Shell Games (16 page)

Marquez opened the file,
and the photos of Federales and cartel operatives had an almost quaint aspect, faces yellowed and cracked, haircuts dated. Half of those pictured were dead. Heinemann shook his head and Marquez flipped a page, smelling stone dust from under his house on the paper. He was still trying to get a better read on Heinemann, trying to get a sense of what made him roll over—or whether he really had—or was this another game. It was his experience that the vain often had a hard time seeing things for what they were.

He flipped another page and the face of Kline was there, fea-tures blurred, but the long head and heavy bones clear enough for Heinemann. Taken in Mexico City eleven years ago. He’d paid three hundred dollars for it and had tried to get the FBI to validate the photo, tell him it was Kline, but they’d turned him away. The photographer had been an expatriate American who’d refused to take pesos and Marquez remembered his argument with him
regarding the grainy, fuzzy quality of the photo. Heinemann said nothing, and Marquez only paused long enough for him to get a quick view of each image. It didn’t take long to go through the file. He thought Heinemann had hesitated, yet he hadn’t said anything, had let him keep turning pages.

He prompted him now. “Did you get anything?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Nothing jumped out at you?”

“Jumped?” As if the word was odd, frustration at being trapped, probably. “No, nothing jumped.”

“Okay.”

Marquez shut the file and without asking, Heinemann reached for it and he let him take it. Heinemann flipped the first page, ask-ing, “What about computer enhancement?”

“What about it?”

“Couldn’t these faces be aged up to today?”

“You’d know him, you’d remember him.”

Heinemann flipped through again, Marquez watching, his senses keyed in. The file was a jacket with photos, all the paper-work removed, and now Heinemann’s eyes lingered on the Mexico City photo. Flipped to the next page, then flipped back and touched the photo with his index finger.

“If anyone, maybe this guy,” and Marquez felt his throat tighten and a floating lightness in his head. “It was dark. We were in the backseat of a car.”

“Where?”

“In the harbor last month like you heard.”

“Pillar Point?”

“Yeah.”

They were ready and Shauf slid a Day-Timer across. “When?” Marquez asked.

“You mean the exact date?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know if I can remember the exact date.”

“Your girlfriend says you’re good at math. She says you could be a professor if you wanted.” If you weren’t moving dope and raping the ocean, if the day was a little longer or you taught night classes. “We need dates,” Marquez said quietly, and could tell Heinemann was wheeling through the possibilities, was in a room with two game wardens and trying to figure out how to get out of here without getting charged, trying to figure out where to stop talking and start dealing. He was trying to calculate what exact dates were worth and what he gave up by pinning it down, what the risk was. He was most worried about Roberts, about getting charged with assaulting a peace officer, because he’d made an earlier comment that the longest prison sentence ever given for poaching abalone was three years. He wasn’t worried about abalone poaching. He wasn’t intimidated by anything they’d threatened regarding abalone.

Marquez watched him study the Mexico City photo and felt his pulse pounding in his ears, saw a red haze around the light in the room and was back with Ramon and a good friend, another DEA agent named Brian Hidalgo. Brian stood in the room now next to Shauf, pointing a finger at Heinemann and rubbing his own scalp making fun of Heinemann’s haircut, then turning back to smile at him and asking, “Remember that plane going down?” They’d watched a drug smuggler’s plane shot down and a ball of orange light rising from the desert plateau become a column of black smoke and spread in the cold wind until it was gone. Marquez shook it off, Hidalgo vanishing. Heinemann played with the calendar pages, stalling for time and Marquez caught Shauf’s eye. Heinemann knew the answer and she gave the faintest nod of agreement.

“It was around the end of August,” Heinemann said. “Yeah, pretty sure it was like Saturday the thirty-first, but it’s not like any-thing happened that night.”

“Saturday the thirty-first, what time?”

“Almost dark, sort of twilight. This guy in the photo might be a guy I met up in a car up in the parking lot.” Heinemann leaned back and folded his arms. “So you really want this dude?”

“You would have noticed something else.”

“About him?”

“A physical characteristic.”

“It’s not like I was paying that kind of attention.”

“We’re nowhere without it.”

“I just picked him out of those shitty photos.”

“That’s not good enough.” Marquez caught Shauf’s confused look. He needed more proof, needed to be absolutely sure. Heine-mann could be feeding them this date and the car story by pre-arrangement. He could have worked it out with Bailey and Meghan Burris. “You went up to this car and what got said.”

“He told me what would happen if I messed up, like if I talked to anyone like right now. But it was weird, because it was Jimmy’s deal.”

“No, it was yours, that’s why he wanted to see you. Bailey was just the hired ride.”

Heinemann shook his head. His voice got quieter. “It was all Jimmy’s.”

“We’ve been paying Bailey and you keep saying he’s the guy behind it all. If that’s true we want you on our side of the table, but you’d have to have proof.”

“I could get him to talk.”

“That might work.” Marquez gauged him. “You’d have to testify, too.”

“I know.”

“If what we’re doing here, right now, proves out, then we’ll want to talk about the next step, but listen, we’re going to step outside again.”

Marquez walked out behind Shauf. He faced her in the hall-way and realized his hands were shaking.

“He’s picked out Kline,” he said.

“I get that, so why mess with him?”

“We need it to come from him, not just pointing at my photos. I want him to dig a little deeper because he’ll be more committed to us if he does.”

When they walked back in Marquez started slowly. “Think of it like this, we’re telling you to wade into the ocean and just keep swimming out to sea. I want to see you swim out far enough to where I know you need us. You want a deal that keeps you out of prison and I want a confession in return. Dates. Times. Methods of transferring abalone. I want you to identify this man in a way that makes me certain. It’s like a password for me.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re blocked on it, so we’ll come back to it.” Marquez reached and touched August thirty-first on the Day-Timer. “Let’s back up. Start at the beginning, again.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time and then started. Bailey had gotten him involved by saying it was a one-time diving deal for the two of them. Two other divers that Bailey knew had already gathered the abalone and it was up in the cove near Elephant Rock. All they needed to do was pick it up.

“Who were these other divers?”

“Jimmy was the one in contact with them. We were working off GPS coordinates when we got up there.”

“Up to Elephant Rock?”

“Yeah.”

“You were reading the coordinates?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty good with GPS.”

“Who were they?”

“The divers?” Marquez nodded, could feel this was the moment and exhaled slowly. Now he didn’t want to put any pressure at all on Heinemann. Let Heinemann make his own decision. Let him come to us now, let him put it together his own way. Let him see we’re sanctuary. We’re your only hope, Marquez thought.

“It may have been those divers at Guyanno Creek,” Heinemann said.

“That’s convenient,” Shauf said, and shoved her chair back. “A couple of dead divers.”

But Marquez knew now. He got it. Shauf stood up like it was over, Heinemann trying to sell them Stocker and Han because they were dead and couldn’t be questioned. Marquez calculated time now, Bailey’s call and the urgency of it. He knew it could be, but shook his head. “We have a problem with that,” he said.

“Well, fuck it, then. You guys don’t believe anything.”

“They’re dead so we can’t question them and it doesn’t hang because they had their own operation going.”

“Whatever.” Heinemann shook his head like he was disgusted.

“Two dead divers,” Marquez said after a quiet thirty seconds. “Two guys who’ve already got a pile of five hundred shucked abalone.”

“Yeah, and they were going to shuck the ones we picked up, but they got wasted first. That’s why Jimmy got the call. That’s how it all happened. Jimmy knew one of the divers. The guy’s name was Orion.”

Marquez nodded. They were partway there. Heinemann hadn’t gotten the name Orion from the newspaper articles.

“When they got killed you’re saying Jimmy got a phone call to go pick up some abalone.”

“Something like that.”

“How would anyone have known where to find the abalone? Stocker and Han picked it, right? They left it on the bottom of the ocean. So who knew where to find it?”

“GPS,” Heinemann said.

“You had coordinates?”

“We made a few trips like that. Like I said, I’m good with GPS.”

“How many trips? Write down where you dove.” Marquez handed him a notepad, watched him write, saw he was writing
actual coordinates. He picked up the word Albion, saw Salt Point and couldn’t read the other two yet. He had Heinemann say aloud where they’d dove. Shauf had left the room; now she came back in and they formalized the written confession. Four trips out with Bailey and transfers like Sausalito. This gave them probable cause on Bailey and Shauf went to work on the warrant. They’d bypass the DA’s office in San Mateo County and go directly to Judge May-nard. Maynard was sympathetic to what they were trying to do and had once told Marquez that he was cleared to fax a warrant request anytime.

Marquez continued with Heinemann. They went back to August thirty-first, what had happened that day, and Heinemann’s tone changed as he recounted how it had gone.

A man had come down to Bailey’s boat just before dusk. There was no one else around and he’d seen him come down the ramp. He got on the boat and he obviously knew Bailey, put a hand on Bailey’s back. Meghan had gone for more potato chips and they were drinking beer with him when she came back. The dude’s name was Carlo.

Marquez copied a description, asked questions they could turn into an artist’s rendering, told Heinemann he’d have to agree to sit with an artist, but knew already it was the Hispanic in the Oakland video. They’d get a photo made from the video, get a package of photos together for Heinemann to pick this Carlo out. In his mind’s eye he saw the man getting on board, saying hello to Bailey, his fingers coming to rest lightly low on Bailey’s back, fingertips brush-ing Bailey’s spine, palm flat on the muscle as he told Heinemann since he was new to this he was going to get to meet the boss.

“So Bailey already knew this man?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he ever say where he’d met him?”

“Not really.”

“San Diego?”

“Man, how come you’ve got to tie everything together like this?”

“This Carlo led you to the car where the other man was?”

“Yeah, I was alone in there with him in the backseat and he told me not to look at him.”

“So you did anyway.” Heinemann smiled, obviously proud of how smart he was. Marquez knew he’d taken a good look at the man in the car. “Think about his face.”

“His neck,” Heinemann said.

“What about it?”

“A scar like this thin red line across his neck, like he’d been cut.”

“Okay, you got it.”

“You can barely see it.”

“You saw it.”

“That’s the guy?”

Marquez nodded.

“I haven’t seen him since,” Heinemann said.

“Not after Sausalito?”

“I’ve seen nothing but these Mexicans. We’ve been diving at night with light sticks and these guys don’t even speak English.”

“What was the name of the boat?”

“Coronado.”

“And you got on in Eureka?”

“It was really Crescent City.”

He explained how he’d been moved to another boat when the
Emily Jane
docked in Crescent City. He’d been told there was a full-blown manhunt underway and his only safe route was to get on this other boat. He’d had the feeling they were going to pull guns if he refused, so he’d gone along.

They questioned Heinemann another hour and then returned to how he would contact them when they released him, how the logistics would work tomorrow. They decided he’d call Bailey first and worked out the deal Marquez would present to the DA tomorrow.

“As long as I don’t have to get on a boat with them, I’m cool with it,” Heinemann said. “I’ll do what you want as long as I get to go home, man.”

“You’ve got to dance the dance and we’ll dummy some charges and put that out to the press, theft of the boat, abalone poaching, but we won’t leave you alone with them.”

“How do I know you won’t make the charges real if things get fucked up?”

“You’ve got our word.”

“I want something in writing.”

“Nothing goes in writing until we see how you move out there. We’ll set up your release for tomorrow afternoon and we’ll have your girlfriend’s pickup wired and ready.”

After Heinemann was taken to a cell, Marquez walked out with Shauf. The warrant request had been faxed off, but they wouldn’t hear from Judge Maynard until early morning. The night had changed several things. They had a positive ID on Kline. They had Heinemann moving to where he’d testify against Bailey and they had a tie to the Guyanno divers. He felt like they were close to catching a real break.

Marquez drove home feeling better about their chances than he had in a month. He slept soundly for once and woke with a clear head.

At dawn the sky was scalloped with high clouds that burned and twisted in the winds aloft. He threw out an opened beer that he’d never taken a sip of last night and flipped through the mail, checked for messages from Katherine or Maria, then made coffee and sat outside with the newspapers before getting in his truck.