Marquez drove past the Best Western motel before leaving Sacramento. He wanted to see Li’s Toyota parked in the lot and know that he was still here. He’d meant to talk more with Keeler today about Li. He would have done it on the way out if the conversation hadn’t gone so downhill. With the death of the boy and with Li cooperating Marquez hadn’t done anything to see that charges were at least filed against Li, and he knew Keeler expected that at a minimum.
An hour and a half later he was back in the Bay Area, Keeler’s words ringing in his ears as he was escorted down a hallway in the FBI building in San Francisco. Douglas was waiting for him, his face hidden by an ancient computer monitor.
“Is that you, Marquez?”
“It is.”
“Give me a minute.”
Marquez took a chair and looked around the tiny space. At least Douglas had it to himself. A photo in a gilt frame showed Douglas with one arm around his wife and the other around two sons who looked about twelve and fourteen, sturdy, cheerful-looking kids, and Marquez remembered the last photos he’d seen when the boys had been much younger. On the wall to his right was a letter of commendation from the director, and on the desk a small triathlon trophy won that Douglas used as a paperweight.
“You’re winning medals,” Marquez said.
“It was handicapped for age. There was a big difference, let me tell you.” He slid his chair over, pride on his face that the paperweight had been noticed. His face looked like smooth rock this afternoon. “Have you had lunch, Marquez?”
“You want to do this over lunch?”
“It’s not going to be any easier up here.”
“All right, let’s go eat.” Marquez reached down to his side and lifted his laptop. “I brought this. We got a little shaky footage down near Morgan Hill the other night that I want to show you.”
“Is this where the girlfriend got rolled down the hill?”
“Yes.”
“They doped her up.”
“That’s what we’re hearing. We lost a van we were following, but we got a few murky shots I want to show you after lunch.”
They walked to a Japanese place that Douglas said was cheap and not far away. The sky was ragged overhead now, but the sidewalk was sunlit. They talked about baseball and the 49ers, what they had coming up, tried to reconnect in some way as they walked to the restaurant. But the sports talk didn’t get them anywhere and they sat at a small maple table now in a corner of a room that filled with light every time the sun moved from behind clouds. Marquez ordered a small plate of tuna sashimi, a bowl of rice, miso soup, as though the soup could touch the emptiness inside. He felt like a diplomat on the losing side of a war, waiting to hear what the terms of surrender would be. Ready to protest but knowing his words would fall on deaf ears. It wasn’t his career in jeopardy that had made him call Douglas. It was the threat to the SOU, the way Keeler had laid it out.
He ate and looked at Douglas, again, his smooth dark face, sturdy build, winning a triathlon, thinking that Douglas must work hard at it. It took a particular discipline, a strength of mind more than body. He wasn’t in bad shape himself, but nothing like that. He knew they weren’t that far apart in age and that when they were kids there couldn’t have been more than a handful of black agents with any hope of a career path like Douglas had going in the FBI. Things had gradually changed and Douglas had had the guts to go after that change.
“What do you think of Mueller?” Marquez asked, keeping the conversation on the FBI for the moment.
“Good director. Sorry we lost him out here.”
“Do you want to go east yourself?”
“Not as bad as you want to ship me.”
“I’m having a hard time figuring out what the Bureau wants from us.”
“Communication.”
“Like talking to God.”
“That’s because you keep asking me to tell things I can’t.”
“You had two agents tailing me and I don’t get an explanation.”
Douglas smiled suddenly. “Take it as a compliment, Marquez.”
“Yeah?”
Marquez picked up his chopsticks, ate the sticky rice, and the food did something good for him. He asked about Douglas’s wife, his two boys, and found that he liked him still and could separate him from the Bureau. But he wouldn’t let Douglas buy lunch, didn’t want to owe him for anything.
Then they were back in Douglas’s office. Marquez booted up, showed Douglas what they had. Shauf had managed to get photos of the van. She’d picked a spot ahead of them on the road out toward Gilroy and caught faces in a streetlight. He knew already that the photo quality was too poor to enhance. He wasn’t asking Douglas for help with that, just wanted to see his reaction to the passenger’s face, because he had a nagging sense he should know.
“This is who rolled her down the hill?”
“Yes, and the van was stolen.”
“I recognize him,” Douglas said, “and I’m guessing you do too. You’ve got Eduardo Molina there. He’s using the name Carlo. He had plastic surgery just like the boss. That’s why you had trouble recognizing him. He also caught a customs agent bullet in ’95. It almost killed him. When’s the last time you saw him?”
“I haven’t seen him in fifteen years. We were right there with him on an Oakland street and I didn’t recognize him.”
“I’ve seen that footage, and, yeah, they really did a number on his face. He’s been with Kline all those years. He’s your confirmation, Marquez. You’ve been looking at him.”
“I guess I’m slowing down.”
“That’ll be the day.”
Douglas was flattering him now, so there must be a reason. Marquez could tell he was calculating. He watched Douglas fold his arms across his chest.
“We appreciate what you do out there, Marquez.”
“Yeah, how’s it helping you?”
“I know you think we’re protecting poachers and we know Kline is doing a lot of buying, but frankly we don’t know where he is, either. If we did I wouldn’t be sitting here and you know that.”
Douglas stood and came around his desk. “I’m going to bring another agent in and she’s going to show you something we’ve got for your SOU. Call it a gift from the Bureau to make this go a little easier. Your chief tells me you’ve wanted these for a while. Do you want more coffee or anything?”
“No, thanks.”
Douglas went to get the other agent, introducing her as he brought her in. Elaine Hempel. She had a firm dry handshake.
“Elaine knows tech like you wouldn’t believe.” He felt Douglas studying his face as he prepared to continue. “We’re at a point where it’s going to make more sense to coordinate our efforts. We’ve talked to your chiefs about this.”
Marquez watched Hempel open a box and lay out telelocators on the desk. She handed him one. He knew the model, made by a Canadian company. He’d looked at them several times with the hope of buying sets for his team. They’d even got a couple as demos to try out, but they hadn’t had the money to buy this year. Telelocators went for two grand each, were an inch by an inch and a half in size. You carried one and you could be tracked real-time anywhere.
“These are a gift,” Douglas said. “Not a loan. We appreciate what you’re up against. There are ten, so that covers your whole team, right?”
Marquez nodded. Easier than trying to watch us, he thought. He hid his bitterness and picked up one of the telelocators, turned the black plastic in his hand, liking the small size.
“You let us know your operational intents on a daily basis and we’ll respond to the viability,” Douglas said. “We’ll handle overall coordination and risk assessment. We’ll determine what contact is made with Kline’s organization. At the end of the day they’ll all go down, Marquez. Kline will go down.”
“What do you mean let you know our operational intents?”
“You can shut down the individual divers all day long without a problem, but we’ll handle Kline and Molina. You don’t touch or make contact with anyone in his organization without clearing it with me first.”
“There’s the Bureau I know and love.”
“Everything I’m telling you, I’ve talked out with your Chief Baird.”
“Do you mind if I call him?”
“Be my guest.”
Marquez got Baird on the line and Douglas put him on speakerphone and made a point of saying he and Marquez had been to lunch and gotten things figured out. They were just now handing over the telelocators, and Lieutenant Marquez had a few points of clarification he thought his chief would want to listen in on.
“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Baird said.
“Do I take direction from the FBI, sir?”
“Only if your operation is overlapping.”
“And how will we know?”
“Agent Douglas will coordinate.”
Douglas held up a telelocator, and said, “the locators,” so Baird understood.
“You know, sir, how remote the locations can be.”
“You’ll e-mail your daily report to the FBI, as well.”
“Is that right, sir?”
“That’s what we’ve agreed to for the duration of this operation.”
Marquez didn’t know what to say. “Any more questions for me?” Baird asked, breaking the silence that followed, and when there weren’t any, said he was late to a meeting.
Douglas killed the speakerphone with a finger, and said, “We worked well together once before.”
Agent Hempel handed Marquez the telelocators and briefed him quickly and efficiently on how they worked, how to get them up and running. She gave him her card in case he needed more help. But the word “together” didn’t belong here. The Bureau had figured out how to use his team as another set of eyes. They’d done the army one better and come up with a new-age dog tag. They didn’t care one way or the other about abalone and would share information only on their terms. Marquez picked up the box of telelocators and thanked Hempel for the demonstration.
“I guess we’ll be talking,” he said to Douglas and turned toward the door, his gut in his throat, his thinking clouded by surprise and anger.