Dead Game (19 page)

Let it go, Marquez thought. You think too much and you’re beat. He put the Klamath behind him, remembering the rants of radio talk show hosts as the controversy was in full swing, radio hosts whose only real art was in turning issues needing discourse into venal political standoffs. It all took him down today. His usual resilience wasn’t there, and when another call came from Ehrmann he let it go to voice mail and only took calls from the team. He told everyone to break the drive in half, find a motel, and finish the drive tomorrow. But he kept driving. When he was still three or four hours out he called Maria.

“I’m going to be late, Maria.”

“How late?”

“I probably won’t get home until after 10:00.”

“Then I’m going to stay at Stacey’s again. I’m at Stacey’s, and I was going to leave pretty soon, but if you’re going to be that late I may as well stay here.” She sounded calm, said it without any attitude. “I’m here and working on my homework. I have another three hours of homework.”

“Okay, stay there tonight, but understand it’s not going forward this way. It’s not okay to move out.”

“I know everyone thinks I’m completely ungrateful, but Mom is the one who said the worst things.”

What he felt like saying was knock it off, Maria, grow up and come home. You’ve got a pretty good life, a lot better than what your mom or I had at your age. But he held back. He’d see her tomorrow. He made two other calls on the way home, one dependent on the other, the first to his ex-chief, Bell, to reconfirm, then a call to Ludovna.

“I’m calling to invite you over the day after tomorrow. What kind of vodka do you like?”

“Cold.” A laugh. “Hey, my new friend, whatever you like is good for me.”

“Let me give you an address, and we’ll meet right around dark.”

When he got home it was nearly midnight. He found Katherine sitting in the darkness on the couch. The only light on was down the hallway. Her arms were crossed and she held herself. He touched her face, felt the wet streaks of tears, and her face was hot.

“I am so upset. I remember when her father left I promised her what I would do for her. She doesn’t remember, she was too young, but it was about this time of year, and Jack hadn’t had a job offer in eleven months. Then he got the offer from the security firm, and the only position they had for him was in Alaska. He had just one day to decide, and I think he was as relieved as I was. I knew when he left he wouldn’t be back and that the marriage was over. I don’t even know where he stayed when he got there, but I think he had a girlfriend later on and he didn’t call very often. He never came home again.”

Katherine was quiet, looking at him in the darkness. These were memories he knew she’d rather leave undisturbed, but she continued now.

“I let Maria sleep in my bed for six months. She turned inside herself. Her little smile went away. She used to smile all the time, and she stopped laughing. I made her promises then, one of those was that we would always be close and I would always take very good care of her. Do you know what she said tonight, John? She said she can’t live around me. Sometimes I think she hates me.”

“I think a lot of it is about struggling with herself. She’s eighteen and wants to be independent but can’t be. She’s not financially independent, but if she was she might be ready to get out there on her own.”

“That’s ridiculous, she’s in high school. When I was a senior in high school that would never have occurred to me, and of course I got angry with my mother, but wanting to move out of the house, I would never have thought like that. She says I’m a control freak and I’ve always micromanaged her life. Am I a control freak?”

“Sure.”

“All I’ve ever tried to do is make sure she has the most opportunity she can.”

“And you’ve done that. Now she wants to do it on her own.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants. She doesn’t know what she wants to study or where to go to school.”

“She’ll figure it out.”

“She’s been eighteen for all of two weeks. She’s just a girl still, so what are you saying?”

“I’m saying she wants to grow up, and the best thing you can do, or we can do, is show her a way to be. I was on my own as soon as high school was over. I remember what it feels like.”

“This is my daughter, and she’s still in high school. She’s sleeping on a couch in some ratty apartment in San Francisco. Are you telling me that I should accept that?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying talk to her as though she was thirty. She’s not, she’s just a kid in so many ways, but she’s ready to step it up a notch.”

“No, she’s not.”

“Try her.”

Early the next morning
he sat at the dining room table and wrote his report on his laptop. In a separate file he added what they’d learned in the past two days, and then he read through everything to date. He had coffee with Katherine. She left for San Francisco, and he was on the phone with headquarters and the team as they continued driving home.

Outside, the sky was white and smooth, and when he talked with Shauf she was still way up north but said it was the same blank sky. He made more coffee, grilled a cheese sandwich, cleaned his gear and guns, switched trucks, and drove into San Francisco to the FBI Field Office.

“I can only give you five minutes,” Ehrmann said.

“My questions won’t take long. You let us follow her all the way up there before backing us off. That’s a long ride, Stan. Why didn’t you tell me before you’ve had her under surveillance?”

“I did tell you. I said we lost her, and we’re lucky you found her again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me last week she was alive?”

“Because we’re very close to our takedown, and it’s a very dangerous group we’re targeting. You’d seemed to have already accepted the idea that she burned you. I had planned to brief you when the time came.”

“You’re putting a lot of energy into following her. You could pick her up but you’d rather follow her. You’re hoping she’ll lead you somewhere.”

“We are.”

“Where?”

“To more individuals associated with this crime ring.”

No kidding, Stan, but what individuals? If he asked about Karsov again he’d get a blank answer.

“Why did she go to the trouble to stage her abduction?”

“We’re not sure who she was trying to fool.”

“Not us.”

“No, not you.”

“The FBI?”

Ehrmann shrugged.

“Make a guess.”

“I can’t do that for you.”

Nothing about Ehrmann was squirrelly, but he was acting squirrelly, and Marquez felt like the guy in the room who was only getting part of the picture. He understood the Feds thought Anna might lead them to more players in this Ukrainian mob group they were targeting, but there were gaps, and he could tell he wasn’t getting the whole picture. Maybe he wasn’t asking the
right questions. Ehrmann waited for the next one, and Marquez didn’t ask it. Instead, he stood up. Ehrmann’s five minutes was up, and if it was an hour it wouldn’t make any difference today.

From his truck he checked in with the team. They’d started driving early this morning from the Oregon border and were still a hundred miles from Sacramento and the safehouse. He recrossed the Golden Gate, drove up the mountain, and waited for Maria to get home. She didn’t have a sixth or seventh period today so was home by 2:00. She came in the door, then called, “Dad, where are you?”

“Back here working on your bathroom door. Do you want to take a walk?”

“Where?”

“On the mountain.”

“If it’s not a long one.”

“We’ll turn around when you say so.”

They drove up to the lot across from Mountain Home Inn and walked the paved road past the ranger station and water tanks, then up the steep climb to the fire road before saying much.

“Here’s the deal. As long as you’re going to school and talking to your mom every day while you two work this out, you can keep staying with Stacey and Wendy.”

“Mom’s okay with that?”

“Yes, but the deal is you and your mom have to talk at least half an hour a day.”

“That’s weird.”

“Not as weird as you moving out, and besides, what’s weird about talking to your mom every day?”

“Why for half an hour?”

“So there’s a chance you’ll communicate.”

“You mean it’s my fault.”

“I’m not interested in fault.”

“Does Mom agree with this?”

“I wouldn’t be telling you otherwise.”

She thought on that as they came around another long rising curve, and Marquez looked out at the dark blue of the ocean. Maria’s long-legged stride was like her mother’s. He watched her pick up a piece of serpentine and flick it off the slope, send it over the manzanita and oaks. It made him remember her at nine, the way she used to race up here.

“So I’m supposed to go back to San Francisco tonight?”

“No, you’re already here. I figured you and I could go see my fishing friend, and maybe we can grill some halibut or bass tonight. That sound okay?”

She was quiet too long. She sensed some trick in all this, or maybe it bored her to think about riding around with him and picking up fish from his friend. But then she nodded.

They ended up grilling hamburgers instead of halibut, and he left Maria and Katherine talking near the fireplace, the light of the fire catching their profiles. From the deck he called in and asked dispatch to help him check three hang-up calls on his cell, numbers he didn’t recognize, two from the same spot.

“What you’ve got there are pay phone booths. The two that are the same are in Fresno. The next one is in Sacramento.”

“Thanks.”

The first calls were late this morning, ten minutes apart. The third must have come when he was on the mountain with Maria. A fourth came later that night after he was in bed with Katherine. She moved silently against him, only the rustle of sheets making any noise as her hand found his shoulder and moved across his chest, touched his face, his lips before sliding down to his groin
and taking him in her hand. He turned, and the smooth warm skin of her belly was against him. She pulled him on top of her and her arms wrapped tight around his back, and later she laid her face on his chest and quietly wept for the loss of a dream of the way life might have been. It all came back to Maria. She was no longer the little girl who’d been Katherine’s best friend in the years after her first husband abandoned them.

Late in the night the phone rang, and he walked down the hallway and outside with his cell phone. He slid the deck door shut, speaking quietly, wondering if the FBI was listening in.

“A lot of officers looked for you that night.”

“I had to do what I did.”

“Sure, and I know you must be very sorry for what you had to do to me.”

“I am sorry, but the FBI promised to get my son for me and now they say they can’t. Everything has happened because of that.”

“When did they promise to get your son for you?”

“A couple of years ago, and I’m supposed to help them get closer to my ex. They’d like to lock him up for a long time.”

“Where are you now?”

There was a hollowness to her voice that made him think she was in a pay phone.

“I’m in California. I’m not far from the delta, but I really am going to disappear, if they don’t arrest me first. Do you want to meet me tomorrow? I really do care about the poaching and that’s why I came to you in the first place. I know what they’re doing and what their plans are. I wanted you to bust them. If you don’t meet with me now, I’m afraid you might not get the chance.”

“Why not tell me what you know over the phone? Why make a game out of meeting you?”

“Because they’re probably listening to this conversation.”

“Who is?”

“The FBI. I can meet you tomorrow. I can tell you where the caviar gets moved around. I can meet you where we met that first time.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you there.”

He sat with the phone in his hands after hanging up. Agreeing to meet her was an impulsive move, and he should call Ehrmann. They’d been backed off any contact with her when they followed her, yet this was different. She’d called him. She’d made the contact. He made coffee and thought it over, read the papers, watched the dawn, and decided not to tell anyone on his team, not to jeopardize anyone’s career.

Just before 10:00 he drove into the delta, looped around Sherman Island, backtracked, worked his way east, then cut across a levee island and came in the back way to the slough. He parked and did the rest on foot, keeping an eye on the vineyard roads as he walked toward the meeting spot. Across the flat water the skyline of Sacramento was visible, pale red-gold in the early light, the slough calm, grass and reeds yellowed and burned with fall. He rounded the next turn and saw her standing near the big oak she’d been at the first time. Her face had lost weight and left her gaunt looking.

“For years it’s been the only way he’ll let me see my son or talk to him.”

“The only way who will?”

“Alex, my ex-husband. He’s a criminal, and I deliver things for him. Like fly to LA, pick up a stolen car, and drive it to Las Vegas or someplace.”

“Someplace like Weisson’s Auto.”

“How do you know that?”

“By following the sturgeon.” He tried to read her eyes, couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. “Are you saying you help his criminal network and in return he lets you communicate with your son?”

She nodded.

“Where is he now?”

“He moves around the world. He has a big yacht in the Med and a house in Switzerland and lots of different names.”

“Does he ever come here?”

“They say he does.”

“Did you ever go to the police?”

“Yes, and to the State Department. They said they’d work on it through channels and referred my case to the FBI. The FBI came to see me and interviewed me for two days. They’re very interested in my ex. He’s wanted for a lot of different types of crimes. He sells stolen weapons from the Soviet Union and other places. They told me about all the things he does and what I’m supposed to listen for. I speak Russian. I was a Russian; I am a Russian. His guys all know that. They all knew I was married to Alex once and they all knew the deal. They figured I wouldn’t risk screwing it up.”

“Then the FBI showed up.”

“That’s right, and they wanted me to keep on making deliveries and whatever Alex’s people wanted, and they promised they would work with the Russians, find my son and bring him here.”

“Last night you made it sound like the FBI came to you with the idea that you start doing deliveries for Karsov. Now you’re telling me the deal was already in place. Which is the truth?”

“I had already made a deal.”

“And they discovered what was going on and approached you.”

She nodded.

“And now they’ve told you they can’t get your son back, so in your mind the deal is off, but the problem is they already had the earlier evidence on you. What they’d gathered before they sanctioned your dealing with Karsov.”

She nodded again.

“They don’t usually back out of deals.”

“They backed out of this one. For a long time they said they were looking for him and when I first showed the emails I sent to him and the ones I got back, they were sure they would find him. But they didn’t and after the first year they said the emails were bounced around the world and they didn’t even know if he was in Ukraine. They thought he might be in Switzerland. They kept making me promises, but I could tell they weren’t trying very hard anymore. They said they weren’t sure they’d be able to get him. When they said they probably wouldn’t be able to and I was still lucky because they could have arrested me instead of making a deal, I guess something snapped in me. That’s when I decided I was done acting like a criminal. I decided to fake the abduction so the FBI would think something had happened to me. They knew I’d gotten involved with Fish and Game because Alex’s guys wanted me to. Then I got the idea it was the way I could fool everybody and disappear.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because it didn’t work out like I hoped. I didn’t fool anybody.”

“You fooled me. You had me racing to that fishing access. I would have gone a long time looking for you.” She reached and touched him.

“They’re going to make the sturgeon business work, so they’re learning all about Fish and Game. They want to find out where the wardens live.”

“We’re not talking about the FBI anymore.”

“No, we’re talking about Alex’s people, and the FBI knows who they are. I gave them the names, and I know they already knew some of them. But once Alex’s guys know where you live, they’ll come to you just like they do with a banker they want a loan from in Sacramento. They’ll watch your wife or your kids and then one day one of them will call you and you won’t know them but they’ll offer to pick up your kids when they get out of school, and they’ll tell you what time, where they get out, and what school. Then it’s your choice, either you let them fish for sturgeon or maybe they’ll pick up your kids and the next phone call will be to let you know you can still have your kids back. With the banker all he had to do was approve a loan. I know it doesn’t sound real, but it is, and they’re very patient. They want to know who they’re up against, and that’s why I called to meet with the SOU. They told me to meet with you and find out who you are. The FBI should have told you all this.”

“You told me last night that you called because you cared so much.”

“That’s because I was afraid you wouldn’t show up.”

“What do you think I can do for you?”

“They’re going to try to put me in prison because I stopped helping them and I’m still doing what Alex’s guys tell me to do. I just delivered a stolen car. The FBI probably knows, and they warned me if I ever stopped working with them I’d end up going to prison for all the things I’ve done for Alex. But I’m not working with the FBI anymore because I think Alex’s guys are suspicious of me. They must have found out something.”

Marquez started to answer, then turned as he heard engine noise. He saw a blacked-out Suburban coming toward them on the slough road and another down in the vineyard.

“Oh, no, here they come,” she said. “Please don’t stop me.”

She ran across the road and down the slough bank. But where could she go? Without slowing she dove into the water and swam to the other side of the slough, had climbed up the bank before the first Suburban reached him. The agents drew their guns as they came out of the Suburban. Two ran past Marquez, two others ordered him down. He saw the second Suburban down in the vineyard slowing to a stop as he dropped to his knees.

“Face down, arms out, asshole! Where is she!”

Marquez was belly down on the road, face pressed to the soft soil as his gun was stripped off him, a knee on his spine as cuffs clicked into place. An agent leaned over him.