Shell Games jm-1 Page 16

  “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.

  When he drove down the mountain he was thinking of Heine-mann’s story of imported Mexican divers. They’d heard whispers of something similar last year. Mercenary divers. Travelers. The scarcity was driving prices up. Market poachers were becoming more sophisticated and exploitative. One study he’d read predicted that one-third of all animal life would vanish from earth in the next fifty years as habitat succumbed to the encroaching demands of a swelling humanity.

  Alvarez called as Marquez passed the new houses on the south-east flank of the mountain, saying Bailey’s black Suburban was in his driveway and a porch light burning.

  “Then we can knock on the door.”

  “How far out are you?”

  “An hour, but the traffic isn’t bad.”

  “It’s always the opposite of the economy. It’s going to get lighter and lighter.”

  “I’ll carry that happy thought. See you down there.”

  Alvarez was the finder on this search, the designated locator of all evidence. Anyone else who found anything would point to it and wait for Alvarez. He’d also do the initial videotape, prior to the search. That way, only one warden would be required in court later. Alvarez had picked up the Turbo Twin and had it in his truck.
If Bailey didn’t answer the door and Marquez felt they needed to they’d take out the lock with the Turbo, which would be Marquez’s job because of his size. He thought over what they knew about Bailey on the ride down, what they’d gotten back from NCIC on the drug charges Bailey did a year of state time for in ‘94.

  When he got there Marquez parked at the mouth of the drive-way, blocking the Suburban’s exit. They took positions on either side of the front door and Marquez knocked hard. Ten seconds later he knocked again. When he’d been DEA they’d never let it go this far because with drugs, evidence could be flushing down a toilet in the seconds that were going by, and that was on his mind now, thinking that if they could catch Bailey with drugs, anything, that was a way to hold him in jail. But he’d also decided on the way down that Bailey was capable of more than he’d ever thought and he could be going for a gun. He waited half as long and then knocked again and picked up the Turbo, counted to a slow five and grinned at nothing as he swung it into the lock. He heard part of the lock bounce off the wall on the other side of the room and the door slapped against the wall.

  “State game officers, we’re coming in.” He saw Bailey coming down the hallway, hair wet from the shower, a towel wrapped around him. “We’ve got a warrant to search your house, Jimmy.”

  “You wrecked my door, motherfucker. I was in the shower, I would have opened it.”

  “Maybe you’re taking too long of a shower.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Someone is going to go with you while you put some clothes on, then we’re going to ask you to wait out here in the living room.”

  Bailey let his towel drop and looked at Roberts and Shauf.

  “One of you ladies want to come with me? My clothes are in the bathroom.”

  19

  They started in the kitchen and there was almost nothing in the cabinets, a few liquor bottles, soy sauce, a lot of empty shelf space, three Coors cans in the refrigerator, milk, soft drinks, moldy cheese, a package of English muffins, and then something that caught Marquez’s eye, three Dannon yogurts. Bailey wasn’t a yogurt eater. He’d been there for a couple of Bailey’s breakfasts, pre-packaged Danish, or donuts from the convenience store, a couple of cigarettes and coffee. In the freezer was a bag of ice, two frozen TV dinners, a salmon tail, and two abalone steaks wrapped in white butcher paper. The pale meat had been in there long enough to have ice crystals. In this context it didn’t mean anything and he rewrapped it and put it back in the freezer.

  “Anything, Lieutenant?” Cairo asked, and Marquez glanced over him.

  “A little bit of abalone, but it’s old.”

  Bailey wanted to call his lawyer, kept asking to every minute, or so. It was Marquez’s habit not to let suspects make any calls until after the team had completed a search. There was always a chance they’d make a call and tip someone else off before key evi-dence was found.

  Cairo was in the living room, emptying out a TV cabinet filled primarily with old magazines. Bailey sat on the couch near him making his request every few minutes, Cairo in flip-flops and shorts, but wearing a tactical jacket. He looked like an armed junkie root-ing through Bailey’s stuff.

  Marquez thumbed the liquor bottles. Gin, vodka, cheap scotch, Jim Beam. Bailey had flipped the lawyer’s card at Marquez. Alberto Cruz, a name that was vaguely familiar, though he didn’t read anything into it. He wished he could confront Bailey this morn-ing with Heinemann’s confession, but it would have to wait. He let the liquor cabinet door fall shut and Cairo came slowly over. The house smelled like dust and cat piss. The carpet was probably original.

  “He occupies this place, but he doesn’t live here,” Cairo said. “This isn’t a home.”

  He turned to Shauf’s footsteps. “One of the bedrooms is locked,” she said. “We need him to open it unless we’re going to use the Turbo again.”

  “Jimmy, there’s a locked bedroom. Have you got a key for it?”

  Bailey didn’t answer and Shauf went down the hall to the bathroom. Marquez walked down, tried the bedroom and then leaned in the bathroom where Shauf had lifted the tank lid off the toilet, looking for drugs.

  “There’s yogurt in the refrigerator,” Marquez said. “Yogurt isn’t his style, but we haven’t seen anybody else staying here.”

  “Back home we’d run him in for yogurt.” She was Texan. “But out here I think it’s legal.” She clicked open the door of the shower and he smelled the draft of mildew. She reached for a shampoo bottle. “Look at this. Did you know he washes his hair?” She picked up a blue disposable razor, turned it in her hand and asked, “What do you think?”

  He opened the medicine cabinet. Aspirin, Advil, Band-Aids, strictly ordinary stuff until he emptied the rest of the medicine cabinet and found two prescription labels that were for people named Crawford and Ulrich. When he set these aside the cabinet was empty. The mirrored door swung loosely, too loosely, and he looked at the screws holding the cabinet to the studs, but they were secure and rust had bled from one.

  He walked to the end of the hall now, opened the garage door and stepped into the cold darkness, fumbled for the switch, found it, and clicked on a four-foot fluorescent hanging from rusted chains. He hit the button for the garage door opener and it banged into the front of Bailey’s Suburban after rising three or four feet. It slapped against the bumper, came back down, and he hit the but-ton again, heard Bailey’s muffled yelling from the living room where he must have seen the door hitting his car.

  “You fucking Nazis.”

  A disassembled car motor sat on yellowed newspapers in one corner of the garage, looking like it had for years. He saw dive equipment and moved toward it, knelt to examine the scuba gear. A yellow wetsuit, flippers, a mask, gloves, booties, and scuba tanks. They lacked the dust of everything else in here. He picked up an underwater dive light and tested it, shining the light on the back wall where an old workbench, stained with oil and with an iron vise mounted on one end, stood on wooden 2 x4’s. Above it were shelves, paint cans, jars of screws, relics of the landlord he guessed. A few suitcases were stacked in a corner. He looked at the rafters, the weak light, and walked back out to the living room. He needed better light.

  “Jimmy, I need you to back your truck up. Do you mind doing that or do you want me to?”

  They let him back the truck up, then Marquez asked him to come into the garage and over to the dive equipment. He picked up a wetsuit and turned to face Bailey.

  “How’s that eardrum of yours, Jimmy?” Bailey claimed he couldn’t dive anymore because of a blown eardrum. “This is yours?”

  Bailey shook his head.

  “You’re storing it for somebody?”

  “I sold it to a guy. I’m letting him store it here with his motor.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Shit, I don’t remember.”

  “You’ve grown some balls, Jimmy. You don’t even seem like the same guy.”

  “You seem like the same asshole, dude.”

  Overhead in the gap between ceiling joist and roof rafters were pieces of lumber, mostly long pieces of trim, warped and checked and dried too long. There were pieces of copper pipe, heating duct, and angle iron. He scanned the workbench, then pulled the ply-wood away from the wall to see what was behind it, and now was looking at unfolded white waxed boxes with a Mexican label for abalone. He counted, turned to Bailey.

  “Forty. When did you go into the shipping business?”

  “Excuse me? My lawyer says you’re going to pay for every lost day while I don’t have my boat.”

  “You tell him next time you talk to him that all his hard work has paid off. You’re getting your boat back and he ought to send you a bill. We’re going to have to open that bedroom door now. Do you want to do it for us or do you want to ask whoever is in there to open it?”

  Marquez could see he’d guessed correctly, though Bailey didn’t say anything until they’d walked down the hallway and Bailey had leaned against the door. Then he spoke quietly,
“Hey, it’s me,” he said, “you gotta open up.” He turned back to Marquez. “She must have split.”

  “I’ll go around,” Cairo said. Bailey didn’t know it, but they’d had the perimeter covered since getting here. That was another old habit carried from his DEA time. No one had gone out the window, but a few minutes later they heard Cairo’s feet land on the bed-room floor. He opened the door and a shade sucked tight against the window as the draft blew in. “The window was wide open,” Cairo said.

  Marquez turned. “Who was in here, Jimmy?”

  Bailey was too quick to answer.

  “A chick I met last night. She freaked when you started knock-ing and I told her just to stay in here.”

  “Where’s her car?”

  “She rode with me.”

  “She walking down the street, right now?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “She’s got her phone. She might have called a ride.”

  “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.”