Kirk Russell - Shell Games

“Then give me why.”

“Kline was hired to do a hit here in the Bay Area. We believe it’s supposed to be this week and we’ve lost track of him. We thought we had him yesterday, but the man we took down turns out to be a double. We’re still holding the double and if you want a look, I’ll take you to see him. It’ll blow you away. Looks just like Kline and he’ll show you his scar. He had plastic surgery in Mexico City two years ago. They shaved his head, peeled his scalp down over his face, modified the bone structure, and came up with a pretty good double. He says his eyes leak all the time and half his face is numb, but the money is good.”

“So Kline knows you’re after him.”

“That’s right, we fucked up. I’m going to give more today though I’m disobeying an order, so it stays between us, okay? I’m telling you because we’re out of time. We have a contact in Mexico who’s sure this hit is going to take place. It’s someone within our judicial system and we’ve been over every case being tried in California and have come up with four candidates, including a DA and a judge here in the Bay Area. There are six murder trials pending this morning where the accused is a gang member and the killing was drug-related. Some of those gangs distribute for cartels. So it may be a payback, a debt owed, or he may be here to kill a witness. We don’t really know-”

“That’s too big a field,” Marquez said. “You know more than that. You wouldn’t put this kind of effort in.”

“That’s why this informant on the Emily Jane was so impor-tant. That’s how we were keeping track of him. He’ll do this hit unless we find him first.” Douglas paused. He lifted a hand from the table. “No question he’s taking abalone and moving dope. The abalone is a new gig, the dope operation he’s had for years. We’ve been trying to work our way into that operation. Don’t ask me why he got into abalone this round. We don’t get it.”

“It’s better money than dope. That’s why.”

“We’re seeing a lot more of Molina all of a sudden. You’re see-ing him more. He knows we know Molina and may be dangling him as bait to lure us. That’s part of why I want you to stay away from Molina. Kline probably has countersurveillance on him.”

Marquez flashed on a wedding party where the photographer and his assistant gathered the family for a group photo and killed them all. There was no morality in Kline, no real connection to humanity, only the continual question of what people could do for him.

“Your name has come up,” Douglas said. “We got that from our informant and there’s a chance Kline knows the names of all or part of your team. He may be tracking you, and you of all people know what he’s capable of.”

Marquez watched Douglas put ketchup on his hamburger, take a bite of it, dripping ketchup back on the plate.

“What do you know about Jimmy Bailey’s whereabouts?” Marquez asked.

“Why?”

“We’ve lost him and he’s doing business with Kline.”

“We don’t think he’s a real player,” Douglas said. “He’s a low-level drug peddler.” Douglas handed over a card now with a num-ber handwritten on the back. “If you get the feeling you’ve got someone watching you, call this number.”

Marquez suppressed a smile, but it struck him as comic and theatrical that if Kline came for him he’d get a chance to phone and call for help. He took the card and then before they finished talking got some insight from Douglas into the FBI’s take on why Kline was poaching abalone. They believed he was laundering money by paying it out for abalone and then selling the abalone largely in Asian markets. Marquez said good-bye to Douglas on the sidewalk and mulled what he’d learned as he drove away.

He met with the team and gave them everything he’d gotten from Douglas, then talked it over with Keeler and sent three war-dens back to Pillar Point and Cairo and Petersen to Fort Bragg. They’d stay on Bailey and wait for Heinemann and check out some recent tips. Marquez called Katherine and she invited him over. When he got to her house the front door was open and he could hear Katherine and Maria in a sharp exchange. It was the same thing again, the same pattern.

“I’m having dinner in my room tonight,” Maria was saying. “I have too much homework.”

“What are you having?”

“Tomato soup.”

“What else?”

“Toast.”

“That’s not enough.”

“I had lunch; I’m not hungry for anything else.”

“What did you have for lunch?”

“A sandwich, and it’s none of your business. I’m not having this soup anymore.” Through the open deck door, Marquez watched Maria slosh a pot of soup into the sink and fling her toast into the garbage. She saw him and said, “I’m not eating anything tonight and no one can make me. I’m sick of this.”

“Go to your room,” Katherine said, “I’ll talk to you there.”

Marquez heard her door slam and Katherine stood with her hands on her hips glowering at him. She picked up the soup can, slammed it into the garbage, held up a little plate of peanuts, no more than ten scattered across it.

“Look at this,” she said, “and I’m supposed to let the doctor handle it.”

“Can you force her to eat?”

“I’ll spoon-feed her like a baby if I have to. Her period has stopped and her bones are going to be as brittle as sticks in a few months. This is going to stop now and that stubborn little will of hers isn’t going to prevent me from making her eat. I will not let her destroy herself because she wants to look like one of these emaciated godforsaken models. You could cut paper with the hip bones of some of those women.”

“Didn’t her doctor set a goal of a pound every four days?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“She told me she’s going to make that.”

“Guess what? Anorexics lie. They deceive. It’s part of the game. I’ve got two friends who started down that path twenty years ago and they’re still skin and bones. They exercise constantly and they actually think they look good, but they look like they just walked out of Auschwitz and they don’t fool anybody. That isn’t going to happen to my daughter.”

“You’ve got to give her a chance.”

The conversation went down from there and he didn’t end up having dinner with Katherine. He drove home. That night he fell asleep in a chair on the deck with a blanket wrapped around him. He dreamt of Africa and his first wife, Julie, a morning out in the bush. He smelled the early morning coffee and the acacia trees and grass. They held tin mugs and crouched, smiling at each other, watching the black silhouettes of elephants move across a plain in the dawn. Julie sat close to him again in the night and he felt what he’d felt that morning, that the world was open and theirs to make and the life ahead was going to be grand. Her hand had slid under his shirt and around his back and he’d held her tight against him after they’d made love.

The sensation was so real in memory that as he awoke he felt as though he’d violated his marriage with Katherine. His face was wet with dew and his neck kinked from sleeping in the chair. He rose clumsily and a deer bounded away in the darkness downslope. He laid the blanket on the chair, walked in the house, and fell asleep again in the bedroom, a hand on Katherine’s pillow, his mind still floating in the dream.

Later, it was a call from Douglas that pulled him back from his personal problems. It was early, a red sunrise, and Douglas said a male body had washed up at the base of cliffs near Daly City. A hang glider pilot who’d been scratching low along the cliffs yesterday had spotted a corpse but inexplicably had waited until midnight to call 911. The rough description was close enough to be Davies, and Douglas was offering Marquez a ride down.