The next morning the sky was colorless, the gunmetal ocean broken with whitecaps. Marquez left Petersen in Fort Bragg and started south, checking Noyo and Albion for Davies’s boat, continuing south along the coast past Salt Point all the way to Jenner and the mouth of the Russian River before turning inland. He carried less hope this morning and leaving the coast drove slowly up the river canyon, thinking over what they had, wondering if there was more they could do to find Heinemann. He figured he’d set up another meeting with Douglas today to talk about Davies. An hour later, after he’d reached 101, he took a call from Keeler.
“Tran Li is on his way here to headquarters. He says he’s driven all night to come see you. He was in Reno when I last talked to him, and I called you afterwards but couldn’t get you on your cell phone. I could hear casino machines in the background, so I think he was telling the truth. What do you think this is about? Where are you?”
“In Marin but I’ll head your way.”
Two hours later, Marquez parked and spotted Li’s truck parked down the street from the Resources Building that also housed DFG headquarters. Li was sitting erect in the driver’s seat with his eyes closed. Marquez rapped lightly on the glass and didn’t get any reaction, knocked a second time and saw the clouded awareness in Li’s eyes turn to sadness and his hand fumble for the door handle. He got out wearing a puffy down vest that made him look smaller. He’d shaved his head, his face was gaunt. Grief and guilt were overwhelming him. As they rode up the elevator Marquez guessed Li had been fasting.
“My son talked to me in a dream and says I help you.”
Marquez nodded.
“I have a man’s name who bought abalone from me in Oakland. He has a business there for a long time. You can go talk to him.”
“Can you prove he sold to you?”
“No.”
He led Li to a conference room, then let Chief Keeler know. Keeler came in as Marquez sat down across from Li with a notepad and the little Motorola recorder he’d used for years. He stood the recorder upright in the middle of the table between them and Li shook his head. He folded his arms.
“No sound recorder.”
“It’s for me, so I can listen again later. Not for evidence.”
“Not for this time, okay?”
Marquez reached and clicked it off. He lay it down on its side and knew he shouldn’t have put it in the middle of the table. He’d made Li nervous. Li told him about a man named Billy Mauro who had a fish distribution business in Oakland on Second Street. Li repeated Mauro’s name several times and Marquez stopped the conversation and got a phone book. He looked up fish wholesalers and found Billy Mauro’s Fresh Seafood and had Li confirm.
“You took abalone to him.”
“When my wife take kids to school she go by there and my sons carry the abalone in.”
Marquez remembered Alvarez speculating the wife was moving the ab. He’d get a kick out of being right.
“She carried it in the trunk?”
“Yes, then she drive inside Billy Mauro’s business.”
“And your sons helped unload?”
“Yes. I count before and he pays me at my store.”
But that didn’t explain how during the nights they’d had the house under surveillance, nights when Mrs. Li’s old diesel Mercedes had sat on the short driveway or on the street, abalone had been loaded into the trunk.
“How did you move the abalone to the Mercedes?” Li ignored the question and Marquez repeated it, and when he still didn’t get an answer he wondered about the Mauro story. “I need to know how you got the abalone into the car.”
“Why this so important?”
“Because we were there outside your house watching and we never saw it moved.”
Li smiled suddenly, a competitive light flaring momentarily in his eyes, like a welding spark that burns bright and quickly goes out. “My sons carried the abalone in the school backpacks.”
And now Marquez could see it. His first thought was that they couldn’t carry enough abalone in their backpacks and then remembered the kids often went back inside the house again taking their packs with them. He’d only been there twice in the early morning himself, he’d have to ask Shauf and Cairo and Alvarez, but the time he had been there the older boy, Joe, had gone back into the house and his brother had been moving around in the backseat doing something which at the time he’d read as a kid fidgeting, but he was probably dumping abalone into garbage bags, unloading the backpack. Because Maria was always running around with a backpack that was too full and heavy, as were her friends, he’d come to take it as a norm and could see how they’d been fooled.
“They’d empty their packs and go back into the house for more?”
“Yes.”
Marquez moved his notebook and laid a box on the table. It was one of the cartons from the Mexican supplier that they’d taken from Bailey’s garage. He turned the red lettering so Li could read and watched Li move his hand for the first time, his fingers touching the lettering. “Yes, this name.”
“At Mr. Mauro’s?”
“Yes.”
“Who else is selling to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know where he sells the abalone?”
“He ship it everywhere. When my son dies Billy Mauro comes to my house and gives money for Joe Li for college education. He is very sorry and he beg me to say nothing to police and the other men warn me not to speak. They know Billy Mauro so he do business with them.”
Then he’s doing business now, Marquez thought. He’d have to move the team around.
“Why don’t you stay in Sacramento tonight,” Marquez said. “We’ll put you in a motel room.”
“No, I go back to Colorado.”
“We may need to talk to you more tomorrow. You need sleep. You can rest in the motel. No one except me will know you’re there.”
Li would start the long drive back to Colorado if he didn’t talk him into staying. Li had that kind of determination. God knows, they’d followed him enough to know what he was capable of, but this was grief and an insomnia and need to be moving that Li probably wasn’t even aware of, and Marquez put the effort in now to get Li to follow him to the Best Western where he usually stayed himself. He checked him in, paid for the room, and walked Li down to the door and got a cell phone number from him, gave Li his and said he’d have more questions tomorrow. He’d told Li he wouldn’t have to testify. But if they took this Billy Mauro down that could change, though he didn’t want to say anything about that yet. He’d have to find a way to keep Li out of it.
He drove back to headquarters and the chief was working on papers at his desk when Marquez walked in. Keeler didn’t look at him but asked him to sit down, which was usually a bad sign. He kept his focus on the papers while Marquez talked about what he’d gotten from Li.
“That might be the break we’ve needed,” Keeler said.
“I’ll check it out.”
“Not before we have a conversation about you. Only two things are keeping you out there as patrol lieutenant: your past record of success and the personal fondness of the director for you. But neither Chief Baird nor I will protect you any further, and, frankly, I don’t know how much longer Director Buehler will either. This confrontation with the FBI was completely unnecessary and the way you handled it was, in my view, adolescent. Did you block their car?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Had you already guessed they were Federal agents?”
“A guess isn’t worth anything.”
“What’s the answer?”
“I’d assumed they were.”
“So you thought you’d confront them. They asked you to move your vehicle and you refused.”
“I asked to see their badges and by then I was on the phone to Douglas.”
“You’d better be careful here, John. You’ll have only yourself to blame, so if you have any questions when that time comes you can get all your answers at home. You’ll hurt the SOU, as well, if you go head-to-head with the FBI. They’ve asked for our cooperation and they say they’ve passed on all the information they can without compromising their sources, which as you know better than anyone here, is another way of saying they can’t risk revealing anything at this point. Now, they want you out of the picture.”
“Douglas asked for that?”
“No, it was way over his head, and I can tell you you’re gambling everything you’ve worked for because you don’t like the Bureau’s style. They won’t talk to us, so you’re going to show them up by exposing them.”
“Chief, they—”
“Don’t argue with me and I don’t want to hear any explanations. There’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know. If you want to take your career down and ruin the unit you built, then I don’t have time for you.” Keeler’s face reddened. “I’ve never taken you for a damn fool. Shut the door on your way out.”