Shell Games jm-1

by Kirk Russell

  “What do you think about Davies now?” she asked.

  “I think he’s got a private agenda he mixed up with ours.”

  “What do we do with him now?”

  “Nothing. He’s a suspect.”

  “At least Ruter is talking to us,” Petersen said. “He’s opened up to you.”

  “Yeah, we’re tight now.” He saw her white teeth in the dark-ness. He listened to another wave break and his head was buzzing in a way that made him wonder if he’d ever sleep tonight. “This is what I think probably happened. Davies gave Huega to the people who’d killed Stocker and Han. Maybe that was about abalone or maybe it was dope, but the bottom line was money. Some deal went sour and Davies delivered to gain credibility with them. If it’s Kline, he’d need to do that. He made comments to Ruter about crossing an abyss there’s no returning from.”

  “Or he was there and he killed Huega.”

  “That’s what Ruter thinks.”

  “Ruter can count me in on that one, too. Either way, I guess you don’t have to defend Davies anymore.”

  “Is that how I’ve sounded? You think the detectives are right about that?”

  “Definitely.”

  Marquez opened another beer. He wasn’t sure yet what it meant, but he knew what had changed tonight. Any connection he had with Davies was gone.

  12

  The Pacific Condor floated on a darkening sea, its rust stains lost to the fading light. Bailey was at the stern, Heinemann in the cabin. From the cliffs Marquez and Roberts watched Bailey finish a Coors, then crumple the can and send it spinning like a coin across the water.

  “Jerk,” Roberts said. “That was for us.”

  “He’s making me thirsty.”

  They lay in low scrub brush and dry grass and it had been hot with the sun on them all afternoon. Now the fog was on its way in. Melinda’s face was flushed, her eyes bright. It seemed to Marquez that her anger toward Bailey had grown steadily.

  “Don’t let him get under your skin.”

  “Except that can is more litter in the water now. The guy is a dock toad and so far we’re watching a party boat. That’s about his sixth beer.”

  “They’re waiting for twilight.”

  He couldn’t hear what she said next but he could feel the pulse of the air compressor on the boat. Bailey had turned it on when he pulled this last beer from the cooler. They watched the sun redden, the black jagged face of Elephant Rock smooth with shadows, and Roberts was right, the clock was running down. He glanced at her. She looked cold now, apple spots on her cheeks.

  The cabin door opened and the bow-legged, black-bearded Heinemann came out. They watched his white-foaming splash as he entered the water, trailing an air hose, a hookah spooling from the compressor at the stern where Bailey worked as tender and kept watch, operating the davit, swinging the boom out and waiting, while underwater on the floor of the cove Heinemann used the air hose to inflate pop-ups, urchin baskets with floats. Two bobbed to the surface and in steady succession six more, and they were both quiet on the cliff until Heinemann’s head broke the surface. He lifted his mask and hooked the first basket to the boom as Marquez refocused the camcorder, the light-enhancing feature turning Bailey’s hair white as the first basket swung toward the boat. The urchin basket bulged and was edged in a way that said hard abalone shells were pushing at the fabric, not the small forms of urchins. Marquez videotaped and listened to Roberts’s careful recording of the facts as the baskets were lowered into the hold.

  Within ten minutes the anchor rose and the Condor turned south toward San Francisco. They hustled back up the trail and Marquez drove as Roberts talked to the Coast Guard and tracked the boat with the GPS locator. So far, it had gone as Bailey had said it would. He listened as Roberts let the rest of the team know and then talked with Petersen who’d swung in behind them. He felt upbeat. It had gone well. They had good footage; they’d have Bailey’s testi-mony and if Bailey was right about Sausalito, they might get all the way to the buyer tomorrow. The Marlin and the Coast Guard would help track the boat the catch was transferred to and he hoped that would take them all the way home.

  “Signal good?” he asked.

  “Perfect.”

  The Kline file lay on the seat between them, Roberts’s Gatorade on top of it. She picked up the Gatorade, wiping at the ring the bottle had left, as though somehow the file was sacred to him and she was worried he’d be upset. Earlier, he’d asked her to take a look at it, but so far she’d only thumbed through it as a curiosity. She tapped it now.

  “How come there aren’t better photos?”

  “The FBI has better photos.”

  That got her more interested. The FBI added another level of credibility for her and he knew from talking to Roberts that she’d once considered an FBI career. She’d told him about being younger and imagining she’d be like Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs.

  “What’s the closest you got to him?”

  “There were a couple of times. Once, in Mexico, when I was still DEA, we were up in a mountain pueblo-this was a joint task force with the Mexicans where we’d set up surveillance ahead of a wedding. A man invited to the wedding was the Mexican equivalent of a district attorney. He’d made a name for himself prosecuting drug traffickers and we’d heard the Juarez cartels were either going to buy him off or shut him down. We had our own reasons for wanting him to survive and keep doing his job, so we were trying to help the Mexicans protect him until he prosecuted a couple of cases we were very interested in. Two days prior, we’d been tipped that the cartels had hired Kline to take him out. The DA had come to this wedding with his daughter, a beautiful girl, maybe twelve or thirteen.”

  The last sentence came out like it felt, a stand-alone truth, a side fact until you knew what had happened and he paused, drew a slow breath, having never really gotten over this one. There were times driving along a freeway or a road anywhere, times when his mind drifted to her and for reasons in himself he didn’t understand he’d calculate how old she’d be if she was alive still. He pictured her face easily as he talked to Roberts.

  “The DA went to the ceremony at the church, then made a bee-line with his daughter for their car. He’d made his appearance and was avoiding the party. We’d asked him to avoid the party, and he was okay with it.” Marquez glanced over. “I’m talking about a small church, crowded, old wood doors, stone steps, everybody spilling out after the ceremony. I was well up the slope on one side of town and I could see them walking across the plaza. It was a high desert kind of cold with a wind blowing and kicking up dust. A man came out of a side street and at first he seemed to be headed away from them, then turned back and raised his hand to get their attention. He called to them. Not in a hurried way, but I focused on him, and his face was hidden to me. I started down as soon as the DA took a step backwards, looked like he was trying to shield his daughter. Then it went fast. We think the man asked the DA a question, got the wrong answer and shot the girl through the forehead while her father had an arm around her. There was a delay, maybe fifteen seconds, time enough for more questions, and we got a shot off.”

  “You?”

  “No, I was running down and Kline drove past me. Another agent shot at him but missed. Kline didn’t kill the Mexican prose-cutor and the man didn’t quit his job, but he lost his guts to pursue the traffickers. I heard there were other threats against his family and he folded up after that.”

  “Resigned?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Marquez didn’t answer and she returned to Kline. “It’s not like we have much to go on. Not like there’s much proof about him being here, Lieutenant. What does the FBI say about him being in California?”

  “I made one call and so far I haven’t had a call back from the Feds.”

  She turned quiet and he didn’t begrudge her skepticism. In fact, he respected it. He wanted SOU wardens who were skeptics. His theory of Kline being here could turn out to be a fantasy. He hoped i
t was. Roberts was young, unafraid, and strong. She was an expert markswoman, had a black belt, ran marathons, and had been scuba diving since she was ten. She had the shoulders of a swimmer and grew up in a generation where the young women pumped iron the same as the men. What she hadn’t tested herself against was the absence of morality and he’d wanted to communi-cate Kline to her without overdramatizing, but felt like he’d failed. It was better left alone now.

  At 10:27, the Condor passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and angled toward the north bay. It berthed in Sausalito as Bailey had said it would and Marquez got set up with the local police and the rest of the SOU. Roberts went for food while he talked to the Sausalito police, letting them know they were on location and as far as he knew the bust would still be early morning.

  When Roberts got back, they ate, then moved down to a position on a docked boat. They’d trade off every four hours through the night, and she was asleep now, her head on a coil of rope, a blue plastic tarp hiding her body like a blanket. Sodium lights strung along the dock hummed and swung in the wind and the shapes of Bailey and Heinemann flickered through the pale light of their rear cabin window. Across the bay, the skyline of San Francisco glowed with a hazy brilliance and as the night deepened and quieted he listened to the water lapping at the dock and faint strains of music carrying from the Condor. He watched Bailey come out, pee off the boat into the water and he was near to waking Roberts to change shifts when a light came on in the boat berthed next to the Condor.

  Earlier, he’d scanned the boat, the Emily Jane, hadn’t seen anyone on board and had decided it was a fishing vessel. He lifted the camcorder and with the infrared hooked in he easily read the heat image of a man, then picked up a second individual and swung back toward the Condor, saw both Bailey and the diver out on the deck, the cabin door ajar, a shaft of light falling across the stern. A winch engine coughed and started and Marquez reached and shook Roberts’s shoulder.

  “We’re on.”

  She came awake quickly, asking, “What time is it?”

  “3:30.”

  “Bailey lied.”

  Marquez punched in the numbers for the Sausalito police and then Alvarez’s cell phone. It would take Alvarez and Petersen at least twenty minutes to get here from the motel in Corte Madera and urchin baskets were already moving. They weren’t going to get here in time and the Sausalito police said their first car wouldn’t get there for ten minutes because they had officers assisting the CHP on a vehicle pursuit. He watched Bailey as the dispatcher told him the suspect car had crossed northbound on the bridge then dropped into Sausalito on Alexander Drive. It had since sideswiped three cars and the driver was on foot now with officers in pursuit. Sounded exciting, but it wasn’t going to help them here.

  Marquez repeated their situation and counted three men on the Emily Jane, then got off the line with the dispatcher. He had no problem taking down both boats with Roberts, but it would be safer with backup. He decided to give Sausalito as long as possible to get here.

  “They’ve almost got it,” Roberts said.

  They heard the Emily Jane’s engines kick on and diesel smoke wafted across the dock as Marquez tried the Marlin, but as he feared, they were between shifts and docked at the Berkeley marina. He talked to a sleepy warden, asked him to find Hansen.

  “Okay, we have to go,” he said. “Get yourself ready.” He slipped his tactical jacket on. STATE GAME OFFICER was written in large green and yellow letters, but he didn’t think there’d be any confusion either way. He picked up his flashlight and looked at Roberts crouched near the railing, her eyes shiny and alert. “I’ll walk down, identify myself and order the Emily Jane to shut its engines down. They’re going to pick up on me right away and as soon as they do, click your light on. Then get out on the dock. Let’s look like as many people as we can while they’re trying to make a decision. Bailey knows to do whatever we tell him, so he should be easy. We’ll board the Condor, confirm it’s abalone, then ask Heinemann to step down on the dock. I’ll hold the other two in place and back you up on Heinemann. We’re going to want to handcuff him before we move on the others, and in the meantime hope the Sausalito police get here. When they get here or after we have Heinemann under control we’ll board the second boat. Not before. We clear on that?”

  “Got it.”

  He looked in her eyes. It was her first SOU bust. “It’ll unroll fast,” he said. “Remember, when I click my light on, let them regis-ter me first, let them start thinking it’s one guy, then we’ll hit them with another light. All we have to do is hold them.” But now, he saw a police unit slow to a stop up in the parking lot, lights off. Two officers got out quickly and then looked confused about where to go. They started one direction and stopped, as if afraid they were going to make a mistake. He pointed them out to Roberts. “I’ll go get those two. Wait here.”

  He made his way back to the officers and led them down to wait behind a fish wholesaler’s shed. Roberts would come in with him and the officers would follow. He worked back to her, adrena-line running now. “Let’s go, but let me lead.”

  Marquez started the walk, his shoes making a quiet rhythm on the dock. He saw them pick up on the sound, then clicked on his flashlight and Roberts did the same. He held his ID chest high and said, “Fish and Game, gentlemen,” as he reached the Condor. “Who’s captain of this boat?” Heinemann pointed at Bailey. “Captain, we’re going to board your boat and look at what you’re moving.”

  The Sausalito cops started toward them. Marquez had hoped for four Sausalito officers, but the pursuit in town meant the two would be the only backup. That was okay, except he could feel a problem starting. The lights went off on the Emily Jane. Two of the men disappeared in the darkness, though they had to be in the cabin. Marquez moved alongside the Emily Jane searching for the third man as Roberts boarded the Condor and called, “Abalone, Lieutenant.” She’d opened an urchin bag and he knew she was doing a quick count so she could arrest Bailey and Heinemann.

  Marquez searched the Emily Jane with his flashlight, yelling to the men on board that he was Fish and Game and to shut their engines down and come out. When nothing happened he knew they had a problem. He saw the boat was only held by one moor-ing line and looked for another on board, figured he’d tie it off. He watched for movement, called out again, “Shut your engines down, now, gentlemen.”

  The third man must be hiding around the starboard side. Marquez didn’t pull his gun yet, but he freed the clasp now so he could pull it easily, and behind him, he heard Bailey coaxing Heinemann, making a point to be heard. “Come on, man, it’s fuck-ing Gamers. We’ve got to roll with it.”

  Roberts was back on the dock, telling Heinemann and Bailey they were under arrest when a squat man appeared on the stern of the Emily Jane and walked toward Marquez holding his hands up, talking as he got closer.

  “Hey, man, what’s up? What’s the problem?”

  “This is a bust, come down off the boat.” Marquez shined his flashlight on his badge while the cops kept their lights on the boat cabin. “Fish and Game.”

  “Okay, Fish and Game, what’s the problem?”

  “The catch you’re transferring from your friend here.”

  Roberts had handcuffs out and Marquez kept his eyes focused on the boat cabin, looking past the man getting off the Emily Jane. The other two had to be lying down inside the cabin. Where else could they be? There was scuffling behind him and he turned to see Bailey pounding down the dock. He’d broken free of the officer who’d gripped his arm and had run. One of the Sausalito cops was chasing and Heinemann used the moment to break in the other direction, knocking Roberts down as he passed, straight-arming her at the collar and springing toward the Emily Jane. Heinemann scrambled aboard as the man who’d climbed down had a knife out now and was slashing at the mooring line. He’d all but cut through it by the time Marquez got his gun out, disarmed him, and had him facedown on the dock with his arms out. Marquez called to Roberts and then slid the knife away wi
th his foot. He turned to check Roberts’s position and the cops chasing Bailey.

  Roberts had leapt on board the Emily Jane and the boat had clunked into reverse, engines gunning, snapping what remained of the mooring rope. Marquez yelled at her to jump, but she was trying to handcuff Heinemann and didn’t hear him above the diesels. He had to make a decision and left the man lying on the dock and went for the Emily Jane before it left with Roberts.

  When he jumped he caught just enough rail to hang on, hoist himself over, and then aimed his gun at a man who stood under the deck light holding a sawed shotgun on Roberts. Marquez ordered him to drop the weapon, but the man didn’t flinch, didn’t move the gun from Roberts.

  “Drop it, now,” Marquez yelled. “It isn’t worth it. You’re sur-rounded. Lay the weapon down.”

  Marquez was within fifteen feet before the man said, “Not another step, fucker.”

  His grip on the shotgun was tight and Marquez knew he was thinking about emptying a barrel into Roberts and swinging the gun his way.

  “You might kill her, but I’ll empty a clip into you before you can get to me. Drop the gun,” he yelled over the engines.

  “There’s a man coming up behind you, Lieutenant,” Roberts called, and Marquez registered him without taking his aim from the man with the shotgun. “He’s got a gun.”

  “Fucking right, I’ve got a gun,” the man yelled, and Marquez couldn’t risk turning to look at him. “In the water if you want to live.” Marquez figured he must have jammed something in the wheel to keep the boat going straight. “Hey, pig, you listening to me?” He fired a burst and Marquez heard the bullets whang off metal above his head. “Go, now-now, or you’re gone. You’re both dead fuckers if you don’t jump.”