Kirk Russell - Shell Games

Back inside he laid the file on the dining room table and opened a beer. If Katherine had been home she would have tried to stop him and maybe it was the rum and tiredness, the thrumming of his nerves, but the file and the grainy face looking up from a poor photo seemed to have a presence that he could feel. It dis-turbed the space in the house, but, of course, that was all in his head. It was the emotion of the day and accepting that Kline could be in California. He turned the pages and didn’t need to reread words he remembered. A few witness statements. Photos of torture executions. He looked at the wavery ink lines of his own hand-writing in the year after he’d left the DEA-or more accurately, been offered the chance to extend his leave of absence into resig-nation. A polite way of saying something else, and yet, he hadn’t challenged them. He’d taken it because he’d bent their rules enough to where they could have done more.

He remembered the urgency with which he’d interviewed people, chasing leads, coaxing the frightened to talk, the long drives, always armed, gun lying under a newspaper on the passenger seat, watch-ing the headlights behind him, the cars that passed on the other side of the road. A particularly hot night in Texas came at him now, boiled up through the rum and he remembered the feeling of para-noia. Was he inviting it back now? He turned another page. He should show Ruter this photo, he thought, a concrete telephone pole with two men chained to it, one Federale, one DEA agent, a very good friend he’d talked to that same night. A chain was around their necks, ratcheted the same way, hands bound, feet bound, gut slit. The knife had been wired to the concrete pole by its hilt. It hung above the head of the DEA agent, Ramon Green. He touched Green’s image, whispered, “He’s here, Ramon. I can feel him.”

His voice echoed off the oak flooring in the small living room. They die but you take them with you and you keep them alive by remembering. No alcohol-fueled melodrama, he thought, but touched the page near Ramon’s head again. What a terrible thing that had been. Could he explain someone capable of this to his team? He turned another page now and read through his attempt at a chronological bio on Kline. He’d made a trip to Thailand and wasted his money. At the time he’d had an FBI friend who’d kept him informed. He didn’t know what they believed now. His last attempt had been rebuffed.

The Feds had learned that Kline was the son of Christian mis-sionaries, Elizabeth and Henry Kline from Dayton, Ohio, who were kidnapped and killed in the late sixties by communist rebels in Indonesia. He stared at a photo of the parents. You’re lucky you didn’t see how the boy turned out, Henry. You wouldn’t have liked it much. He’d even gone to Dayton, gone a couple of weeks believing he could find clues to Kline’s hiding places in the family history.

The FBI believed that Kline had been sold or traded for weapons as an infant. Then until he was a teenager there was nothing. The year he turned sixteen a lurid story circulated in Indonesia of a young man with white blond hair who’d cut the throats of eight men in a jungle village. Villagers believed he could see at night. Allegedly, that young man had been allied with a communist guerrilla group and the FBI had spun it into a story, a bio that had gaps they couldn’t fill. Somewhere around his twentieth birthday he disappeared. He turned up in Africa with a new name and was out of politics and working for drug traffickers. His move to Mexico had coincided with the years when cocaine was the drug of choice in America. Was he still operating from there?

He read on and then flipped the file shut. It had articles, it held analysis, some from classified government papers, the kind of thing they’d arrest you for in today’s climate. He’d leaned on people to help him, he’d called in favors. Everything in the file he’d pored over god knows how many times. He finished the drink and it was nearly 1:00. He’d communicate with the Humboldt detective tomorrow, swallow his pride and call Ruter, set up to meet him.

He left the file on the table, then lying on the bed, the top blan-ket wrapped around him, eyes closed and the roar of the ocean in his ears again, felt a presence near him, pushed that aside, and thought about his last conversation with Katherine. The distance, the lack of spark. He heard the floor creak out near the kitchen and lay quiet, opened his eyes again. The sound had been distinct, not the house creaking as the night cooled, but someone inside, weight on the floor. He reached for his holster on the nightstand, lifted the gun slowly out, rested it on his chest over his heart. Then a scuffling, something moved on a counter, and he slid the blanket off, very quietly opened the nightstand drawer and removed the tiny flash-light Katherine kept there. He rose and heard the hinges of the old casement window in the kitchen squeak as he stood up.

He’d had poachers follow him home before and the house had been burgled. You could come unseen at night up through the brush and trees on the downslope. The last burglar had jimmied the deck door slider-it was old and you could lift it right out of the track. Marquez had cut a broomstick to block the slider, but only used it when he was going to be away.

He moved to the bedroom doorframe with the gun and flashlight. It got quiet out there and he had the feeling that whoever was there had just heard the floorboards squeak. A minute passed without any sound except an owl outside and he eased forward two steps, touched his heel down, rolled his weight forward very slowly, eyes adjusting to gray-black, looking for any movement at the end of the hallway. The faintest sound from the kitchen and he took another step and remembered that as he’d read the Kline file he’d opened the kitchen window for air. Another three steps, each one very slow, and now he was close and ready to come around the corner.

He knew a weapon might be aimed where he’d appear and got ready, visualizing the kitchen layout. It was small, Mexican pavers on the floor, a little rectangle and then the counter looking into the dining room. His guess was that anyone in there would press up against the refrigerator. Whatever was there was waiting, staying very quiet. He hesitated a moment, listening, holding his breath, then quickly crossed the opening to the kitchen with the flashlight held out but not on yet, his gun up, tracking. He clicked the light on movement on the counter and lowered the gun as a big raccoon went out the kitchen window and dropped down, no longer hurrying as it crossed the moonlit deck. A torn box of Triscuits lay on the counter.

He turned on the ceiling light, cleaned up the counter, and locked the window, feeling relieved and coming down off the adrenaline spike. It made him smile; it changed the night a little. He looked at the file on the dining table, walked around and opened it again after turning out the kitchen light. Moonlight reflected off the photos and he stared at the faces.

Marquez closed the file again, then took it off the table and slid it onto a chair so it wasn’t prominently in view. He didn’t want it in the moonlight anymore, wanted its presence diminished, wanted it where it was less important. He looked out on the deck again for the raccoon, then walked back down the hallway and lay down again. The file was a ghost net for him, the information and memories of Kline floating like the pieces of net that broke loose from fishing trawlers and rode undersea currents for years continuing to trap fish. You wanted to think it was over. You wanted to think he was gone, dead, or in prison somewhere. But it’s not over. He’s here.

Forty minutes south of San Francisco Marquez left Highway 1 and drove through fields of pumpkins out to a broad stand of eucalyptus trees along the bluffs. Fog shrouded the high branches of the trees and under the canopy the road was wet and dark. Droplets ticked onto the hood as he parked. Bailey’s black Suburban wasn’t there yet, but Marquez walked out any-way along the abandoned road to a concrete bunker built during WWII and waited, leaning against the yellowed concrete. Ten minutes later, Bailey waded through the ferns wearing cutoffs, sandals, and a gray sweatshirt. His ponytail was tied with colored rubber bands, the loose hairs at his forehead carried beads of water from fog.