Kirk Russell: Shell Games

“What kind of money is in abalone?”

“Roughly fifty dollars a pound.”

“What do poachers take a year? Give me a dollar value.”

“Ten million.”

“And what do these divers make on urchin?”

“A dollar fifty a pound.”

“Fifty a pound for abalone, a dollar fifty for urchin,” Ruter repeated. Marquez nodded. Ruter continued, “I guess you do need help if you can’t keep a lowlife like Stocker from pulling that many abalone. You’re not covering the base and you’re worried about it? Is that it? Davies called and you jumped in your truck without thinking about procedure.”

Marquez let it slide and Ruter pointed at the camcorder lying on the picnic table.

“Did you take pictures of the victims?”

“No.”

“You don’t mind if I look at the tape, do you?”

“Go ahead.”

Ruter talked as he watched the video playback. “I wish we had equipment like this, but we had to fight just to get cell phones. That’s our big victory this year.”

Marquez knew what tight budgets were about. The SOU budget had been halved this year. His team had been cut to six. He watched Ruter run through the video, then lay the camcorder down.

“Thank you,” Ruter said, hitched his pants, and walked down to his partner.

Marquez waited a few minutes then drove down to where they had Davies. Both rear doors of a county car were wide open and Ruter sat next to Davies with one arm up on the seat back. He was a short, bullet-headed man, salt-and-pepper hair parted on the left side, red in the face from walking up the slope repeatedly in the heat. He sat with his trousers hiked up, one foot out the door, left hand covering his inside holster.

“I’m taking off,” Marquez told him.

“Stay available,” Ruter said. “Don’t get too far undercover.”

Marquez touched Davies’s shoulder, said, “Give me a call, I want to talk to you more about this.”

“Where are you going to be tonight?” Ruter asked.

“In Fort Bragg.”

“If I want to talk to you, where do I find you?”

“Use the number I gave you.”

Ruter turned back to Davies. “Is that the number you called this morning?” he asked, and Marquez never heard the reply.

A couple of hours later, he was driving between Mendocino and Fort Bragg. The sun was low on the horizon, its last light streaking the water. His phone burred softly and he looked at the number showing on the screen, then matched it to Ruter’s card.

“Your friend killed them,” Ruter said, his voice hoarse now. “And this isn’t about abalone. Stocker was suing him and Davies saw a way to use the poaching as a cover and take care of the problem.” Ruter paused, waiting for a response, but Marquez had gone as far as he was going to go with the detective today. “Davies went berserk in that bar and Stocker was going to win the lawsuit. Stocker’s lawyer says the case was a no-brainer and Davies was going to lose his boat.”

“Everything is a no-brainer for a lawyer.”

“Davies told me this afternoon that someone should have turned Ray Stocker’s lights off a long time ago.”

“I don’t think Davies is your man.”

“You’ve got a lot of opinions for a game warden.”

“And you solve cases faster than any detective I’ve ever met.” He heard Ruter’s hard exhale. “Look, Ruter, I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner.”

“So now you’re sorry? I’ll tell your chief that for you. If I was your superior officer, I’d-”

Marquez pulled out his earpiece and clicked the phone off. He drove slowly north looking out over the darkening water as DEA memories invaded him again.

Marquez got into Fort Bragg after dusk and met Sue Petersen at a pizza parlor in the old part of town. A red neon sign arched over the entry of Carlene’s and she was standing in the softer shadows to the side, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and brown leather loafers. Her black hair was cut short, her face animated as she smiled. They’d worked together for eight years and she was the only warden left of those he’d started with in the SOU.

“You ironed your T-shirt,” he said, as he walked up.

“I figured you were buying dinner, so I went all out.”

Before Davies called this morning, Marquez had bought yellow onions, garlic, basil, canned tomatoes, and spaghetti. His truck smelled like wilted basil. It had been his night to cook at the SOU cold house in Fort Bragg, but after leaving Guyanno he didn’t have it in him and called Petersen suggesting Carlene’s. He dropped the basil in a trash receptacle on the sidewalk before they walked inside.

In the back was the cedar-paneled room Carlene’s called the party room, and they asked for a table there because it was empty. A waitress took their order of salad, pepperoni pizza, and a pitcher of beer almost as soon as they sat down.

“No beer for me tonight, John.”

The waitress was still there, but he didn’t change the order, and after she left, he asked about Tran Li, the Vietnamese immi-grant they were building an abalone poaching case against. They had more than enough to take him down, but so far, Li hadn’t led them to anyone else. Li had either outsmarted them or not sold any of what he’d brought home. He had a big freezer in his garage, they had a search warrant in place, but Marquez had been holding off because he figured Li was the best lead they had to the buyer working the coast. Li was diving every day, taking as much as he could, and it was Marquez’s gut feeling that Li was connected to their bigger buyer. He knew Petersen didn’t agree with the decision to wait. She thought Li would plea-bargain and give up the buyer and that they should have taken him down today.

But she gave him the day without comment. Li had gotten into Fort Bragg near dawn and dove with his older son for six and a half hours. The SOU had videotaped them in coves and rock gardens and then later in Noyo Harbor as they unloaded the Zodiac and loaded their car. The rest of the team was camped outside Li’s house tonight in Oakland.

“Li and son got gas at the Chevron and stopped at the Sea-Lite Motel on the way out,” she said. “We went in after and I talked to the manager. They ate in the little restaurant there. She remem-bered Li’s kid having a hamburger and she found the ticket and showed me.”

Li had stayed in the motel twice since starting this poaching spree and Marquez was sure the motel was a meeting place.

“The kid must have wolfed the burger because they weren’t there twenty minutes,” Petersen said.

Li was wearing the team out running, sometimes twice a day, between Fort Bragg and his house in Oakland, a three-and-a-half-hour drive. He’d get in the fast lane and sit on eighty miles an hour. He was a compact, hardworking diver who’d argued his own case in front of a Santa Rosa jury when they’d busted him three years ago. The jury had been barely interested in abalone poaching and the judge sympathetic to Li’s immigrant roots and his desire to better his family. He’d been lectured by the judge, given a suspended sentence and reduced fine. Marquez had hoped he’d never poach again.

A week and a half ago they’d recognized him at Noyo Harbor, like a bad bear coming back, Petersen had said. They’d tracked him eight out of the last nine days. Committing the same offense within three years would make him much more likely to get a prison sentence this time around. It would add to the leverage they’d bargain with.

The waitress arrived with a plastic pitcher and slid it onto the table, beer sloshing over the sides. She put down two salad bowls, wiped her fingers, and walked away. Marquez offered beer to Peter-sen again and when she shook her head he filled his glass. As he tipped his head back and drank he saw an image of Ray Stocker’s head and heard Davies’ drawling comment that Stocker was look-ing up at the sky for his home planet in the constellation of Orion. They’d run Davies’s name through NCIC, the National Crime Infor-mation Center, and had come up with two minor arrests, nothing significant. The drawl was Georgia. They’d have to find out more about him now.