Night Game

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Beneath the trees the light faded and wind cut through his coat. He climbed the steep trail, hiked through another long switchbacking turn, then saw them standing near an outcrop, silhouetted by red-orange sky. Both men turned to watch him. Even from here he could tell it was the same pair.

When he reached them, Marquez looked first at the bearded man, then at the bullet-headed kid. “Tell me again, why it is we can’t do these deals in a warm bar?”

“Let’s just get it done,” the beard said and clicked on a small flashlight.

Earlier this afternoon their seller, the man Marquez’s undercover team couldn’t seem to get close to, had lingered on the line, a voice changer mechanically flattening his tone as he bragged about being better than the Chinese at bear farming, though the Chinese had been at it for more than a thousand years. Marquez had seen photos of bears living out their lives in cramped cages. He’d watched videos on the Internet of bears banging their heads against cage bars, catheters running from their abdomens to milk bile juices. The traditional method was a knife gash to open the bear’s abdomen. Bile dripped through cage bars onto collection plates. Ounce for ounce, the bile on the plates was worth more than cocaine. But until this seller Marquez had never heard of bear farming in California or anywhere in the States.

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