After 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.