by Kirk Russell
“What’s her name?”
“Karen.”
“Karen what?”
“Fuck if I know.”
Marquez studied the rest of the room. A mattress lay on the floor. A couple of blankets and a sheet were rumpled near the bottom. A beanbag ashtray with butts and a couple of roach ends sat just off the bed and the room smelled like cigarette smoke and sex. Marquez moved toward the bed and stripped the blankets, first one then the other with Bailey watching.
“This is like maid service, Jimmy. We’re making it easy for you to wash your sheets. Think of it as an opportunity.” Bailey didn’t respond. He pulled the bottom sheet and checked the seams, then lifted it and looked underneath, frightened the spiders but didn’t see anything. Meanwhile, Cairo went through the closet, pulling clothes out, checking the pockets of the pants and shirts. “How long have you been out of the house, Jimmy?”
“We’re filing suit today to get my boat back.”
“Seventeen thousand lawsuits a year in California and hardly any of them go anywhere. Seems like everyone is suing us this week.”
“You’re going to get your ass kicked.”
“Are we?” Marquez paused, looking in the faded blue eyes. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Bailey moved into the hallway, muttering, slamming the wall with a fist, a move Marquez interpreted as a signal. Alvarez fol-lowed Bailey outside. Cairo picked up the beanbag ashtray, said he was going to take it in the kitchen and look through it more care-fully. Marquez held a finger up, meaning don’t say anything, mouthed “follow my lead.”
“We’re done in this room,” Marquez said. “But I want to take another look at the kitchen. Let’s go top to bottom on the kitchen again.”
“You got it.”
Marquez pointed at the door, signaled that Cairo should leave and shut the door behind him, which he now did. Then it was quiet in the room and Marquez waited, heard a faint scraping, a foot, knee, elbow, something moving to a more comfortable posi-tion. He’d seen a tiny piece of insulation on the closet carpet, but no ladder or anything to climb on, so it must have been done while they were knocking on the front door. He looked around for something to stand on. There was a dresser but it looked heavy to move, so he quietly opened the door again, walked out to the kitchen and got the broom he’d seen earlier.
Cairo came back with him. Marquez stood in the closet and with the broom handle reached overhead, lifted the access hatch, and slid it to the side.
“You may as well come down, so we don’t have to climb up and get you.”
Feet dropped through the hole, then legs, and he helped her down. She wore panties and a T-shirt, and once on her feet she dusted insulation off her shoulders. She shook her hair and looked defiantly at Marquez.
“Did you like that?” she asked.
“What were you doing in the attic?”
“That’s a stupid question if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Why hide? Mark wouldn’t care, would he? Have you talked to him yet?”
“Are you going to guilt-trip me now?”
“I’m asking.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly waiting by the phone for him.”
“You haven’t heard from him?”
“No, and if you’ll excuse me I need to use the bathroom.”
20
Meghan Burris came out of the bathroom wearing cutoff jeans and a tube top. She walked straight out the front door and Marquez followed her out on the off chance he could reach her. They’d allowed Bailey to leave the living room, some-thing they wouldn’t ordinarily do with a suspect, and Bailey had gone to his Suburban. There wasn’t anyone they knew about that Bailey could call to warn that his house was being searched and Marquez wanted to send a message to Bailey’s lawyer, wanted the lawyer to know they were confident and coming after his client. They were building a case. Send a signal they didn’t need to confine Bailey; they already had him.
Meghan Burris’s blonde hair carried a purple streak that ran down the center of the back of her head and a lacy tattoo snaked its way down her lower back and under the waist of her pants. She turned to face him as he called her name.
“You already searched me when you helped me down. Do you want to do it again?”
“Why don’t we talk before you get with Jimmy?”
“Why do I have to talk to you?”
“Let me tell you what we’re seeing. Give me a few minutes. It might be worth it to you.”
She looked over at Bailey who was in the Suburban on the phone, motioning for her to come get inside. When she turned back toward Marquez instead, the driver’s door swung open and Bailey called her like he was whistling a dog home.
“Meghan, come here.” When she didn’t, Bailey hustled toward them, the phone still pressed up against his ear. “Don’t even fuck-ing have a conversation with him.”
“You don’t tell me what to do, Jimmy.”
“I’m telling you to get in the truck. We’re leaving.” He reached for her arm and pulled her onto the driveway before Marquez caught his wrist.
“Go finish your phone call, Jimmy.”
“You’re really the big fucking guy, aren’t you?”
He let go of Bailey’s wrist, answered, “Tell your lawyer about it.” He didn’t hear what Bailey said as he turned away. Marquez moved out on the lawn with Meghan. He knew she didn’t like anything about law enforcement. That radiated off her and had when they’d visited Heinemann’s boat. But he also felt that there was probably a tipping point with her, a point where survival would kick in and it would be more in her interest to help them. He knew he had to rattle her cage a little and after Bailey backed off he turned to her. “You don’t want to go down with Jimmy.”
“Like I would even know how to poach anything.”
“I’m not talking about poaching.”
“Anything else you found is Jimmy’s, not mine.” She meant a little bit of cocaine near Bailey’s bed that had been dumped into the carpet and left a white streak in the dirty brown shag. They’d debated trying to do something with it as a way of holding Bailey. She hooked her thumbs in the front of her shorts and her eyes turned with a different challenging light. “You don’t really have anything to say, do you? You just want to get him and you want me to help, and now you think you’re going to scare me.”
“Does Jimmy have you selling drugs on campus?”
“No.”
“We saw you do a couple of deals. Are you doing that on your own?”
“This conversation is over. You are like total bullshit. All of you people are.”
“We followed you after the conversation on the boat because we need to find Mark Heinemann.”
“So you can mess up his life.”
Marquez nodded toward Bailey. “He’s working with some bad people and you’re going to have to choose which side you’re on. There’s not going to be any middle ground.”
“Ooh, pretty scary. I’m so worried now I can hardly think. Look, do you really think he talks to me? It’s real simple, okay. He took me to dinner and we got high and he was real sweet last night so he could bring me back here and fuck me since Mark is gone. Do you want to write that down or do you already know about stuff like that? Now, he’s hung over and you kicked his door in and tore up his house and he’s an asshole again. So do you really think he talks to me? Get real. I’m out of here.”
She turned and started toward the Suburban. “Don’t leave just yet.”
“What, are you going to threaten me now?”
“No, I’m not. I’m going to give you a phone number you can reach me at.”
“Why would I want it?”
“The people Jimmy and Mark are messing with are as bad as they come. I’ve been twenty years in law enforcement and not all of it Fish and Game. I’ve come across one of these people before and I promise you that Jimmy and especially Mark don’t have any idea who they’re dealing with. They’re way over their heads.” He handed h
er the card at an angle Bailey couldn’t see.
“I wish I’d stayed home last night,” she said, then walked to the Suburban and got in the passenger side.
She slammed the door and Bailey backed out of the driveway, turned and flipped him off, mouthing “fuck you” from behind the window before driving away. Roberts would follow on the off chance he’d lead them somewhere. Marquez watched the rest of the team filter out of the house and looked at the warped garage door, the avocado paint peeling off it. What did they have on Bailey? Forty cardboard boxes. Heinemann’s story, which would need some evidence to be worth much.
What they had didn’t add up to much yet. He watched Alvarez messing with trying to close the front door, running crime tape through the lock bore hole and trying to tie it off on the porch. Bailey’s lawyer was probably already drafting a letter saying his client had been right there willing to open the door and never got the chance. Where was Bailey getting the money to hire a lawyer like Alberto Cruz? The blown-out front door would sound like macho bullshit to Keeler and in combination with the lost equipment, he knew it was going to get rough with the chief soon unless they came up with something.
“Hey, Lieutenant, how do you want to leave this? It keeps blowing open.” Alvarez grinned at him. “What did you guys do in the DEA when you kicked in doors?”
“Throw a chair behind it and go out the back door.”
He’d leave two wardens down here and take the rest north for the Heinemann release. He’d sit down with Heinemann this after-noon. Marquez talked through all of it now with the team before they split up.
On the drive north as he was coming through Pacifica he took a call from Petersen. There was a light wind off the water and he watched a line of pelicans above the surf as they talked.
“Will we get any help from her?” Petersen asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“Meghan’s pretty tough. She uses her sex like a cutting knife. You could try her, but I can’t connect with her.”
“That type usually talks to you.”
“Not this one.”
Marquez heard another woman’s voice, then Petersen’s name called out loudly, not her alias either. It made him smile. She’d already told him she was in line to get a sonogram, sitting in a wait-ing room listening to the chatter as she waited for her appointment.
“I’ve got to go, John.”
“I can hear. Good luck with the sonogram.”
“Do you want to meet me in Richmond or in Marin?”
“I’m going through the City first. I’ll call you.”
He slowed at a stoplight and lost the pelicans. Forty minutes later he was in San Francisco, a strange nervousness turning in him as he parked and walked down to Presto.
He could see Katherine behind the zinc counter, her smile loose and easy as she joked with one of her employees, and then her expression changed as he walked in. The smile stayed but her eyes clouded and she lifted a hand to wave hello before saying, “Just a minute, John. I’ve got to do one thing in back.”
Marquez looked around at what Katherine had made here, the smooth limestone, the tall doors that folded like an accordion, tables with a couple of solos working laptops, the sunlight slanting in across the stone and onto the counter where a young guy was working the espresso machine and a woman with purple hair and a ring in her nose was taking orders. He looked through the glass at a plate of sandwiches cut in triangular shapes, little panini, she called them. She’d made a place that felt good to be in. It was easy to be here and he wondered about making a different life himself, something that fit better for both of them. Take a round table in the sunlight, drink a coffee and read a newspaper, take a long run along Stinson Beach and not worry about the Klines and Baileys of the world. He could get a different job and it wouldn’t be so hard with Katherine. She came out from the back office now and then around from behind the bar, leaning toward him and kissing him, her face flushing as she did.
“I was coming through and thought I’d stop and see you.”
“I have to walk down to the florist. Do you want to come with me?”
“Sure.”
They walked in the sunlight down the sidewalk and she told him about her conversation with Maria and how little Maria had eaten yesterday. An orange, less granola than you’d feed a pigeon, half a banana.
“Not a whole banana, John, half a banana because she said a whole one would make her vomit.”
“How much weight do you think she’s lost?”
“She won’t get on a scale with me around and she claims she has never felt better.”
He’d gone on the Net and read what kind of problem anorexia was with teenage girls and young women, and that’s what Kather-ine was talking now, although Maria had yet to see her regular doctor. Now, he asked the question he’d been carrying around.
“How much do you think is caused by you and me?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure it figures in, but she’s the one with the problem.”
“What do you tell her about us?”
“Lately, that I’m discouraged. She needs to know the truth. She doesn’t need any more bombshells.” Katherine slowed to a stop and looked at his face. “The truth is we’ve been separated five months and not much has changed. We’re still arguing.”
“We may always argue.”
“What do you think I should tell her?”
“That we’re trying to work it out.”
“I don’t see you trying very hard, John.”
“I’m here to see you, right now.”
“Unannounced and on your way to somewhere else. Our mar-riage has never come first. You were too used to being on your own when I met you.” Her eyes glistened and she shook her head. “You’re one of the best people I’ve ever known and I don’t want to fight with you, but you’re never going to put us first.” Tears started and she wiped them away angrily. “I think I’ve done all I can.”
“Why don’t you move back in and I’ll resign as patrol lieu-tenant. I’ll find another line of work.”
“You can’t do that.” She shook her head. “I have to go to the florist. I have somebody coming right now that I have to meet.” He stepped forward and put his arms around her. He felt her break and her chest heaved with quiet sobs. “I feel like my dreams are gone,” she said, and he couldn’t hear the rest. He wiped her tears and she took hold of his face and pressed hers against his and he felt her hot tears on his skin. “John, John, this is so hard for me, but I don’t know if we’re getting anywhere and I’m really afraid.”
“Move back in with me.”
“I can’t.”
And for the first time he realized the marriage might end. She reached up, touched his lips with her fingers, then turned and went down two doors and into the florist shop. He walked back to his truck and everything he was doing felt diminished and less important than it had an hour ago. He started the truck and dropped down toward Lombard, driving slowly, his thoughts clouded in confusion at what he couldn’t seem to grasp. He took a call now from Alvarez.
“Bailey dropped Meghan at a house in Santa Cruz and came back to Half Moon. He’s at a bar. We’re with him?”
“Stay with him.”
“You all right? You sound funny.”
“I’m good. I’m on my way to Heinemann.”
He was on Lombard running toward the Golden Gate Bridge with a desperation to make things right with Katherine, but with a new uncertainty and wondering what to make of it. He sat in the center lane on Lombard until he noticed a white sedan that he thought he’d seen earlier when he was on the sidewalk with Katherine, a government Crown Vic hanging three lights back now but pacing the pack he was in. Marquez changed to the right lane and then turned right at the next corner, dropped down to Chest-nut and turned left into boutique and tourist traffic that moved at no more than twenty. He went two blocks and then saw the flash of the sedan’s white side as it turned onto Chestnut.
He ran out Chestnut and started toward the bridge again. He passed cars, bumped well over the 45 mph limit and went wide of the toll booths, then stayed in the right lane crossing the bridge. On the other side, he exited into Sausalito, down through hills dry with the fall and drove along the water. Halfway through town he picked up the Vic behind him. He phoned Petersen.
“I think I’ve got someone following,” and described the car to her, two occupants, one male, one female. He named a shopping center in Corte Madera and a trick they’d used before, and as he came through Sausalito and got on 101 again he drove north to Corte Madera.
He parked in the wide lot, talked to Petersen, gave her his loca-tion and told her he was going in for a coffee to go from Il Fornaio. Then from inside the restaurant he saw them turn into the lot. Two older women in front of him were slow ordering as they kept talking about a book called The Smoke they’d each just bought copies of. They’d heard the author read somewhere and kept talking about him while the guy waiting to take their order was standing around. Marquez was close to walking out, unable to wait much longer. He needed to make sure Petersen had seen the car turn in, but couldn’t call from inside. Finally the women ordered. He got a large black coffee and called Petersen as he walked out.
“I’ve got you and them,” she said.
“They just picked up on me.”
“Yeah, I’m rolling toward them.”
He got to his truck about the time Petersen blocked them from backing out of their parking slot. He pulled up behind her as the driver of the Vic was already honking for her to move. Petersen got out as Marquez got out and the passenger door opened on the Crown Vic. Both occupants were young, clean-cut, and fit, the woman’s black bangs like a crow’s wing, her sharp dark eyes locked on his face. The male had sideburns that ended well up his ears and hair cut like a golf course green. His clothes had the look and he opened his door, leaned around and jabbed a finger in Marquez’s direction.
“Hey, buddy, we’re trying to back up.”
“You just got here. Why don’t we talk first?”