Redback kr-4

by Kirk Russell

  ‘Did you get to talk to her?’

  ‘Yes, but with the locals watching over my shoulder, but she’s either a great actress or really is scared that something has happened to him. I’m going back this afternoon to interview her, but don’t tell Holsten or Boyer that I told you that. I’m not supposed to tell anyone.’

  Marquez understood. Earlier, he’d seen Boyer, Group 5’s ASAC, in a conference room with Holsten and a translator. Neither Holsten nor Boyer would talk about it when they came out.

  ‘Did you know about a girlfriend?’ Sheryl asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The girlfriend says he pays for her house.’

  ‘What’s her name again?’

  ‘Alicia Guayas. She has photos with her and Jim.’

  ‘How do you read her?’

  Sheryl hesitated. She sighed.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Marquez wrote the name Alicia Guayas on a pad. From his desk Marquez could easily see Jim Osiers’ desk and the framed family photos. He could see Jim’s marriage hitting a hard spot, but not Jim abandoning it or taking bribe money.

  ‘What about Rayman?’ he asked.

  ‘No word.’ There was static and then she said, ‘The Mex Feds claim they have people in Loreto who’ve known about the girlfriend and say it’s been going on for awhile. In one photo he’s got an arm around her and he’s leaning over as if he’s going to kiss her.’ Marquez was more worried about the false bank account. He heard voices in the background and Sheryl said, ‘I’m going to have to call you back.’

  Jim Osiers had three sons and a wife in the Inland Empire. He bitched about his salary and commute, but who didn’t? Even with locality pay it was tough to make it in LA on a DEA salary, and Marquez had always gotten the feeling Osiers savored the break in Loreto just to get away from the grind of the commute and trying to raise three sons on his salary. Marquez lived in Hermosa Beach out in South Bay like a lot of the single agents, but he’d always thought Osiers lucky to have a family to come home to at night. The drug war was a soul destroyer. It ate you from the inside out and you needed ways to counter that.

  Marquez walked out of the Field Office in the late afternoon looking for food. The afternoon was smoggy and hot, the sky white with no depth. On the sidewalk two construction workers talked loudly about a truck parked in their restricted zone as if the owner would overhear and move it before they had it towed. Marquez glanced at the panel truck as he passed, rust-stained, chalky white paint, Perez Cabinets stenciled on the sides in black letters. It had two front tires bald in a way you could only get away with in a part of the country where it didn’t rain much. More than likely, the Perez Cabinet guys were working nearby and saw a chance to steal free parking.

  He bought a black coffee and a tuna sandwich, and when he walked back the construction superintendent and other worker were gone. In the Field Office a TV played and he ate the sandwich and watched a CNN report with shots of the Sea of Cortez and Highway 1 in Baja. Competitors called CNN crisis news, but at least they were there. No one else was covering.

  A flyover search for bodies in the Sea of Cortez had yielded two local fishermen and they were looking for four others in what CNN called cartel infighting. There was nothing new on Jim Osiers and it was too late for good news. Marquez stayed at the office until 8:00 that night and then went home to the apartment, frustrated that Holsten wouldn’t let him go to Baja, but also very disturbed by what Sheryl had learned.

  Marquez lived in a one-bedroom on the second floor of a three-story stucco apartment building with a Spanish motif. The apartment had oak flooring and a concrete deck with black iron railing, the deck with a view of the ocean. At night after the traffic died, he could hear the waves breaking. Sometimes he’d sleep with the sliding door open just so he could hear that.

  Marquez had drifted into his early thirties living alone. Ask him why and he’d shrug off the question, though he knew the answer was his wife’s murder in Africa. ‘Wife’ was an impersonal word for Julie, and really, married barely fit them. They married young, most would say way too young, and maybe time would have done to them what it did to other people, but Marquez still let himself believe otherwise. He allowed himself that. He didn’t indulge grief and make a touchstone out of sorrow. He didn’t sit at a bar, drink with you, and then wait for the chance to tell you about his sadness. But he did live alone.

  He’d gone out with plenty of women in the last five or six years. He wasn’t a loner. He liked to laugh and have fun. He got a beer from the refrigerator now and opened it. Summer dusk was settling in. Jim Osiers was missing and he couldn’t picture Osiers staging his disappearance. The girlfriend, OK, maybe, but Rayman making the call after Sheryl arrived, the late night tip, the bank account revealed before mid morning the next day, no way. It all felt a little too organized. He needed to go there and find out.

  He finished the beer and then stacked some charcoal in the Hibachi and lit it. Smoke curled in from the deck through the open slider. The sailboat of an ex-cop named Dunfield slowly passed out beyond the surf, ghostly in the twilight. The boat’s name was Blow Me and for that Dunfield, who was retired, had become a minor celebrity with the local teens. Dunfield was often in shorts, sandals, a T-shirt, and a cap. He was getting by on not much more than his pension money, but seemed happy.

  Marquez opened another beer and then grilled a chicken breast and corn. He was eating when his sister, Darcey, called.

  ‘Nathan left last night,’ she said, meaning her husband. ‘He’s going back to New York and leaving me the boat and the restaurant.’

  She sounded defeated and he was sorry for her but it didn’t surprise him. This had been coming for awhile. It was a long way from New York to Seward, Alaska, and owning a restaurant that made its money on tourists in a season that wasn’t much more than five months. Darcey loved it there, but Nathan had threatened to leave more than a few times.

  ‘I’m sorry, Darcey.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m glad it’s over.’

  Marquez didn’t know what to say to that. She was hurting. That’s why she was calling. He wished they talked more. He wished she lived closer and was happy. He listened and tried to forget about Osiers as he talked with her.

  He hung up remembering a foggy night when he was fifteen and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in his grandmother’s old Chevrolet Impala desperate to find her. He didn’t have a driver’s license yet, just a permit, and was afraid the bridge toll-taker would see it in his eyes, call the cops, and they’d stop him from driving into San Francisco to the Tenderloin where one of Darcey’s stoner friends had told him she’d gone after running away from home.

  That night he had a photo of her lying on the passenger seat, a blowup of her high school yearbook picture, though she’d stopped looking like her photo months ago. Heroin made her rail thin, her hair stringy, and her face dull and gaunt. He found the address in the Tenderloin and then a building with a stairwell stinking of urine and littered with trash. On the fourth floor pale yellow light came out from under the door and when he knocked, the man who opened the door said, ‘Go home.’

  ‘I’m looking for my sister.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’re looking for God. Get the fuck out of here before I kick your ass down the stairs.’

  Marquez had pushed his way in and the guy punched him, but Marquez was already six foot one and strong. He hit back and hard, but the fight like all fist fights was a mess. When he left the man on the floor and staggered down a hallway and pushed into a bedroom he found a doped-up Darcey, maybe not even aware what the fat guy on top of her was doing. It was that hard and that long ago. He had carried her out wrapped in a blanket smelling of sex and sweat.

  On the sidewalk a big guy pulled a knife and said, ‘I own the bitch.’

  Marquez still believed the guy would have stabbed him if a police cruiser hadn’t rounded the corner. The police didn’t hesitate and in that moment his view of the police changed permanently. He’d run wi
ld as a kid, wandered the forests of Humboldt County, and listened to his parents’ friends talk about their pot fields and getting ripped off by cops. The family had lived for two years in a tent with a dirt floor and later in San Francisco they’d lived out of a VW van. The cops were always rousting them. He’d been a truant before he was seven years old and was taught to look at the police as enemy. But not after that night, not after those cops got out and helped him. That night changed everything.

  SEVEN

  At sunrise the Perez Cabinets truck was still on East Temple, though now a bad smell leached into the soft early light. Blow flies crawled across the rear rolling door toward a crack, and Marquez watched them and then crossed the street and called LAPD from downstairs in the DEA building. He got transferred to a Detective Broward.

  ‘Have you run the plates?’ Broward asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Give them to me.’

  He read them off and said, ‘Why don’t you get a patrol car out here and I’ll meet the officer.’

  ‘Are you that sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been around this before?’

  ‘I have.’

  Broward thought about that for a few moments and said, ‘I’ll need you to wait there.’

  A handful of construction workers gathered to watch the lock on the roll-up door torn off as a pry bar lifted the door. Tortured metal wrenched and snapped and as the door went up the heavy smell of death rolled out like a breaking wave. When the detective saw the body he started clearing everyone.

  But Marquez didn’t leave. He backed up and then remained where he had a view of a male body lying on its side with its back to them. He studied the pants, shirt, short brown hair, and the shoulders. When he turned, he saw two reporters who’d been hanging around the Field Office waiting for word on Osiers cross the street as they saw crime tape strung.

  Detective Broward walked over to Marquez, put a hand on his shoulder, said, ‘Thanks, but I need you to step outside the perimeter now.’

  ‘When will you turn the body over?’

  ‘When we’re ready.’

  ‘Call me when you do.’

  ‘Why?’

  Before the call came Marquez let his squad know that the body in the truck looked too familiar. Hidalgo and Green came with him as he went back out. The truck’s bed was almost waist high and the police had placed a stepladder there. He followed the detective up into the truck and stood where he was told to. He heard the detective ask him, but for a few moments Marquez felt like he was outside his body looking at Jim Osiers. He leaned and looked at the face again, made himself do it, the eye socket, the blood that had run down to his collar. He saw the bruising and where a piece of Osiers’ skull had erupted through his scalp. He saw Jim had bled, so had been alive when it happened. Rage and deep sorrow rose in him and pushed away the shock and disbelief.

  ‘This is our missing agent, Jim Osiers. He was on my squad. We started at the DEA the same year. We came in together. He’s the agent missing in Baja.’

  Marquez was aware that the detective already knew who it was and that he’d only confirmed it for him. He heard Detective Broward say he was sorry, but it didn’t really matter who was sorry. It was the scale of the thing they were up against. The money was too large, the demand for drugs too big, and it seemed to him that the world was different than it had been when he’d started at the DEA. The violence had been there, but it was more accepted now, just as it was accepted as normal that more people had guns that spit more bullets faster. He turned to Broward.

  ‘His wife is going to insist on seeing him, but she shouldn’t see him like this.’

  ‘We’ll take care of her.’

  Broward managed to say it like he meant it, though of course no one could take care of her or the kids, or protect them from the other stories that would come out now. From behind him, Hidalgo asked, ‘Is it Jim?’ When Marquez didn’t turn, he called again, ‘John, is it him?’

  EIGHT

  Three days later, Marquez picked up Sheryl at LAX as she returned home. ‘John,’ was all she said as she got into the car. As he pulled away from the curb and threaded into traffic she pressed her palms flat on her thighs and stared through the windshield. Her dark hair was parted in the middle and cut at an angle that fell across her cheeks. She closed her eyes as a car somewhere behind them honked.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve been better. I went back and talked again to Alicia, the girlfriend, and she showed me things Jim had written her. Not long love letters or anything but notes, and it’s his handwriting. She showed me jewelry he gave her. They’ve talked about names for the baby. I don’t know what he was planning, but he wasn’t denying it was his baby, and one of the names they were kicking around was his middle name. He told her he was going to move to Baja. He didn’t say how he’d make a living.’ She exhaled and leaned back. ‘He was out of here, John.’

  ‘How was he when you were there?’

  ‘Tense, but I always think he’s tense, especially when he says he’s relaxed. He had five beers in him when we went out that night. I had three.’ Sheryl turned and looked at him for the first time since getting in the car. When their eyes met she said, ‘Here’s what I know. He had a girlfriend. That’s confirmed, and I can tell you she’s pregnant and grieving. Even if the Salazars or somebody made her get involved with Jim, she’s in shock. And there was a bank account in La Paz. I drove down there and the bank manager took me through it.’

  ‘How much money went through it?’

  ‘Three hundred sixty-three thousand dollars in six and a half months, but maybe he got a pay raise I didn’t hear about.’ She reached over and touched his arm. ‘I didn’t tell you that, OK. Let Holsten tell you.’

  ‘Does Holsten know you went to La Paz?’

  ‘He sent me. Everything I’ve done in Baja he’s directing. You don’t know that either, but that’s not about you, John. It’s about the leak. He said he won’t trust anyone until we know how the Salazars got the identities of our squad.’

  ‘It may not have been the Salazars.’

  ‘Same point.’

  ‘OK, what else did you learn in Baja?’

  ‘I’ve got to say this first, I’ve let myself start believing things about Jim I couldn’t have imagined two days ago. When he disappeared I said bullshit, bullshit, bullshit to what the Mex Feds were telling me. Now, I believe it’s all possible, and it’s making me question everything. I don’t know what to do with that.’

  ‘Don’t do anything with it yet.’

  ‘All right, I’m trying not to, but Pete Phelps showed up with more evidence. The ATF was already on Jim.’

  ‘That’s according to Phelps?’

  ‘Pete is one of the good guys.’

  If you say so, Marquez thought, and then lined up in traffic getting on to the 405. It was going to take a while to get Sheryl home. He turned over the idea of Pete Phelps showing up and the ATF watching Osiers.

  ‘Were you really the one to ID his body?’ she asked.

  ‘I think LAPD figured it out first and I confirmed it.’

  ‘Holsten wants me to look at the panel truck. He thinks it might be the one Jim and I saw at the beach. What did they do to Jim?’

  ‘Crushed his skull.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ For several minutes she didn’t say anything and then, ‘The ATF thinks Jim was trying to squeeze too much money out of the Salazars and they got tired of it.’

  ‘Is that a Phelps opinion or an ATF conclusion?’

  ‘Pete is actually OK, John.’

  She didn’t talk after that but she was right, he didn’t trust much of anything Pete Phelps said. They drove in silence most of the rest of the way to her house where Marquez said, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow and let’s get lunch. I’ve got a meeting with Holsten in the early morning. I’ll call you after that.’

  ‘I’d like that. I need to talk.’

  ‘So do I. See you tomorrow
.’

  NINE

  Saturday morning early the Field Office was quiet. Holsten had stopped on the way in at the day-old bakery he frequented. Croissants, muffins, and cookies sat on a white paper plate. Next to the plate was an unopened quart of orange juice and paper cups. It was much more than the two of them would eat and Holsten explained before Marquez asked.

  ‘Agents Javits and Steiner are on their way here. We’re going to reorganize this morning. I’ve got to go get something out of my car. Tell them the food is for everybody if they get here before I get back.’

  When Sheryl walked in she said, ‘He called me late last night and said be here at 8:00.’

  Steiner, it turned out, thought he was going to be promoted, not transferred to the one squad that was falling apart. He looked angry as Holsten delivered the news. Boyer, Group 5’s ASAC, was home sick with the flu, but Holsten made it clear the changes weren’t Boyer’s anyway.

  ‘They’re mine,’ he said. ‘Agent Marquez you’re relieved of your supervision duties. Agent Javits you’ll work with your ASAC and eventually be squad leader. Marquez you’ll work undercover locally with Agent Steiner.’ He nodded toward Steiner. ‘Tom is an old friend of mine. We started at the DEA together. We go back that far. He’s transferring to your squad as of this morning.’

  Nobody said anything and Holsten stared at Marquez.

  ‘Agent Marquez, we’re going to send a strong message, starting with the hippie tour boat operators you’re already watching. Monday morning I want to know how we’re going to bust them.’ He paused. ‘What do you call them, again?’

  When Marquez didn’t answer, Sheryl volunteered, ‘The Fab Four, but it’s a joke.’

  ‘We’ll call this Operation Fab Four. This is where we start to rebuild Group Five.’