Shell Games

by Kirk Russell

  “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.”

  “We’re going to jump,” Marquez called to the man in front of him. “Tell your friend to hold steady and no one will get killed.” He still held his gun on the man and kept moving toward Roberts, said quickly to her, “We’re out of here. Jump now and I’m behind you.”

  “Not before you, Lieutenant.”

  He pushed her backwards, shielding her body as he did. Roberts disappeared over the rail. He heard a splash and took a long look at the man with the shotgun, kept his gun on him as he climbed over the rail, started to turn to look at the other man and heard, “You look at me and I’m blowing your head off.”

  He looked anyway before falling away from the boat. Their eyes met and he had the face forever, then was backwards into the darkness.

  13

  Marquez kicked his shoes off and surfaced, treading water while still holding his gun. What he didn’t want to do was lose anything more, and what he felt was humiliation and anger. Fear of getting shot had left him as he hit the water. Now, he was cold and the heavy ballistic and tech vests dragged at him. The boat was moving away and they’d have to fight the current and swim to shore. He managed to holster the gun and started swim-ming toward Roberts. Chest-tightening cold was already working on him. He yelled to her. She yelled back and he couldn’t make out the words. He saved his badge, managed to get it in a pocket and then let the tech vest slide and peeled his shirt, wrapped his shoulder holster around a forearm and got the ballistics vest off.

  Then he swam steadily toward her. They had to get to the Coast Guard and the Marlin. They had to reach shore. The Emily Jane was running fast without lights and when he checked again he had to find the moon’s reflection on the wake and followed that to the dark shape of the boat sweeping toward the Golden Gate. Roberts waited for him. She said the cold was no problem and they angled for shore, Roberts leading.

  The dock lights drifted away and the current tugged them toward the Gate. They landed well south of the docks, coming ashore near the main part of town, Marquez’s big frame rising out of the bay like some sort of Godzilla, algae slicking off him as he climbed the seawall rocks and then up onto the sidewalk alongside Bridgeway. They walked down to a hotel that seemed to be the only place open and as Marquez walked in shirtless the night clerk started dialing 911. He showed his badge and they borrowed a couple of sweatshirts carrying the hotel logo.

  Marquez called the Coast Guard first, then the Marlin. He heard Hansen talking over the roar of the Marlin engines and knew he was up on the flydeck and the Marlin was running full out.

  “We’ve got them on radar,” Hansen said, “but they’re flying, and I mean flying. What have they got on that boat? It’s doing better than fifty knots. The Guard is going to have to run these guys down, but they’ll get them. Hey, what happened out there? We heard you went swimming, again.”

  “We were outgunned and they said jump.”

  When he hung up with Hansen, he called Brad Alvarez, who was at the Army Corps of Engineers dock, talking with the Sausalito police. They were still looking for Bailey.

  “We need a ride. We’re at a hotel,” Marquez said.

  “What’s the name of the hotel?”

  Marquez had to look at his sweatshirt before he could tell him. They waited outside, both of them still shaking from the cold and thanking the night manager several times when he walked back out and handed them coffee, insisting the sweatshirts were on him. Marquez held the coffee, stood there waiting, embarrassment and disappointment coloring his thoughts. They had the bust they’d needed right there and they looked like Keystone Kops. Jump on a boat and then jump in the water. Bailey was going to say he ran because he got scared, he thought. He’ll still want to get paid. Bailey will say he panicked, thought there was going to be a firefight. Roberts, who’d been quiet, finally said something about what had happened.

  “It was my fault and I’ll resign tomorrow.”

  “No, you’re not, and we’re going to find that boat.”

  “I just didn’t want him to get away. I’m really sorry, Lieutenant. I could have got us killed, but I thought we could stop the boat.”

  “You keep underrating these people, Melinda.”

  “I know and I blew it. I’ll ask for a transfer.”

  “Don’t do that, you belong here.” Alvarez’s white Cherokee came toward them. Marquez touched her arm and said, “We’ll sort it out.”

  “I messed up, Lieutenant. I don’t want to pretend it was any-thing else.”

  She’d be pulled from the team tomorrow if Keeler got word of how it went down and Marquez decided he’d send her to Fort Bragg this afternoon because Keeler would be here in Marin this morning visiting an old friend having surgery at Marin General. The chief would want to meet, and knowing Keeler he might want to question Roberts.

  With Alvarez they found the only place open to get hot coffee and food. Alvarez turned with a wry look, “Of course, you guys probably prefer surf ‘n’ turf.”

  Marquez stripped the wet pants and put on dry clothes and shoes when he got to his truck. He left on the hotel sweatshirt. He’d just finished changing clothes when Chief Keeler called. It was 6:00, which probably meant someone had called Keeler about what had happened, though he didn’t know who that could have been.

  “Have you got any more equipment left to lose?” Keeler asked.

  “Not a lot.”

  “What is left, your vehicles? Something is wrong here. I’ll be down there by 8:00. I want you to meet me at Marin General in the surgery waiting room. I’d like it if you wrote your report first and brought a printed copy.” Keeler didn’t wait for him to say he couldn’t get it done in time. “You may hear from Chief Baird before I get there.”

  “About this?”

  As SOU patrol lieutenant, Marquez had direct access to Fish and Game’s top law enforcement officer, the chief of patrol, Gor-don Baird. Each new state governor typically appointed a director of Fish and Game and a handful of deputy-chiefs, but the chief of patrol earned the rank and carried the real responsibility for law enforcement. The director’s was a political office. Marquez didn’t talk with Baird often, though every day he copied Baird his e-mailed reports. He heard Keeler’s long sigh, as though he was too old for these types of problems.

  “The FBI called off the Coast Guard pursuit of the boat you’re after.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Over an hour ago.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s all I know, right now.”

  “Backed the Guard off the Emily Jane?”

  “Did you get water inside your head? Yes, they asked the Coast Guard to cease pursuit.”

  “What are you talking about, Chief?”

  “I’ll have a better explanation when I see you.”

  Marquez debated calling Baird and got as far as dialing Baird’s home number after Keeler hung up. He stared at the numbers on his screen as his thumb touched the call icon. Baird alre
ady knew Keeler was on his way down here and would want him to hear it from his deputy-chief. He pressed the call button anyway, then killed it before the phone rang at Baird’s house, his hand trembling as he tossed the phone down. Why in the hell would they do that? What possible reason? He watched Petersen’s headlights swing into the marina parking lot. She got out and walked over.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Petersen smiled. “I’ve been working with the locals here, trying to run down our friend Jimmy.”

  “Anything?”

  “Not yet.” She pulled at the torn cuff of red fleece coat that had long ago faded to pink. “I think he got a ride out of here, John, maybe even by boat. A couple of fishermen went out about an hour after things went bad.”

  “We’ll go looking for him at home later today. I’ve got to meet with Keeler first.”

  “Do you want us to keep searching for him?”

  It had been three hours since Bailey had run, but dawn wasn’t far off, the sky already white toward the east. Maybe daylight would compromise his hiding spot, which was really what Petersen was asking about. It was 6:10.

  “Okay, give it another round. I’m going down to his boat and see what I find on board.”

  Marquez watched her drive off and then walked down to the dock to board the Condor. He recovered the GPS transponder first. He dropped that in his pocket. They’d impound the Pacific Condor, move it to Yerba Buena, and try to put heat on Bailey when they caught up to him. They couldn’t charge him but they could question him and they didn’t need a search warrant to go through his boat.

  Marquez started at the stern, worked his way through the equipment there, opened a cooler that was tied off to the deck and found a couple of Coors talls, an empty Doritos bag floating in the water, and a seven-inch abalone lying on the white plastic bottom underneath it. When he lifted the abalone out and turned the algae-stained shell he could still smell the mineral brine of the sea. He let it slide back and opened the hold, thinking it was more likely that Bailey’d had a car parked somewhere near or a ride waiting for him. Petersen, Alvarez, and the Sausalito police had gone building-to-building around the dock. They’d checked bushes and walked the area. He used a flashlight to look in the hold and saw another basket down there, one they hadn’t had time to transfer, and he winched it up now, counted forty abalone.

  He lowered the basket back into the water in the hold and checked the rest of the deck before going into the cabin. Once inside, he pulled on latex gloves and began a search for evidence, anything he could hold Bailey with. There was a full baggie of marijuana and a couple of roaches. There was a large McDonald’s bag packed with fast-food trash in a corner of the cabin and the smell filled the space when he opened it and rooted through it. He found a piece of abalone shell with a hole drilled in it on a leather shoelace and turned it in his hand. An odd design had been etched on the smooth green shiny part of the shell, a pyramid shape with what looked like the letter Hon one face, a beach thing, maybe, worn around the neck. Was the Hfor Heinemann? How long had Bailey known Heinemann? He dropped it in an evidence bag and went methodically through the storage compartments, the emergency equipment, life preservers, a flare gun, a fire extinguisher, a ship-to-shore radio, bottled water. There were a couple of coats and he searched the pockets, found a handful of Mexican pesos in one, which he counted before putting back in the coat. He came to a locked cabinet and said quietly, “Too bad you locked it, Jimmy.” He searched the pilot’s section for keys, then decided to walk up to his truck and get something to open it with.

  He came back with a small pry bar and ripped the cabinet door off, feeling a base satisfaction as the hinges tore out of the aluminum and the door fell on the cabin floor. Inside, he found a red metal toolbox. The upper tray carried a couple of screwdrivers, pliers, a tool for stripping electrical wires and a roll of electrical tape. He lifted the tray and underneath was a gun with a taped handle and a box of nine millimeter shells. He moved the gun with the screw-driver and saw that the serial numbers had been filed and burned.

  “What have we got here, Jimmy?”

  He knew Bailey would say he’d bought it or won it from some-body in a bar, that he didn’t do the serial number work, didn’t even know about that and kept it on board out of fear of poachers, particularly since he was working for the government. If he got the right judge, and there were a few of them, he’d get nothing more than a lecture.

  “Marquez, who are you talking to in there?”

  He turned at the voice, something familiar in the timbre, stepped out of the cabin and saw Charles Douglas. He lifted a gloved hand in recognition, but didn’t say anything yet. Five years ago, Douglas had been an FBI special agent, but he’d probably advanced since then. He’d had the moves of a guy on his way up. They’d worked together briefly on a child-kidnapping case Douglas had been assigned to. Four kids had disappeared at random out of California coastal towns and the FBI came up with the idea they were looking for a lone male boat owner. Douglas had requested Fish and Game’s help. As far as Marquez knew the kidnappings had stopped, but the case had never been solved. He figured Douglas was here as the emissary from the Bureau because they’d worked together before.

  “Did they send you to explain it away?” Marquez asked.

  “It was my call to back the pursuit off.”

  “Then you’re just the guy I’d like to talk to.”

  “Let’s go sit down somewhere we can talk. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. There’s a little place, Flora’s, Floradito, something like that, I’m sure you know where it is.” He pointed down the water. “Why don’t you meet me down there in fifteen minutes?”

  “See you there.”

  Marquez put the tray back in the toolbox, shut the lid and was still thinking about it. He slid the dope into an evidence bag and dropped the bag in his pocket. He took another thirty seconds in the cabin. When he came back out he climbed off the boat with the toolbox and evidence bags in hand, then set them down as he peeled the gloves.

  Douglas was already outside his car in front of Flora’s when Marquez drove up. The deli faced the bay and had tables outside that were damp with dew and splattered with gull guano. Flora’s did its true business at lunch and through the afternoons when the weather was good, but also sold coffee, bagels, and pastries to the early crowd. They carried their coffee outside and gulls wheeled overhead looking for food as they cleaned a couple of chairs.

  Douglas looked unchanged. He was black with Cherokee blood and especially proud of the Cherokee. He was a history buff and could tell you anything you wanted to know about the Cherokee tribe. He’d come through 9/11 and the partial reorganization of the Bureau, and looked just as confident as the last time Marquez had seen him.

  “Since when does the Bureau give free passes to poachers?” Marquez asked.

  “I’m going to explain what I can.”

  Of course he was. He was here to explain and the only prob-lem with that was the FBI was as stingy with information as a politician with the truth, and it was the Bureau’s habit to always make their investigations more important than any other—9/11 had given them another magnitude of throw weight, but as near as Mar-quez could tell, it hadn’t made them more competent. More busy, definitely. Under the direction of the Coast Guard, the Department of Fish and Game had done numerous patrols with the Marlin, checking bridge abutments at the Golden Gate, Bay Bridge, and Richmond/San Rafael, as well as watching the bay. Calling off the Marlin probably felt like calling off one of their own. There were stories floating all the time now about boats loaded with explosives, bridges targeted, the deeper fears of nuclear bombs delivered with cargo ships. The Marlin now carried automatic weapons, .308’s. But the terrible new possibilities didn’t cancel out his own job and he hoped Douglas wasn’t going to throw terrorism at him.

  “I’m going to tell you more than I should,” Douglas said, his face showing the heavy burden the Feds carried. It had no effect on Mar
quez though, and if anything, it made him think less of Douglas, though he’d always liked him. Saying he was going to tell him more than he should probably meant he was going to lie, so maybe the Bureau really did have a live operation they needed to protect. “We’re close to capturing an individual we’ve been after for many years. He’s responsible for the deaths of five people in law enforce-ment that we know of and he’s suspected of being behind the killing of a judge in Houston and a DA in Arizona in ‘97. There is an indi-vidual on the Emily Jane who’s in our employ as an informant and who has dealings with this individual’s organization.”

  “So Kline is here.” He saw Douglas had been prepared for that, which must mean he’s talking with Ruter.

  “I can’t name names.”

  “Are you involved in the investigation of the diver homicides?”

  “We’re assisting.”

  “Okay, well, we’re looking for a large market poacher who’s buying up north coast ab and it could be Kline. Are you telling me he’s our buyer?”

  “I can’t tell you what I know yet, but I may be able to in the next day or two. I’ve got to get cleared first.”

  “How close are you to him?”

  Douglas looked down at his coffee and picked up the cup, then immediately put it down again. He got out his card and wrote a couple of phone numbers on the back.

  “These are private numbers you can reach me at. The top one will get me day or night.”

  “Where’s the Emily Jane this morning?” No answer for that either and if you’re a Fed long enough, you turn into one, Marquez thought. You start thinking your questions and thought processes are better and you begin to walk among the anointed. He took the card and pocketed it. “How about you call me when you’re able to talk,” Marquez said, as he stood up.

  “Don’t leave yet.”

  “I learned not to underrate him. He’ll make the reality fit your fears. Thanks for the coffee, Charles, and it is good to see you again.”