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Marquez punched him hard, watched him go slack, and then took his weight off him. When he got in his car and started driving he shook from adrenaline. He drove back to San Diego and the airport and parked for an hour before returning Sheryl’s calls, and then talked normally, relating what he learned about the Sherpa pilot, Del Weaver, from the Federal Aviation Administration

‘I’ll see what more I can learn. I’ve already talked to the FAA. Weaver routinely flies to Calexico and then north into the Central Valley to a private landing field, some almond grower named KZ Nuts. Weaver’s business is as a short haul pilot. He’s got a reconstructed Sherpa, a C-23 rebuilt after the Coast Guard auctioned it off.’

She listened and then asked, ‘Where have you been? I called six times. Billy Takado’s body has disappeared. They’re saying it may have been accidentally cremated. We got a call from the Mex Feds this morning. Until it’s found again the investigation into his death is on hold.’

‘It won’t get found.’

That night he was swept by remorse and disappointment in himself. His hands were bruised and swollen. When he washed them in the bathroom and looked in the mirror he saw yet another cop unable to deal with the job and lashing out at the enemy, inviting retaliation. But there was something worse than that, a sensation as though he was unraveling as he was drawn in, as if anything could happen and he didn’t know himself anymore.

He took a late night call from Sheryl who asked near the end of their conversation, ‘What happened today, John? Did something happen? You don’t sound like you.’

‘Something did happen.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘If you change your mind, I’m here.’

TWELVE

A
fter the memorial service for Jim Osiers, Sheryl asked if he wanted to come back to her house. Marquez went home first. Then he drove over to Sheryl’s and they sat in lawn chairs under the big oak in her backyard. But even in the shade it was hot. You couldn’t see anything in LA Basin other than yellow-white haze and he couldn’t lose the image of Jim’s sons standing alongside their mother, the youngest crying, the oldest trying to stand tall in a way his father might be proud of. What would happen when he got older and learned more about his father? Would he be able to forgive him?

Dusk came and Sheryl invited him to stay for dinner. They moved into the kitchen and she leaned against him as pasta boiled. She was a little drunk now, alcoholic heat radiating off her and him. A light sweat shone on her forehead and her eyes carried both challenge and sadness. They ate outside and drank more wine, but the wine didn’t do anything at all for him tonight. He thought about Miguel Salazar lying on the sidewalk with his nose broken and bleeding, and of the investigation of Jim Osiers that had begun and would touch all of his squad and likely linger with them the rest of their careers.

What he’d done to Miguel Salazar in Tijuana needed to come out. He couldn’t hold it secret and no question they would come for him. They’d come in waves if the first didn’t get him.

Sheryl put her hand on his and said, ‘Don’t go quiet on me. Let’s keep talking. I need to talk.’

‘I’m here. I’m listening and I’m thinking about what we got off that boat. I’m going to chase this Sherpa pilot lead. Holsten and Boyer are going to take apart Group Five, but I’m going to chase this wherever it goes first. We know the Sherpa pilot flies to Calexico regularly and we’ve got enough on him and the almond grower to start looking at both more closely. I’m betting the pilot, Weaver, moves drugs for the Salazars.’

‘Former military pilot?’

‘Yeah, but it’s going to be the same old thing.’ It’s always the money. ‘I’ll get them all,’ he said, and didn’t sound much like himself.

‘Do you want to bust them or do you want something else?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Jim got framed.’

‘He didn’t get framed about the girlfriend. Her baby is due in mid November.’

He’d go to Calexico in the early morning. He’d keep pushing. Sheryl went back inside and got a bottle of brandy. She put two glasses on the picnic table, handed him the bottle, and Marquez opened and poured. He came close to telling her what he’d done with Miguel. They drank. They moved back inside. She looked at his hands. She touched his swollen knuckles.

‘I’ll call you from Calexico,’ he said.

‘No.’

She hooked his belt with her hand, put her arms around him and said, ‘Don’t go yet.’ She pulled his shirt out, slid her hand up his back. ‘Stay. You should have stayed a long time ago.’

She pressed tight against him, dropped her hands, fumbled with his belt buckle, and then he was taking her clothes off. It was the line they’d never crossed and he wasn’t sure why it was happening now, but he was aroused and a little drunk and they were alive. That was the unspoken thing. Her skin was very smooth and warm and her mouth tasted like brandy. She wrapped her legs around him and stopped talking and let her heels fall to the soft covers of the bed. She was not in any hurry and slowed him and whispered, ‘Only this once,’ as a moan started from low in her chest. She was trying to tell him something else that night, but he was still too young, too caught up in the events of the week and the thing they were doing.

He was at Sheryl’s when Anderson called. His half-ass mobile phone rang and woke both of them at a little after 4:00 in the morning. Marquez found his shorts and the phone and answered as he walked out of the bedroom.

‘Sorry to call so early.’

‘That’s OK, Kerry, what’s up?’

‘I sent you copies of files on Stoval. The package should arrive addressed to you at your office this morning. There’s also a file in there on a man named Kline that we can link to Stoval.’

‘What about the stuff I called you about?’

Sheryl padded into the room. She was naked and he watched the refrigerator light silhouette her body as she opened the door just far enough to reach for a pitcher of water. Then she stood in the quasi-darkness listening to his conversation.

‘I checked with Customs,’ Marquez said, ‘and they tell me Stoval has been in and out of the country eight times in the last three years.’

‘More than eight,’ Anderson answered, ‘but the point is he’s protected. That’s what I told you the first time we met. Remember? And you won’t get anywhere trying to talk to the CIA. They’ll obfuscate and wear you down. That’s how they work. But I didn’t call about them. I’m only calling about the package I sent you, and I can’t talk long. I’ve got to catch a flight.’

When he hung with Anderson, Sheryl asked, ‘What package?’

‘Files from Anderson for me.’

‘Stoval files?’

‘Yeah, and if I’m in Calexico will you catch them for me when they come in?’

Sheryl did more than that. She caught the package as it arrived and then opened it and went through the files. That surprised him. But maybe it shouldn’t have.

THIRTEEN

C
alexico is in California’s Imperial Valley just over the border from Mexico. Human mules routinely crossed here. Marquez had once seen a bust where cocaine got baked into plastic animal carriers that were then shipped with dogs in them. At the time, US Customs avoided bringing their drug-sniffing dogs around other dogs, so the carriers passed through with little scrutiny. Once through, the dog carriers got dissolved in vats of chemicals, the cocaine extracted and the waste poured out into the ground behind a warehouse.

There were DEA agents stationed in Calexico, but Marquez didn’t check in with anybody. He drove to the little International Airport and parked in the bright sun near the tarmac. Then his car phone rang and a retired newspaper editor in San Fernando, Mexico introduced himself.

‘Thanks for returning my call,’ Marquez said.

‘Oh, I’m happy to talk about him. I liked him a lot.’

Marquez listened to the quaver and enthusiasm in the old man’s voice as he remembered Billy. He thought about how differently the same human being was talked about at the DEA.

‘I knew his mother too. He was like her. He could make you smile just by walking into a room. He had a business of taking hunters out for bird hunts. He used to bring me birds. He’d come right into the newspaper office with them and put them on my desk.’

‘Were you in San Fernando when his fiancée got killed?’

The old man coughed. His voice quieted. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to talk about that.

‘It was very sad.’

‘Who killed her?’

‘It was never solved.’

‘Was Billy accused?’

‘Yes, the police were very stupid.’

‘Who did you suspect?’

‘Oh, it’s so long ago. It was someone crazy, I guess, and so sad.’

‘Billy is dead,’ Marquez said, ‘and I think it goes back to when you knew him.’

The old editor coughed again and said, ‘He died when she died.’

He murmured something else and didn’t want to talk anymore. Marquez copied down the name of the church with the cemetery where Rosalina was buried and then he drove north over the Tehachapi Mountains. He dropped into the Central Valley and continued on until he reached the big almond orchards of KZ Nuts.

Now he could smell the land in the dust the wind carried. Dust dulled the late afternoon and reddened the sun. He called Brian Hidalgo at the Field Office and as he waited for Brian to pick up, looked through long rows of almonds to an airstrip with a new concrete extension white in the sun. He studied the KZ buildings, a big ranch house and processing and storage buildings. He saw delivery trucks and an airstrip where a rainbow-colored windsock swelled with wind.

‘I’ve been making calls on this,’ Brian said. ‘I talked to a friend of mine whose father used to crop dust all over the Central Valley. Sixty years ago that airstrip on the almond ranch was called Dolan’s Field. Military planes coming out of March Field, Air Corps planes would use it in an emergency.’

‘What about now?’

Papers shuffled, Brian looking at his notes. ‘KZ has changed hands in the last few years and is owned by a larger corporation that I’m trying to learn something about. What I’ve learned so far is that they own eleven other orchards, six in California, two in Oregon, three in Washington. I’ve got a couple of pages on them. They bought all of them over the last five years. Each has an airstrip.’

‘This one has just been enlarged. If they had a plane like the Sherpa they could move shipments of drugs from one orchard operation to another, and then use delivery trucks to distribute.’ Marquez counted trucks. ‘I’m looking at nine trucks right now with KZ painted on the side.’

‘I’ve got more on the Sherpa too. That plane is a helluva workhorse. It can land in some tough places. I’ve never told you this, but in Vietnam I had the job of calling in air strikes. In the end there Charlie was all over us and I had to bring the bombs right up to our guys. I knew sometimes we were killing some of our own. You tell yourself you’re not because it’s the only way you can deal with it, but afterwards you can never really get away from it. I think that’s why I’m ready to rock and roll all the time with these cartel freaks.’ Hidalgo paused and abruptly switched subjects. ‘It’s getting weird around here. Holsten came through this morning looking for you. There’s some news out of Tijuana.’

That night Marquez slept in a Best Western motel and dreamed of a Mex Fed captain named Viguerra. Captain Vengeance they called him for the way he went after
narco trafficantes
. In his dream Viguerra was smaller, his black mustache neatly trimmed, his uniform crisp and neat in a way it never was in life. He stood near the wreck of a burning plane.

‘For every one I arrest, I kill two. I have chosen to fight them. A man can rule a certain amount of territory as a lion rules. As long as he is strong and shows no weakness he can dominate. For now, I am the lion. I have the helicopters and soldiers and the will to kill them, but this is a war with no ending. This is what the Americans don’t understand. In this war are beings among us who are not human. They have aspects of us, but they are not of us, and they bring cruelty that is inhuman. Even now, I can feel the presence of one. His men I can kill. Him, I don’t know. If you can find for me where he was born, I will give you all the wealth of Mexico. But you will never find that. There is no birthplace or childhood for any of them. They are not of God.’

‘Come on, a man is a man. He’s the same as any of us.’

‘No, my friend, he isn’t.’

But that was just a dream. He woke in the motel room and lay on his back thinking about the leak at DEA. He once had a mission and a purpose and a way of fighting the war on drugs without getting overwhelmed by the scale of it. But he was losing his hold on that. He closed his eyes, saw Captain Viguerra again and asked, ‘How do I find Stoval?’

Viguerra laughed.

‘You don’t have to worry about finding him. That is one thing you do not need to worry about. I promise, when he learns you are looking for him he will find you.’

FOURTEEN

A
t the Calexico International Airport the air controller was happy to talk shop about the Sherpa. He liked talking planes and was very familiar with the gray fifty-eight footer and its pilot. Calexico International had only one east/west runway. A fully loaded Sherpa needed up to five thousand feet of runway to land, but not if it was coming in empty from San Diego. The Calexico runway was four thousand six hundred and seventy feet, but that was okay, the controller explained. Weaver’s routine was to land with an empty plane that then got loaded.