Dead Game (13 page)

The next morning
a tall gold-colored SUV sat in the spot between the eucalyptus trees where Raburn usually parked. The man in the driver’s seat turned to stare as Marquez pulled in between two trees. When Marquez walked up to the edge of the trail to look down the muddy path to the river and Raburn’s houseboat, he heard the man coming up behind him. Before turning to talk to the man he realized that the houseboat windows were broken.

“What happened?”

“Raburn’s boat got shot up.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. It’s always the drunks that survive the wrecks. He’s hiding at his brother’s.”

“You’re not a friend of his.”

“Are you?”

“He called me yesterday and said he had some fish for me. I said I’d stop by this morning. When did all this happen?”

“Late last night. I’m Barry Gant. I’m with the volunteer firefighters. My sister-in-law lives right here. She’s got a four-year-old daughter. Any one of those shots could travel a mile and kill somebody. Whoever came here and did this is here because of him. He draws that element here.”

Gant walked down the muddy path behind Marquez. A line of bullet holes pocked the painted plywood walls of the houseboat, but there were no holes in the flotation, which was interesting, assuming they knew Raburn wasn’t home and wanted to cause maximum damage. He walked the length of the boat, then stepped onto the deck while Gant ranted.

“That dumb sonofabitch had a gallon of gasoline next to a corner outside on the deck. A bullet came within an inch of it.”

Marquez nodded, had seen the plastic two-gallon container each time he’d been here, though he didn’t see it right now. The walls of the boat were nothing more than two-by-fours on two-foot centers with a skin of plywood and a mix of glass and Plexiglas windows. The Plexiglas panels had degenerated under years of bright sunlight and turned cloudy, and now they were marked with bullet holes. The glass windows had been shot enough times to shatter, and he guessed a dozen or more bullets had passed through the boat, probably ricocheted off the rock embankment across the river. Marquez poked his head, looking inside.

“Don’t go in there. The county crime people are coming out.”

“Was there a police report?”

“Last night.”

“Did they find casings on the bank?”

“How do you know all that?”

Marquez decided to let the conversation end. He’d made a guess about trajectory, deciding that the gun had been fired from a position almost level with the boat, a slight downward trajectory so probably just a few steps up the bank, and he looked for footprints but couldn’t find anything definitive. It did not look like the spray of an assault weapon, and he pictured someone standing on the bank pumping shots into the houseboat. Someone who knew Raburn wasn’t inside. Someone unconcerned about the noise the shots made. Ludovna’s guy came to mind. Here to make a not-sosubtle point. The county wouldn’t waste time with this because there were no witnesses and no one was hurt. He turned to Gant.

“Raburn is at his brother’s?”

“A deputy found him down there last night.”

“Okay, I’ll check there. Thanks for all your help.”

The wet corrugated metal of the packing shed roof reflected the morning sunlight brilliantly. The remaining leaves of the pears looked more tattered and bare than just a few days ago. He drove past the equipment building, and the old Scout bounced hard in a pothole. Isaac’s big blue Ford F-350 was in front of the house, parked near the older Volvo his wife, Cindy, drove. Raburn’s truck was hidden from the road and covered with a tarp, so he was either scared or making a show of it. Marquez pulled up alongside Raburn’s pickup, got out, and walked up to the house.

It needed paint. The porch creaked under his weight. He knocked and stood near the railing cap, listening for a moment inside and looking out through the rows of fruit trees. He smelled damp earth, the fall. On the porch railing under his hand, paint had peeled and cracked like a dry riverbed and small beads of water had pooled between the cracks. He knocked again, and the door rattled loosely. The house was probably in need of more work
than the money you could make selling apples and pears in a dozen years of good harvests, and Raburn was probably right about his brother’s chances.

It wasn’t until his third knock that Isaac’s son opened the door, then went to get his father. But it was Abe who came to the door rather than Isaac. He stepped out onto the porch and shut the door, his face pale, combative, anxious. He smelled like a hangover, and ashen half-moons of pouched skin sagged below his eyes.

“Lucky I wasn’t home when it happened.”

“Who did it?”

“It’s got to be him. He must know who you are.” Raburn tried to give him a hard stare now. “Either way I’m done with Fish and Game. You can go ahead and arrest me this morning because this sure as hell isn’t worth dying for.”

“I can understand you being scared.”

“You don’t understand shit. I’m fifty-two. I got here when I was sixteen. Do you really think you know more about the fish species that live in the delta than I do? You sure as hell don’t, and there’s no problem with sturgeon. The problem is you trapped me and you’ve made some people angry and if you keep it up you’re going to get me killed just like I told you the first day.”

“Let’s take a drive together and get some breakfast. You look like you need some food.”

They drove up the river to Freeport, and Raburn put away sliced ham, three eggs, potatoes, and coffee. He asked for another order of toast and concentrated on the food, head down, eyes out the window whenever he looked up. Something about the shooting didn’t fit. Raburn’s answers were too dodgy. The accusatory tone, how Fish and Game had entrapped him, had a staged air to it.

“You can arrest me, but I’m going to tell the jury I did everything I could to help and finally got scared.”

“That sounds like your lawyer talking.”

“I’ve done everything you asked. You can’t ask me to risk my life.”

They weren’t offering him any protection, and the DA would roll her eyes and say, look, he’s done enough, we’re not bringing any case against him. They’d plea-bargain something, and Raburn would get a slap on the wrist.

“So you think shooting up your boat was a message from Ludovna?”

“I already said that.”

Marquez handed the waitress a twenty and looked at Raburn again, caught Raburn studying his face.

“One problem with all this is you haven’t given us what we need to take Ludovna down. You say you don’t have records of sales.”

Raburn was scornful. “No one keeps records. Who’s that stupid?”

Marquez drove him back to his brother’s, and Raburn didn’t say a word during the ride. He got out of the Scout.

“Don’t shut the door yet,” Marquez said. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll give you a day to think about everything. You’re hungover, you were up all night, and like you said, anyone would be scared. Think it over. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“I’ve already thought it over. If you want to bust me, go ahead. I know someone else who disappeared, and it isn’t going to happen to me. I got warned last night, and I don’t need to be told twice.”

“Who do you know that disappeared?”

He could see Raburn regretted having said that. He didn’t answer, let the door fall shut, and Marquez watched him go up the porch and into the house.

“How’d it go with Dishonest Abe?”
Shauf asked.

“He says we can arrest him whenever we want.”

“Nothing would make me happier. Want me to talk to the DA this morning?”

“Why don’t you meet me in Walnut Grove and we’ll get a cup of coffee and talk about where we’re at instead.”

He got into Walnut Grove ahead of her and took a call from Ehrmann while he waited, parked on the side of the road.

“Lieutenant, Stan Ehrmann here.” Marquez picked up on the formal tone right away. “We’ve got the problem this morning I warned you about. You’ve crossed into our operations, and I’m going to back you off.”

“Where did we do that?”

“At Weisson’s Auto. How many times have you been there?”

“I’ve been in the building once, and we’ve been by the building a number of times.”

He related the events with Torp and Perry, then listened to Ehrmann.

“It’s a chop shop. What the Russians call a
patsani
gets a few hundred bucks to steal a car and deliver it. You’ve seen the totaled cars in the fenced-in area. Most of those totals are late-model cars that were sold cheap at auctions by insurance companies. You can make pretty good money if you have stolen cars to get the new parts from and you rebuild a cheap total. We’re looking for several individuals who periodically visit Weisson’s, and we’ll shut down their operation at the same time. We’ve been there awhile, and I don’t want anything happening that has any chance of arousing any suspicion.”

“We’ll stay away. Is that your surveillance in the unfinished three-story building off to the left?”

“Excuse me.”

“I saw something going on in that building on the third floor.”

“And why did you think it was surveillance?”

“I’ve been doing this a long time, and I saw what I thought was a reflection off glass.”

It was more than that. He’d spotted what he’d thought might be surveillance but hadn’t wanted to start asking questions yet. Chop shops weren’t unusual, and he’d figured it could be a Sacramento Police team. If by some chance he’d spotted an FBI team, it shouldn’t have happened. He listened to Ehrmann clear his throat.

“Why don’t you come to work for me, Marquez?”

“The Feds would never have me, but I think you know that. I’m sure you’ve read up on me.”

“I’d like to hear your side of it sometime.”

“My side is the leak came from somewhere inside DEA. Someone got bought, and I was lucky enough not to be home when they
came around to kill everyone. Did you read about the drug killing outside Cancun, Mexico, a couple of days ago? Nine dead, two of them Federal agents, two more agents found wounded yesterday. It was a lot like that.”

“I’d still like to hear the story.” Marquez left it at that, and Ehrmann said, “I sent you more information on Torp. It’ll be at DFG headquarters by noon.”

He said, “Thanks,” and meant it. Ehrmann didn’t have to and no doubt had gotten them more than they could ever get from NCIC or WSIN, the Western States Information Network.

“What’s happening here is you’re doing your job so well we may have to stop you from running over the back end of us.”

“We won’t go near Weisson’s. We’ve got a buyer in Rio Vista. We’ll work him, and we’re getting somewhere with the Nick Ludovna I talked to you about. But I’m going to ask again, is Nikolai Ludovna part of your investigation?”

“Not at this time.”

“You’ve looked at him before?”

“We have.”

He bought coffee with Shauf, and she rode with him out Walnut Grove Road past the tractor business and the fields of young pears, past Giusti’s and out beyond tomato fields ready to be tilled under and grapevines bare with the late fall. She looked at the tomato fields and said, “I guess we can’t let Cairo see this. He’d be down on his knees, running earth through his fingers.”

They turned off the main road and then drove out to a stand of oaks, parked, and got away from the truck. They walked out to a log and sat down well away from anywhere anyone could hear them.

“Look at us,” Shauf said. “Ruax gets her house bugged so we’re not even sitting in the truck.”

This was the other thing Ehrmann had told him. They’d swept Ruax’s house and come up with bugs. That was happening now. They were seeing more counter-surveillance, and suspects had gotten smarter about cell phone use as well. They favored the stolen chip and the prepaid card.

“So where are we at this morning?” she asked. “Dishonest Abe wants out. Anna is gone. Ludovna is sitting on his toadstool, and prison bait isn’t calling you back. We’re nowhere on August even though we watched the airport handoff.”

“Crey did call me back. I’m going to meet him tonight, but the trick there is still to cut Torp and Perry out of the picture.”

“That’s what I mean, nothing is quite working. We’ve got a bunch of pieces and nothing whole. Do you think we’re birddogging for the Feds?”

“Do you want to roll it up?”

“No.”

“Does Cairo?”

“No. Neither does Roberts or Alvarez, but you’ve got to be as frustrated as everyone else.”

“It’ll come together.”

“What do you think is going on with the Feds?”

“I think they’re waiting to see if our operation turns up anything that’ll help them.”

“So we are bird-dogging for them. You think there’s a tie-in with August and what we watched come out of Weisson’s and go to him? These guys trafficking in sturgeon are also moving other stuff.”

“Good chance of that. Let’s focus on Crey the next several days and see what more we can learn from the FBI about their investigation.”

He sat with Shauf another hour, bringing up past operations as they tried to find parallels. There’d been a bear bust, a twisted guy named Ungar, it had taken them a while to figure out. The operation had gone several directions before they took Ungar down.

When they got ready to leave, Shauf threw out, “You know, the shutdown is hanging over everybody, and I don’t mean the Feds. I mean the end of us. What’ll happen with you and me?”

“I’ll put you up for captain, and I’ll go plant tomatoes with Cairo.”

“Yeah, everybody is going to be a captain. But really, what are you going to do? Are you really thinking of hanging it up? What would you do then?”

“Go to work for the Feds; they’ve got all the money.”

“Isn’t that the truth? Or the Highway Patrol. Every time I think about what they make compared to us it pisses me off.”

Marquez knew he wouldn’t quit on this case. He’d find a way to shut down these sturgeon poachers, and if it meant doing it without his badge, he’d cowboy it and find a way to stay legal. He felt a strong rush of emotion.

“I’ve got to know what happened to Anna. I want the truth there. And I’m not walking away from these poachers. I’ll sink a few boats first.”

“Great. I’ll visit you in prison. Maybe you can bunk with Torp, Perry, or Crey when they get back in.”

Marquez’s phone rang, and he smiled at Shauf. “It’s Crey.”

“What’s going on, big man?” Crey asked.

“Not much, just sitting around.”

“Are we still on for tonight?”

“Nothing has changed on my end.”

“See you at Lisa’s around dark. We’ll get it all figured out tonight. We’re going to make some money, bro. Life is a big rock candy mountain.”

“I was just thinking that. See you there.”

Marquez hung up. He held the phone in one hand and smiled at Shauf.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing. Let’s get out of here.”