Kirk Russell - Shell Games

“We’ve got a surveillance that could eat up the day.”

“When will you know?”

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

“You hear how off he is, don’t you?”

“I hear something I haven’t heard before.”

“I hear two voices. There’s a hardwire problem,” Ruter said.

Marquez didn’t hear two voices and didn’t say anything in response.

Ruter asked, “What about this description he gave. It rang bells for you, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, it did.”

“All right, Marquez, we’re taking this Kline idea more seri-ously. Are there photos of him?”

“I’ve never seen a good one, but the FBI may have them now.”

“I’ll call them. How about if we talk in the morning?”

After he’d thought over the conversation with Ruter and the recording, he called Maria. Katherine’s sister had picked her up from school, she’d stay with her cousin tonight and her aunt would drive her to school tomorrow.

“How’s it going, Maria? How was school?”

“I’m fine.”

She didn’t really sound fine. If anything, she sounded sad.

“What’d you have for dinner?”

“I wish you and mom would stop bugging me about what I eat. Do I bug mom because she’s fat?”

“She’s not fat.”

“She’s got that little pooch belly. I’m never going to look like that.”

“That’s nothing.”

“Whatever. I don’t want to look like that.”

“Your mom looks great.”

“Only to you.”

“We’re talking about you, right?”

“I don’t want to talk about me and I can take care of myself. Besides, I have to get off the phone now. Lisa wants to use it.”

“Ask Lisa if she can wait a minute.”

There was a long pause. “I’m totally sick of everyone talking to me about food. I have to go now, I really do.”

He let her get off the phone, yet wished he was sitting next to her talking to her right now. He had an uneasy feeling that he hadn’t had before about the eating issue and sat in the darkness thinking about it and began to worry for her, and for the distance forming between them. He thought about the gaps in the conversations with Katherine and the way they didn’t seem to mesh anymore. Thought of five years ago when Maria was a giggly ten-year-old and how easy and uncomplicated life had seemed then. Everything had changed and moved; it was hard to accept the difference.

The ocean darkened and the horizon fog went from purple to black as night fell. Marquez stopped in Half Moon Bay and picked up three chicken tacos and a large coffee to go, then drove to the condo they’d borrowed to watch Pillar Point Harbor. Shauf and Alvarez were waiting there. After he’d pulled into the lot and gotten out, he took another call from Ruter. He put the tacos and coffee on the roof of the Explorer and leaned back in to get the phone.

“We can do it tonight, after all,” Ruter said, and Marquez hesi-tated, thinking about it before answering.

“See you in four hours,” he said.

Marquez called Shauf and Alvarez rather than walk up the two flights, told them the situation and was backing out of the parking space before remembering the tacos and coffee were on the roof. The coffee bumped off a side window and splashed onto the street, but the tacos hadn’t slid off yet and he dropped them on the passenger seat, thinking he’d stop for coffee again somewhere up the road.

But he never did. He called Ruter when he was a half hour out and checked in with the team again. They’d placed a GPS trans-ponder on Bailey’s boat after he’d gone to a bar in Half Moon Bay. Tracking the boat with the GPS unit should be easy, but Marquez wanted visual surveillance and had called the Coast Guard about a helicopter flight. It was a funny thing; they’d found that poachers were used to the orange and white copters and didn’t associate them with game wardens. He bit into one of the cold tacos as he listened to Ruter go on about Davies and it occurred to him he’d have to give Petersen a heads-up that he’d be getting into Bragg later tonight.

Davies was in the interview box alone, his eyes tracing the walls, when Marquez arrived. He held out his arms to show Mar-quez the cuffs.

“They’re trying to charge me for Huega’s murder, Lieutenant.”

“Were you at Guyanno when Stocker and Han were killed?”

“No.” Davies stared back at him. “I came up with that to scare Danny, but it turns out he was there.”

“Huega was?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How do you know?”

“We were selling to the same people.”

“Selling abalone?”

“It was the only way to get close to them. I’ve got the money, I’ve been holding it for you.” When Marquez didn’t respond, Davies repeated, “It was the only way.” Marquez thought he saw sadness before the steady intensity returned to Davies’s eyes. “I didn’t kill Danny. He swam in and I watched him start down the beach.” Davies wiped the side of his face on his shoulder. His fore-head carried the dull gleam of oil and he was unshaven. According to Ruter, he’d refused to eat or drink. “And he was fine then.”

Marquez wanted to keep the questioning on Huega being at Guyanno during the murders, but went with the shift now.

“Somebody knew where to find Huega,” Marquez said. “But you were the only one who knew where he was. What explains that?”

“Somebody was keeping track of him, but, hell, you know, around here you just listen to the police radios and they were buzzing that night. Any fool can keep track of what these cops talk about.”

“They think you set Huega up.”

“Look, the fat man out there listening had Danny ready to testify he’d seen a knife like the one used at Guyanno on my boat. I mean, he was cutting a deal with him, Lieutenant, as in dirty cop, and Danny was going along because they had him on a dope dealing charge and they were trading that with him. Anything I did, I had to do.” Marquez had heard this self-righteous rap from Davies three or four times now. He felt the long, fast drive up, the two cups of coffee he’d had getting briefed by Ruter when he’d arrived. The coffee made his nerves vibrate and his stomach sour. He knew Ruter was convinced of Davies’s involvement and was frustrated that he couldn’t bring charges or get Davies to confess to assisting the killers. Davies was admitting to being in contact with these poachers and selling abalone to them, but wouldn’t take it any further than that, even when they hinted at immunity from prosecution. He’s not giving me the numbers either, Marquez thought. So why’d Davies want me here? Just to confess he’d sold abalone? That seemed small in light of everything else.

“You’re thinking I’m a head case, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”

“I’m thinking this is the time to tell me what you really know.”

“Danny got into dope with them and that was the part that went bad on him. It was more than just abalone. They’ve been running dope for growers up in Humboldt and selling it to these same people buying abalone.” The crow’s feet around Davies’s eyes, the wrinkles that lined his mouth, whose cause Marquez had put down to sun and wind, he now saw formed in part by anxiety. “They took out Stocker and Han because those two had cheated them. They were already looking for Danny when he got on my boat.”

“You sound like you’re sure of that.”

“They asked me where to find him after Guyanno. Stocker, Han, and Danny, they were rotating their diving so two of them are out every day the weather permits. They’d been going at it for seven weeks, trying to pull a hundred abalone a day, about five grand worth. That was their goal, but their deal was another five bucks each if they delivered it already shucked, so Stocker started looking around for a place no one would pick up on him. Danny said they’d been beating their average for seven weeks, so I figure they’d been paid a quarter million so far. Some of that cash they used to buy dope, and then they sold the dope to the same abalone guys. It was all a big circle and they were making it big time. That’s why they couldn’t keep quiet about it. They used the Lost Coast for some of their dope smuggling and that’s why I ran Danny up there, so he could show me where.”