The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin (8 page)

I
drove back down that depressing stretch of Valley road toward the freeway, hopped on it, headed south back over the hill. I got back to my office, yanked the slider open, sat down at my desk, and pulled out my MacBook Pro.

I started typing up, in short, crisp bullets, what I knew so far. I do this throughout a case. Basic, brief pieces of information in chronological order. I constantly revise the notes, strip them back to the core nuggets of information. But I add things too, new insights, texture, context. It allows me to go back over the whole case quickly and gives me a simple, written-out narrative that I can print out, hold, and look at. It's interesting, it helps me see where I am, and it often helps me decide where to go. As I was
writing out my bullets, I thought, Music, yes, music. I put on Lou Reed's
Street Hassle
, the songs coming out of my new speakers loud and crisp. And then I started to type again. Actually, not true. I started to go insane.
Street Hassle
. Great, inventive record, but the wrong choice for right now. Too weird. Too maddening. I turned it off and sat there. I stopped typing for a sec. I just sat there, thinking. About this guy who nobody liked, getting a big hole put in his chest. About the people in his life at the time of the murder. The sheepish brother, the flaky ex-girlfriend, the burned ex–business partner. And of course the parents. The parents who still grieved profoundly, despite knowing the flaws of their offspring.

So, where to go? You know? The cops had investigated and had ultimately come up empty. Did they do a bad job? Probably not. Look, they don't always do a good job, but they often do, especially when Ott's involved.

So was one of the people I'd talked to hiding something? Sure, it's possible. They all have tight alibis, but that doesn't mean there isn't a nugget buried in one of those stories. Right? Yes, Greer was out in the middle of the ocean, Sydney was in Chicago, Craig was with his family, but any one of them could have been involved
indirectly
. They could have hired someone, or they could know something they aren't telling me. And even if they didn't do it or have it done, they might have been involved somehow in something that maybe wasn't really even their fault. You know? They could have told an unsavory person about Keaton, and then
that
person found a reason to kill him.

The other thought I had was, Okay, the people I've
talked to so far—when I look at them, I don't see it. I don't feel it. I can't see any one of them holding up a gun and firing a hollow-point bullet into the chest of a person they know, or hiring someone else to do it. But the thing is, I
could
be wrong. Because people can snap at any time. Any time. It's such a mystery why and how that happens. Where the rage comes from, and why it comes when it does.

There's a story Ott and the guys down at the station tell about this very subject, and it goes like this. A guy is walking across the street in a really nice section of Santa Monica, Second Street and Wilshire, right by the Fairmont Hotel, right by the Promenade. Beautiful day. A Sunday. So this guy, normal guy, khakis, blazer, is walking across Second Street. And there's a car at the stop sign right there, a guy behind the wheel, waiting for him to cross. Pedestrian's got the right of way, and the guy's walking along, kind of slowly. Just taking his time a bit on a Sunday as he crosses. So the guy in the car honks his horn at him. Not loud. Just a friendly honk. Beep, beep. Let's get moving. And the guy walking across the street? You know what he does? This guy who's never committed a crime in his life, pays his bills, has a family at home? He pulls out a gun and fires three times through the other guy's windshield. Kills the driver. No, more than kills the driver. Unloads into the driver's head until it's nothing but a bunch of blood and brains and bones. Right out of the fucking blue. So where did it come from? The killer's answer was: I'd had enough.

That's what he said.

So, where to go? Where to go?

Do round two on all parties involved to see if they give
me something new, something fresh, something that I can, you know, actually use? See if one of them gives me a reason to believe that they just went off the rails for some reason, like the guy in the story? Or hired somebody else to do it? Or something?

Or maybe, maybe, one of the people I'd talked to had already given me something I could use.

With a case like this, a case that never had a suspect and eventually went cold, you have to really look at the edges. You have to. After all, what choice do you have? The police had come up empty.

I thought about all the things all the people I'd talked to had said. Had anyone given me anything? Had anything stood out as unusual, interesting, weird even? You had a guy running a marina wearing a puka-shell necklace, an ex-girlfriend play-fighting in her yard, an ex–business partner in a tragic insurance office in the Valley, Keaton dabbling in the tropical fish business . . .

The tropical fish business.

I mean, what the fuck is that? I've never heard of anyone being in the tropical fish business. Have you? What does that even mean? Owning an aquarium store? Being one of those guys in really short running shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, with a parrot on his shoulder and a station wagon out back with a bunch of nets and shit in it? Or does it mean breeding and selling expensive fish to weirdo fish people and Bond villains? No clue. But if anything stuck out,
that
stuck out. Right? That's something lurking on the edge of this story. So why not look into it.

Right?

I
produced the card that Craig Helton had given me just a couple of hours ago. I dialed the number. He answered.

“I didn't think you'd call me so quickly,” he said, surprised.

“I didn't either. Have a question, though.”

“Yeah.”

“You said Keaton went into the tropical fish business. Can you tell me a little more about that? What does that mean, exactly?”

Craig Helton laughed. “I know. Pretty out there, right? Truth is, I don't know that much about it. It was after the bar; we weren't speaking. But I'll tell you what I know.”

“Great.”

“It was some kind of high-end tropical fish business. Where people spend a lot of money for certain kinds of fish. Not fish you can buy in just a regular old pet store or aquarium place or whatever. That's really all I know. Every time I heard anything about it, I just said, ‘Please stop, I don't care.' But like I said, I heard it didn't work out. Keaton left the business, skipped out on them or something. Shocking.”

“Did you ever hear who the people were that he was working with? Or did the company have a name that you remember?”

“Never heard anything about the people. But the company, yeah. What was it called? Ugh. I put it out of my mind. Ugh. Man. I can't remember.” And then he said, “Let me think. My wife might remember. I'll figure it out and call you back.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We hung up.

I started looking around the web, doing a cursory investigation into expensive tropical fish. To get my head around what this business might have been about. And, man, I learned quickly that there are indeed some expensive fish out there. With some wild names to boot.

The clarion angelfish. Indigenous to islands off the coast of Mexico. Goes for anywhere from twenty-five hundred to seven thousand dollars a pop. I looked at a picture of one. It was striking, quite beautiful, really. Flat and disk-shaped, bright orange, and sort of see-through, with vertical indigo-blue stripes down its face and side.

The Australian flathead perch. Not as beautiful as the clarion angelfish, to my eye, but certainly interesting
looking. Also orange, but not as bright. This one was long, sleek, skinny, minnowlike, with white horizontal stripes rimmed in black. Five thousand bucks.

And look at this. Wow,
really
? The freshwater polka-dot stingray. A black Taiwanese stingray, two little alien eyes on the top of its head, covered in bright white circles, polka dots, of various sizes. One hundred thousand dollars. For one.

And . . . holy shit, you have got to be kidding me. Looks like this might be the top dog. The platinum arowana. Valued at almost four hundred thousand dollars. A big fish compared to the others, looks like two feet long or so. And all white, a bright, glowing white, all over. With a white iris around a yellow eye. I thought: I'm not sure I've ever seen an all-white fish. And then I saw why. There are green, red, silver arowana, and other colors too, found in waters off Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. But to be white, all white, means a genetic mutation. A rarity. A mistake. I found a video of a platinum arowana moving slowly through a massive aquarium. It had a little bit of an underbite and a slightly smooshed face. Because of the all-white body and the translucent white fins, it blurred a bit as it undulated through the water. It evoked an image of a white Persian cat swimming around underwater, fur swaying as it moved through the water, creating a trailing blur.

Jeez, I don't know if it's worth nearly half a mil, but it's mesmerizing, that's for sure. I watched it some more. Sliding, swaying, blurring.

My phone buzzed and shook. I looked. Craig Helton. I answered.

“Hey, Craig.”

“Prestige Fish,” he said.

“That was the name?”

“Yep.”

“Wow. I think I ate dinner there a couple of days ago.”

I heard a stony silence through the phone. Maybe just the slightest hum of a computer or copier in the depressing office where Craig sat.

I continued, “In that Prestige Fish could be the name of a restaurant. It kind of sounds like a restaurant.”

“Oh,” Craig said. “That was the name of the tropical fish business. Not any restaurant.”

I said, “No, I know. I was kidding around. Like, Prestige Fish
could
be the name of a fish place where you could go for a little salmon or something.”

Again, no response from Craig. Just that hum in the background. I thought I now maybe heard something being printed. I decided it was time to stop trying to explain to Craig what I had meant. “Never mind,” I said. “And thanks, Craig. Thanks for calling me back.”

“You bet, John. Call me anytime.”

I Googled Prestige Fish, found
it, went to the site. It was very simple. No pictures of fish, no pictures of anything. Just a black background and a description of the business, a contact e-mail, and a phone number in crisp yellow type. Interesting. The super-low-tech website, the simplicity of it, suggested confidence, made it seem like they knew what they were doing.

The description of the business read: “We find rare
tropical fish for fish lovers and collectors. Contact us with inquiries or to make an appointment.”

Brokers. These guys were brokers. Like real estate agents. Except instead of finding you a high-priced house, they find you a high-priced version of Nemo.

Man, the things that people are into and are willing to pay crazy money for. Cars, sure, but watches, wine, flowers. And fish.

I continued looking around the web to try to make a little more sense of the overall world. I learned pretty quickly that there are people who dive for exotic fish and people who breed exotic fish all over the planet. Hawaii, China, Indonesia, and, like I'd seen in my initial search, Mexico, Australia, Japan. These divers and breeders usually sell the fish to big companies with massive spaces filled with aquariums and pools. Most of the fish have some value, but not insane value, like the platinum arowana. More like fifty bucks a fish, twenty bucks a fish, that kind of thing. The big companies then mass breed the fish and sell them to everyone else—to aquarium stores all over the world, or even straight to customers. The big companies will occasionally get their hands on a rare fish with real value, a fish that is very hard to catch or breed, like a clarion angelfish, and they'll sell it to a high-end fish store or, again, straight to a collector. Prestige Fish, I guessed, just dealt in the high-dollar ones, the rare ones; did the work of finding the fish for you and getting the fish to you.

And how did all these fish get shipped around? Get from a mass breeder to a customer? Get from a diver in
Indonesia to a collector in America? That's what I was wondering. And when I found out, it seemed absurd and almost impossible, but yet it somehow made sense.

They put the fish in a plastic bag with a little water, put it in a box, and overnight it to you.

I sat back and had a thought. Which was: I guess I'm lucky. I mostly just want to work, hit Ping-Pong balls, enjoy cold light beer, and hang out with Nancy. Thank god I don't want to spend a bunch of mental energy, and money, on a bunch of overpriced goldfish.

And then I had another thought, and it was this: If I can get a meeting with the people at Prestige Fish, whoever they are, I'm going to pretend I'm an interested customer.

Why? Why not just tell them I'm a detective and I'm looking into the murder of a man named Keaton Fuller, a man who, I believe, was involved in this business somehow?

Well, sometimes I like to look around, get the feel of a situation, before telling the people there I'm a private cop up in their business. And let's not forget—in
this
situation, it's tropical fucking fish. Just out of the box enough to be something.

I entered a prefix into my phone that made it read “private,” didn't want my name somehow appearing, then dialed the number on the Prestige Fish site. I got a recording. I left a message.

“Hi, my name is John Dean. I'm calling because I'm interested in talking to you about acquiring some fish. I'm in L.A. Perhaps I can schedule a time to talk to you soon, in person. Please call me back when you can.”

I left my number.

John Dean is a name I use sometimes. One, it's close to my actual name, so I can remember it. Two, if they search for it they'll find a million of them and won't know which way to turn. You give the name Denton Duzenswaddle and they either know you're full of shit immediately, or they find the one guy who's actually named that, call him, and realize pretty damn quickly that he's not interested in buying any Australian flathead perches.

Nine minutes later I got
a call back from the number I had dialed.

“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.