From up here she and Osiers watched it like a play, a bit episode in centuries of smuggling. They saw the flash of gunfire, heard the shooting, the pip, pip, pip loud enough to be real and far away enough not to be.
‘They’re dying out there,’ Javits said softly.
On the beach the panel truck backed up to the dock and men got out of the jeep with weapons. The bar lights went out. Shooting out on the water stopped and very faintly the scream of a woman carried on the wind and made Javits shudder. Made her wish she was a thousand miles away living a whole different life.
But it was only that one scream and then a brighter light shone out on the sea. That had to be the big offshore boat using a searchlight. There was no more shooting, so they must be getting their pilots on to the fishing boats and starting the boats this way, she guessed. The searchlight went out. The fastboat’s engines droned loud again as it ran south into the night, and the convoy of fishing boats moved slowly this way, their lights rising and falling, their owners left somewhere back in the dark sea.
As they watched the boats come in and off-loading start, Osiers said matter-of-factly, ‘I’m going down to those trees where the beach road hits the highway. Do you know where I’m talking about?’
‘Right where the beach road meets the highway?’
‘Yeah, right there, and I’ll wait in the trees and try to get some plate numbers. Stay here until they pull out and we know what direction they’re going. I’ll radio you to come get me and we’ll call the Mex Feds if we get license plate numbers.’ He paused. ‘You got that?’
‘They could have someone down there watching the road.’
‘No, I watched both vehicles pull in, neither slowed or stopped, and if we don’t get plates and makes on the vehicles, the Mex Feds aren’t going to do shit. I know how they work around here.’
He left before they could argue about it, and she watched him as far as she could. Ten minutes later her radio squawked as he reached the trees.
‘I’m here.’
Javits watched the Jeep and the panel truck leave the beach and start up the road toward the highway. She glanced back toward the beach. Bar lights remained off, same two vehicles still parked in front. The panel truck and Jeep drove out the beach road and slowed where the road met the highway near the trees where Jim was waiting. When the vehicles turned north and disappeared she started down. As she reached the highway she expected Osiers to radio and she paused there, and then drove slowly down the highway. When she neared the stand of trees and the beach road entrance, the Toyota pickup that had been parked in front of the bar pulled out on to the highway, accelerated and passed her going north. So the pickup hadn’t just been left there for the night. That bothered her and when Osiers didn’t answer the radio she got worried.
She drove down around the curve in the highway and then came back slowly, expecting him to walk out on to the highway shoulder. She cued the radio repeatedly and now turned down the road to the beach, stopped at the trees, and got out. She called, ‘Jim.’ She used her headlights and then a flashlight, and then hurried back to the car.
She drove slowly forward trying the radio. Twenty minutes later she fought to keep her voice calm as she used the satellite phone to call Marquez. Her heart hammered. The phone rang. Come on, John, pick up, please pick up, and then he did.
SIX
After Sheryl’s call, Marquez drove to the Field Office. At dawn he tried again to convince Holsten.
‘You’re not going,’ Holsten said. ‘Hundreds of federales are already looking for him and Highway 1 is shut down both directions. The Mexicans put up roadblocks at Santa Rosalia and outside Lazaro Cardenas last night. They’re stopping vehicles in and out of Ensenada this morning. They’re stopping boats. There’s nothing you’re going to bring to the equation and you’re needed here.’
Just before noon Sheryl called from Loreto, her voice flat and dead as she reported, ‘Jim had a girlfriend in Loreto named Alicia Guayas. She’s nineteen and pregnant. The Mex Feds just took me to meet her. She says it’s his baby and they also claim he has a bank account in La Paz under a false name. The girlfriend told them that Jim is leaving his wife for her. They’re trying to tell me Jim staged his disappearance so he could run off with her.’
‘Did you get to talk to her?’
‘Yes, but with the locals watching over my shoulder, but she’s either a great actress or really is scared that something has happened to him. I’m going back this afternoon to interview her, but don’t tell Holsten or Boyer that I told you that. I’m not supposed to tell anyone.’
Marquez understood. Earlier, he’d seen Boyer, Group 5’s ASAC, in a conference room with Holsten and a translator. Neither Holsten nor Boyer would talk about it when they came out.
‘Did you know about a girlfriend?’ Sheryl asked.
‘No.’
‘The girlfriend says he pays for her house.’
‘What’s her name again?’
‘Alicia Guayas. She has photos with her and Jim.’
‘How do you read her?’
Sheryl hesitated. She sighed.
‘I don’t know.’
Marquez wrote the name Alicia Guayas on a pad. From his desk Marquez could easily see Jim Osiers’ desk and the framed family photos. He could see Jim’s marriage hitting a hard spot, but not Jim abandoning it or taking bribe money.
‘What about Rayman?’ he asked.
‘No word.’ There was static and then she said, ‘The Mex Feds claim they have people in Loreto who’ve known about the girlfriend and say it’s been going on for awhile. In one photo he’s got an arm around her and he’s leaning over as if he’s going to kiss her.’ Marquez was more worried about the false bank account. He heard voices in the background and Sheryl said, ‘I’m going to have to call you back.’
Jim Osiers had three sons and a wife in the Inland Empire. He bitched about his salary and commute, but who didn’t? Even with locality pay it was tough to make it in LA on a DEA salary, and Marquez had always gotten the feeling Osiers savored the break in Loreto just to get away from the grind of the commute and trying to raise three sons on his salary. Marquez lived in Hermosa Beach out in South Bay like a lot of the single agents, but he’d always thought Osiers lucky to have a family to come home to at night. The drug war was a soul destroyer. It ate you from the inside out and you needed ways to counter that.
Marquez walked out of the Field Office in the late afternoon looking for food. The afternoon was smoggy and hot, the sky white with no depth. On the sidewalk two construction workers talked loudly about a truck parked in their restricted zone as if the owner would overhear and move it before they had it towed. Marquez glanced at the panel truck as he passed, rust-stained, chalky white paint, Perez Cabinets stenciled on the sides in black letters. It had two front tires bald in a way you could only get away with in a part of the country where it didn’t rain much. More than likely, the Perez Cabinet guys were working nearby and saw a chance to steal free parking.
He bought a black coffee and a tuna sandwich, and when he walked back the construction superintendent and other worker were gone. In the Field Office a TV played and he ate the sandwich and watched a CNN report with shots of the Sea of Cortez and Highway 1 in Baja. Competitors called CNN crisis news, but at least they were there. No one else was covering.
A flyover search for bodies in the Sea of Cortez had yielded two local fishermen and they were looking for four others in what CNN called cartel infighting. There was nothing new on Jim Osiers and it was too late for good news. Marquez stayed at the office until 8:00 that night and then went home to the apartment, frustrated that Holsten wouldn’t let him go to Baja, but also very disturbed by what Sheryl had learned.
Marquez lived in a one-bedroom on the second floor of a three-story stucco apartment building with a Spanish motif. The apartment had oak flooring and a concrete deck with black iron railing, the deck with a view of the ocean. At night after the traffic died, he could hear the waves breaking. Sometimes he’d sleep with the sliding door open just so he could hear that.