Dead Game

by Kirk Russell

“We used to do a little sturgeon business on the side.” Marquez waited a beat to see how that registered and added, “I’ve been out of it for a while, but now I’m getting back in.”

  Crey pointed toward the door and the pale sunlight outside on the lot. He patted the girl on the rear and stepped around the counter and led Marquez out.

  “You and me, we don’t know each other,” Crey said, “and I don’t know what people have told you about me, but I messed up and did some time for it a few years back. One thing I’m not going to do is end up inside again.”

  “Abe Raburn said he’d call ahead.”

  “Raburn is going to vouch for you?”

  “He was supposed to call this morning.”

  Crey’s smile was sarcastic. “Then that’s one strike against you already because Raburn can’t keep his mouth shut about anything.”

  Marquez gauged Crey. “I’ve got a fish to sell.”

  Crey frowned at that, and Marquez wasn’t sure which way this was going to go. He knew Crey was close to telling him to take off.

  “You ever been inside, done time?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t understand what it means to not go back. What I’m leading to is I don’t do business with people I don’t know.”

  “That’s why Raburn was supposed to call you.”

  “Raburn is like the town clown with his little boat with the happy stern. Lincoln is rolling over in his grave. He’s doing fucking cartwheels.”

  Marquez spoke slower. He wanted this to work.

  “I’m not Raburn, and Raburn is getting some heat from the Gamers, or at least he thinks he is, so I’m not selling to him right now. I don’t take those kinds of risks.”

  Marquez let Crey study a face a good fifteen years older than his, and one that had seen more sun and water than his had.

  “People seem to respect you, Richie. I can sell you caviar for two hundred bucks a pound.”

  “That’s another strike against you. That’s way fucking high.”

  “Then let’s get a beer and talk about it. Or if you want, I’ll call you when I have another good one.”

  Crey didn’t say yes or no to any of it. He didn’t even say he’d ever done a deal with Raburn. He smiled the affable smile again and said, “Sure, we’ll have a beer sometime.”

  They shook hands before Marquez walked up the street to a bar Beaudry used to hold court in. He slid onto a stool, looked at what they had on tap, and ordered a Sierra Nevada Pale, then sized up the handful of people in the premature twilight of the room. A couple of women who looked like bikers, a couple of old boys who might know something, and a middle-aged black-haired man Marquez was pretty sure he’d seen around some other dock, maybe on the north coast when the SOU had worked an abalone poaching case.

  One of the two old boys down at the other end called to the bartender and, when the bartender didn’t turn fast enough, got to his feet, wondering aloud what had happened to Mac, the former bartender, and then limped toward the restrooms. Marquez left his beer and followed the man into the restroom, used the urinal next to him, asking, “How long has this kid been tending bar?”

  “Not goddamn long enough.”

  “Where the hell is the old bartender and where’s Tom Beaudry? I went into the bait shop, and there’s some asshole there who says he bought Beaudry’s shop.”

  “Stole it is more like it.”

  Marquez washed his hands slowly and took time with the paper towel, and, like many older men, this guy’s flow wasn’t what it used to be. Took him a while but after that he had no problem explaining what he meant.

  “Don’t go saying I told you this, but something funny went on when Tom sold the bait shop and his boat.”

  Marquez wadded the paper towel he’d dried his hands with and threw it away. The old boy hitched his pants and leaned toward him, turning his head a little bit like he could see better that way.

  “That kid that bought it sure as hell didn’t earn the money to buy Tom out.”

  Now Marquez sat on a torn leather bar stool between the old men. He bought a round of drinks, a gin and tonic for one and a scotch with a splash of soda for the other.

  “Rumor is Tom didn’t want to sell, but then he did it anyway because he had to. In fact, had to sell so bad he couldn’t choose who to sell to.”

  When Marquez thought of the bait shop, a single blue neon sign, BAIT, BEER, ICE, faded markers, the dusty windows in a building that listed like a shipwreck, the idea seemed absurd. Beaudry kept his boat in good repair, made a point of saying that’s where the money should be spent, yet even the boat wasn’t worth forty grand. It had to go deeper than that. Marquez took a pull of beer, turned the bottle so the label faced him as he put the beer down. He picked at the label with a fingernail.

  “Either of you have a phone number on Beaudry?”

  “Hell, no, but he’s up along Lake Berryessa. He’s got a house across from the lake. I bet you can find him if you really want to.”

  Marquez laid another twenty on the dark wood bar. “A final and then I’ve got to take off.”

  “Well, as long as you’re buying let me tell you another story that went around. Tom Beaudry had a sister who died in a fire down in Henderson, Nevada. Her house burnt up with her in it, and the rumor up here was Tom borrowed money from the wrong people and couldn’t pay them back fast enough, so they killed his sister. There was a retired FBI fellow who used to live around here who told us that.”

  “Is he still around?”

  “No, he moved to the desert. He knows things about Roswell, New Mexico, that the government has been suppressing. He’s going to write a book about it so he’s got to be somewhere they can’t find him first.”

  Marquez thanked the old boys and left enough money for yet another round. He walked out into a cold wind, and from his truck he called the Las Vegas police and ran the arson story by a captain he knew there, who as it turned out knew about the fire and the controversy. He gave Marquez the name of an officer in the Henderson PD that he said was a pretty straight-up guy, but he suggested Marquez call the FBI first.

  “Why would I want to screw up my operation?”

  Heard the laugh on the other side, the understanding, then got the explanation.

  “Because there may be an organized crime angle and that’s the Feds’ turf.”

  “What kind of organized crime?”

  “The new boys in town are Russians, and that was the rumor.”

  Marquez thanked him and sat in his truck still holding his cell phone before deciding against a cold call to the FBI in Vegas. He was holding the phone when Shauf called. She’d followed Ludovna and another man to a café on old Main Street in Isleton. She sounded angry or disturbed or both.

  “Guess who just pulled up, parked, and went inside a café here to meet Ludovna.” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Raburn is at a table with Ludovna and the running suit. Did he call you and say anything about meeting Ludovna?”

  “No.”

  “They’re in there laughing, John. Ludovna is sitting close enough to kiss him. Does that seem right?”

  12

  When Marquez knocked on Tom Beaudry’s door, morning sunlight was high on the rounded hills behind the house. It hadn’t been hard to get an address on Beaudry, a little police magic, but looking around at the other houses and the lake across the street it seemed a surprising place to find a guy who’d scratched out a living with a bait shop and a sport boat. When the door opened he saw recognition, brief shock, then a tightening around Beaudry’s eyes at the invasion of his privacy.

  “I’m retired.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You used to help us, so I thought you might again. I’ve got some photos of people I’d like to run by you.”

  Beaudry had lost weight. His hair had whitened. His skin, though permanently tanned, had paled as though he no longer spent any time outside.

  A
woman’s voice called from another room, “We have to leave right now, Tom.” Then she appeared in the hallway, a large purse hanging off her shoulder. “Who’s he?”

  Marquez stepped aside as she went past him. He slid photos out of a manila envelope that included several miscellaneous faces, a few with features similar to Raburn’s, Ludovna’s, and August’s. He had a single photo of Anna. Because Beaudry’s hands were deformed by arthritis, Marquez held each so he could read them, then moved slowly to the next.

  “Well, that’s Abe Raburn, the fool. He and his brother were runaways who showed up in Isleton must have been thirty years ago. In those days whether they ate dinner or not depended on how much fish they caught. They told everyone they were eighteen but they couldn’t have been more than fifteen and spent half their time hiding out. I know for a fact neither one of them had a legal driver’s license until they were in their twenties.” He tapped a gnarled finger on Ludovna’s face. “This man is a foreigner and a communist, one of the Russians that came over after Reagan finally brought those bastards to their knees. He was out on my boat a couple of times bragging how important he was in Russia.”

  Marquez showed more photos, including a profile of August taken at fifty feet and not easy to read. Down in the car Beaudry’s companion honked the horn twice, leaning on the horn with the last burst.

  “No, I don’t recognize anyone there.”

  “How about her?”

  In the photo Anna had hair pulled back. She wore sunglasses and a dark blue tank top showing tan shoulders and arms.

  “Sure, she worked as a river guide and bartended in Rio Vista at night. Nice girl and cute. You’re not going to tell me she’s poaching?”

  “What I’m wondering is whether you remember ever seeing any of these people together.”

  “Now her mother was a Russian, wasn’t she?” The horn sounded again, this time a longer blast, and Beaudry yelled, “Goddammit, stop that.”

  Marquez nodded. “Her mother was a Russian who immigrated here. She worked at UC Davis as a scientist. She and Anna lived in the delta.”

  “You’re wondering if I ever saw her with this other Russian?”

  “Did you?”

  “Not that I can remember, and I can’t believe she’d be mixed up with sturgeon poachers. That’s what this visit is all about, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What I remember of her is she loved to be on the water. She worked for one of those guide businesses, but you know that already.”

  The horn sounded again, and Beaudry touched Marquez’s arm. He closed the front door and without a word moved toward the steps, calling back to Marquez after he’d started down.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Marquez slid the photos back into the envelope and followed him down the steps. He was surprised how unsteady Beaudry was. When they reached the car Marquez asked his last questions.

  “Who’d you sell your business to?”

  “A young man whose father I knew very well. The boy isn’t made of the same stuff as his father, but I needed the money and I wanted to see him try to make a new start. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you.”

  Marquez was still at the top of their driveway as Beaudry and the woman drove away. He knew as he got back in his truck that he was going to call the FBI, and that meant starting with someone he trusted. He found his address book and then the number for Charles Douglas, who as far as he knew was still in the FBI Field Office in San Francisco. He’d worked with Douglas twice before, most recently trying to take down a drug smuggler who’d branched into abalone poaching. But it was the first time he’d worked with Douglas in ‘98 that had marked him most. That was during an FBI search for a child abductor who was working California coastal towns the SOU knew well.

  “Good to hear your voice,” Douglas said.

  “Likewise. How’s your war on terror coming?”

  “Until we figure out what the other side really wants it’s going to go on a while. But my kids are growing up, and my wife got her law degree.”

  “Congratulate her for me.”

  “I will.” Douglas let a beat pass. “But you’re calling.”

  “I’m chasing sturgeon poachers, and there was a fellow who used to own a bait shop in Rio Vista named Tom Beaudry. Beaudry had a sister who died in a fire in Henderson, Nevada, and there may have been some question about whether it was a homicide or an accident. I understand the FBI got involved, that the Bureau may have questioned Tom Beaudry about a loan made to him that may have been Russian mob money.”

  “We call it Eurasian Organized Crime nowadays. EOC.”

  “That’s fine, but the story I heard was that these were Russians.”

  “And where’d you hear all this?”

  “I called a friend.”

  “Okay, let me ask it a different way, what’s this have to do with sturgeon poaching?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but we’re looking at the guy Beaudry sold his bait shop and boat to. I know it’s a long shot that you can help me, Charles.”

  “It is a long shot, but I’ll check for you. No promises, okay? Is this the number to get you at?”

  “It is.”

  Marquez hung up with Douglas and turned the heater on high as he left Berryessa. He still couldn’t shake the cold that felt as though it had reached down to his bones. The sun was bright when he reached the valley, and he drove toward the delta on Route 12, running out through the low rolling hills where the B-52s had practiced touch-and-go landings for years, their shadows darkening the sky as they lumbered toward Travis Air Force Base. Douglas called back before he’d crossed through the low hills and reached Rio Vista.

  “How long would it take you to get to San Francisco?”

  “A little over an hour if I turn around now.”

  “The head of our Eurasian Organized Crime unit would like to talk with you. Ask for me when you get here.”

  “See you there.”

  13

  “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.”