Dead Game (7 page)

“Do you remember
two Lithuanians picked up in Miami trying to sell nuclear weapons and anti-aircraft missiles? There were about forty missiles, and these weren’t the handheld fire-andforget variety either. We think most ended up in Iran. Fortunately, the nuclear deal never went down. This was in 1998.”

Ehrmann watched Marquez’s face for any reaction, probably wondering whether a Fish and Game officer would track something like that. Douglas had introduced Stan Ehrmann as their local EOC, or Eurasian Organized Crime, expert and Marquez as a warden who’d once swum from a poacher’s boat out in the bay and climbed out over the rocks in Sausalito like Godzilla. That while trying to break another poaching ring, and, though he hadn’t meant it to, Douglas’s telling made Marquez sound ill prepared, just escaping the boat with his life. No doubt Douglas
briefed Ehrmann on the SOU and their friendship and what they’d worked on together.

• • • • •

Ehrmann was a tall man, reedy, professorial, not a guy you looked at and thought FBI. But then many of the Eurasian criminals he was chasing didn’t fit traditional stereotypes either. Some were Ph.D.s and highly educated.

“We estimate there are two to three hundred of these Eurasian crime groups active in the United States. There is some cooperation and communication with other Russian groups, but not any shared structure. You can’t compare them to the Italians. EOC groups are closer to terrorist cells. Some speak their own code within their language, so we have a hard time penetrating with undercover officers. You have to remember there are fifteen republics now where there was once the Soviet Union, and there are many different dialects. In California they’re into money laundering, drug trafficking, extortion, identity and credit card theft, car rings, prostitution, murder, and a whole list of other things. Do you remember the five bodies dumped in San Pedro Dam?”

“Sure.”

“The word we use is
liquid
, and I don’t mean the water in San Pedro. They’re very liquid as organizations. They’ll put together the group they need for a criminal enterprise and dissolve when they’re done. So, who would they need for an illegal caviar business?”

“A network of fishermen and a way to broker the fish, transport it, and with caviar the means to produce caviar from roe, package and ship it. The people selling may or may not know what’s going on.”

“Are any Russian immigrants suspects?”

“We’re looking at a Nikolai Ludovna.”

“I’ve heard his name before.” Ehrmann wrote Ludovna’s name down. “Let me see what I can find out.” Now he cleared his throat and got to it. “The Bureau investigated a fire resulting in the death of a woman named Sally Beaudry. Arson investigators determined it was deliberately set, and we got involved because we had her brother, Tom Beaudry, on tape with known associates of Russian organized crime trying to arrange a loan to pay gambling debts. We had a possible motive for killing his sister in that he was beneficiary on her life insurance policy. The payout would have more than cleared those debts.

“He was in the habit of visiting his sister and gambling after she’d gone to bed. He’d fly down from here, stay with her, and drive into Vegas at night. What I think happened, and this can’t leave this room, is Beaudry backed out of a loan with the Russians and somehow they became aware of the life insurance policy. Maybe he told them she was sick and to wait a couple of years for their money. I hate to think he did, but whether they hacked it or he told them, they figured out it made more sense to keep him alive and collect when she died.”

“I’m sure you sweated Beaudry.”

“Like sweating a small hard stone. He’s also got a lot of opinions about the government. He’d built up a debt he couldn’t service running his boat as a cash business and skimming the profits. The bait shop didn’t make any money, and he’d maxed out his credit cards. The sister had disability payments and a little bit of a retirement stipend, so he couldn’t go to her, and he sure as hell couldn’t go to a bank. He had to go to a unique lender and start negotiating, except that he wasn’t in a position to negotiate.
They reached terms, but then he backed out of the loan, and we think he realized they were going to end up owning his business in short order.”

“You got this through wiretaps?”

Ehrmann nodded and continued.

“About two weeks later the fire kills Sally Beaudry. When the insurance company balked at paying, he hired a lawyer and fought them. In the end he got paid most of the policy value, and the Russians stopped looking for him soon after.”

“Have you ever looked at the guy who bought the bait shop and boat?”

“No. Give me his name.”

Marquez watched him write down Richie Crey. He wrote it without hesitating. He wrote like he didn’t have any question about how Crey was spelled.

“It’s possible,” Ehrmann said, “that organized crime fronted Crey the money to buy out Beaudry. They may have told Beaudry what the price would be as part of the whole package of getting forgiven on his late debt payment. You’d have to tell me that sturgeon poaching is worth the effort, if that’s what you’re saying they’d want the business to front for.”

“Over time it could be worth it. Crey’s an ex-con, and I’ve talked to a few people who wonder where he got the money to buy. There’s also a rumor Beaudry sold too cheaply.”

“A connection may have been made with Crey in prison. That happens. These deals have a way of getting complicated.”

Now Ehrmann glanced at his watch. He leaned forward and faced Marquez.

“We’re eighteen months into an investigation of a Ukrainian group operating along the West Coast. One of the locations we’ve
had under surveillance is in Sacramento. We believe there’s some possibility of overlap with your sturgeon poaching investigation.”

“Are you telling me we’re tracking one or more of the same people?”

“No, and unfortunately I can’t talk much about our investigation. I have to leave things vague today, and I’m sorry about that. But if there’s an overlap we don’t want any confusion. I’m going to give you a phone number for me and would appreciate one in return that I can always reach you at.”

“Where would we overlap?”

“I can’t do this with you, Lieutenant. I’m sorry, I wish I could.” Ehrmann’s gaze went to Douglas. It was about to end. They’d called him in to put him on notice, and about everything else he could draw his own conclusions. “I hope this conversation has cleared up some of your questions.”

Ehrmann walked out, and it was just Douglas and him again.

“What’s the bottom line here?” Marquez asked.

“You may get backed off of whatever you’re doing in a hurry. He wanted your phone number so that all he has to do is call you and say quit. They’ve got a lot of time into the investigation he’s talking about, and they’re close to a bust.”

Marquez stood, and they looked at each other for a few seconds. He’d been sucker pitched with a promise of information about Beaudry, but either way they would have communicated the possible overlap, the blue-on-blue problem. In which case whatever they were doing always superseded any other agency or department. That’s what it meant to be top dog.

“Remind me never to call here again.”

Douglas laughed. “Good to see you. We’ve got to get together. How are Katherine and Maria?”

“Back east looking at colleges.”

“That’s where she wants to go?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“But her mom has an idea.”

“That’s about right.” He looked at Douglas again before leaving. “How close are they with their investigation?”

“They don’t tell me anything. Call me and let’s get the families together.”

Raburn had cleaned the sturgeon
and bedded it on ice in the pickup. He had a special refrigerator set to twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature Ludovna wanted caviar stored at, so he didn’t get the cooler out until Marquez arrived. It wasn’t until they got on the road that Marquez smelled whiskey.

“Do you always get lit up before you go see Ludovna?”

“I had a couple of drinks waiting around for you.”

“Might be a good night to have a clear head.”

“Look, if I wanted someone to nag me I would have gotten married.”

“Why don’t you pull over and I’ll drive.”

Marquez ground the old pickup into gear. At Sacramento Fresh Fish they drove around back to the loading bay. The white BMW was there. Raburn used his cell phone instead of knocking on the door. A rolling door slowly rose after he hung up. An employee
wearing a butcher’s apron waited on the other side and didn’t do much more than grunt as he helped unload the sturgeon. When Ludovna walked in he was wearing a dark blue suit and looked like he was on his way to a wedding. Cologne mixed with the smell of fish, and he was careful with his shoes as he walked through the shop.

“This is my friend I told you about,” Raburn said, and Ludovna looked at Marquez without saying anything. He pulled his suit coat back so it didn’t brush against the stainless-steel table and the fish they’d unloaded. He leaned over to smell the sturgeon.

“It’s old,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” Marquez answered, giving it back to him, reading him as a bully.

“Who the fuck are you again?”

“John Croft, and it’s great to meet you. Sorry we’re late. The fish was on ice as soon as it came out of the water. Then it was in Abe’s freezer.”

“Are you going to tell me I don’t know fish?”

“I don’t know anything about you, so I don’t know what you know or don’t know. But I know about this sturgeon.”

“Yeah, yeah, you know about this sturgeon.” He stared hard at Marquez. “Where’s the caviar?”

The cooler was behind the seats in the pickup, and Raburn went to get it. He carried it in and put the cooler down on a stainlesssteel counter, opened it, removed the bowl with the caviar, and peeled back the Glad wrap. Ludovna dipped a finger in the eggs.

“Tastes like mold, like shit.”

“Let’s just load it back in the truck,” Marquez said to Raburn, saying it evenly, meaning to disrupt the show here. “I don’t need this tonight. I’ve got plenty of people I can sell to.”

He didn’t wait for an answer from Raburn and picked up the bowl and resettled it in the cooler before starting toward Raburn’s old Ford.

“Stop the fuck where you are and bring it back.”

When he turned, Marquez saw Ludovna pointing a finger at him, and Nike Man with a gun showing but still tucked in his waist. Meanwhile the employee lowered the rolling door. Marquez set the cooler down on the concrete, and Ludovna registered that but turned to Raburn.

“You’re a drunk and you’re stupid. You think you can fool me, but I have a dog smarter than you. You don’t deserve anything, but I’m going to pay some money tonight. I’m going to give you half, then you leave, and if this happens again then we never do any more business.”

Marquez looked to his left at the big sinks they rinsed fish in, drains that could handle fish guts. He looked at the small amount of money on the table representing all the sturgeon species was worth tonight, looked at the men who were destroying it, and crossed to where the money lay on the stainless-steel counter. He picked up four one-hundred-dollar bills, clean new notes Ludovna had counted out. One bill fluttered to the floor.

“Pick it up,” Ludovna said. “You take two bills and leave the rest. Pick the one you dropped up.”

Marquez picked up the bill off the floor and laid it on top of the other three, then walked back over to the cooler, everyone watching as he carried the cooler to one of the big sinks and sloshed eight pounds of caviar into the sink. Repackaged as Caspian beluga in two-ounce jars it might have brought fifteen thousand dollars. He swiveled the spigot, the water gushed, and a stream of gray eggs flowed toward the drain. They rolled and
swirled in the water and sucked down the drain as Ludovna yelled and Nike Man pulled his gun.

“Keep your money. We’ll take the sturgeon home with us, too.”

Marquez swept the eggs with his hand and washed another pound down the drain, the water a torrent getting the upper hand now. Soon the sink would be clean. Eggs popped against his palm. Ludovna crossed to him, saw the last go down the drain, and drove an open palm into Marquez’s shoulder, pushing him back. His face was dark red. A shine had started on his forehead, and Nike Man held the gun with both hands, aimed at Marquez’s head.

“What the fuck did you just do?”

“We’re not selling anymore. You didn’t like my caviar, so I threw it out. I’m the one taking the loss, so tell your goon to put his gun down.”

“He’ll shoot you and we’ll feed you down the drains.”

Ludovna said something in Russian, and the goon racked the slide. Marquez froze, his wet hands flat on the stainless-steel table. “You fuck,” Ludovna said. “You make one step and he’s going to kill you. Put your head in the sink. I’ll wash your blood down the drain, you fuck.”

“I don’t cheat people. I don’t sell bad product, but how good did you expect it to be this time of year?”

Ludovna turned abruptly to Raburn.

“I should kill you both.” Then to Nike Man, “Search him, and if he moves, shoot him.”

Nike Man checked him for a wire, doing it quickly and efficiently from behind. Ludovna waited until that was done.

“The caviar was moldy.”

Marquez gauged the change in Ludovna.

“It wasn’t the best,” Marquez agreed.

“It’s shit.”

“I did the best I could with it.”

“It’s still shit.”

Ludovna moved over close to him. He was close enough that Marquez could feel his breath and smell the cologne again.

“You keep two hundred dollars tonight.”

“I don’t want any money, and you can keep the sturgeon. It was all a mistake. It was a mistake asking Abe if he knew anyone who’d be interested in doing business long term. I’m interested in a relationship. I want someone I can call without a lot of complication when I have a fish to sell.”

Ludovna smiled, repeated Marquez’s words, making them sound weak. “A relationship.” He put a hand on Marquez’s shoulder and squeezed too hard. “That’s what you want, a relationship. Okay, next time we’ll have a drink together. You come to my house.” His voice changed, was quieter. “You want to do business with me, then I have to know who you are, okay?” He massaged Marquez’s shoulder, rubbing the skin between his fingers. “You come to my house.”

“Sure.”

“You get another fish and you call me.”

“All right.”

“When you come to my house you come alone.”

Marquez nodded. Ludovna continued to stare at him, his breath on Marquez’s face. Then he stepped back. He insisted Marquez keep two hundred dollars. He smiled and patted Raburn on the back, and all the problems were over.