by Kirk Russell
Torp and Perry crossed the Bay Bridge and dropped into San Francisco. No one said anything except to call out their own position or that of the van. Then, as they got closer, Shauf voiced it.
“Is this possible?” she asked. “These two spitballs.”
August Foods had Christmas lights up and a holiday display of Belgian chocolates and Italian cookies and breads in brown paper wrappers near the entry. Torp and Perry had pulled into a yellow zone, and Torp stayed with the van while Perry went inside. He spotted August in the middle of the store holding an olive oil bottle, talking to a couple, and began to move toward him. Marquez shifted his binoculars to August’s face, saw him raise a hand above the head of the woman he was selling olive oil to and stop Perry’s approach. When that happened Perry went back out to the van, leaned against it, and fired up a smoke. Inside, August had disappeared.
“We may have just caught our break,” Marquez said to Shauf. “Here comes August’s Porsche.”
The van side door slid open, and Perry lifted out a carry-on suitcase that he brought around to the passenger side of August’s car and rested on the seat. August pulled away. He drove south, and the SOU followed him off the airport exit and then into the short-term parking garage at SFO. He crossed to the terminal, checked in at one of the United computer stations, and was in the security line before Marquez reached anyone at SFPD who could direct him to their airport security chief. Meanwhile, August walked toward a gate with his carry-on, which had run through X-ray with some questions but no delay.
“Do you want to follow him or watch him on camera?” the security chief asked.
“Both.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Three, and I’d like to get at least one of us to the gate where he is.”
“Will you possibly be boarding a plane?”
“I don’t think so.”
Shauf followed August out to the gate and watched him sit down. They had his flight. United 1375 to LA. Marquez watched Shauf in grainy black and white on the airport video monitors as she talked to him on her cell.
“He’s about an hour early,” she said. “Why? Who gets here early to go to LA?”
August sat with his legs crossed, arms folded as he looked out the windows at the planes coming in.
“Who is he?” the security chief asked, and Marquez gave him a quick recap. “We’re pretty sure he’s repackaging illegal caviar and selling it out of his stores. But he’s got a system for moving it we haven’t figured out.”
Maybe they were in the process of figuring it out. Another man entered the screen and sat down near August, leaving the gap of one seat between them. He also had a carry-on, similar in type. He started talking with August. Stocky man, fleshy face. Marquez asked the security chief if he could get sound.
“God no, we can’t even get cargo holds X-rayed.”
He watched August’s lips. Twenty years of undercover and some training and he was pretty good at this, but he didn’t think it was English they were speaking. When August got to his feet, the other man stood as well. They left the gate, then went into a restroom, and Marquez looked to the chief.
“I guess I’ve got to ask what I’ve been wondering all these years. How much can you see?”
“You don’t want to know. Follow me.” He led him to a secluded screen, and they had a top-down view of the toilet stalls and urinals. August was at a sink, his carry-on against a wall near the exit. He slowly washed his hands while keeping an eye on his bag. Then the other man used the urinal, his carry-on parked next to August’s.
Shauf asked, “What are you seeing?”
“Man number two at the urinal, August at a sink. The two bags are next to each other. Now August is leaving and the other guy has moved to the sinks.”
“Did you catch that?” the security chief asked quietly off to Marquez’s side.
Marquez relayed what they’d just watched onto Shauf. “They traded bags in the restroom.”
Forty-five minutes later the unknown man had a name and was on a flight to Seattle. Instead of flying to LA, August drove back to San Francisco. He went to his apartment and carried the bag upstairs while Marquez talked to Washington Fish and Wildlife and then U.S. Fish and Wildlife in Seattle, trying to get the inbound man tracked. They decided to follow the man rather than stop him in the airport with the carry-on, and toward dusk the bad news came.
“I’m sorry,” the Washington warden said. “We’re not even sure how he did it, but we’ve lost him.”
“He’s gone?”
“Like he was never here.”
19
Two women sat on a big black leather couch in Ludovna’s living room. One wore skin-tight jeans and couldn’t have been more than eighteen. The other wore a short skirt and a top that had to be a little cold tonight. Marquez handed Ludovna the bottle of vodka he’d brought him. He looked around the room. The sliding door to the backyard was open, and chill December air flowed in. Steam rose from the hot tub in the backyard.
“You didn’t tell me it was a party,” Marquez said, and then “Hello” to the women. The call had come from Ludovna, and he’d left Shauf and Roberts and driven from San Francisco. In the corner of the room an old Western movie played silently on a high-density screen.
“These are my friends.” Ludovna looked at them. “You girls go outside.”
He poured two vodkas, handed Marquez one. From the backyard the smell of dope drifted in through the door.
“The first thing I bought in America was a house, even before a car. A car is bullshit. You can always get a car.”
“You must have had some money when you got here.”
“Someone stole my car a couple of nights ago. I was out with one of the girls and someone stole it. It was a beautiful Cadillac, and they stripped it and burned it, so now I have to get a new car. But a car is no big deal. A man should have a place of his own. Where do you live?”
“Here, in Sacramento. But now I want to move in with you. You’ve got girls, a big house, and plenty to drink.”
Ludovna smiled and refilled their glasses. He downed his and gestured for Marquez to do the same. But Marquez didn’t kill his drink. He looked from Ludovna’s face to the big room and the fireplace, heard the women giggling outside.
“If you want a house like this, get me a thousand sturgeons.”
“Sure, I’ll catch a thousand tomorrow.”
“Here everyone wants to make a lot of money. In Russia I was a KGB officer in charge of interrogating foreigners, and now I sell fish and real estate in the land of opportunity. You get me good sturgeon, and we’ll make you rich.”
Marquez lifted his glass, toasted, “To catching every last sturgeon.”
Ludovna refilled the glasses and expounded his theories on money and America as Marquez watched the two women in the backyard. A low deck surrounded the hot tub. The backyard was deep with a lawn and low-voltage lights along the back fence. It was landscaped. He watched one of the women bend over the hot tub to test the water. She kept her legs straight and arched her back for them.
“You like her, you can have her tonight,” Ludovna said.
“Thanks, Nick.”
“You need to wear something when you’re with her.”
“Yeah?”
“I caught something from her once.”
The women came back in, and Ludovna told one to get some caviar for his friend. He poured the women vodka and said to the younger one, “After you bring the plate, you should get in the tub.”
She made a show of saying that was going to be fun. She touched one of her nipples, and yet it didn’t seem like she was looking forward to the tub. Ludovna waited until they were in the kitchen.
“How do you know so many guys catching sturgeon?”
“I don’t know so many guys.”
“You said you did.”
“I exaggerated because I want your business. It’s what we do in America. First we exaggerate to sign you up, and then we tell y
ou how it’s going to be.”
“No one knows you. I asked around and no one knows you.”
“Raburn knows me.”
“So why does he help you fuck him? He sells to me. Why would he want you to get any of the business?”
“Because he owes me money.”
“Raburn owes you?”
“Yes.”
Ludovna thought about that. He was quiet, and then his eyes returned to Marquez’s face.
“Do you know how to make caviar?”
“Sure.”
Ludovna refilled the glasses again, and the young woman with skin-tight jeans came out with a plate of caviar, little crackers, and sliced lemon. She’d lost her top in the kitchen and sat down next to Marquez after putting the platter on the table. She snuggled close. Her breast was rock hard, but it didn’t hurt.
“We’re talking,” Ludovna told her, “you and her go in the tub.”
“I want to sit here.”
Ludovna’s voice hardened abruptly. “Go in the tub,” and Marquez wondered if he was sitting with a small-time hood moving a little bit of stolen fish and whatever else, or whether Ludovna was as organized as they imagined he might be. When he gave Ehrmann Ludovna’s name, Ehrmann had acted uninterested, and maybe the FBI had already checked him out. The new Bureau could get all phone numbers on a suspect very quickly and send them to their Special Operations Division in Virginia. The computer there would track any hit on any of those numbers. His guess was the Feds had already looked at Ludovna and didn’t see anything to go after.
The women stripped their clothes near the sliding door and walked out to the tub, both men watching as they dipped their feet in the water and then climbed in. Ludovna gestured toward them with his glass.
“They’re good for me. I don’t have a wife anymore. In my last year in the KGB I taught interrogation. If you interrogate a wife about sex, it’s very complicated. But not with these women. With them it’s very simple, and for now that’s okay for me.”
“You were KGB?”
“Yes, and I was very good at knowing when I was being lied to. That was my talent. Yesterday, I read in the newspaper that the FBI told the military not to torture the prisoners in the Guantanamo Base. The military didn’t listen to the FBI, but the FBI was right. It’s easier to get them to talk if you don’t torture them. The important thing is to scare them deep inside, but not make them hate you. You want them to talk, of course. I could take a man like Raburn and make him tell me everything he has ever done. A man like that is easy to break. You see the way he is nervous. I could break him down so he shakes all the time the rest of his life. The brain is very delicate.”
“That’s an interesting story.”
“It got me here.”
“What got you here?”
“What I knew got me here. Everything is information. That’s what everyone is trading. I could put you in a chair in a room, and it would take days, maybe weeks, but in two weeks I promise you would want to make me happy. If I told you to smile, you would smile. If I told you to urinate in a cup and drink it, you would do that too. You would drink my piss.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know, but I know. This is what I was good at. Where is your house in Sacramento?”
“What?”
“Where do you live? What street?”
“I’ll invite you over, and you can come see how we live. We don’t drink our urine, but we have a good time.”
“When do I come to your house?”
“How about later this week? Let me check with my wife and I’ll call you.”
Ludovna seemed okay with that. He reached for the bottle again, then built a cracker with caviar, asked Marquez to eat it and tell him where the caviar was from.
“From here,” Marquez said after taking a bite.
“You’re right.” He leaned forward, got closer. “I don’t like your friend Raburn, but I understand him. I know the ways he is weak, but you I don’t know yet. You hide things.”
“Who doesn’t?”
Ludovna refilled Marquez’s glass. They ate different caviar, small black beads of sevruga, flavor bright and intense. Marquez lifted his vodka and downed it.
“All the bullshit in this country,” Ludovna said. “I started with an American wife, like Raburn’s brother, only in reverse. I didn’t have to mail for mine; she was already here.”
“So what happened to her?”
“She went off the road into the river in her car in the fog.” He pointed at Marquez’s hand. “Why don’t you wear your ring?”
“It catches on fishing gear.”
“See, all the bullshit.” Ludovna smiled. “Everybody has the answer ready. Everything is bullshit. In this country there are people who want to save every kind of animal, but with the sturgeon it’s the United States who helped to get the ban on Caspian sturgeon lifted. No other country eats so much caviar, not even the French. The U.S. wants to make better relations with Iran so they are willing to let the poachers kill the rest of the Caspian. They’re helping the wrong poachers. They should help us ban everything from the Caspian so the price will rise here.”
Marquez looked at his watch. “Nick, I’ve got to take off, but I’ll call you and invite you over.” Marquez stood. “Thanks for the drinks. Enjoy your girls.”
“No, sit down, don’t go yet.”
Marquez started to move out from around the coffee table. He stopped at the end of the couch, knew Ludovna had to control the situation.
“You stay for one more drink. We are almost finished talking, but I want you to understand.”
“I think I do understand, but I don’t want to recite my Social Security number or tell you all the places I’ve lived or the people I know so you can check on me. It’s not worth it to me.”
Marquez moved back along the couch and sat down, and Ludovna moved over and sat alongside him. Their thighs pressed against each other. Ludovna refilled the shot glasses.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, then pretended to backhand Marquez’s face. “Sometimes you have no choice but to use force. With a woman I hit one side, then the other. Always the back of my hand, okay. Never hard enough for her to lose consciousness, but always I wore a ring that tore the skin. Women don’t like to lose the way they look. Even the ones who are very tough hate to lose that. Even the ugly ones.” He brushed knuckles across Marquez’s face. “Never too hard, but scarring each time until I get a specific answer. That was my other career before fish and real estate, before I came to America.”
He sat back. The vodka had reached him, opened his tongue, reddened his cheeks and the starburst of capillaries on his nose. The attempts at physical intimidation didn’t mean much to Marquez, but he felt the touch of paranoia he’d felt when he’d walked in tonight. Ludovna would work hard to find out everything he could about him. Ludovna leaned back, his leg still pushed against Marquez, stone-washed jeans, soft leather shoes.
“Raburn is lying. I know this, and if you are not who you say you are, you should leave now and nothing will happen to you.”
“I’m just trying to make some money.”
“Okay, I want to hear you talk about what you know. Tell me about the land of the delta, the seasons, what you know about the sturgeon.”
So he did, talking for another twenty minutes but drinking little more, drawing an image of the Sacramento River coming from the north, San Joaquin from the south, the Consumnes, the Mokelumne, the levees and sloughs branching, where the tide ran, the brackish water, the shifting through the year. He named fishermen he knew, people Ludovna knew or could check out or wouldn’t know how to approach and who’d rebuff him anyway. He made up a couple of names and put people in boats they didn’t own and along Montezuma Slough and fishing between the Mothball Fleet.
Sometime later, after the women were back in the house complaining that they were lonely, a car pulled into the driveway. Marquez heard doors slamming, voices. The doorbell rang, and Ludovna greete
d a friend who introduced himself as Mickey, which he said was short for Mikhalov. Mickey had four two-ounce jars of caviar with August’s import label on them, and Marquez felt Ludovna follow his eyes to the labels.
“Time for you to go,” Ludovna said, walked him out and then to his truck on the street. “If things are not right, then Raburn and his brother are responsible. Do you understand?”
Marquez wanted to ask about the brother but didn’t want to reveal he didn’t already know. “I hear you,” he said, got in the truck, and Ludovna was still standing in the road as he drove away.
20
Brad Alvarez had left the SOU in April. By then they’d heard the first rumors of the poaching ring they were after now. Alvarez had returned to the central coast as a warden, and Marquez hadn’t seen him since June, so it was great to walk in and spot him in back in a booth. Alvarez already had a beer and was watching a cook make pizzas, fire them in the woodburning oven.
“Did you drink him under the table?”
“No, Ludovna can put away the vodka, but I did my part.”
“How are you feeling?”
“A little buzz, but I’m okay.” Marquez looked around. “Hungry.”
It smelled like cheese melting in the open wood-fired oven. Alvarez had grown a goatee again. He looked like the resistance leader of a guerrilla unit who’d come out of the jungle for a beer.
“It’s time to check out the KGB story, and he told me tonight he had a wife here who went into the Sacramento River in her car and drowned. Doesn’t seem very troubled by that.”
“Where are we at, overall?”