Kirk Russell - Redback

‘Severe skull fracture as a result of cranialencephalic trauma… No contrecoup-type injuries were found but severe contusions occurred most likely a result of bone fragmentation and subsequent impact of brain surface… Injuries indicate the victim’s head was in a fixed position… hemorrhaging and contusions indicate victim was alive…’

He reread the paragraph. Osiers was alive for hours as his skull was mechanically crushed. They drew it out. Marquez stared at the words and then made a decision that he tried to tell himself wasn’t impulsive and fueled by anger. He refilled his coffee, gassed up the car at the corner Chevron and rolled south with the dawn traffic, running in a stream of lights toward San Diego.

From the San Diego Airport he phoned Sheryl and left the message that he was checking out the pilot of the Sherpa aircraft whose name they found in the tour boat documents. When she called back he didn’t take the call. He let it go to voice mail, as he did with all calls he received that morning. He located the Sherpa, a boxy former Coast Guard transport plane, sitting on a runway, gray and cool in the early light. He copied down the tail numbers and took photos, and then drove south toward the border, toward the San Ysidro Gate and Mexico, and crossed to Tijuana, fully aware of what he was doing.

He drove the main drag past the discount everything stores, the instant auto-body repair shops, the massage parlors, the few remaining floristas, and then left La Revo and worked north until he found the restaurant Takado showed him, a place where the narco-juniors, the wannabes, gathered and hung with Miguel Salazar.

He parked, went in, asked for a table in a corner just inside the back patio, knowing that he was going to do something he might later regret. He told himself he’d already known Osiers’ skull had been crushed, but that didn’t change him. Morning sunlight fell through the leaves of a jacaranda tree and the shadows of the leaves flickered over his wrists and hands as he rested them on the table. The waiter came and he ordered huevas a la Mexicana, eggs scrambled with chili, onion, and tomato, and drank coffee and watched the iron gate at the back of the patio garden.

Just before 9:00 a.m. a white Porsche parked across the street near his car and two young and well-dressed men entered the restaurant. They walked toward the patio, shoes clicking on the tile, hard stares searching for anything and finding Marquez, as he knew they would, as he willed them to. He lifted his coffee cup in a mocking salute as they passed by, his eyes answering their promise of violence.

Out on the patio an old waiter took their orders, but they were agitated. Marquez had violated their morning, their sense of themselves, and he continued to stare at them as one lit a cigarette and cocked his head toward him. It wouldn’t be long now and for Marquez time slowed. He saw it all as one scene, a painting with the doors to the patio garden, the waiter in black, the soul-poisoned sadism of Miguel Salazar, the fountain bubbling in the shade of a loquat tree and the young disciples of cartel money and power gathering themselves at the table, readying for their ascendancy. Hibiscus and calla and blue tile of the patio and sunlight reflected off the white tablecloth, all of it bright, vivid, and inevitable.

It’s a new world, he thought. Instead of dealing in millions of dollars, the larger cartels dealt in billions. They buy banks and bankers. They buy the fastest boats, the best planes. They buy judges, prosecutors, police, and politicians, and the kid who got up from the table now, who held his eye and came toward him, swaggered with certainty. The patio door swung open. The young man stepped in and stopped at Marquez’s table. He slid his coat back to show a gun and spoke in English.

‘This place is not for gringos.’

‘Who is it for?’

‘Get up.’

Marquez picked up his coffee cup and turned toward the garden. He was aware but not watching directly as the boy who would be a man brought his gun across in a hard sweeping motion and shattered the cup, drenching Marquez’s clothes and splattering the tablecloth and floor. The blow left three fingers on Marquez’s left hand stinging and numb, but before the kid could bring his arm back, Marquez swept his legs out from under him and his rage at everything that had happened fed the next minutes.

Now he was outside, his shirt torn, lower lip leaking blood. Inside, the old waiter helped one of the men to a sitting position. The other lay curled on his side and would need an ambulance. Marquez had left money for the damage, but the trip here was a bad mistake. He was leaving when Miguel Salazar drove around the corner.

Even then he should have walked away. Instead, he waited and when the chance came closed the gap before Miguel reached the back patio gate.

‘Miguel, I’m here to see you. Que tal?’

Salazar went for his gun, but Marquez gripped his collar and jerked him so hard he could barely get the gun free before it was knocked from his hand. Then it was all he could do not to fall as he stutter-stepped backwards, Marquez dragging him at almost a run and turning him as he reached Miguel’s car, then slamming his face down hard. Marquez heard Miguel’s nose give, the cartilage grinding like a footstep in gravel, and lifted his head and slammed it again. He threw him down on the sidewalk, drove the air out of him with a knee, ground the side of his face into the concrete and put his full weight onto Miguel’s skull as Miguel fought back.

‘You’re going to have to watch everywhere all of the time and we’re going to lean on them to take you down, so you’re going to have to pay more. Eventually, you’ll become too much of a problem, then what do you think will happen?’

Marquez punched him hard, watched him go slack, and then took his weight off him. When he got in his car and started driving he shook from adrenaline. He drove back to San Diego and the airport and parked for an hour before returning Sheryl’s calls, and then talked normally, relating what he learned about the Sherpa pilot, Del Weaver, from the Federal Aviation Administration

‘I’ll see what more I can learn. I’ve already talked to the FAA. Weaver routinely flies to Calexico and then north into the Central Valley to a private landing field, some almond grower named KZ Nuts. Weaver’s business is as a short haul pilot. He’s got a reconstructed Sherpa, a C-23 rebuilt after the Coast Guard auctioned it off.’

She listened and then asked, ‘Where have you been? I called six times. Billy Takado’s body has disappeared. They’re saying it may have been accidentally cremated. We got a call from the Mex Feds this morning. Until it’s found again the investigation into his death is on hold.’

‘It won’t get found.’

That night he was swept by remorse and disappointment in himself. His hands were bruised and swollen. When he washed them in the bathroom and looked in the mirror he saw yet another cop unable to deal with the job and lashing out at the enemy, inviting retaliation. But there was something worse than that, a sensation as though he was unraveling as he was drawn in, as if anything could happen and he didn’t know himself anymore.

He took a late night call from Sheryl who asked near the end of their conversation, ‘What happened today, John? Did something happen? You don’t sound like you.’

‘Something did happen.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘If you change your mind, I’m here.’

After the memorial service for Jim Osiers, Sheryl asked if he wanted to come back to her house. Marquez went home first. Then he drove over to Sheryl’s and they sat in lawn chairs under the big oak in her backyard. But even in the shade it was hot. You couldn’t see anything in LA Basin other than yellow-white haze and he couldn’t lose the image of Jim’s sons standing alongside their mother, the youngest crying, the oldest trying to stand tall in a way his father might be proud of. What would happen when he got older and learned more about his father? Would he be able to forgive him?