Shell Games (23 page)

Billy Mauro opened the door
of his office and motioned them in. He dropped the shades that screened his windows from the work space and his forehead carried a light sheen of sweat as he sat down. He removed two 9 x11 color photos from a brown paper envelope and slid them across facedown to Marquez, then pointed at a printer in the corner.

“I printed from e-mail attachments.”

“Where did the e-mails come from?”

“After Li’s boy drowned, I let them know I was putting my business up for sale on the Internet.”

“Let who know?”

“The men you’re looking for.”

Marquez laid a hand on the photos but didn’t turn them over yet, wanting a more complete description from Mauro first and guessing that the photos had some shock value. He watched Mauro slide a desk drawer open, then suddenly he had a handgun, but he
was holding the grip with two fingers to show he wasn’t pulling a gun on them. Roberts had already gone for her gun and had it out while Mauro laid his on the desk.

“No, no, officer, I’m just showing you the gun I bought after this. They threatened my family. I never would have done business with them otherwise. They watched my family and then came to me and said if I didn’t work with them they’d kill my family. My mother is ninety and lives in a rest home and they got her name somehow, so what was I supposed to do? Call the Department of Fish and Game?” He tapped his computer. “Your department is less than four hundred people, I looked it up. Are you going to protect me with only a few people in the area? No, of course not.”

“Maybe your friend the mayor could,” Roberts said. “You should have called the police and us and you know that. You wanted to make money and you saw an opportunity.”

Mauro’s broad face turned toward her. “You don’t have any children, do you?” She didn’t answer. Mauro looked at Marquez. “What about you?”

And Marquez had a feeling they were getting something like the truth now. “You always have to fight back,” he said. “Whether you’d called us or not, you knew it was wrong. But we would have had a setup here and eventually taken them all down. They never would have known you were involved.”

“Okay, you say that, but look at these first.”

Marquez read the expectation in his face and still didn’t flip them over.

“Where’s the e-mail?” he asked.

“Deleted.”

“On this computer?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s get it back.”

“I’ve never retrieved one. You’ll have to show me.”

“You’re as bad as I am,” Marquez said, and Roberts was already
on her feet, coming around the desk to help Mauro scan through his deleted mail.

It didn’t take long to find and open it and they didn’t find any others from the same address. There was no text, only the attachments.

“Open the attachments?” she asked.

“Go ahead and we’ll compare them to the photos.”

She opened the first one and Marquez flipped the photos over, a feeling like a cold finger on his chest touching him as he looked at the first one. It was a shot taken at the killing scene at Guyanno. At the far left of the print, part of Stocker’s arm showed along the left side of the photo. You could read a series of blue dots on Stocker’s bicep and Marquez realized that the tattoo really was the constellation Orion as Davies had said. His eyes moved off Stocker and followed the image. There was the trunk of the oak and the chain around Peter Han’s neck. Han’s head was pitched forward, his eyes closed. He was the subject of the photo and Marquez wondered if that was because Billy Mauro had some Asian blood in him as did Han. Was there a racial angle? Did they think Han’s murder would feel closer to home? He could make out a reflection of blood on Han’s thighs. It glistened, hadn’t dried yet, and he stared at it.

“Look at the other one,” Mauro said, seeming to know what he was thinking and Marquez slid the top photo off and looked at the one underneath. Han was looking up at the camera. His left side was bleeding, but there was no knife wound yet. Han had his head pressed back against the tree trunk. He’s trying to get enough air. He’s wounded and he sees what’s coming. You could see pain, fear, resignation in his eyes, but Marquez also saw something he thought was courage, defiance. He’d been shot, chained to the tree, and had known this was the end. Why Han?

“They told me this would happen to me. They called the day after Li’s accident, so I went to Li and begged him not to say any-thing to you.”

“Did Li see these photos?”

“No, no, of course, not.”

“Did anyone come see you?”

“Yes, a man came and I have a video.”

“Do you have sound, do you have his voice?”

“No sound.” He pointed up at the corner of the room and when Marquez saw the tiny lens buried in the wall, he knew he should have seen it when he walked in. Looking around, you wouldn’t expect something like that. “He was in the chair you’re in.”

Mauro put a CD in his computer and explained that the camera was activated from the desk and it burned a CD. He’d had it installed after he’d had a problem with a union rep. There’d been threats he’d been trying to get on tape and there was a sound system, but it was down temporarily. He played the CD for them now and they watched a silent movie.

Marquez didn’t give any sign that he recognized the man and asked, “Have you had contact with him before?”

“On the phone. I recognized his voice.”

“How often do they deliver?”

“Every few days.”

“And what do you get for it?”

“One dollar an abalone plus the shipping costs.” He added, “They pay in cash.”

“How many have you shipped?”

“There’s no record.”

“Make a guess.”

“Three thousand a week.”

“How many weeks?”

Mauro shrugged. “All summer.” The abalone was delivered, cleaned, and then shipped out whole frozen or cut into steaks. In Asia, a smaller three-inch abalone was preferred and Mauro explained that all of the smallest went there. The boxes were deliv-ered separately and he didn’t know how that worked. Had he dealt
directly with Bailey? “Yes, very directly.” Bailey had delivered weekly, driving a white panel van, but he didn’t think Bailey was diving. “But with money it’s always the same two men I deal with.”

“When was the last time?”

He watched Mauro consult a Palm Pilot. He turned it so Marquez could read the screen and then showed a record of past calls and meetings, which he now downloaded and printed out for them. Marquez folded the printout, put it in his notebook. When it seemed they’d gotten all they’d get from Mauro, Marquez stood up.

“We’re going to want to trap the two men here next time they call,” he said. He walked over to the computer now and sent copies of the e-mail to DFG headquarters in Sacramento, to himself, to Chief Keeler, to Ruter, and to Douglas at the FBI. He blew off the urge to lecture Mauro, saw fear edge back into his eyes and thought of Mauro begging Li.

“What about my family?”

“We won’t try to do a bust here. We’ll follow them and then we’ll link it to other evidence. We’ll try to figure out a way that protects you. But when it all goes down you’ll have to testify.”

“I can’t do that.”

But you’ll probably have to, he thought, though Mauro didn’t have to be convinced of that today. And he was right to be afraid of these people. He looked at the face Mauro’s camera had caught.

“What’s this man’s name?”

“Carlo.”

Marquez nodded and studied Molina’s face.

“When do you expect another delivery?”

“In the next few days.”

“We’ll be here for that one.” When Mauro didn’t respond, Marquez talked through how it would work. He took his time, slowing it down, getting a better read on Mauro. He explained how the bust would work, the partnership they’d be moving into, and suggested Mauro call his lawyer again. Marquez went outside
to call Keeler. When he came back in, Mauro sat looking down at his desk. Probably wondering how else he could have played this, Marquez thought. Wondering if he should have talked at all. “These two men aren’t going to hurt you or your family,” Marquez said, but could see the fish broker didn’t have any faith.

“I know they’ll come here,” Mauro said. “I know they will.” He looked up abruptly. “I really don’t think you understand how serious they are.”

“So are we,” Marquez said. “So are we.”

Marquez ate lunch with the team
at a Thai restau-rant in Oakland, then talked an hour with Chief Keeler about the opportunity Billy Mauro presented. At the end of the conversation Keeler transferred him to dispatch to replay a message left earlier, a report of an unauthorized fishing boat left in China Basin. The caller sounded like an older woman—she’d refused to give her name and had hung up without revealing which pier. Dispatch obviously thought the woman was a crank, but the timing was too coincidental to the missed meeting in Sausalito so Marquez decided he’d go by China Basin and run the wharves there before pulling his boat out of the water.

He crossed the bay, cutting his Fountain powerboat’s speed as he got close to the China Basin piers, then goosing it again as wake wash caught him from behind. The afternoon had turned sultry, high clouds masking the sunlight, and around him the air was heavy with the smell of bay mud. Ripples from his wake sloshed
against the creosoted pilings as he hugged the ends of pier build-ings, checking each dock, easing his way along. He passed a large wharf renovation sign, one that had been there long enough for the lettering and the taxpayer money to fade away and then glimpsed a white boat berthed beyond two ancient crabbers, a metal boom arching over its stern. He brought his boat around, turned into the shadowed water under the strings of broken windows and weathered wood and saw white paint, black trim, a blue painted door, Davies’s boat, the
Opal.
The caller, who’d told dispatch that she lived on the pier, had claimed that three men had gotten off the boat.

As he turned to dock at an empty slip, a gray-haired woman on an ancient pleasure craft came out on her deck, called to him that he couldn’t dock there and he knew immediately that she was the caller. He tied off and walked down to talk to her. An iron gate blocked access to her gangplank and he showed his badge while she studied his torn jeans.

“You’re with Fish and Game?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He handed her a card.

“I called the police this morning, but they haven’t been out yet. They told me to call the Port Authority and Fish and Game.”

Skin disease, what might be rosacea had marred her cheeks. She covered her chin self-consciously as she scrutinized the card.

“Your message said the boat came in late last night.”

“Yes, it did. Very late.”

She handed the card back and told him the boat arrived at

1:30. She’d awakened to the noise and watched from the dark of her forward cabin as three men got off, leaving the boat tied with only a bowline, so it banged against the dock all night. That was why she’d called. The boat was going to damage the dock. She pointed up toward the street, describing as best she could the van that picked them up. Marquez looked at the concrete steps leading up from the dock, then at the chain-link gate lying nearly flat. They’d been carrying things but she couldn’t tell what because the
dock lights were burned out. She thought she’d heard Spanish. He waited for her to elaborate and she didn’t, but unlocked her gate and came out on the dock, touched his wrist, her fingers like a tiny bird alighting. “I’m sorry I’m not more helpful. Will you find the boat owner and ask him to move it?”

“We’ll try to.”

“They’re not allowed to dock here.”

“If we find the owner, we’ll certainly tell him, but in the meantime I’d appreciate it if you’d call me at this number if you see anyone near the boat.”

Marquez looked around and wondered what possible arrange-ment she had to live here. Something grandfathered, some debt owed. The few other boats looked like they were permanently docked. He excused himself, walked back down and wrestled with the stern of the
Opal,
pulling it over to where he could tie it off, then got a flashlight off his boat, put on gloves and entered Davies’s cabin.

Three months ago he’d had a beer on the
Opal
with Davies. He’d heard a few comments about the dire world situation that he’d put down to beer talk, but wondered how those views played in now. That was a conversation he hadn’t shared with Ruter yet—Davies’s view of the Middle East, his certainty about the inevitability of a Third World War. Davies’s dive equipment was missing from its usual spot and he searched the bins and storage lockers before returning to the wheel. The pilot license, navigation manuals, maps, log, and equipment were neatly in place. So were the emergency radios, the flare gun, everything thieves would grab if the boat were left open and unattended.

He saw no evidence of struggle or violence and touched things in a minimal way, economizing his moves, not believing the cabin would become a crime scene, but knowing there might be impor-tant evidence here. There was ground coffee in a filter, but no coffee made, then something he couldn’t account for, a half-full Folgers
coffee can, lying on its side in the trash, coffee grains spilling out across the wrappers underneath. He knelt and studied the coffee as though getting closer somehow would bring the answer out. They’d caught up to Davies, he thought. He’d been making coffee and had gotten surprised. Maybe Davies had dropped the can in the trash as a signal when a gun got pressed to his back. Marquez knew he should back out of the cabin now, not contaminate anything fur-ther. He stood slowly. He’d call the San Francisco police and see if he could get them to come out with their crime scene techs. Do that before calling Douglas. He walked out on deck, opened the hold and lay down, shone the flashlight beam on the dark water. There was little water in the hold, a foot or so, and he moved the beam back and forth until he was confident there wasn’t anything there. When he closed the hold and stood up, the woman was standing on the dock looking at him.

“I remembered something.”

“Good, I’ll be right there.” He shut the cabin door, climbed onto the dock and peeled his gloves.

“They’d all gone up toward the street and then one of them came back down and got back on the boat. I believe he threw something in the water. I heard a splash like a brick would make.”

“Could it have been something bigger?”

“No, I’m sure it was small. He stopped as he was going up and then came back and threw it in.”

A diver could check under the dock. He could dive himself. He looked down at dark oily water. Would they find anything in that mud? He wrote his cell number on another card and handed it to her, telling her his first name was John, and asked hers. “Corinne Mathews,” she said, and he shook her tiny hand, grateful for her willingness to help. She was still watching as he backed his boat out. He gave her a wave and a smile, though he was very troubled by the
Opal
’s presence here. The bay was still flat and calm all the way out to the Gate. No sailboats this afternoon, some motor traffic
but not much. Marquez got on the phone to SFPD before pushing up the throttle, angling the boat as they transferred him around. They wanted to wait to see if Davies showed up today and reclaimed his boat and he hung up thinking he might as well call Douglas.

Marquez had gotten his boat, a twenty-nine foot Fountain, sev-eral years ago at a Fed auction. The hull had been damaged during a DEA bust and the boat went for way under market value, and still it had stripped his savings. It took another ten grand to repair the hull, but he didn’t think there was a manufacturer that built a better off-shore boat and had figured it would help his team. He’d named it
Bonfire
after Katherine’s nickname and when it had some engine problems three months ago he’d blamed it on the separation.

But it didn’t have any engine problems this afternoon and he reached for the throttle and kicked it up. The Fountain carried two 502 Mercs. It blew through fifty and he raised the tabs, opened the throttle.

“Where are you, Davies?” he asked aloud. “What happened there last night?” And the wind tore his words away as the
Bonfire
ran for home.