Kirk Russell - Shell Games

“But what do you think?” Alvarez asked, and he knew they’d all been wondering. Bailey had been Marquez’s informant. Only Marquez had worked him and Bailey had burned them, and now Alvarez was speaking for all of them. They needed to know what he really thought.

“I think he’s being used by Kline and he ran because he expected a gunfight. Maybe Kline’s people told him they’d take out Roberts and me and the Sausalito cops complicated the plan.”

Marquez shrugged. He wasn’t going to speculate beyond what he had already about Bailey’s motives. He let it go at that and ended the meeting. Shauf would go back to the borrowed condo across from Pillar Point with Roberts, Cairo to Fort Bragg, and the others would stand down, take motel rooms, or make the drive home. He watched them go to their vehicles with an air of defeat and decided he’d get everybody together again in the next couple of days. He didn’t think he’d said it very well, hadn’t made clear that they would keep their autonomy no matter what. They’d figure it out, or at least he would. Law enforcement was all push, pull, a mix of failure and success and you did what you had to do to keep it going. They were at that sort of crossroads and his gut said the FBI was worried and that his Fish and Game team had been pulled into the mix not so much because they’d interfered or stood to, but more likely because satellite imagery and agents in suits driving Crown Vic’s into small coastal towns and asking questions wasn’t adequate. They need us more than they’re worried about us interfering, he thought.

“I talked to Nick Hansen today,” Petersen said-she’d lingered behind, was in her truck now with the window down. She smiled at a memory of the conversation, probably Hansen’s dry humor, coming back to her. “He asked me if there was anything I want to know about the Golden Gate Bridge pilings. He says he can’t even count the trips he’s made out there and says he spends half his days on Fed patrols.”

“We aren’t going to work for them. I promise you that.”

“Even if they sing their common cause, all for the greater good song? We’re after the same guy and all.”

“No way, no chance.”

“What about the chief?”

“He won’t cave.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear. Well, I might make a run all the way home tonight.”

“You can drive with an easy heart now.”

She laughed. “I’ll come back down to Fort Bragg in the morn-ing and check out that other tip.” She put on her seatbelt and then looked puzzled, glancing back at his eyes as she started the engine. “I’ve got a question.”

“Ask it.”

“Does Douglas know this Kline said he’d kill you someday?”

“No.” And there’s no reason to tell him, he thought.

Marquez watched her drive off, made a couple of phone calls from the parking lot, then drove down to Tim’s Treads, a tire store Alvarez said he was headed to. He found him in the small waiting room and they walked outside, looking at the traffic on the frontage road, Highway 101 across the fence beyond.

“They want control of us,” Alvarez said.

“It’s a telelocator, not an implant in your brain.”

“You know they’re using us.”

“What I think is they need us. They have information that makes them believe Kline is here for more than dope smuggling and abalone. He’s an enterprise, Brad.”

“Like we’re not up against it already.”

“Get over it tonight and I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

He thought about Petersen’s last question as he drove away. He’d been injured and sick the night Kline came for him, but how had Kline known he was vulnerable? He’d never have that answer and never stop wondering. He got ready to call Katherine as he drove away. It was a spur-of-the-moment idea, but early enough in the afternoon that maybe she and Maria didn’t have a dinner plan yet.

He waited for her cell to ring and remembered crossing the border back into Texas and the old two-story wood frame he had rented for next to nothing and barely used. There’d been a single working bathroom, a bed, a place to cook. He’d had trouble getting out of the car and the house had been hot, dusty, the tap water run-ning with rust that he’d thought was blood in his fevered state. He’d barely made it upstairs to the bed, forced a window open, left the lights off, was lying on his back on sheets that were drenched with his sweat when he’d heard noise in the yard, a car engine, someone down there, idling with their headlights off. He’d managed to get his gun, get into the attic space where he had access to the roof before the front door opened. Then he’d waited, shaking with fever in the dry attic heat, his breath rasping hoarsely, the gun slick in his hand, watching through the crack, watching and listening as he tried to quiet his breathing, tried to focus outside the fever.

A figure had entered the darkened room. He’d heard boots clicking like hoofs on the ancient wood floor and looked down on the figure whose shoulders were hunched and indistinct and whose eyes by some trick of reflected light were faintly red as the face turned upward.

“I will find you,” said a voice that seemed to come from inside his head. “I’ll hold your heart in my hand.”

He’d heard liquid sloshing as the steps retreated, smelled gaso-line as he’d tumbled from the attic, heard the whoosh as it ignited and a ball of bright light illuminated the room. He’d climbed out on the roof, slid on the asphalt, grabbed at old wooden gutters and fallen two stories as the gutter gave way and fire enveloped the house. He remembered hearing ammunition popping as the heat caught it, as the volunteer fire brigade strapped him on a board before sliding him into an old hearse converted to an ambulance. He’d had nothing left, not even his passport, and the hospital had called the DEA and verified he was who he said he was. He’d been ten days in the hospital and had come home to California.

“John,” Katherine said, and her voice was light.

“I’m off this afternoon. I could pick up some food and the three of us could barbecue tonight.” When she hesitated he knew it could easily be that she had other plans, and he felt funny immediately and wondered if he should have made the call.

“Where?” she asked.

“Either house. I can pick up food right now.”

It was like dating Katherine, inviting her to dinner, hoping she’d agree, his pulse rising as he waited for her answer. The distance kept on hurting, same old sad story, a cycle he had to break for both of them. Either they went forward or called it, no way around that truth. It made him think of his sister living in London. She’d built a new life with a British banker husband, erased America from her head, and told him he’d never have a normal marriage because their childhood had been too much of a mess. Their mother had dropped his sister and him at their grandparents when he was nine and his sister was twelve. Their father had already left; mom was headed for rehab. She’d never really returned, had visited, but never took them home, and when he was thirteen and his sister a junior at Redwood High, their grand-father sat them down and told them their mother had died the day before in a train accident in India. For a long time he’d gone on believing she was still alive and he’d imagine he was seeing her on a street corner or driving past in a car.

Then in the summer of her senior year in high school his blue-eyed sister had graduated to heroin rather than college. She’d become rail-thin within six months. She’d moved out and he’d found her in a Tenderloin crack house a few months later, had told a pimp he was her brother and turned his back on a gun and carried her out in his arms. Darcey was why he’d gone into the DEA. Darcey was also one of the few people he’d ever seen beat heroin, or at least get to where she could live without it. The last long conversation they’d had, he’d told her he and Katherine were having trouble.