Kirk Russell - Shell Games

It was hard enough to get a county DA to go after poachers when they had the whole ring. Spending money prosecuting abalone cases didn’t get district attorneys re-elected. It was hardly a hot-button issue.

Tell most people that white abalone was the first ocean species humankind could genuinely claim bragging rights to extinguishing and they’d shrug. Big deal, extinctions happened. Talk about man-aging resources and they’d agree with you, as long as it didn’t cut into their lifestyle too much. Where was abalone in the scheme of things? It wasn’t an African elephant, an orca, or lion. Not much glamour in an abalone and there never would be.

A century ago, abalone had been so plentiful along the California shoreline that all you had to do was wade in a foot or two and pick them up. Shellmounds attested to how plentiful they’d once been. Their shells had become a source of jewelry and inlay. Japanese had set up factories and shipped huge quantities home for food. Diving came after the easy stuff was gone and we’re down to the end game for a species that has survived for a million years.

Marquez looked at Li and knew he didn’t have the right to offer this man-who’d raked through ab beds for a week-taxpayer money to help move out of the state. And he didn’t have the right to promise Li he wouldn’t be prosecuted.

When the pager beeped he punched in the number for Li’s shop and hung up. Within a minute, or maybe no more than thirty seconds, the phone rang. Li picked it up and sweat started on his forehead. Marquez listened in on the conversation. The man talk-ing on the other end was smooth, quiet, and very clear.

“If you’ve got more abalone to sell, then stay by your phone and I’ll call you back in half an hour,” he said, and hung up.

Now it was very quiet in the shop and Marquez couldn’t get Li to talk and sat silent himself. He smelled ginger and an herb he couldn’t identify. The front door opened, bells tingling, and one of the older women who’d been at the house when they’d presented the search warrant came toward the back. Li called to her, his voice tight with anxiety, the pitch rising, maybe warning her off in Vietnamese. There was a rapid exchange and then she was closer, standing at the half wall separating the office area from the shop, wagging a finger at Marquez before turning and leaving.

A half hour passed. Forty-five minutes and he felt Li’s nervous-ness grow. Then the phone rang again. “Yes, hello,” Li said, and almost immediately instructions were given. Li made rapid notes, his gnarled hand agile across a piece of paper. Marquez held the phone to Li’s ear while he wrote with his good hand. “Tonight,” the voice said. “11:00.” Marquez heard it very clearly, then a slowly delivered warning. “If anything is wrong, if you’re not there, if anyone is with you, if we see anything, then it’ll happen just like we told you.”

“Yes.”

“So you want to be really sure, because we’ll wait and we’ll do what we said. If you’re lying and they’re telling you they’ll protect you, they’re wrong. What’ll happen is we’ll wait for your kid as long as it takes, and I bet you know about waiting. I think all you gooks are born knowing how to wait. Same thing, my man, and you got to understand the people who hired me, they leave it open. They’re good for the money and they just want the job done even-tually. You don’t want that to happen.”

“This abalone is stored at a friend’s house.”

“Okay, you be sure now. Don’t let the Gamers suck you into this.”

The line went dead. Marquez tried to talk it out with him and explained how they’d deliver more abalone to him this afternoon in an ex Webvan truck. The lettering was still on the side; he’d rec-ognize it. Shauf would handle the drop with Alvarez’s help. They’d help Li load his Toyota.

“We’ll be there with you.”

Now, he got Keeler on the line and talked over protecting the family, getting the chief to agree they’d move Joe Li and his mo-ther this afternoon, leaving out the Colorado part for the moment. He called Shauf as they finished.

“I have to go to Sacramento to meet with Baird, Keeler, and Buehler, so you’ll need to handle the delivery here,” he told her, “and I’ll call you on the way back. We’re going to get a step closer tonight. We’re going to make it happen.”

“How’s Li taking it?”

“Not well, but he’s tough.” She was silent. “We need him.”

When she still didn’t say anything, he said he’d talk to her later and hung up. He knew she didn’t think this was right or moral. But he didn’t see any other way because they were losing. They were running out of time.

When he left the afternoon sunlight on J Street and entered the cool conditioned air, Marquez found Chief Keeler and the director of Fish and Game, Jay Buehler, at the far end of a curving concrete bar. The place was new and hip, but conservative enough to draw the political shakers. They served cosmos and martinis and the bar had tall cabinets of cherry wood and expensive cognacs on high shelves in front of mirrored glass. Keeler, who avoided bars whenever he could, looked uncomfortable this afternoon. In the nine years Marquez had known him he’d never seen Keeler finish a drink, though he’d stand at a Christmas party with a rum toddy or glass of champagne in his left hand. The single time Marquez had asked, he’d replied “I had an alcoholic father,” as if that was all the explanation anyone would ever need.

Jay Buehler was single at fifty-five, balding, graying, and known locally for late nights and young women. He was a lawyer first, a successful one, a charismatic rainmaker in a firm that had played and won in the political casino of California politics. Unlike his predecessor who’d worried constantly about the SOU making a politically embarrassing mistake, and who’d pored over reports with anal intensity, Buehler worried more about being left out of operations and missing out on the fun. He liked having a covert team, liked the excitement of busting bad guys for a good cause and had managed to get the SOU budget temporarily doubled to more than three million a year by regaling legislators with stories of car and boat chases, stings, and midnight apprehensions. The current budget was well below half that and Marquez’s conversa-tions with Buehler often included a schedule of house committee meetings where Buehler had wrangled appearances he wanted Marquez to make and plead the SOU case for more money. It was the legislature’s habit to have the SOU’s patrol lieutenant periodi-cally testify to the efficacy and value of the covert unit.

The meetings had been shorter this year. The state was out of money and Marquez’s team had been cut to five wardens and him-self. Buehler had taken the cut as a personal insult, but it didn’t seem to be on his mind today. He came off his stool and gripped Marquez’s hand with vigor. “Thanks for coming up,” he said, as though there’d been a choice. Marquez caught his own face in the bar mirror as they turned, saw a big man, middle years, harder eyes than he would have wished, a face shaped by wind and sun.

A waiter distributed menus while Marquez recounted the blown Sausalito bust, Buehler interrupting with questions about the leap from the Emily Jane and the swim to shore, Keeler listening closely, some intuition telling him something was missing in the account. Buehler stirred his drink with his finger, signaled the waiter, then looked back at Marquez from under heavy white eyebrows.

“What’s the situation with this Jimmy Bailey?” Buehler asked.

“He burned us and we haven’t caught up to him yet.”

“We don’t know where he is?”

“No.”