Kirk Russell: Redback

He bought a black coffee and a tuna sandwich, and when he walked back the construction superintendent and other worker were gone. In the Field Office a TV played and he ate the sandwich and watched a CNN report with shots of the Sea of Cortez and Highway 1 in Baja. Competitors called CNN crisis news, but at least they were there. No one else was covering.

A flyover search for bodies in the Sea of Cortez had yielded two local fishermen and they were looking for four others in what CNN called cartel infighting. There was nothing new on Jim Osiers and it was too late for good news. Marquez stayed at the office until 8:00 that night and then went home to the apartment, frustrated that Holsten wouldn’t let him go to Baja, but also very disturbed by what Sheryl had learned.

Marquez lived in a one-bedroom on the second floor of a three-story stucco apartment building with a Spanish motif. The apartment had oak flooring and a concrete deck with black iron railing, the deck with a view of the ocean. At night after the traffic died, he could hear the waves breaking. Sometimes he’d sleep with the sliding door open just so he could hear that.

Marquez had drifted into his early thirties living alone. Ask him why and he’d shrug off the question, though he knew the answer was his wife’s murder in Africa. ‘Wife’ was an impersonal word for Julie, and really, married barely fit them. They married young, most would say way too young, and maybe time would have done to them what it did to other people, but Marquez still let himself believe otherwise. He allowed himself that. He didn’t indulge grief and make a touchstone out of sorrow. He didn’t sit at a bar, drink with you, and then wait for the chance to tell you about his sadness. But he did live alone.

He’d gone out with plenty of women in the last five or six years. He wasn’t a loner. He liked to laugh and have fun. He got a beer from the refrigerator now and opened it. Summer dusk was settling in. Jim Osiers was missing and he couldn’t picture Osiers staging his disappearance. The girlfriend, OK, maybe, but Rayman making the call after Sheryl arrived, the late night tip, the bank account revealed before mid morning the next day, no way. It all felt a little too organized. He needed to go there and find out.

He finished the beer and then stacked some charcoal in the Hibachi and lit it. Smoke curled in from the deck through the open slider. The sailboat of an ex-cop named Dunfield slowly passed out beyond the surf, ghostly in the twilight. The boat’s name was Blow Me and for that Dunfield, who was retired, had become a minor celebrity with the local teens. Dunfield was often in shorts, sandals, a T-shirt, and a cap. He was getting by on not much more than his pension money, but seemed happy.

Marquez opened another beer and then grilled a chicken breast and corn. He was eating when his sister, Darcey, called.

‘Nathan left last night,’ she said, meaning her husband. ‘He’s going back to New York and leaving me the boat and the restaurant.’

She sounded defeated and he was sorry for her but it didn’t surprise him. This had been coming for awhile. It was a long way from New York to Seward, Alaska, and owning a restaurant that made its money on tourists in a season that wasn’t much more than five months. Darcey loved it there, but Nathan had threatened to leave more than a few times.

‘I’m sorry, Darcey.’

‘I’m not. I’m glad it’s over.’

Marquez didn’t know what to say to that. She was hurting. That’s why she was calling. He wished they talked more. He wished she lived closer and was happy. He listened and tried to forget about Osiers as he talked with her.

He hung up remembering a foggy night when he was fifteen and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in his grandmother’s old Chevrolet Impala desperate to find her. He didn’t have a driver’s license yet, just a permit, and was afraid the bridge toll-taker would see it in his eyes, call the cops, and they’d stop him from driving into San Francisco to the Tenderloin where one of Darcey’s stoner friends had told him she’d gone after running away from home.

That night he had a photo of her lying on the passenger seat, a blowup of her high school yearbook picture, though she’d stopped looking like her photo months ago. Heroin made her rail thin, her hair stringy, and her face dull and gaunt. He found the address in the Tenderloin and then a building with a stairwell stinking of urine and littered with trash. On the fourth floor pale yellow light came out from under the door and when he knocked, the man who opened the door said, ‘Go home.’

‘I’m looking for my sister.’

‘I don’t care if you’re looking for God. Get the fuck out of here before I kick your ass down the stairs.’

Marquez had pushed his way in and the guy punched him, but Marquez was already six foot one and strong. He hit back and hard, but the fight like all fist fights was a mess. When he left the man on the floor and staggered down a hallway and pushed into a bedroom he found a doped-up Darcey, maybe not even aware what the fat guy on top of her was doing. It was that hard and that long ago. He had carried her out wrapped in a blanket smelling of sex and sweat.

On the sidewalk a big guy pulled a knife and said, ‘I own the bitch.’

Marquez still believed the guy would have stabbed him if a police cruiser hadn’t rounded the corner. The police didn’t hesitate and in that moment his view of the police changed permanently. He’d run wild as a kid, wandered the forests of Humboldt County, and listened to his parents’ friends talk about their pot fields and getting ripped off by cops. The family had lived for two years in a tent with a dirt floor and later in San Francisco they’d lived out of a VW van. The cops were always rousting them. He’d been a truant before he was seven years old and was taught to look at the police as enemy. But not after that night, not after those cops got out and helped him. That night changed everything.

At sunrise the Perez Cabinets truck was still on East Temple, though now a bad smell leached into the soft early light. Blow flies crawled across the rear rolling door toward a crack, and Marquez watched them and then crossed the street and called LAPD from downstairs in the DEA building. He got transferred to a Detective Broward.

‘Have you run the plates?’ Broward asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Give them to me.’

He read them off and said, ‘Why don’t you get a patrol car out here and I’ll meet the officer.’

‘Are you that sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you been around this before?’

‘I have.’

Broward thought about that for a few moments and said, ‘I’ll need you to wait there.’

A handful of construction workers gathered to watch the lock on the roll-up door torn off as a pry bar lifted the door. Tortured metal wrenched and snapped and as the door went up the heavy smell of death rolled out like a breaking wave. When the detective saw the body he started clearing everyone.

But Marquez didn’t leave. He backed up and then remained where he had a view of a male body lying on its side with its back to them. He studied the pants, shirt, short brown hair, and the shoulders. When he turned, he saw two reporters who’d been hanging around the Field Office waiting for word on Osiers cross the street as they saw crime tape strung.

Detective Broward walked over to Marquez, put a hand on his shoulder, said, ‘Thanks, but I need you to step outside the perimeter now.’

‘When will you turn the body over?’

‘When we’re ready.’

‘Call me when you do.’

‘Why?’

Before the call came Marquez let his squad know that the body in the truck looked too familiar. Hidalgo and Green came with him as he went back out. The truck’s bed was almost waist high and the police had placed a stepladder there. He followed the detective up into the truck and stood where he was told to. He heard the detective ask him, but for a few moments Marquez felt like he was outside his body looking at Jim Osiers. He leaned and looked at the face again, made himself do it, the eye socket, the blood that had run down to his collar. He saw the bruising and where a piece of Osiers’ skull had erupted through his scalp. He saw Jim had bled, so had been alive when it happened. Rage and deep sorrow rose in him and pushed away the shock and disbelief.