Kirk Russell - Shell Games

“How much farther do you want to cross over the line?”

But Davies didn’t seem to hear him.

“I got some information from him and he got on the phone for me. We made some calls to his friends. You sit Danny down, Lieu-tenant, and he’ll talk to you. Put his feet to the fire, though. That’s the way to get results.”

“Bring your boat in, Mark.” He hoped this Huega was okay, figured he probably was, and felt a quiet regret for Davies, who’d be looking at prison time for this. “You’re blowing it; they’ve got an all-points bulletin out on you.”

“If I come in I’ll be sitting in a cell with some dweeb-ass county defender trying to tell me to plead guilty because he’s never won a case in his life. You don’t have to tell me I fucked up today, Lieu-tenant.” He hung up.

Marquez stared at Li’s house after Davies clicked off. He phoned Ruter, left a message, and was surprised by a call back two hours later.

“We got him,” Ruter said, “and we’re looking for Huega. You ready to admit you were wrong about Davies? Maybe you ought to check out your informants more carefully.”

“Do you have anything tying him to the killings?” Marquez asked.

“No one is going to teach you anything about denial, Marquez. You could write the goddamned book. I’ll call you after we sit down with him.”

Marquez took another call from Ruter while watching a teenage kid with his hands buried in the pockets of his sweat-shirt, shoulders rolled forward, hood all but covering his face, walk past with a Doberman on a leash. The dog sensed his presence, but the kid’s head bobbed only to the music piped through his earphones and never looked over. Marquez listened to Ruter’s certainty as the kid disappeared down the street.

“Davies has taken his last boat ride for a while,” Ruter said. “But I need to get with you again and tighten up the time frame. When are you north again?”

“Could be tomorrow.”

“Call me, it can’t wait.”

Marquez slid the phone in his pocket and lights started wink-ing out at Li’s. It was either bedtime, or else Li would use the dark-ness to move. Nothing happened and the street was quiet until after midnight when a tricked-out Honda Prelude with a spoiler drag ran a “sideshow,” racing a Subaru Impreza. They blew past Marquez and he guessed they went through the stop sign down the street at close to eighty. He watched their taillights and then sporadic house lights coming on, dogs barking. When it quieted again he replayed the saved voice mail messages from Davies, the calls made before Davies had gotten through to him from Guyanno Creek. There were two of them, the first at 7:55 yesterday morning.

The first went, “I’m up at Guyanno Creek campground, Lieu-tenant. There’s a bad scene up here. There’s a ton of abalone shells, but the divers who were doing the poaching are dead. Give me a call, okay? I don’t want to do anything until I hear from you, but call me soon, all right? It’s a bad situation, I mean, these guys were carved up. I don’t know about hanging around here.” There was a gap now, a long silence, then, “Okay, Lieutenant, I’m waiting here for your call.” He’d left his cell number.

The second call was more controlled, but equally anxious. When he replayed them yet again it was still hard to picture Davies staging it all as Ruter believed. Davies wasn’t who Marquez had thought he was. That much was obvious, but still it didn’t fall together for him the way Ruter wrote the script.

At around 1:30, Cairo and Alvarez took over the surveillance and Marquez checked into an Oakland motel along the frontage road just off 880. He lay on his back on a squeaking motel bed, smelling the dust in the room, listening to heavy trucks rumbling past on the freeway and to his heartbeat. He thought about Kather-ine and Maria, the silence on the other end of the phone when he’d tried to talk to Maria tonight. He missed her a lot and he’d have to find a way to spend some time with her tomorrow. That might mean driving down late in the afternoon from Fort Bragg. Couldn’t get there before her school let out, but maybe he’d take her to dinner and talk over this food thing.

He didn’t remember falling asleep but awoke anxious and momentarily unsure of where he was. The red numbers of the nightstand clock glowed 4:37. He sat up, thinking he’d shower and get breakfast somewhere before hooking up with the team, and was dressing when the phone rang.

“Lights are on, looks like we’re a go,” Alvarez said. “He’s in the garage.”

“All right.”

“Are we going to do it today, Lieutenant?”

“We are.”

He made a quick stop at a convenience store, bought a bagel he could barely bite into and a large black coffee. They gave Li plenty of room, hanging way back, closing some as he came up the east shore of the bay through Richmond and across the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge. He had both sons with him and was loaded with dive gear. He drove a steady seventy-eight miles an hour up High-way 101, then broke for the coast on Highway 128 where he could see any lights well behind him. The road rolled and climbed and then ran past Boonville and through tall stands of redwoods before reaching the coast.

In the predawn Marquez called Ruter’s cell, figuring the detec-tive would have been up all night questioning Davies. But it sounded like he woke him up, got a bleary, “Ruter, here.”

“It’s Marquez. Did they find Huega?”

“Shit.” The phone clicked off and Marquez smiled, punched in the numbers again. “No, they didn’t.” The phone went dead again.

Li was almost to Fort Bragg. The dark shapes of three heads were visible in the truck’s front seat, Li’s younger son in the mid-dle nearest his dad, the older boy slumped against the passenger window, styled haircut getting crushed flat, shoulders buried in a baggy camouflage jacket. According to Alvarez, the kids had shuffled like zombies to the truck, barely awake when the drive started at

4:45. Marquez was sorry the kids were along. He was okay with charging the older son with poaching, they had enough on video-tape to do that, but he regretted that the kids would see their dad get busted, particularly the younger son. He keyed his mike, talking to his surveillance team as Tran Li dropped down to Noyo Harbor. Marquez wondered how he’d take it this time. Last time they’d busted him he’d acted as his own lawyer, arguing his case, his pale gold face animated by determination as the jury leaned forward and tried to connect his broken English.

Li loaded equipment into his black Zodiac and Petersen joined up with the team. She spoke quietly as the kids lugged dive equip-ment from the back of the pickup.

“He’s taking a chance with the weather. We had thunder cells last night.”

“He’s got a couple of hours,” Marquez said. “Water is still calm.”

“A couple of hours at the most.”

Depending on how Li played it. Marquez checked the horizon again. Close to shore the water was slate smooth in the calm of early morning, but a heavy band of rain clouds lay along the hori-zon and cirrus had begun to fan overhead. Isolated thunder cells were forecast, unusual for this area, squalls, periods of high wind. Li left the harbor, his wake rocking off the concrete jetty. He cleared the gray rock of the breakwater and turned north, the Zodiac look-ing small, dark, and vulnerable as it moved out to sea. The boat was well offshore as it passed the town and Marquez’s covert team on land drifted with it. They followed Highway 1 and spread out along the cliffs where they could trace the silken line of its wake. Sooner or later, he’d come in because the abalone beds were all in the first sixty feet of water.