Kirk Russell - Shell Games

Heinemann flipped through again, Marquez watching, his senses keyed in. The file was a jacket with photos, all the paper-work removed, and now Heinemann’s eyes lingered on the Mexico City photo. Flipped to the next page, then flipped back and touched the photo with his index finger.

“If anyone, maybe this guy,” and Marquez felt his throat tighten and a floating lightness in his head. “It was dark. We were in the backseat of a car.”

“Where?”

“In the harbor last month like you heard.”

“Pillar Point?”

“Yeah.”

They were ready and Shauf slid a Day-Timer across. “When?” Marquez asked.

“You mean the exact date?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know if I can remember the exact date.”

“Your girlfriend says you’re good at math. She says you could be a professor if you wanted.” If you weren’t moving dope and raping the ocean, if the day was a little longer or you taught night classes. “We need dates,” Marquez said quietly, and could tell Heinemann was wheeling through the possibilities, was in a room with two game wardens and trying to figure out how to get out of here without getting charged, trying to figure out where to stop talking and start dealing. He was trying to calculate what exact dates were worth and what he gave up by pinning it down, what the risk was. He was most worried about Roberts, about getting charged with assaulting a peace officer, because he’d made an earlier comment that the longest prison sentence ever given for poaching abalone was three years. He wasn’t worried about abalone poaching. He wasn’t intimidated by anything they’d threatened regarding abalone.

Marquez watched him study the Mexico City photo and felt his pulse pounding in his ears, saw a red haze around the light in the room and was back with Ramon and a good friend, another DEA agent named Brian Hidalgo. Brian stood in the room now next to Shauf, pointing a finger at Heinemann and rubbing his own scalp making fun of Heinemann’s haircut, then turning back to smile at him and asking, “Remember that plane going down?” They’d watched a drug smuggler’s plane shot down and a ball of orange light rising from the desert plateau become a column of black smoke and spread in the cold wind until it was gone. Marquez shook it off, Hidalgo vanishing. Heinemann played with the calendar pages, stalling for time and Marquez caught Shauf’s eye. Heinemann knew the answer and she gave the faintest nod of agreement.

“It was around the end of August,” Heinemann said. “Yeah, pretty sure it was like Saturday the thirty-first, but it’s not like any-thing happened that night.”

“Saturday the thirty-first, what time?”

“Almost dark, sort of twilight. This guy in the photo might be a guy I met up in a car up in the parking lot.” Heinemann leaned back and folded his arms. “So you really want this dude?”

“You would have noticed something else.”

“About him?”

“A physical characteristic.”

“It’s not like I was paying that kind of attention.”

“We’re nowhere without it.”

“I just picked him out of those shitty photos.”

“That’s not good enough.” Marquez caught Shauf’s confused look. He needed more proof, needed to be absolutely sure. Heine-mann could be feeding them this date and the car story by pre-arrangement. He could have worked it out with Bailey and Meghan Burris. “You went up to this car and what got said.”

“He told me what would happen if I messed up, like if I talked to anyone like right now. But it was weird, because it was Jimmy’s deal.”

“No, it was yours, that’s why he wanted to see you. Bailey was just the hired ride.”

Heinemann shook his head. His voice got quieter. “It was all Jimmy’s.”

“We’ve been paying Bailey and you keep saying he’s the guy behind it all. If that’s true we want you on our side of the table, but you’d have to have proof.”

“I could get him to talk.”

“That might work.” Marquez gauged him. “You’d have to testify, too.”

“I know.”

“If what we’re doing here, right now, proves out, then we’ll want to talk about the next step, but listen, we’re going to step outside again.”

Marquez walked out behind Shauf. He faced her in the hall-way and realized his hands were shaking.

“He’s picked out Kline,” he said.

“I get that, so why mess with him?”

“We need it to come from him, not just pointing at my photos. I want him to dig a little deeper because he’ll be more committed to us if he does.”

When they walked back in Marquez started slowly. “Think of it like this, we’re telling you to wade into the ocean and just keep swimming out to sea. I want to see you swim out far enough to where I know you need us. You want a deal that keeps you out of prison and I want a confession in return. Dates. Times. Methods of transferring abalone. I want you to identify this man in a way that makes me certain. It’s like a password for me.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re blocked on it, so we’ll come back to it.” Marquez reached and touched August thirty-first on the Day-Timer. “Let’s back up. Start at the beginning, again.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time and then started. Bailey had gotten him involved by saying it was a one-time diving deal for the two of them. Two other divers that Bailey knew had already gathered the abalone and it was up in the cove near Elephant Rock. All they needed to do was pick it up.

“Who were these other divers?”

“Jimmy was the one in contact with them. We were working off GPS coordinates when we got up there.”

“Up to Elephant Rock?”

“Yeah.”

“You were reading the coordinates?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty good with GPS.”

“Who were they?”

“The divers?” Marquez nodded, could feel this was the moment and exhaled slowly. Now he didn’t want to put any pressure at all on Heinemann. Let Heinemann make his own decision. Let him come to us now, let him put it together his own way. Let him see we’re sanctuary. We’re your only hope, Marquez thought.

“It may have been those divers at Guyanno Creek,” Heinemann said.

“That’s convenient,” Shauf said, and shoved her chair back. “A couple of dead divers.”

But Marquez knew now. He got it. Shauf stood up like it was over, Heinemann trying to sell them Stocker and Han because they were dead and couldn’t be questioned. Marquez calculated time now, Bailey’s call and the urgency of it. He knew it could be, but shook his head. “We have a problem with that,” he said.

“Well, fuck it, then. You guys don’t believe anything.”

“They’re dead so we can’t question them and it doesn’t hang because they had their own operation going.”

“Whatever.” Heinemann shook his head like he was disgusted.

“Two dead divers,” Marquez said after a quiet thirty seconds. “Two guys who’ve already got a pile of five hundred shucked abalone.”

“Yeah, and they were going to shuck the ones we picked up, but they got wasted first. That’s why Jimmy got the call. That’s how it all happened. Jimmy knew one of the divers. The guy’s name was Orion.”

Marquez nodded. They were partway there. Heinemann hadn’t gotten the name Orion from the newspaper articles.

“When they got killed you’re saying Jimmy got a phone call to go pick up some abalone.”

“Something like that.”

“How would anyone have known where to find the abalone? Stocker and Han picked it, right? They left it on the bottom of the ocean. So who knew where to find it?”

“GPS,” Heinemann said.

“You had coordinates?”

“We made a few trips like that. Like I said, I’m good with GPS.”