Kirk Russell - Redback

Dusk came and Sheryl invited him to stay for dinner. They moved into the kitchen and she leaned against him as pasta boiled. She was a little drunk now, alcoholic heat radiating off her and him. A light sweat shone on her forehead and her eyes carried both challenge and sadness. They ate outside and drank more wine, but the wine didn’t do anything at all for him tonight. He thought about Miguel Salazar lying on the sidewalk with his nose broken and bleeding, and of the investigation of Jim Osiers that had begun and would touch all of his squad and likely linger with them the rest of their careers.

What he’d done to Miguel Salazar in Tijuana needed to come out. He couldn’t hold it secret and no question they would come for him. They’d come in waves if the first didn’t get him.

Sheryl put her hand on his and said, ‘Don’t go quiet on me. Let’s keep talking. I need to talk.’

‘I’m here. I’m listening and I’m thinking about what we got off that boat. I’m going to chase this Sherpa pilot lead. Holsten and Boyer are going to take apart Group Five, but I’m going to chase this wherever it goes first. We know the Sherpa pilot flies to Calexico regularly and we’ve got enough on him and the almond grower to start looking at both more closely. I’m betting the pilot, Weaver, moves drugs for the Salazars.’

‘Former military pilot?’

‘Yeah, but it’s going to be the same old thing.’ It’s always the money. ‘I’ll get them all,’ he said, and didn’t sound much like himself.

‘Do you want to bust them or do you want something else?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Jim got framed.’

‘He didn’t get framed about the girlfriend. Her baby is due in mid November.’

He’d go to Calexico in the early morning. He’d keep pushing. Sheryl went back inside and got a bottle of brandy. She put two glasses on the picnic table, handed him the bottle, and Marquez opened and poured. He came close to telling her what he’d done with Miguel. They drank. They moved back inside. She looked at his hands. She touched his swollen knuckles.

‘I’ll call you from Calexico,’ he said.

‘No.’

She hooked his belt with her hand, put her arms around him and said, ‘Don’t go yet.’ She pulled his shirt out, slid her hand up his back. ‘Stay. You should have stayed a long time ago.’

She pressed tight against him, dropped her hands, fumbled with his belt buckle, and then he was taking her clothes off. It was the line they’d never crossed and he wasn’t sure why it was happening now, but he was aroused and a little drunk and they were alive. That was the unspoken thing. Her skin was very smooth and warm and her mouth tasted like brandy. She wrapped her legs around him and stopped talking and let her heels fall to the soft covers of the bed. She was not in any hurry and slowed him and whispered, ‘Only this once,’ as a moan started from low in her chest. She was trying to tell him something else that night, but he was still too young, too caught up in the events of the week and the thing they were doing.

He was at Sheryl’s when Anderson called. His half-ass mobile phone rang and woke both of them at a little after 4:00 in the morning. Marquez found his shorts and the phone and answered as he walked out of the bedroom.

‘Sorry to call so early.’

‘That’s OK, Kerry, what’s up?’

‘I sent you copies of files on Stoval. The package should arrive addressed to you at your office this morning. There’s also a file in there on a man named Kline that we can link to Stoval.’

‘What about the stuff I called you about?’

Sheryl padded into the room. She was naked and he watched the refrigerator light silhouette her body as she opened the door just far enough to reach for a pitcher of water. Then she stood in the quasi-darkness listening to his conversation.

‘I checked with Customs,’ Marquez said, ‘and they tell me Stoval has been in and out of the country eight times in the last three years.’

‘More than eight,’ Anderson answered, ‘but the point is he’s protected. That’s what I told you the first time we met. Remember? And you won’t get anywhere trying to talk to the CIA. They’ll obfuscate and wear you down. That’s how they work. But I didn’t call about them. I’m only calling about the package I sent you, and I can’t talk long. I’ve got to catch a flight.’

When he hung with Anderson, Sheryl asked, ‘What package?’

‘Files from Anderson for me.’

‘Stoval files?’

‘Yeah, and if I’m in Calexico will you catch them for me when they come in?’

Sheryl did more than that. She caught the package as it arrived and then opened it and went through the files. That surprised him. But maybe it shouldn’t have.

Calexico is in California’s Imperial Valley just over the border from Mexico. Human mules routinely crossed here. Marquez had once seen a bust where cocaine got baked into plastic animal carriers that were then shipped with dogs in them. At the time, US Customs avoided bringing their drug-sniffing dogs around other dogs, so the carriers passed through with little scrutiny. Once through, the dog carriers got dissolved in vats of chemicals, the cocaine extracted and the waste poured out into the ground behind a warehouse.

There were DEA agents stationed in Calexico, but Marquez didn’t check in with anybody. He drove to the little International Airport and parked in the bright sun near the tarmac. Then his car phone rang and a retired newspaper editor in San Fernando, Mexico introduced himself.

‘Thanks for returning my call,’ Marquez said.

‘Oh, I’m happy to talk about him. I liked him a lot.’

Marquez listened to the quaver and enthusiasm in the old man’s voice as he remembered Billy. He thought about how differently the same human being was talked about at the DEA.

‘I knew his mother too. He was like her. He could make you smile just by walking into a room. He had a business of taking hunters out for bird hunts. He used to bring me birds. He’d come right into the newspaper office with them and put them on my desk.’

‘Were you in San Fernando when his fiancee got killed?’

The old man coughed. His voice quieted. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to talk about that.

‘It was very sad.’

‘Who killed her?’

‘It was never solved.’

‘Was Billy accused?’

‘Yes, the police were very stupid.’

‘Who did you suspect?’

‘Oh, it’s so long ago. It was someone crazy, I guess, and so sad.’

‘Billy is dead,’ Marquez said, ‘and I think it goes back to when you knew him.’

The old editor coughed again and said, ‘He died when she died.’

He murmured something else and didn’t want to talk anymore. Marquez copied down the name of the church with the cemetery where Rosalina was buried and then he drove north over the Tehachapi Mountains. He dropped into the Central Valley and continued on until he reached the big almond orchards of KZ Nuts.

Now he could smell the land in the dust the wind carried. Dust dulled the late afternoon and reddened the sun. He called Brian Hidalgo at the Field Office and as he waited for Brian to pick up, looked through long rows of almonds to an airstrip with a new concrete extension white in the sun. He studied the KZ buildings, a big ranch house and processing and storage buildings. He saw delivery trucks and an airstrip where a rainbow-colored windsock swelled with wind.

‘I’ve been making calls on this,’ Brian said. ‘I talked to a friend of mine whose father used to crop dust all over the Central Valley. Sixty years ago that airstrip on the almond ranch was called Dolan’s Field. Military planes coming out of March Field, Air Corps planes would use it in an emergency.’