by Kirk Russell
A figure had entered the darkened room. He’d heard boots clicking like hoofs on the ancient wood floor and looked down on the figure whose shoulders were hunched and indistinct and whose eyes by some trick of reflected light were faintly red as the face turned upward.
“I will find you,” said a voice that seemed to come from inside his head. “I’ll hold your heart in my hand.”
He’d heard liquid sloshing as the steps retreated, smelled gaso-line as he’d tumbled from the attic, heard the whoosh as it ignited and a ball of bright light illuminated the room. He’d climbed out on the roof, slid on the asphalt, grabbed at old wooden gutters and fallen two stories as the gutter gave way and fire enveloped the house. He remembered hearing ammunition popping as the heat caught it, as the volunteer fire brigade strapped him on a board before sliding him into an old hearse converted to an ambulance. He’d had nothing left, not even his passport, and the hospital had called the DEA and verified he was who he said he was. He’d been ten days in the hospital and had come home to California.
“John,” Katherine said, and her voice was light.
“I’m off this afternoon. I could pick up some food and the three of us could barbecue tonight.” When she hesitated he knew it could easily be that she had other plans, and he felt funny immediately and wondered if he should have made the call.
“Where?” she asked.
“Either house. I can pick up food right now.”
It was like dating Katherine, inviting her to dinner, hoping she’d agree, his pulse rising as he waited for her answer. The distance kept on hurting, same old sad story, a cycle he had to break for both of them. Either they went forward or called it, no way around that truth. It made him think of his sister living in London. She’d built a new life with a British banker husband, erased America from her head, and told him he’d never have a normal marriage because their childhood had been too much of a mess. Their mother had dropped his sister and him at their grandparents when he was nine and his sister was twelve. Their father had already left; mom was headed for rehab. She’d never really returned, had visited, but never took them home, and when he was thirteen and his sister a junior at Redwood High, their grand-father sat them down and told them their mother had died the day before in a train accident in India. For a long time he’d gone on believing she was still alive and he’d imagine he was seeing her on a street corner or driving past in a car.
Then in the summer of her senior year in high school his blue-eyed sister had graduated to heroin rather than college. She’d become rail-thin within six months. She’d moved out and he’d found her in a Tenderloin crack house a few months later, had told a pimp he was her brother and turned his back on a gun and carried her out in his arms. Darcey was why he’d gone into the DEA. Darcey was also one of the few people he’d ever seen beat heroin, or at least get to where she could live without it. The last long conversation they’d had, he’d told her he and Katherine were having trouble.
That night, he barbecued salmon and roasted potatoes in the fire, two of Maria’s old favorites, though she said she’d stopped liking salmon as much and wasn’t hungry for it at all tonight. She made them a salad and her own separately, putting only a few drops of olive oil on the leaves she planned to eat. She cut the end of a cucumber over the lettuce while Katherine lectured her. Maria’s salmon sat on a corner of her plate throughout dinner and Marquez watched her feed it to the sink as her mom’s head was turned. Then she got on the phone with her friends, after explain-ing that she’d actually eaten a big lunch.
“Do you see it now?” Katherine asked, as Maria talked to her friend in the back room and the two of them sat out on the deck in front of the dying embers.
“Yeah, I see it. Her weight is down.”
“Way down. I’m taking her back to her doctor.”
He drank a beer and they moved off Maria. He listened to the day’s problems at the coffee bar, some of the complaints she’d fielded today, her expansion ideas. He questioned her more about the two men who’d come in, then showed her the video from Oakland and without looking very close or long she dismissed those men. He didn’t push her on it because she didn’t want to think that way tonight, and they tried to make it normal and sit out here like they used to and have it be easy and the way it used to feel, but couldn’t do it. And yet, she sat close to him, curled in the chair, resting an arm on top of his, her fingers through his fingers, everything as fragile as glass. He held her hand gently and thought carefully about the chain of events with Heinemann while staring at the fire. When his cell rang he put the beer down and Katherine said she was going to get Maria and it was time for them to go. She got up slowly, her eyes averted as he answered the phone, figured he had to answer.
“I helped load two thousand abalone onto their boat today,” Davies said. “We winched it over from a salmon trawler. The trawler dragged the catch underwater to the meeting. They had the bags hanging off the back of the boat in case they ran into any of your people. They were going to take a knife and cut the line. These people would take a knife to you, too, Lieutenant. I got some film for you if you want to meet tomorrow morning.”
“What did you film?”
“Their boat and the guys that came in to pick me up. I bought this little video camera off the Internet that I hooked up to my boat cabin. I can run it remote control. If we sit down I can draw you the hull and give you a top-down view of their boat. I can meet you around dawn in Sausalito, unless you’re done with me.”
Marquez watched Maria walk out from the back room, saw the hall light go off.
“Or I’ll meet you near that engineers’ dock.”
“I’ll be there if you’ve got film for me.”
“What did I just tell you?”
Davies hung up, not waiting for any more, a statement in that, and Marquez laid the phone down as Katherine walked out onto the deck again.
“We’re leaving,” Katherine said, and Maria was already out the door, not checking back to say good-bye. “She’s angry at me, not you, John.”
“I can be there when you take her back to the doctor.”
“The doctor wants to talk to her alone, but I’ll call you after.”
Marquez put his arms around her and drew her close. He didn’t kiss her but slid his hand under the hair on the nape of her neck and held her face against his. He felt her hold him, her fingers briefly on his spine. She straightened and he saw Maria standing in the front doorway staring at them, her hands pressed together in front of her, her facial expression one out of childhood. Maria’s eyes found his and questioned, then she turned and he heard her feet go down the stairs.
27
When he left the house the next morning he called Alvarez and told him he needed backup for the Davies meeting and that he was picking his boat up. It was still dark when Marquez got to the marina. He used his headlights to see as he fumbled with the gate lock, then hooked the boat trailer to his truck, backed it down to the water, floated it, climbed on board, and clicked the blowers on before firing the engines. He hit the switch redirecting the exhaust through the drive to quiet the engine noise, but it was still particularly loud and deep in the darkness. He left it idling, tied off on the dock as he parked the truck and trailer, then carried his tactical vest and surveillance equipment back down. He poured coffee from a steel thermos as he motored out past the 5-mile-an-hour signs, smooth water rippling ahead of the bow. He had other uses for the boat today, but figured it would also work well for this meeting with Davies.
Now he followed the channel buoys, sipping coffee, looking at headlights crossing the San Rafael Bridge as he aimed the boat toward Angel Island and brought the speed up to twenty-five. The boat slicked across glassy water. The morning calm probably meant it would be hot today. He concentrated on the bay ahead and thought about how to approach Billy Mauro, refusing to let himself believe Davies’s promise last night of having film to give him. The sky whitened overhead and the silhouette of the east bay hills wa
s rimmed with pink light as he passed Angel Island.
When he tied off in Sausalito and came ashore, he didn’t spot Davies and realized he hadn’t really expected to. There were fishing boats on their way out and he checked the dock, retrieved the coffee thermos and sat on a concrete bench facing the water, drinking another cup though he hardly needed it. He watched the light change and remembered a crabber they’d busted here a year ago, the crabber’s wife berating them as they’d lifted each crab out, measuring its shell, finding twenty-seven of a hundred were undersize while she kept telling them that they were destroying the industry, that they were the problem.
Across the bay, the sun rose above the hills and a finger of light colored the smooth harbor water. Davies was a no-show. No surprise, so get on with it, he thought. Their focus today would be on the Oakland fish broker, Billy Mauro. He called Alvarez.
“Let’s get some breakfast. I’ll buy, but I’ve got to dock where I can see the boat. Maybe one of those tourist spots farther down.”
“Sounds good to me, Lieutenant.”
Alvarez ate an omelet, Marquez scrambled eggs and toast. The big room was almost empty. A party of cheerful Germans was a few tables over talking in an animated way, but there was little other breakfast traffic. He called Shauf and Roberts, who were in Oakland scouting Billy Mauro’s operation. Shauf had discovered that Mauro was well liked and well known along the waterfront. He had a dock location where he received directly from fishermen, but his office and production were in a corrugated metal building on Second Street. He shuttled two brightly painted vans, moving fish from the pier to the warehouse on Second Street, sometimes bringing the fishermen along to haggle price, then running them back down to their boats. But it looked to Shauf like most of the communication was by cell phone, a buyer meeting the boats, looking product over and communicating with Billy Mauro at his desk in the warehouse.
“So what’s the plan here this morning?” she asked.
“We’ll go see him.” Because he didn’t see any other choice. There wasn’t time to set up surveillance. “Brad is with me. He’ll hook up with you and I’m bringing my boat over.”
He kept the boat’s speed down as he crossed the bay. The only rough water was the wake from an empty outbound cargo ship flying a Chinese flag. He brought the speed up enough to plane after the cargo ship passed and now to his right as he passed San Francisco, the early sunlight reflected with the colors of copper and bronze and mirrored light off the skyscrapers of the financial district. He wore a Giants cap backwards and didn’t need a coat this morning. Well before the estuary he cut his speed and tried Davies’s cell phone once more before docking, didn’t get an answer and didn’t leave a message. Roberts picked him up in Jack London Square.
Mauro’s business was sandwiched between a produce supplier and another seafood delivery business. Its street face was corrugated aluminum siding and two sliding doors sheathed with battered and dirty galvanized sheeting. A man stood out front hosing down the sidewalk and nearby street. A delivery truck with the company’s logo, a blue and yellow fish with a smile on its face as it leaped from the ocean into a net, was in the building being loaded by two men in dirty white uniforms. They looked like they’d been working cleaning fish, and they paid scant attention as Marquez and Roberts walked in.
Billy Mauro was in his office on the phone and waved them in without knowing who they were. He seemed an energetic man, pointing to the phone, meaning that he couldn’t get out of the con-versation yet, but studying them, his round face quizzical. The room smelled like cigar smoke and Mauro in his short-sleeve white shirt looked like a middle manager from four decades back. He had the attentive eyes of a man used to solving problems and Marquez solved one for him, right now. He got his badge out and showed it to him. Mauro got off the phone soon after.
“I have a friend in Fish and Game,” Mauro said. “Chief Wagner.”
“He retired,” Marquez said, “and died of a heart attack about five years ago. He was a good man, where’d you know him from?”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“Really.” Mauro looked away. He shook his head, the unlit cigar clamped in his teeth again. “What can I do for Fish and Game today?”
It was Marquez’s plan to tell Mauro what he’d been accused of and if he reacted to that, try to keep him off balance and see what they could learn.
“Someone has accused you of buying illegal abalone.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Of course, but we have to follow up on these things.”
The cigar came out now and Mauro laid it down on the desk. The wet end of it stuck to his finger and he had trouble getting his fingers loose.
“There are so many regulations now compared to when I started into this business. Not Fish and Game regulations, but for example the health department was just here yesterday. They want me to put Sheetrock on the inside of my building.” He looked as though he expected a reaction. “It has been the same way for thirty years and no one has ever gotten sick eating anything I shipped.” He shook his head at the absurdity and then reached down and picked up the cigar again. When he looked up again his eyes were cautious and distant. “I bring in Mexican abalone, but that’s legal. I’ll get the papers if you want.”
“You bring it in boxed?”
“Boxed and frozen, by boat and truck. They’re talking about a dock strike very soon so I have more than usual, but you can see it’s all legal.”
He pushed the papers across to Marquez. He used the cigar to point at the name, Carcenaros, the same Mexican firm Bailey’s boxes were from. He could feel the change in Roberts, felt her tighten next to him as she put it together, and Marquez threw another brick through the window as Mauro looked for his papers.
“We have videotaped testimony from Tran Li. He names you as one of his buyers. We’ve showed it to the DA and it’s enough to go on for commercial trafficking charges. We sent our last ab poacher to prison for three years and impounded all his equipment and boats. The middle men got longer sentences.”
“He’s lying.”
“He drove a long way to tell us.”
“Li is scared you’ll trick him, so he’s making things up he thinks you’ll like. He’s an immigrant. They’re all afraid of the police. You know how it is. He stills lives like he doesn’t belong here.” Mauro looked for confirmation, for understanding. “But I’ve never bought anything illegal, never even once.” He tapped his desk with an index finger. “Li is trying to cut a deal, right?” He tapped his chest lightly. “I’ve bought urchin from him, but never abalone.” Shook his head for emphasis. “Never abalone.” He pointed at the wall behind him. “Next door is my competitor. If you ask him what I say when people try to sell me illegal product, he’ll tell you I tell them that I’ll call Fish and Game if they don’t get the hell out of here. Look.” Mauro opened a desk drawer and removed a card that he handed across to Marquez. “Deputy-chief John Wagner,” he went on, “I show them the card, tell them he’s my friend and I don’t buy anything illegal. Li is trying to save himself by placing blame on me. If you ask people you will find I’ve been in business as long as I have because I’m honest.”
“I have to tell you that Li has made a full confession,” Marquez said. “He feels he has nothing more to lose.”
“As I said, I know the family, and losing their son was very hard. He’s probably very scared of you.”
“That doesn’t cover it.”
“Should I call my lawyer?”
“You could, but I think it makes sense to talk first. We have enough for a case against you, and you’re right, it’s your worst nightmare, a plea-bargain deal was cut with Li after the DA was sure our case was solid.” He paused. “That was before Jimmy Bailey.” He saw Mauro’s face pale and then tighten high on the cheeks. “But we’re not really after you. We’re after the buyer moving product through you and we want all the places you ship to. If you can’t give us that, if you can’t contact them or t
hey’re gone, or you want to deny it all, then we’ll put the charges together and padlock your building when we arrest you.”
“This is all nonsense. I have bought fish from Li, but never abalone, and you have no proof of anything.” He picked up the cigar again. “I am very legitimate.” He pointed to an Oakland Chamber of Commerce commendation framed and hanging on the wall. “People know this about me.” His face colored. “Enough of this.” He picked up the phone, fumbled with a Palm Pilot and started punching in numbers. “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see. You have no case against me and you’re not going to bully me.”
“We’re not trying to bully you. In fact, we’re giving you a chance to cooperate. Ordinarily, we’d stake out your place and build a case, but we don’t have time and we don’t think we need any more than Li has given us. I can show you the video. I can show the Carcenaros boxes we took from Jimmy Bailey’s house when we searched it. But those are only pieces of the puzzle and your problem could get a lot bigger. You’ve got to decide whether it’s worth letting that happen.”
Mauro hung up the phone, pushed the shipping papers forward, again. “Look for yourself.”
Marquez didn’t pick them up again. This was how the game was played, the same papers used over and over. They could be dated from last December and still be in use today.
“Where do you ship the Mexican product?”
“Everywhere.”
“Local restaurants?”