He remembered from Billy’s tapes that her hair was black and that there was a field of maize behind her body as there was in this photo. There wasn’t a name on this or any of the earlier killings with women, but he felt sure this was Billy’s wife, Rosalina. She was as beautiful as Billy had claimed.
He found Anderson outside on a deck, sitting on a lounge chair with a glass pitcher of margaritas sweating on a glass table next to him. Kerry wouldn’t look away from the ocean yet, but offered to get Marquez a glass so he could drink with him, and when Marquez didn’t take him up on it, said, ‘I knew it would be you.’
‘No, all along you thought it was going to work, and now it isn’t.’
Marquez looked past the coconut trees and the beach to the purples and blues of the Caribbean. He looked back at the tiled deck. Anderson wore red shorts that finished just below his knees. He wore sandals and a Washington Nationals baseball shirt. Near the pitcher of margaritas was a form half filled out for box seats for the Nationals’ next season.
‘Are you going to look at me, Kerry?’
‘I’m going to look at this view as long as I can.’
‘That won’t be much longer. They’re in the air but almost here. Was it all about money?’
‘It was about needing something to look forward to. I couldn’t have gone on without it.’
‘How does it feel now?’
‘Terrible.’
‘There are some things I need answered before they get here.’
Anderson took another long drink. ‘In Washington they called me Mr Information. Go ahead.’
‘I want to ask you some questions about Jim Osiers.’
‘What would you like to know? When James Gardiner-Osiers was born? That was March 23 1955, and though you worked with him I’ll bet you didn’t know that for a long time his name was James Gardiner-Osiers. He was raised by his mother who divorced his father because he ran around with other women constantly. In gratitude to his mother, Osiers dropped her name, Gardiner, as soon as he hit eighteen. That’s what happened in Loreto. He was just trying to be like the old man. Getting him to fall for the girlfriend was easy. He’d waited his whole life for that. I got everything ready then for later. I left it muddy. I left it so it could be solved when the time came and I was ready to pull the plug. I needed someone because the leaks were going to end when I left.’
‘You set him up with Alicia?’
‘No, they found her, but she didn’t know any better. The Salazars knew the Americans would back off once they found out about the pregnant girlfriend. I knew he was vulnerable.’ He turned and grinned drunkenly. ‘I was the analyst. They were right about his tastes and Stoval liked the idea.’
‘So why frame Sheryl Javits?’
‘The leak needed to be found before I retired. Sooner or later, someone would figure out information wasn’t flowing anymore and start looking at me. Her ex-husband took bribe money. We got her through him. He had a story for her. We worked it for a couple of years and when they divorced he gave her the money. By then, she already believed the cover story.’
‘Phelps has been arrested and she’s out.’
Anderson waved his hand, dismissing that, saying, ‘I knew Stoval had records of everything. He was a fascinating man with an incredible memory.’ He added with odd pride, ‘I made it almost twenty years.’
‘But you didn’t make it, Kerry.’
Anderson gave another drunken grin, poured himself another drink and lifted a towel on the small glass table to show Marquez a gun.
‘You’d better take it away before I use it on myself. How much time do I have?’
‘Maybe an hour.’
‘I’d like to watch the ocean until then, if I can.’
Marquez picked up the gun and removed the clip. He pictured Anderson in prison a decade from now, small and gray, sitting on his bunk working on a baseball box score.
‘You have to answer some questions for me now,’ Anderson said. ‘How was I listed in his computer?’
‘By a code name and number and you’re not alone. You’re listed under US government employees. It’s the bank transfers that are going to nail you. Every date of every payment is in there, along with what he got for it.’
‘So why are you here first and they’re not here?’
‘They’re looking at everything and I was looking for what happened to Group Five and this recent thing with Sheryl. You’re listed as a Washington Senator, yet you’re under law enforcement, US government. I put it together from our baseball conversations over the years. I’m guessing your season tickets came every year from him.’
‘Very good.’
‘Four FBI agents are on their way. I called when I changed planes in Miami.’
He left Anderson on the deck and figured he’d run into the FBI crew at the airport, but it turned out they passed him on the road around the island before he got there. He called Desault after turning in the rental car and Desault told him he’d scored big with the Anderson hit.
‘If you want to keep the wildlife angle going, this is your chance to push it.’
‘Yeah, I want to keep it going, but I’ve got some ideas.’
The flight home took him to Mexico City. He had a layover there and a bad encounter with two Customs officials who detained him and led him to a room. They left him there for fifteen minutes, and then returned and explained that the questioning would not be here, but at a police station. They still wouldn’t say what it was about, but asked for his passport and as he got it out, he realized he wasn’t going to give it up.
‘I’m going to keep this until the police station.’ He opened it for them. ‘You can take another look, but you can’t have it.’
A third man arrived, a big guy who walked behind them as they went outside toward a police van. The van driver was in a federales uniform. He was an older guy with a gut, a black mustache, and a vertical scar right down the middle of his nose. Marquez remembered the scar and as the Customs men closed behind him to force him into the van, he pushed his way back on to the sidewalk. The driver was an old Salazar man.
He knocked away the arm of the one who tried to grab him and got back inside the airport with them following, trying to catch him but not drawing their guns. Nor did they yell or call for help. They didn’t want to attract attention and that told him all he needed to know. The third man who’d showed up late dropped away as Marquez walked up to the airline counter. He made the connecting flight.
On the plane a stewardess handed him a large manila envelope with his name and seat number on it. Someone wanted to make sure he got it. As the plane taxied toward the runway, he opened the package and pulled out three black and white photos. He guessed he was looking at a dry wash in Baja. They had dressed Billy Takado in the Hawaiian shirt and the old cotton slacks he liked so much. They didn’t bother with shoes. The last photo had a handwritten message, ‘Nos vemos pronto.’ We’ll see you again, soon. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t, he thought.
He slid the photos back into the manila envelope, tucked the envelope into the seat pocket in front of him, and as they flew over Baja, he thought of Billy and his dreams of a beach cantina, and of Brian Hidalgo haunted by Vietnam and trying to take it to the cartels. He remembered Sheryl as they walked the almond orchard in the night so long ago, and a dawn on the north coast when the sun rose red through fog as the SOU busted a big ab poaching ring, and how they celebrated later on a deck above the ocean in the gold light of fall. You fight the fight even if it’s bigger than you, and keep going, and meet them head-on at the next spot, or outsmart them and buy time for a grizzly to get away or a herd of bighorn to disappear into the rocks.