Kirk Russell - Shell Games

“I’m going to tell you more than I should,” Douglas said, his face showing the heavy burden the Feds carried. It had no effect on Marquez though, and if anything, it made him think less of Douglas, though he’d always liked him. Saying he was going to tell him more than he should probably meant he was going to lie, so maybe the Bureau really did have a live operation they needed to protect. “We’re close to capturing an individual we’ve been after for many years. He’s responsible for the deaths of five people in law enforce-ment that we know of and he’s suspected of being behind the killing of a judge in Houston and a DA in Arizona in ‘97. There is an indi-vidual on the Emily Jane who’s in our employ as an informant and who has dealings with this individual’s organization.”

“So Kline is here.” He saw Douglas had been prepared for that, which must mean he’s talking with Ruter.

“I can’t name names.”

“Are you involved in the investigation of the diver homicides?”

“We’re assisting.”

“Okay, well, we’re looking for a large market poacher who’s buying up north coast ab and it could be Kline. Are you telling me he’s our buyer?”

“I can’t tell you what I know yet, but I may be able to in the next day or two. I’ve got to get cleared first.”

“How close are you to him?”

Douglas looked down at his coffee and picked up the cup, then immediately put it down again. He got out his card and wrote a couple of phone numbers on the back.

“These are private numbers you can reach me at. The top one will get me day or night.”

“Where’s the Emily Jane this morning?” No answer for that either and if you’re a Fed long enough, you turn into one, Marquez thought. You start thinking your questions and thought processes are better and you begin to walk among the anointed. He took the card and pocketed it. “How about you call me when you’re able to talk,” Marquez said, as he stood up.

“Don’t leave yet.”

“I learned not to underrate him. He’ll make the reality fit your fears. Thanks for the coffee, Charles, and it is good to see you again.”

“I’d like it if you stayed and talked.”

“I’d be doing all the talking, but give me a call if that changes.” Marquez took four steps and turned back, looking at Douglas’s face. “How’d you know to find me here?” Douglas didn’t answer. “I guess that says it all. I’ll see you.”

Marquez stopped at the Sausalito police station on his way to the hospital to meet with Chief Keeler. He knew and liked the police captain, a frank and genial man named Jim Gerhardt. Sausalito police worked out of brown painted trailers that sat on a grassy hump of a hill at the end of Locust Street, trailers they’d inhabited since their former station had flooded nearly a decade ago. Marquez parked between two boats on trailers and wondered if Gerhardt would have stayed if he could have looked into the future and seen himself in a trailer park this long after the flood.

Gerhardt was at his desk. “I won’t take much of your time,” Marquez said, and watched him drop his reading glasses and slide his chair back.

“I’m sorry about last night, John. We got there as quickly as we could.”

“I short-noticed you.”

“You couldn’t help it.” He frowned. “We’ve searched town for this Bailey and your wardens seem to think he’s gone, but you’re not here about him, are you?”

“No, I’m here because I just met with the FBI.”

Gerhardt nodded, reached across his desk, his big-boned wrist pulling free of his sleeve as he picked a card from a holder. He squinted at it, holding it a distance away, before fumbling with his glasses again. “Special Agent Charles Douglas,” he said. “He was here with another agent this morning. He wanted to talk about the sequence of events last night.”

“Did he say why?”

“He couldn’t discuss it.”

“The FBI called off our pursuit of the Emily Jane and I think they probably watched the whole thing here last night. They had the Emily Jane under surveillance and we stumbled into that when we showed up with Bailey.”

“They didn’t say a word to me about being in town with any surveillance team.”

“That was my next question.”

Marquez handed back the card, thanked him again for back-ing them up last night, and then drove to the hospital to meet Keeler. A couple of red-tailed hawks circled in the late morning sky above the parking lot and the air was clear and cool as he walked toward the entrance. Inside, the air was humid and rich with chemical odors. People had surgeries that saved their lives and children got born and many good things happened in these places, but he associated hospitals with some of the worst memo-ries of his life. He moved quietly in here, asked at the desk where the surgery waiting room was, and when he walked in, Keeler was alone in the large, empty room.

There were gurneys in the corner and a couch arrangement where Keeler sat. From behind, he looked like an old valley rancher on horseback, hands folded into his lap as though holding reins. He sat straight-backed, a legacy of Marine Corps training. He’d thinned at the shoulders in the last few years and his waist bulged where his uniform shirt was tucked in tight. His white hair was cut short and neatly combed. He wasn’t far from retirement now, and lately had been talking about hanging it up next spring and working on his almond orchard behind the old farmhouse he’d bought and was restoring outside Davis. He was also refurbishing an aluminum-skinned Airstream camper and had plans to go all over the United States with his wife, Clara. The chief turned at the echo of footsteps in the empty room.

“How is he?” Marquez asked, meaning the chief’s old friend who was in surgery.

“It’s worse than they thought.” He touched his abdomen. Marquez knew it was some kind of cancer. “I’ve lost three of my oldest friends in the last year and a half to cancer. I hate that. I hate it that they had to close him up and they’re going to tell him they can’t do anything for him.” His voice dropped to a rough whisper. “Goddammit, I hate it.” He touched his face, pressing fingers into his forehead, looked at Marquez and said, “You know, I can remember him like yesterday when we were no more than twenty-one. He was the one the girls always went for.” He shook his head. “Tell me what happened last night.”

Marquez walked through the sequence of events but left out telling Roberts to get off the boat. “I’d like to try to find the Emily Jane,” he said. “They berthed somewhere up north.”

“You want to pit your unit against the FBI?”

“No, sir, but we can’t stop doing our jobs because they’re after somebody. They owe us a lot more information, Chief.”

“Why do they owe us if we walked into their operation?”

Marquez was unsure how to answer that. The Feds had wiped out a bust after he and Roberts had to bail off a boat at gunpoint, yet he also knew Keeler’s respect for the FBI was almost unques-tioning. He’d brushed with the chief on this subject a couple of times before and had learned that saying anything openly critical of the FBI was something Keeler saw as unpatriotic. Yet he could also sense an opening here. Perhaps because of the circumstances of the morning, perhaps because of the risk Roberts and he’d been in or a conversation he’d had with Baird while driving here from Sacramento this morning.

“Chief, I need the Emily Jane. We can find it without approach-ing anybody on board.”

“Should we tell the FBI to cancel their operation?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what are you saying?”