Shell Games

by Kirk Russell

  Five minutes later he was making coffee and talking to dis-patch. It was 5:10. There’d been a call to Fish and Game during the night, a message left that Marquez listened to as he poured coffee.

  “Hey,” a man’s voice said, “I don’t want to give my name or nothing, but I know who those guys killed up at Guyanno Creek were selling to. There’s a whole bunch of guys in on that.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not leaving my number, man, but you can reach me through this one.” Marquez listened carefully to the numerals again, moved the pencil swiftly from one to the next com-paring them to what he’d written down the first time he’d listened. The message concluded with, “Leave me a way to get ahold of the warden that was up there at Guyanno and I’ll call him back.”

  Marquez clicked off, laid the phone and pencil down, the phrase “the warden that was up there at Guyanno” still chasing him. It was an easy thing to know. The place had been crawling with police and the story of what had happened had gone out from there. It was unusual to get a request for a particular warden, but you could explain that away with the murders.

  He turned to Katherine’s footsteps and then held her as she pressed against him. He ran his hand down her bare back, the smooth skin there, the curve of her rump.

  “I need your help today,” she said. “Do you think you can be there when I talk to Maria?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll try. When do you want to do it?”

  “After school.”

  “All right, but I’ll have to call you, Kath. Depends how today goes.”

  “This is the kind of thing, John.” She tensed and pulled away from him, from his inability or unwillingness to say absolutely he’d be there, and when she turned it was as if suddenly she was self-conscious of her nakedness and no longer comfortable around him.

  He watched her go down the hallway, heard the shower run-ning a few minutes later. He called Petersen while Katherine showered and dressed. Nothing had happened during the night in Pillar Point and Petersen sounded tired, said she didn’t feel well. It was too early to call the number from the tipster and he folded the paper and walked back to the shower to talk with Kath, try to explain what was going on with work and why he couldn’t commit to the afternoon yet. They had coffee together. Katherine said she had to go get Maria to drive her to school, then would head into the city to Presto. He watched her car disappear, walked back into the house, made more calls, and read through a fax he’d gotten on Heinemann. At 7:30 he called Ruter.

  “Has the FBI taken over the cases?” Marquez asked.

  “It’s a joint investigation. What’s it to you?”

  “They stepped in on one of our busts.” Marquez had made the decision to try to talk to Ruter. He figured they could help each other. “They had an informant on the boat we’re after and I get the feeling from talking to them that it ties to Guyanno Creek. Have you asked them about Eugene Kline?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you get back?”

  “Nothing, so far.”

  “Ask again.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Marquez, but I get enough already. I’ve got to go.”

  He had a conversation with Chief Keeler after hanging up with Ruter, Keeler telling him he was invited to lunch with Chief Baird and the director of Fish and Game, Jay Buehler, and he needed to be in Sacramento at 12:30 and not be late. He took a call from Petersen as soon as he hung up with the chief.

  “Girlfriend is on the move,” Petersen said, and her voice was lighter now. “She went to Starbucks and now she’s at a laundromat. She could wash all her shirts in half a load, but we also made a stop at Rite Aid for quarters, soap, and face cream. I think we’re spinning our wheels following her.”

  “Let’s go a day with her.”

  “If she orders a hamburger for lunch should we take her down?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on, John, that was funny.”

  “I’ve got more on Heinemann. He was busted on campus at San Diego State four years ago for peddling dope. He’d been masquerading as a student but wasn’t enrolled. He got away with a suspended sentence and a fine, but that puts him in San Diego while Bailey was still living there, and I’m wondering if those two go back a little further than Meghan Burris thinks. No way is he really enrolled at UC Santa Cruz as she seems to think. Why don’t you check that today?”

  “Sure, it’ll give us something to do while she’s getting her astrology charts read.”

  Marquez crossed the bay. The paint on his black Nissan pickup had faded to gray in places and the seat cupped around his back in a way that was always a little too tight, but he liked its reliability and unassuming lines. It was old and didn’t stand out. Park it in a beach lot and no one noticed it. He parked on Webster Street in Oakland, three blocks from Li’s shop and threaded through the morning sidewalk crowd. Next door to Li’s place was a large Asian market with a steady traffic of early shoppers this morning, but Li’s shop was empty. Li sold herbs and various other incidentals, things he bought in bulk from liquidators, or odd items like dispos-able cameras past their expiration dates, a mix of stuff he gathered and then moved out again at a slight profit. As Marquez had guessed he would be, Li was in his shop. He could see him at the rear though the door was still locked.

  Li wore a black silk shirt and the hospital sling for his collar-bone had been replaced by a red scarf. Marquez watched him through the glass as he shuffled forward. He had to be hurting terribly inside, but they needed to talk today, and it was the con-versation they’d had three years ago after the Santa Rosa trial that Marquez was relying on now. They’d sat at a booth in a chain restaurant and Li had painted, in fragmented sentences, images of the Vietnam War, telling how the Cong officer had executed his parents, how his family came from China originally and how the Vietnamese on either side didn’t like Chinese immigrants. He’d been conscripted and escaped and described watching American fighter jets low and dark overhead, the screaming noise they made as they came in off the water. He knocked over a glass in the restaurant as he told of the bombing of Hue, the decayed pale blue plaster of his father’s high-walled office falling, and American soldiers, one with a face and hair like yours, he’d said. He made it out with the boat people, married in a refugee camp and waited his turn to come to America.

  Li stood a moment looking at him, then opened the door. He looked down at the worn wood floor of the shop, gesturing for Mar-quez to come in, waiting for him to pass by, letting Marquez lead the way to the rear office because he was a police official. Marquez knew that Li had given his sons American names to protect them. He remembered Li saying that, describing the birth of his older son, Joe, born an American in an American hospital, and how he was raising his sons American and the things he was buying. “I buy computer games, CD burner, stereo TV,” as though these things were talismans that would protect the boys. They dressed like the American kids they were and spoke English with their friends, wore high-topped tennis shoes. He’d talked about them going to college and his own business expanding, and temporarily left the abalone problem in the courthouse. It had been Marquez’s impres-sion that it was through his sons that Li felt connected to this country and something of that had to be gone now.

  They sat at the table, what served as his office behind the counter, the cash register at the very rear of the long rectangular space. The walls were high and old, white paint fading toward yel-low, cigarette smell permeating the air.

  “I can’t tell you more,” Li said. “I go to prison, okay. You arrest me, okay. I understand.”

  Marquez showed him the photos they’d had made of the two men who’d visited Li. “These are the men that came to see you.” Li shook his head. “That came to your house.”

  “I don’t know those men.”

  “We videotaped them and had these prints made. Have you sold them abalone?” Li shook his head but Marquez felt an energy building inside. He didn’t want to violate Li’s grief, but he had to know, had to sway Li o
ver onto their side. There was no one else, no other real lead left. “These guys came to threaten you and now we’re going to give it back to them. We’re going to threaten them, but we have to know how to find them.”

  He watched Li’s eyes, knew this was the moment he’d go one way or the other. “Phone only good one time only. They change all the time.”

  “Show me the number.”

  Li got a piece of paper from a drawer.

  “Let’s try it anyway,” Marquez said. “If they answer, tell them you have five hundred abalone you hid in a friend’s freezer and you need to sell before we find it. You can tell them we’ve been here several times and we’re threatening you. You need the money. You’ll sell cheaper, okay? These buyers will be suspicious, but they’re here to get abalone and they may try to work out a way to do a deal. So we’re going to give it a go. I’m going to punch in your phone num-ber and we’ll see if they call you back, okay? Can you do that?”

  “They say they will kill my other son if I tell you.”

  His eyes were dark, shining with sadness, liquid, not under-standing how he could be asked to risk that. He shook his head, made as though he was going to rise and leave the table.

  “We won’t let them kill Joe and we’ll help with the move to Colorado.”

  Li had told him about the move, that it was all set and Marquez’s idea was that Joe and Mrs. Li leave early, even if it was for an extended visit and he had to help Li make the rest of the arrange-ments himself. He wondered if Keeler would go through the roof, but he didn’t see another way to keep it moving here. It was a route, a way to do it, and Li could plea-bargain out by cooperating. His gut turned asking Li to risk another son, but he was confident that if they got the boy and his mother out of town today they’d be safe. He started calling the number on the piece of paper, watching Li as he did.

  Maybe you pay for all cruelty somewhere. It should be that way, but he didn’t know what else to do with Li other than to force him to help.

  It was hard enough to get a county DA to go after poachers when they had the whole ring. Spending money prosecuting abalone cases didn’t get district attorneys re-elected. It was hardly a hot-button issue.

  Tell most people that white abalone was the first ocean species humankind could genuinely claim bragging rights to extinguishing and they’d shrug. Big deal, extinctions happened. Talk about man-aging resources and they’d agree with you, as long as it didn’t cut into their lifestyle too much. Where was abalone in the scheme of things? It wasn’t an African elephant, an orca, or lion. Not much glamour in an abalone and there never would be.

  A century ago, abalone had been so plentiful along the California shoreline that all you had to do was wade in a foot or two and pick them up. Shellmounds attested to how plentiful they’d once been. Their shells had become a source of jewelry and inlay. Japanese had set up factories and shipped huge quantities home for food. Diving came after the easy stuff was gone and we’re down to the end game for a species that has survived for a million years.

  Marquez looked at Li and knew he didn’t have the right to offer this man—who’d raked through ab beds for a week—taxpayer money to help move out of the state. And he didn’t have the right to promise Li he wouldn’t be prosecuted.

  When the pager beeped he punched in the number for Li’s shop and hung up. Within a minute, or maybe no more than thirty seconds, the phone rang. Li picked it up and sweat started on his forehead. Marquez listened in on the conversation. The man talk-ing on the other end was smooth, quiet, and very clear.

  “If you’ve got more abalone to sell, then stay by your phone and I’ll call you back in half an hour,” he said, and hung up.

  Now it was very quiet in the shop and Marquez couldn’t get Li to talk and sat silent himself. He smelled ginger and an herb he couldn’t identify. The front door opened, bells tingling, and one of the older women who’d been at the house when they’d presented the search warrant came toward the back. Li called to her, his voice tight with anxiety, the pitch rising, maybe warning her off in Vietnamese. There was a rapid exchange and then she was closer, standing at the half wall separating the office area from the shop, wagging a finger at Marquez before turning and leaving.

  A half hour passed. Forty-five minutes and he felt Li’s nervous-ness grow. Then the phone rang again. “Yes, hello,” Li said, and almost immediately instructions were given. Li made rapid notes, his gnarled hand agile across a piece of paper. Marquez held the phone to Li’s ear while he wrote with his good hand. “Tonight,” the voice said. “11:00.” Marquez heard it very clearly, then a slowly delivered warning. “If anything is wrong, if you’re not there, if anyone is with you, if we see anything, then it’ll happen just like we told you.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you want to be really sure, because we’ll wait and we’ll do what we said. If you’re lying and they’re telling you they’ll protect you, they’re wrong. What’ll happen is we’ll wait for your kid as long as it takes, and I bet you know about waiting. I think all you gooks are born knowing how to wait. Same thing, my man, and you got to understand the people who hired me, they leave it open. They’re good for the money and they just want the job done even-tually. You don’t want that to happen.”

  “This abalone is stored at a friend’s house.”

  “Okay, you be sure now. Don’t let the Gamers suck you into this.”

  The line went dead. Marquez tried to talk it out with him and explained how they’d deliver more abalone to him this afternoon in an ex Webvan truck. The lettering was still on the side; he’d rec-ognize it. Shauf would handle the drop with Alvarez’s help. They’d help Li load his Toyota.

  “We’ll be there with you.”

  Now, he got Keeler on the line and talked over protecting the family, getting the chief to agree they’d move Joe Li and his mo-ther this afternoon, leaving out the Colorado part for the moment. He called Shauf as they finished.

  “I have to go to Sacramento to meet with Baird, Keeler, and Buehler, so you’ll need to handle the delivery here,” he told her, “and I’ll call you on the way back. We’re going to get a step closer tonight. We’re going to make it happen.”

  “How’s Li taking it?”

  “Not well, but he’s tough.” She was silent. “We need him.”

  When she still didn’t say anything, he said he’d talk to her later and hung up. He knew she didn’t think this was right or moral. But he didn’t see any other way because they were losing. They were running out of time.

  16

  When he left the afternoon sunlight on J Street and entered the cool conditioned air, Marquez found Chief Keeler and the director of Fish and Game, Jay Buehler, at the far end of a curving concrete bar. The place was new and hip, but conservative enough to draw the political shakers. They served cosmos and martinis and the bar had tall cabinets of cherry wood and expensive cognacs on high shelves in front of mirrored glass. Keeler, who avoided bars whenever he could, looked uncomfortable this afternoon. In the nine years Marquez had known him he’d never seen Keeler finish a drink, though he’d stand at a Christmas party with a rum toddy or glass of champagne in his left hand. The single time Marquez had asked, he’d replied “I had an alcoholic father,” as if that was all the explanation anyone would ever need.

  Jay Buehler was single at fifty-five, balding, graying, and known locally for late nights and young women. He was a lawyer first, a successful one, a charismatic rainmaker in a firm that had played and won in the political casino of California politics. Unlike his predecessor who’d worried constantly about the SOU making a politically embarrassing mistake, and who’d pored over reports with anal intensity, Buehler worried more about being left out of operations and missing out on the fun. He liked having a covert team, liked the excitement of busting bad guys for a good cause and had managed to get the SOU budget temporarily doubled to more than three million a year by regaling legislators with stories of car and boat chases, stings, and midnight apprehensio
ns. The current budget was well below half that and Marquez’s conversa-tions with Buehler often included a schedule of house committee meetings where Buehler had wrangled appearances he wanted Marquez to make and plead the SOU case for more money. It was the legislature’s habit to have the SOU’s patrol lieutenant periodi-cally testify to the efficacy and value of the covert unit.

  The meetings had been shorter this year. The state was out of money and Marquez’s team had been cut to five wardens and him-self. Buehler had taken the cut as a personal insult, but it didn’t seem to be on his mind today. He came off his stool and gripped Marquez’s hand with vigor. “Thanks for coming up,” he said, as though there’d been a choice. Marquez caught his own face in the bar mirror as they turned, saw a big man, middle years, harder eyes than he would have wished, a face shaped by wind and sun.

  A waiter distributed menus while Marquez recounted the blown Sausalito bust, Buehler interrupting with questions about the leap from the Emily Jane and the swim to shore, Keeler listening closely, some intuition telling him something was missing in the account. Buehler stirred his drink with his finger, signaled the waiter, then looked back at Marquez from under heavy white eyebrows.

  “What’s the situation with this Jimmy Bailey?” Buehler asked.

  “He burned us and we haven’t caught up to him yet.”

  “We don’t know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “Well, his lawyer does, and the lawyer was in touch with the department this morning. He’s threatening a lawsuit and claiming he’ll go to the media. He wants Bailey’s boat back and the rest of the money he says we owe him. He’s got some balls on him. His story is Bailey ran to save himself from being shot and didn’t think there would be any issue with that because he’s on our side and working for us.”