Shell Games Read online

  “I’d like it if you stayed and talked.”

  “I’d be doing all the talking, but give me a call if that changes.” Marquez took four steps and turned back, looking at Douglas’s face. “How’d you know to find me here?” Douglas didn’t answer. “I guess that says it all. I’ll see you.”

  14

  Marquez stopped at the Sausalito police station on his way to the hospital to meet with Chief Keeler. He knew and liked the police captain, a frank and genial man named Jim Gerhardt. Sausalito police worked out of brown painted trailers that sat on a grassy hump of a hill at the end of Locust Street, trailers they’d inhabited since their former station had flooded nearly a decade ago. Marquez parked between two boats on trailers and wondered if Gerhardt would have stayed if he could have looked into the future and seen himself in a trailer park this long after the flood.

  Gerhardt was at his desk. “I won’t take much of your time,” Marquez said, and watched him drop his reading glasses and slide his chair back.

  “I’m sorry about last night, John. We got there as quickly as we could.”

  “I short-noticed you.”

  “You couldn’t help it.” He frowned. “We’ve searched town for this Bailey and your wardens seem to think he’s gone, but you’re not here about him, are you?”

  “No, I’m here because I just met with the FBI.”

  Gerhardt nodded, reached across his desk, his big-boned wrist pulling free of his sleeve as he picked a card from a holder. He squinted at it, holding it a distance away, before fumbling with his glasses again. “Special Agent Charles Douglas,” he said. “He was here with another agent this morning. He wanted to talk about the sequence of events last night.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He couldn’t discuss it.”

  “The FBI called off our pursuit of the Emily Jane and I think they probably watched the whole thing here last night. They had the Emily Jane under surveillance and we stumbled into that when we showed up with Bailey.”

  “They didn’t say a word to me about being in town with any surveillance team.”

  “That was my next question.”

  Marquez handed back the card, thanked him again for back-ing them up last night, and then drove to the hospital to meet Keeler. A couple of red-tailed hawks circled in the late morning sky above the parking lot and the air was clear and cool as he walked toward the entrance. Inside, the air was humid and rich with chemical odors. People had surgeries that saved their lives and children got born and many good things happened in these places, but he associated hospitals with some of the worst memo-ries of his life. He moved quietly in here, asked at the desk where the surgery waiting room was, and when he walked in, Keeler was alone in the large, empty room.

  There were gurneys in the corner and a couch arrangement where Keeler sat. From behind, he looked like an old valley rancher on horseback, hands folded into his lap as though holding reins. He sat straight-backed, a legacy of Marine Corps training. He’d thinned at the shoulders in the last few years and his waist bulged where his uniform shirt was tucked in tight. His white hair was cut short and neatly combed. He wasn’t far from retirement now, and lately had been talking about hanging it up next spring and working on his almond orchard behind the old farmhouse he’d bought and was restoring outside Davis. He was also refurbishing an aluminum-skinned Airstream camper and had plans to go all over the United States with his wife, Clara. The chief turned at the echo of footsteps in the empty room.

  “How is he?” Marquez asked, meaning the chief’s old friend who was in surgery.

  “It’s worse than they thought.” He touched his abdomen. Marquez knew it was some kind of cancer. “I’ve lost three of my oldest friends in the last year and a half to cancer. I hate that. I hate it that they had to close him up and they’re going to tell him they can’t do anything for him.” His voice dropped to a rough whisper. “Goddammit, I hate it.” He touched his face, pressing fingers into his forehead, looked at Marquez and said, “You know, I can remember him like yesterday when we were no more than twenty-one. He was the one the girls always went for.” He shook his head. “Tell me what happened last night.”

  Marquez walked through the sequence of events but left out telling Roberts to get off the boat. “I’d like to try to find the Emily Jane,” he said. “They berthed somewhere up north.”

  “You want to pit your unit against the FBI?”

  “No, sir, but we can’t stop doing our jobs because they’re after somebody. They owe us a lot more information, Chief.”

  “Why do they owe us if we walked into their operation?”

  Marquez was unsure how to answer that. The Feds had wiped out a bust after he and Roberts had to bail off a boat at gunpoint, yet he also knew Keeler’s respect for the FBI was almost unques-tioning. He’d brushed with the chief on this subject a couple of times before and had learned that saying anything openly critical of the FBI was something Keeler saw as unpatriotic. Yet he could also sense an opening here. Perhaps because of the circumstances of the morning, perhaps because of the risk Roberts and he’d been in or a conversation he’d had with Baird while driving here from Sacramento this morning.

  “Chief, I need the Emily Jane. We can find it without approach-ing anybody on board.”

  “Should we tell the FBI to cancel their operation?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “There’s a reason we crossed paths. We may be looking for the same people.”

  “We may be, in which case we’re lucky the Feds are on the case.” Keeler looked at him quizzically. “Are we leading back to your ghost killer?” Marquez shrugged. He’d already pushed the Kline idea far enough without evidence and Keeler didn’t care for speculation. “Officially, there’s no way I can let you do that.”

  “I understand.”

  Marquez watched a nurse walk through carrying a clipboard, smiling at them as she passed. He let Keeler think and was quiet. It was a foundation belief of Keeler’s that no one should ever get away with endangering a peace officer, and he was counting on that.

  “Did this FBI agent say anything to you about abalone poach-ers?” Keeler asked.

  “They have an informant aboard the Emily Jane.”

  “They didn’t tell Chief Baird anything this morning. They apologized for having to intercede, but that’s all.”

  “I think that’s because we’re after the same man.”

  “If you’re right, they’ve got a lot more resources to go after him. In that case we should stand aside.”

  “They don’t know the coast or the people that live along it the way we do and it’s my judgment that we can’t afford to wait.”

  “We’re not going to deliberately cross them.”

  Then what are we going to do, Chief? Are we going to watch? Call them up when we have a lead? Marquez listened to the hospital noises and let Keeler weigh his own risks. The doors opened, a surgeon came out and then walked over to Keeler. He sat down on the edge of the couch and told the chief more about what they’d found and talked about other forms of therapy, but was candid that the odds were poor. The chief took this in quietly, then asked ques-tions about what kind of care his friend—a widower and without immediate family—would get. What could be arranged? What could he do? The surgeon outlined generally what would happen, then slowly stood, said he was sorry, again.

  Marquez walked out of the hospital with Keeler soon after. Keeler was thinking about his request, but it was no longer the right time to ask. He got Bailey’s toolbox and the evidence bags he’d gathered out of his truck and showed Keeler the nine millimeter, its handle wrapped with electrical tape, then put the box with the gun in the back of Keeler’s Isuzu after asking the chief if he’d drop the gun at the Department of Justice in Sacramento. He stood at Keeler’s window, talking with him a little longer before Keeler drove away without answering whether they could look for the Emily Jane, or not.

  Now, in the sun
light in the warm cab of the truck Marquez felt the long night like two heavy hands on his shoulders. He was slid-ing down the backside of adrenaline. He closed his eyes, reclined the driver’s seat, and felt the sun on his face. Had to doze, had to rest a little before going on. He thought of Katherine, her dark hair falling at her shoulders, the bright light in her eyes when she laughed. She was due back today. He’d have to call Maria this morning. Then he let the fatigue take him and closed down.

  He woke to Petersen tapping on his window with her cell phone. He’d been asleep about forty minutes and looked at her groggily, before it all flooded back. He opened the door and sat up.

  “How’d you find me?” he asked.

  “I always know where you are. You know, we used to wonder if you ever slept. Are you ready to get going?”

  He drank from a water bottle. He needed coffee, food. They drove tandem to San Francisco and left her 4Runner parked on Gough Street. By 2:00 in the afternoon they were walking down the Pillar Point dock to where Heinemann’s boat was berthed. A light wind was blowing off the ocean, the soft air smelled of salt, and you could feel autumn. Gold light hazed through thin fog at sea.

  Marquez climbed aboard and knocked. The Open Sea carried a sleeping berth and they knew there was a girlfriend. When a curtain moved and the fingers of a young woman’s hand showed he held up his badge, and then a blonde wearing shorts and a very thin cotton shirt opened the door.

  “We’re looking for Mark Heinemann.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Up north, but I don’t know when he’s coming back.”

  “Can we come in and talk with you a minute?”

  “If you want, but I don’t know anything.”

  They established that Heinemann was her friend and that her name was Meghan Burris. She sniffled and touched her nose in a way that said cocaine. Without prompting she elaborated on her relationship with Heinemann. They weren’t a couple, but they were going out together. She wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for the cat, and she pointed at the striped tabby watching them.

  “We’re working an investigation we hope Mark can help us with,” Marquez said. “We’re also looking for a Jimmy Bailey. Do you know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen him today?”

  “Nope.” She crinkled her nose. “I guess I’m useless. I have to get going anyway.”

  “Have you ever heard Jimmy Bailey talk about abalone?”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  Petersen smiled broadly behind her and rolled the cat on its back, scratching its belly. Meghan made it clear now she only knew Mark Heinemann from school at UC Santa Cruz and staying on the boat was just sort of a fun thing to do. She didn’t believe in hurting animals. Marquez gave her his abalone rap anyway, the problem, what they were up against, needing the public’s help to save the species.

  “We think Jimmy Bailey may be involved with poachers and anything you tell us might help Mark, because we know they’ve been out on the ocean together.”

  “Mark wouldn’t ever poach, but there were these kind of freaky guys who came down to Jimmy’s boat.”

  “Tell us about them.”

  She described the men they’d videotaped in Oakland outside Li’s house, the hatchet-faced Caucasian and the black-haired, buffed Hispanic that Bailey had claimed came to meet with Heinemann. There’d been another man but she’d only seen him at a distance. He’d never come down to the dock.

  “One of the guys that came down here wouldn’t quit staring at me so I left.”

  “If I opened a calendar, could you show me what day that was?”

  “Oh, I already know. On this Saturday it will have been three weeks. It was definitely a Saturday because I didn’t have school and I had to drop my car off that day.”

  Marquez opened his pocket calendar. He marked Saturday August thirty-first and glanced at Petersen, knew from her look she read Meghan as telling the truth, or what she thought was the truth. “See, Mark was down helping Jimmy with his engine and when one of them showed up, it was like Jimmy pretended he didn’t know they were coming, but he did. He always acts like he can fool everybody.”

  Marquez nodded. He tried to gauge what her reaction would be to what he was going to say next.

  “I’m going to tell you some things that you might not like to hear, but that you need to know. We saw Mark bring up urchin bags filled with abalone near Elephant Rock up in the Point Reyes area yesterday. He was with Jimmy Bailey on the Condor and they took their catch down to Sausalito late last night. We broke up a transfer to another boat there, but that boat got away. Mark ran to that boat during the bust and there’s a warrant for his arrest now.”

  “Oh, so you came here to trick me. That’s nice. Boy, does that suck. You said you weren’t after Mark, but you are. No wonder I can’t stand cops.” She brushed her nose with the back of a finger, let her hand fall slowly. “So I’m supposed to be the stupid girlfriend.”

  “Not at all.” He made up a reason now. “We think Jimmy Bailey tricked your boyfriend. It’s Bailey we’re really after,” Marquez said. “Let’s go back to the night of the thirty-first again, what you heard in the conversation on Bailey’s boat.”

  She hesitated, then spoke. They’d been drinking daiquiris on the Condor. Jimmy and Mark were smoking. She’d had one daiquiri, didn’t smoke, and the Hispanic guy had straight rum. Bailey told her she had to split for a while because they were going to talk private business. Mark pretended like he hadn’t heard what Bailey had said. Mark wouldn’t look at her and she’d been real angry when she left the boat. She’d gotten into a bad fight with him later that night and they’d broken up, for the second time, she said.

  Petersen spoke up now, telling her they were going to check Heinemann’s boat for anything Bailey might have asked Mark to hold for him. She asked Meghan if she had anything private she wanted to remove first, deftly explaining that they didn’t need a warrant because they were deputized as customs agents. Petersen went through everything, found nothing, and they questioned her more, then gave her phone numbers to call. Marquez knew her first call would be to Heinemann.

  As they walked away, Marquez said, “That story about Bailey had the ring of truth.”

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “We’ll borrow the condo and I think we’ll watch her.”

  “Do you want me here?”

  “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.”
r />   “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.

  15

  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.