Phil Arturo died later that morning at Good Samaritan Hospital.
Badger and I were a half-mile away in separate interview rooms at the local precinct. We had more answers than they had questions, and I could see the growing annoyance on their faces. The detectives just wanted to understand what had happened up on the twenty-second floor that led to Arturo being shot, and I kept talking about blackmail schemes, a librarian from Sierra Madre, and a Ponzi scheme from 1980s Arizona.
“Who’s the woman you say shot the victim?” the detective asked again.
“Her real name?”
“Any name,” he gritted.
“Well…” I began, and watched them wilt.
We forever seek simplicity in the chaos. We want crisp answers to complex things. Sometimes those answers exist but mostly we have to make one up to satisfy the need. I made a career out of doing this successfully but this was one instance when I laid everything out in all its ugly truth. My meddling had gone too far and it was time to show all of my cards and deal with whatever repercussions might come with the reveal.
The police were convinced that we were behind Arturo’s murder, and by we they really meant Badger, and gave him a good working over. But the gun they found on him hadn’t recently been fired and there were no powder burns on him, proving he hadn’t fired another gun, either. He had the legal right to carry his gun and there was nothing left to pin on him or me outside of a trespassing charge that the building management had no interest in filing. They, too, wanted nothing more to do with Julie St. Jean and Power of One.
I was relatively fortunate that Badger was the less desirable of the two of us—he had a questionable job and sketchy past and just didn’t look presentable—and thus bore the brunt of their efforts. Also, I had a friend on the inside.
“Still playing games?” Detective Ricohr asked as he waddled into the room. “You look like hell.”
“I almost called you before all this happened,” I told him.
“I’m glad you didn’t. Did you do anything stupid?”
“Probably.”
“The illegal kind?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, let me see what I can do.”
Despite the help, I was held for five hours and all we did was talk. We went through the events over and over again. Once they decided I wasn’t a lunatic, they actually started to listen to what I was saying. Soon they were helping me piece together the various parts of the puzzle, though it wasn’t until many meetings and several days later that a single narrative came together.
Eventually, the representatives on the cases of the three murders—Palos Verdes Estates and Lois Hearns, Sierra Madre and James Fitch, Los Angeles and Phil Arturo—worked to weave together the entire story. The fourth player—Detective Fortin from Phoenix—was still missing, and his section would remain unfinished until he was found, if ever.
The path that led to the three murders began when Karen Arturo’s true identity was revealed. There was a lot of debate among the detectives over the source of that development. One theory had Julie herself divulging the secret to Lois after one of their lovemaking sessions in Sierra Madre. Another had Fitch doing his own research on his murdered sister, like the amateur sleuth who stumbles on something far bigger than he can handle. One outlandish idea was that it came from Bronson Thibideux. Doing his due diligence on the purchase of Power of One, he uncovered Julie’s secret and used it as a bargaining chip when negotiating the deal with Lois. Regardless of how the truth came out, it launched a series of events that ended with Arturo being shot on the twenty-second floor of a commercial building overlooking the 110.
The theory was that Lois and her ex-husband, armed with this new information, teamed up with Fitch and together put the squeeze on Julie. Payments were quickly doled out, but these amounted to short-term fixes; the calls for more money wouldn’t stop until the well was dry. With Power of One’s financial struggles weighing on Julie’s ability to pay, she turned to an old source of cash, the money she’d absconded with when she fled Phoenix. While this provided a deep pool to draw from, it alerted Fitch to its existence. His snooping in Arizona in turn alerted Arturo that the woman he thought was dead, the one whose “murder” almost sent him to prison, was actually still alive. Arturo descended on Los Angeles and further complicated an already complex situation.
A falling-out had likely occurred between the Hearns tandem and Fitch, most certainly over the proportion of the split. Some theorized that the split wasn’t organic and might have originated with Julie herself. She convinced Fitch to eliminate his business partners and they’d work out a deal together. Fitch kept his end of the bargain by murdering Lois, but then he foolishly believed Julie would uphold her end of the deal. His life came to an end in the Sierra Madre house with a bullet in the back.
At this point, the only thing keeping Julie in Los Angeles was the box of money in the trunk of my car. It was all she needed to flee and reinvent herself, yet again, in another part of the world. Several attempts to recover the cash had ended in failure. She eventually got the money but she had to go through her ex-husband first, and yet another murder was added to her tally.
By the end of it, Karen Arturo, aka Julie St. Jean, was wanted for the murders of James Fitch, Maggie Fitch, and Philip Arturo. She was also a person of interest in the disappearance of Detective Richard Fortin of Phoenix, Arizona. Many believed it was only a matter of time before his name was added to the list of the dead.
I emerged from the precinct a little after five in the morning to the empty, rain-slicked streets of downtown Los Angeles. With no idea of what to do and without a clear head to come up with an answer, I just started walking. I worked my way back toward the freeway in the direction of Bunker Hill. Empty of thoughts, I walked all the way back to my office in a slight drizzle.
I made my way upstairs and poured myself a hot cup of coffee. I downed it faster than I should have and immediately poured another. My shirt was damp and this made the room feel colder than it actually was. The hot coffee did little to counter it. I remained in the break room for some time and then heard movement behind me.
Pat Faber shuffled in with his head down, unaware of my presence.
“Just getting in?” I startled him.
He wasn’t used to anyone arriving at the office before him.
“You’re in early,” he said, but not as a compliment.
I thrust my coffee mug a little too close to his face.
“My third cup!” I announced, to prove just how early I had come in.
Pat looked at me the way you’d look at the homeless man you encounter on the street at night and need to ascertain if they are deranged or not. He took a half-step back.
I filled him in on the recent developments with Power of One, Arturo’s murder, and Rebecca’s passing, and all the blood spilled in their wake. It was overwhelming.
“How did we get in so tight with them?” he asked.
“We’re going to play that game now?” I retorted.
“What game?”
“Come on, Pat, you know how it happened. You brought them in.”
“I understand that, but how did it get this far?”
“And so it starts,” I said, exhaling audibly.
Having done this so many times with associates, I saw it coming even before Pat did. This was the part where he convinced me to take the fall for something I didn’t do and then actually made me feel responsible for it. Carried to the extreme, it would lead to my voluntary exit from the firm. But there was no need for that.
The prudent path was to play along with the charade—publicly “own” the failure and then under the banner of “lessons learned,” casually outline all the factors that were outside of my control that led to the failure. I’d then bravely close with, “regardless of all that, it’s on me.” This aggressive-passive approach would give me the appearance of the courageous leader without my having to admit that I did anything wrong.
But that was too easy. And prudence wasn’t in the cards after the events of the last several days.
“I’ll take the fall,” I said.
“Chuck, this isn’t about finding blame,” he offered, alerting me that this could be very painless if I played along.
“Of course it is.”
They’d actually go easy on me, knowing full well that they’d extract a little flesh come bonus time, and it would appear on my review alongside the fraction of a special payout I was supposed to get.
“It’s on me, Pat,” I declared. “But we all know who’s to blame.”