong.

And boy, did everyone feel the thrill.

When Jill sunk a ball, she screamed, I mean screamed. She didn't even say anything. She just screamed a glorious scream.

When Nancy sunk one, she yelled: “Yes! That's right! Yes!”

When Dave hit a plop, he closed his eyes and clenched his fist in an almost primal way.

We had finished a few spirited games and gone through almost a full case of beer when Dave said something I've heard a lot over the years when people play beer pong, either for the first time or for the first time in a while. He looked at me and said, with a real longing, a real desperation, in his eyes, “We're going to play more games, right?”

To which I responded, “Yes. Yes, that's right.”

Dave put on some music. The Descendents.
Somery
. A Southern California choice. A great choice. A pop-punk band that I happen to love. Whose lyrics are clever and moving. “Cameage”—one of the great punk anthems ever, for my money. Jill then went into a closet and came back out holding four hats and said that from now on we all had to wear a hat while we played. Nobody objected, not for a second. Jill gave Nancy a black baseball cap with a marijuana leaf on the front. I got a green John Deere trucker hat. Dave got a big straw Vincent van Gogh hat, and Jill gave herself a tiny little cap with a propeller on top. We looked good. We looked ready. It was getting crazy. I was all for it.