Shell Games (13 page)

“Yeah, I think you and Cairo.”

He called Cairo as they drove up the highway a few miles to check out Bailey’s house. Bailey leased an avocado-colored stucco ranch house in an old subdivision. The house had a small lawn of dead Bermuda grass and a white concrete path to the front door that ran like a freeway through a desert. Neither Bailey’s black Suburban nor any other vehicles were in the driveway, but Mar-quez knocked on the door anyway. He looked in through the liv-ing room window at brown shag carpet, a few pieces of furniture, a widescreen TV.

“We’re going to hear from his lawyer next,” Petersen said from the porch steps.

“That’s right, and then he’ll surface.”

As they drove away from Bailey’s they talked over how to make the surveillance of the girlfriend worthwhile. There was no way they’d get a warrant for Meghan Burris’s phone records, but they had an application in on a cell phone number of Heinemann’s they’d gotten from Bailey. If Burris called him they wouldn’t get real-time notification, though he’d made that request as well, but would get a location, an area to work. He dropped Petersen in San Francisco.

Late in the afternoon, Marquez crossed the Golden Gate and drove home, talking on the phone with Keeler as he walked in, telling him about Heinemann’s girlfriend and his plan with the team.

“I dropped the gun at DOJ,” Keeler said, “and I’ve thought more about the FBI. We don’t want to interfere with anything they have going on. I don’t want you to go up the coast.”

“We go up the coast all the time.”

“Don’t go near the
Emily Jane.
Is that clear enough?”

He hung up with Keeler and called Shauf and told her to stick in Fort Bragg. He wrote out the report he hadn’t finished earlier, talked to Petersen again, took a run to clear his head, and at dusk showered, made a sandwich and drank a beer as he went over his notes of the last twenty-four hours. He put on music, an old Gram Parsons, then tried Maria’s cell phone and left a message. She was probably out with her cousin, he thought. Katherine was due in late and had declined his offer to pick her up at the airport, said it was easier to take a cab, and it left him sad and then he tried not to think about it and went back over all his notes, worked the sequence of events on the calendar, again, because sometimes things fell together.

Near midnight, he went to bed and when he woke again it was to the front door opening and footsteps. He reached for his gun, but pulled his hand back as he heard a suitcase drop and the door shut and lock. He heard her footsteps in the hallway and felt both surprise and unexpected happiness.

“It’s me,” Katherine said, leaning over him.

“Bonfire.”

“I missed you.”

Her hair cascaded down around his face and he slid his fingers along the nape of her neck and then pulled her on top of him and kissed her. He took her in his arms and touched the ghost streak of white hair at her right temple, traced her spine with his fingers, then the curve of hip and ass and long thigh muscle, as Katherine’s hands slid along his belly and over his chest and face. He took her shirt and bra off and felt the warm heat of her. Then she was smoothly against him and he was in her and for a little while there was nothing else in the night.

He woke before dawn
and lay on his back, not moving yet, not wanting to wake Katherine. Her face pressed against his chest and he felt the slow rise and fall of her breathing, the quiet exhale. He smelled last night’s sex, the shampoo she used in her hair, felt the warmth of her and was afraid if he moved he’d lose the feeling of having her here again. But when he closed his eyes his cell phone beeped somewhere on the floor near his head. It must have rung earlier and probably it was the ringing that woke him. He slid an arm slowly down alongside the bed, fingers grazing the floor, finding the phone as Katherine shifted.

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 over 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.