by Kirk Russell
‘You could be right, but I’m going to keep at it anyway.’
That seemed to interest Hauser. He turned and studied Marquez before continuing.
‘Enrique got told he was stocking a breed of trout that had to go into the rivers at night so they could get adjusted and weren’t immediate prey for other fish. He was told that the stocking was illegal but important for the rivers and the penalties were very small. The very good pay offset that worry.’
‘Did you pay off Soliatano’s IRS lien?’
‘You have a way of surprising me sometimes, Lieutenant, but perhaps my ego blinds me. I did pay it off after he delivered what I needed, and honestly I thought I was being clever.’
‘How many pike have gone into California rivers?’
‘Thousands and you would be wasting your time if they hadn’t had a problem with a virus. They found that out about a month ago after monitoring several of the spots and seeing the early fish plants die off. Same thing happened with the hatchery fish they still had. The virus destroyed their motor control. There’s a conflicted biologist who made that happen, but he won’t be doing it again. He’s scared now.’
‘Your biologist friend?’
He didn’t answer that and pointed toward the cross.
‘Maybe there is a God. When Enrique’s truck flipped over he was carrying the first of the new plants and now they’re waiting until everything is under control again before they release more.’
‘Your mysterious biologist friend could make all the difference, but you guard the gate. You won’t let us talk to him.’
‘I made a promise to him.’
Hauser turned to look at him again.
‘ENTR’s lawsuit against me is now public knowledge. They’ll follow with a statement tomorrow or the next day and then they’ll really go after me. They probably sat Paula down and gave her a choice and she chose them. Part of the deal will be she helps them discredit me so that no one in the scientific community will ever take me seriously again. You might think I’m exaggerating but climatologists are paranoid for good reasons. The deniers can’t refute the science so they’re after the scientists.
‘It’s not unlike the Catholic Church and Galileo. He said look through my telescope and you’ll see these bodies are moving. He proved the earth was moving and in return was tried for heresy and lived out his last years under house arrest. It’s the same with our science. The deniers can’t handle the truth so they look for email conspiracies and fabricated evidence. And in reality, they’re just frightened of the truth.’
‘Where’s Emile Soliatano?’
Hauser reached in his coat. He pulled a folded piece of paper and handed it over.
‘The address is on there.’
Marquez opened it up, asked, ‘What about a phone number?’
‘I have one but I’m not going to give it to you yet. Emile and his wife are there and he has worked with me for one reason only—money. Don’t forget that when you try to get him to talk. I know you drove around with him—’
‘I get it.’
‘He’ll be shocked I gave him up but you should be able to get him to talk. He’s had twenty thousand dollars of my money in addition to the lien being paid off. That’s more than enough. He can live without any more money from me.’
‘You put out twenty grand of your own to find out how pike were getting moved to the rivers?’
‘I did.’
‘Was that the only reason?’
‘How honest do I need to be in a church?’
He gave an odd, sad smile and said, ‘You really don’t have much time, Lieutenant. They drained the tanks and the concrete runways and they’re breeding and growing with new stock. What I’ve done will slow them down but not for long.’
‘What did you do to slow them down?’
‘I called Fish and Game. I called you and tipped you to the pike project and could have given you the whole thing if you had worked with me.’
They sat a while longer in silence then talked more about his marriage. They didn’t talk about the missing eight million dollars or ENTR’s lawsuit, though Marquez intended to before leaving and after another ten minutes brought it up. Barbara Jones had sent him copies of wire transfers and the statements of two European bank officials and forwarded three emails from an FBI agent whose career was built around finding embezzled money.
‘You’ve made a mark as a scientist but you’re not much of a thief yet. You moved the money. You knew they would find it with the monthly audit and they did. Now what? What’s the plan?’
‘I have never lied to you and I would never do what you’re describing. Why would I risk going to prison?’
‘ENTR forwarded copies of wire transfers and told me this morning the FBI has identified the Brazilian banker you paid off and has tracked half of the money to Luxemburg and then Zurich, exactly half of the money, and I’m guessing you figured to offer ENTR a split with terms. On your end maybe you don’t go public with the pike project and your proof and in return their investors never learn that one of the top scientists went rogue. You leave your wife. You go to Europe and secure the money and then make a new life.’
‘Do you know what the zeitgeist is, Lieutenant? Do you know why we have all of these dystopia movies and novels right now? It’s because people sense what’s coming. The world is going to come apart with climate change. Societies are going to collapse. Don’t imagine that nations will go quietly. Are China and India going to share the rivers if there’s not enough for both? We’ll see wars as we enter a period of climate pendulum swings when the earth tries to balance what can no longer be balanced. After that it’ll be really very simple. It’ll get fucking hot. Is it so wrong to want to live more before that happens?’
‘They’ve got you, Matt. They’ve called your game. I’d return the money now if I were you.’
Marquez rested a hand on Hauser’s shoulder and then stood. He left him there in the empty church, alone and hunched forward in the pew.
TWENTY-FIVE
It surprised him that Soliatano chose a beach town, but why not here? Marquez knocked on the door of a small, well-maintained house with a good ocean view. Stinson Beach was probably as good a place as any to sit and wait, although if his wife went into labor they had a pretty long drive to a hospital. But maybe Soliatano had a plan for that as well.
With his knock the door rattled and he heard footsteps, but they were too light for Emile. When the door opened he met Soliatano’s wife and she seemed a gentle person and unaccustomed to lying. She made a run at it and then gave up and said Emile was at the beach.
‘Doing what?’
‘Trying to learn to surf. He’s always wanted to be a surfer.’
‘I’ll find him. Do you have a name for the baby?’
‘Camille.’
‘Pretty name.’
‘Thank you. Are you going to arrest him?’
‘That’s up to him.’
She stared past him and seemed unsure what to do and a dog trotted down the hall and pushed its nose out the door. Marquez reached and stroked the dog’s head and then drove down to the beach.
The surf was low and flat and he watched Soliatano try to ride the small waves and finally give up and paddle in. The afternoon was cold, the sky gray, and the beach largely empty. Soliatano picked up a towel and when he picked up his phone Marquez started toward him. Soliatano recognized him as he got close and not knowing what else to do he smiled as if greeting an old friend.
‘I’m sorry I took off. Hauser freaked out and this is what he paid me to do.’
‘You made a deal with me and you didn’t keep up your end.’
‘I had to put my family first.’
‘Is that what you’re doing learning to surf?’
‘I’m getting a new career figured out. I’m done with that factory.’
‘Good for you, but here’s some bad news. You’re not going to get any more money from Hauser. He’s going to be arrested and charged wi
th embezzlement and he’s being sued by his former company. It might have all worked if Enrique hadn’t gotten killed.’
‘I’m really down about Enrique. That’s why I’m out here thinking things through.’
‘I can see your grief.’
‘You don’t fucking believe anything.’
‘At least you didn’t get hurt, not even a scratch when the truck rolled. It did a number on the pickup and it killed Enrique and I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out sooner. I mean, look at you. You’re surfing.’
‘I don’t get hurt easily, man.’
‘Yeah, but that doesn’t quite cover it.’
‘Doesn’t cover what?’
‘I’m getting to it. There are some other things first. I found out Hauser paid your IRS lien. That’s bigger money than you told me, much bigger. If it’s true, and it seems to be true, I guessed you lied about that too.’
Marquez let that rest a moment and watched a roller break and lap into the shore.
‘I paid, not him.’
‘I just came from talking to him. He’s sitting in a church pew trying to figure out what to do next. It’s a fucked-up situation, Emile, totally fucked up, but I still need something you can trade. I need the hatchery location.’
‘Only Enrique knew.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Emile picked up his board and the towel but didn’t quite get around to leaving.
‘Here’s what I figured out. You got out of the truck because you’ve got a kid coming and the situation wasn’t the best. The track you guys wanted to back down to get close to the river was in poor condition. It was muddy and steep, but you had no choice but to put the fish in the river. We found GPS tags on the tails of a dozen of the fingerlings, so the hatchery had a way to monitor the drops. So anyway, there you are and there’s a dirt track and it’s steep and muddy and dark, an all round lousy place to back a loaded pickup down.
‘And that’s when you stopped driving. You got out to direct Enrique as he tried to back the truck down. You saw the risk and I know you didn’t think the truck would roll, but you didn’t want to be the one at the wheel. He took the wheel and you stood outside with a flashlight.
‘Now, maybe you brought Enrique along to keep you company and do the dirty work that as driver you’d otherwise have to do yourself. Who wants to ferry a jillion buckets of fish down to a river? I’m guessing your cousin did the muscle work and then the two of you tipped over the cooler and dumped out the rest. But that only worked if you got close to the water, so you bent the rules a little about where to offload the fingerlings.’
‘He was the driver.’
‘No, he wasn’t; don’t blow up your one chance here. How much did you pay him?’
Soliatano’s gaze went back to the ocean and Marquez didn’t really sit in judgment of him. The deal with Hauser got him out from under the IRS lien that probably would have taken forever to pay off, and no doubt Hauser sold himself as a white knight ultimately saving the salmon and trout. Getting out of the truck and letting the inexperienced Enrique Jordan take the wheel, well, that was cowardice, but we all have faults and he did have a kid coming.
‘I paid him a couple hundred bucks.’
‘Where is the hatchery?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You can lie but you can’t disappear without a fugitive warrant this time and sooner or later your wife gives birth.’
‘I never went to the hatchery.’
Marquez took a chance now.
‘Hauser just told me you’ve been there.’
Now they had their longest silence.
‘How do I know how it will end for me and my wife?’
‘It ends if you come clean and I find the hatchery.’
‘I can’t go to jail.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Brookfield Road off Ninety-nine and right toward the mountains and it’s something like ten miles. I’ve never been there. They bring the pickup to me. One guy drives it and they wait for me to leave.’
‘The pickup already has the coolers and the fish in it?’
‘Yeah, they don’t want anyone to know where the hatchery is and that was cool with me. But it’s not that far from where we meet. I know from the way they talked about having just loaded the fish and how to take care of them. One guy is named Barry. I think he’s in charge.’
‘I need the spot on Brookfield Road where they meet you.’
‘There’s a map at the house.’
‘Let’s go get it.’
TWENTY-SIX
Late in the afternoon Marquez crawled slowly east in heavy commuter traffic on his way back to the Sacramento safehouse. He wanted to be north on 99 before dawn and working with a tech as he searched for the hatchery. He called Captain Waller and asked for Nick Chen to get cleared to help him tomorrow. Chen and Marquez teamed up often, Chen on his computer at headquarters and Marquez out in the field.
A spotter plane would go up if they found anything tomorrow as Marquez worked from what he got from Soliatano. He felt like they had to find it tomorrow and Soliatano was the break they had needed. Finding the first hatchery might lead to the other two. Or that was his hope—that and hoping there were only three.
As he hung up with Waller a gray dusk settled over the Central Valley and a call came from Hauser. After three weeks of Hauser’s calls Marquez had grown used to the late-night harangues designed to burn time and serve as diversions from whatever tease about the pike project he started the call with. But after leaving him in the church, he didn’t expect a call today.
‘There’s nothing more I have that will help you but you need to know what you’re up against. Five years ago they funded a major study on the Asiatic carp migration working its way to the Great Lakes. That was a significant study. So was one they did with snakehead in the Potomac. There’s good science in both and it has helped everyone, but they have two faces. They’re using what they learned from the Great Lakes study with the pike introduction. They do that with everything.
‘They make money by studying current problems and then making forecasts and starting businesses that anticipate future problems. I was hired to model climate change in the western United States from 2015 to 2025 because they’re looking at future water usage. Trying to save a fish like smelt in the delta will be so yesterday and quaint no one will understand why it ever mattered.’
‘Where are you, Matt?’
‘In my car.’
‘Near your house?’
‘A couple of miles away but I can’t go there and I don’t know where to go. I stayed in the church until the priest came out and talked to me. I agreed with Paula that until things are figured out she’s in the house and I find a place to live. I stayed in a hotel last night and I lay in the bed there as I talked to her and she told me she doesn’t want to live with a thief. I’m a scientist. I was a possible Nobel candidate and that’s what she said to me, that she doesn’t want to be married to a thief.’
‘I think your lawyer’s idea is the right one. Ask ENTR not to press charges if you return the money. Start negotiating.’
‘It’s not just pike they plan to introduce into western rivers. They’re testing different species of carp too.’
Marquez started to ask about that but stopped and let it be. He edged forward in traffic, still listening but thinking about tomorrow and Brookline Road.
‘Almost all the salmon sold now is farmed and grown in pens and ENTR is getting into that business.’
‘You told me about Chile, Thailand, and Indonesia.’
‘I did?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Several times you’ve told me ENTR expects to beat the disease and musculature problems penned salmon are susceptible to.’
‘Did I tell you about the species selection team?’
‘No.’
‘The species selection team evaluates my models and makes predictive guesses about which species are likely
to thrive and dominate. Their focus is on the river systems. They’ve predicted pike and carp as predator survivors in many rivers and lakes that now have other native species. They don’t know it but their work got used for the pike project. Are you still there?’
‘I’m here, Matt. I’m listening.’
‘The future is about fighting for resources and food. Have you looked at my climate models?’
‘I’ve looked at what you sent me.’
‘After the Arctic ice goes part of North America enters a permanent drought. That’s where I focused. Overall, the warmer it gets the less snowpack. The less snowpack, the more plant and animal species change, the more fires, less water storage in the dry states, and it’s a cascade from there. You have one thing changing, then ten, then a thousand, and a Bible-thumping dystopian on his knees praying for the end times may be certain this is God’s plan, but the people you’re up against look at it differently. They see winners and losers.
‘They see losers not adapting and becoming successively weakened by heat spells, crop failures, lack of water, and businesses moving in and everything coming down to who controls the resources. The government will control the water but the people with the money will control the government and a lot of money is going to be made in rebuilding water distribution systems. Politicians are just part of the pay structure. They’re a business expense. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Where are you going with this?’
‘The illegal pike hatcheries are going to be near legitimate hatcheries such as those we have in partnership with your department. They ran a two-year pilot to assess the viability of eliminating salmon as a keystone fish in western rivers before they moved forward with the salmon farm investments and they used the science from earlier studies and from the Species Selection Team before setting up the pike hatcheries. They expect an acceleration as the climate change cascade begins. You understand what is meant by that, don’t you?’