Dead Game

by Kirk Russell

  “I can’t tell that’s a person.”

  She lifted a small set of binoculars after settling back into her seat. Marquez continued to stand and steer, one hand on the windshield, the slough up ahead narrowing. Ruax was subtle as she swept the binos along the bank, hiding the shape of them with her hand.

  “You’re right,” she said, “and he is looking at us. He’s hoping we break a shaft on a submerged log. Up ahead here is an old boat that’s been docked about fifteen years.”

  “I know the boat.”

  “The Army Corps tried to get it towed out of there years ago, but the owner fought them and won. These guys are using it to camp out in.”

  “I came in here with Raburn.”

  “That’s what I was saying, he buys from them. So he brought you here?”

  “Yeah, and I guess you and I haven’t been communicating enough.” When she didn’t answer, Marquez said, “There’s a woman across the river up ahead on our left.”

  “I see her.”

  “You’ve kept your distance since we got here, and I guess we have too.”

  “We don’t really need any help with the delta, and you’ve got enough problems with abalone, bear, and everything else.”

  “What do you think of the Russian mob idea?”

  “I’d like to see some proof. But there’s always been sturgeon poaching, and, sure the Russian community loves caviar, but the mob talk is a lot of noise so far even if the Feds show up after you start asking questions.” The abandoned boat was visible now. “We call this Camp Sturgeon. They’re here all the time.”

  Marquez kicked it into neutral and eased into reverse. The bow swung around, and he could feel them watching as he made a show of struggling with getting the boat turned around like he didn’t really know how to manage the craft. Someone hooted from somewhere on the bank.

  “Camp Sturgeon,” Marquez repeated, then added, “You’ve got a good crew.”

  “‘Most everything is in my log, and I’ll copy it off for you.”

  “I need your help with this operation, Jo. We only get a few more weeks ourselves, and either we’re going to make one or two busts or we’re going to crack this thing.”

  “My orders are I’m off the river and away from sturgeon poaching.”

  “I want to talk to Baird, see if he’ll let you work with us, unless you want a break from it all.”

  “Well, you’ve got all the pull with Baird.”

  “Yeah, I begged for an additional three weeks after Burdovsky disappeared. That’s the kind of pull I have.” He looked over at her again. “We need your help.”

  “If I’m so good how come I haven’t noticed anyone watching me, and I don’t mean some bogus mob, but some dipshit Fed in a suit in a white sedan trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  “The Feds can be pretty damned good when they want to be.”

  “Right, the Feds are invisible, and the Russian mob just invaded the delta in a submarine they stole from the old Soviet navy.”

  They turned out of the slough and onto the river again. There were more gaps in the fog as they headed downriver, and Marquez figured the day would turn pretty. He liked the smell of the cold mornings when they just started to warm on the river. You could tell the time of year in the way it smelled. Water slapped against the bow as they ran through patches of sunlight on the water. Ruax hadn’t said anything since they came under the trestle bridge, her bitterness overwhelming her again.

  “You didn’t have any of the cinnamon rolls. Do you want to get something to eat?” he asked.

  “There’s a place up here ahead where you can dock, and it’s good for breakfast.”

  “Is the coffee good?”

  Ruax smiled and her face lit up. “No, we joke about it. The coffee is terrible, but they’ve got an egg scramble that’s great.”

  Marquez kicked the engine up, and they crossed the river. He turned to Ruax as they slowed, approaching the dock.

  “What do you say we eat and figure out how we can work together?”

  22

  Marquez pulled the Fountain from the water at Loch Lomond, and after he’d parked the boat and unhitched the trailer, Ruax followed him to San Francisco. She went in to have a look at August Foods, and he left her there and was on his way back to the delta when he took a call from dispatch. Two duck hunters had found a strange dumping ground. One hunter had left a phone number, and Marquez called and talked to the man, who then agreed to meet him. He scribbled directions and turned toward the rice fields where the hunter said he’d be waiting in a white Ford pickup.

  Marquez got there ahead of the hunter and talked with Shauf while he waited. More had come in on Torp and Perry. Shauf had made it her project to find out.

  “Torp did five years for his part in a gang rape. He and a friend fed Liquid X to two high school girls in Hayward. Roofies and GHB. Both were found in his apartment, and his friends testified he’d participated in two rapes. DNA matched semen found on both girls, but somehow the evidence got tainted and Torp ended up with a light sentence. He got picked up on suspicion of rape in Washington about two years before that.”

  “Anything with children?”

  “I can’t find anything. Perry graduated from burglary to grand theft to aggravated assault, did two for a robbery. He was Richie Crey’s cellmate in Lompoc.”

  “What about sex crimes?”

  “None, but another thing about Perry is he broke three of his stepfather’s ribs after getting released last time.”

  “Where’d you get that from?”

  “A deputy in Bakersfield. The stepfather brought charges, then dropped them and called it an accident. It would have put Perry back in.” She was quiet a moment. “Can I talk to you about something completely different? My brother-in-law is supposed to be here this weekend with the kids.” If she was wondering if she could get time off, they’d find a way. “If he gets here, I want to have them over for dinner, and when our operation ends or we get shut down, I’m going to go stay with them for a couple of weeks.”

  When her sister died the family was living in Folsom, and she had thought she’d play a much bigger role raising the kids, but her brother-in-law Jim found he couldn’t stay in the same house and had taken a job in southern Cal last March. Since the move she hadn’t seen much of the kids.

  “When I talked to Jim last night he said he had to tell me something before I came to stay with them. He’s started seeing someone. He’s got a girlfriend who sometimes stays the night. He wanted me to know she might be there when I’m staying with them. I didn’t say much. What am I going to say anyway? It’s his life, and I know how hard it has been for him, but I’m having a real hard time with the idea of staying in the house and someone there taking my sister’s place.”

  “She’s not taking her place, is she?”

  “I know he’s got to go forward and all that, but for me it just doesn’t feel like it’s been very long and now the anniversary is coming up. I didn’t think it would affect me as much as it has. I was shaking all day today. I don’t care how nice she is; it’s just too soon for me. But if I don’t sleep there I won’t be around the kids when they wake up in the morning. I want to be there Christmas morning if I can, if we’re not watching these bozos. I want to bring a trunk full of presents and see their faces.”

  “You’ll be there, and the other part, he’s got to go about it his own way. No one else can know what it’s been for him.”

  She didn’t say any more, and the duck hunter drove up. Marquez followed him out to the blind. They crossed a large tract of private property and went through several gates. Then, out beyond a duck blind at the spot where a dirt road ended, there was a pile of fish heads and tails. Marquez knew before he got out of the truck that they were all sturgeons. A biologist had once told him that a sturgeon today fit almost perfectly into fossilized imprints its ancestors left two hundred fifty million years ago.

  “When did you find these?”

  A fe
w of the tails were large. He began counting, and the hunter pointed.

  “About a week and a half ago we were out at the blind down there. The dogs smelled this, and we came down here.”

  Marquez had counted better than sixty so far, all sturgeon. He turned back to the duck hunter, a young guy, overweight, earnest.

  “Were you the one who called CalTIP?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you wait to call?”

  “I don’t know. We thought they were for the rice for next year’s crop. You know, maybe to fertilize it or something.”

  “Did you know they were sturgeon?”

  He nodded. “One of the guys I hunt with goes sturgeon fishing.”

  “Then he knows about the legal size limits.”

  It was called the slot size. A legal sturgeon was between forty-six and seventy-two inches. Some of these were way over and some under. If the friend fished sturgeon then he must have realized that.

  “It wasn’t really any of our business.”

  “It’s everyone’s business. Part of why this is dumped out here is someone figures no one will bother.”

  “Look, I called it in.”

  “I’m not riding you about it. I’m just telling you we need help from everyone.” Marquez pointed at the pile. “There are more poachers than wardens. Call it in right away next time.”

  Marquez finished the count and followed the white Ford back out. He knew the duck hunter probably felt like he’d tried to do some good and had gotten lectured for his efforts. But it was going to take a lot of help from the public to save some of these species. He relayed to Shauf the eighty-two sturgeon heads he’d counted.

  “Someone like Raburn,” she said. “Where are you headed now?”

  “To pick up one of the older cars and go by Weisson’s Auto. Maybe the one Alvarez hit the tree with chasing those bear poachers up in the Trinity.”

  “The Scout?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It still runs?”

  “It runs okay. Where are Torp and Perry at?”

  “Rio Vista. The bait shop. Torp just bought a bag of Cheetos and a six-pack of Bud, so they’re having lunch. Then it’s back to the office and a busy afternoon for both of them.”

  Marquez smiled. Shauf knew that after what Torp and Perry had connected for them with August, it was worth staying with them. But later, if they went down, despite their prior records the DA would likely allow a plea bargain reduction from a 17B felony to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge. They might get sixty to ninety days of jail time, but more likely home time with a bracelet, which probably would force them to scratch out a living making dope and meth deals from Crey’s house.

  Now Marquez drove the old Scout toward Weisson’s Auto. The engine ran raggedly. It coughed blue smoke, and the transmission ground into gear when he pulled away from stoplights. When he drove up, the fence gate was open. He drove past an old yellow diesel Mercedes and a battered Ford van, vehicles they’d watched get moved at closing time a couple of nights to positions partially blocking access to roll-up doors on this face. They’d picked up on some of the habits of the owner of Weisson’s.

  After he parked, Marquez checked out the rest of the building and doubted the developer put in anything like the heavy-gauge steel the bay doors were made out of. The fence with the razor wire, the floodlights on the tall cinder-block building, gave the place a prison look and said something either about vandalism and theft in the area or about what went on inside. Body shop workers in blue coveralls. Plenty of them. He caught the eye of one.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked.

  “Yeah, some asshole hit my Scout.” Marquez walked him over and pointed at the damage. “I’d like to get a price to fix it.”

  “Looks like it happened a while ago.”

  “It did.”

  “Go talk to the estimator, but if you want my opinion the cost to fix it is probably more than this bucket is worth.”

  “It’s just a fender.”

  “You’ve got a rust problem.”

  “I know, but I’m going to drive it at least another year.”

  The man shrugged and pointed him toward the estimator’s office at the far end of the building. When he got to the estimator’s office Marquez found a heavyset guy with a cluttered desk. They walked back together, then back down to the office, and the estimator consulted a computer and came up with $1,854. Marquez expressed his shock, folded the estimate, and said he’d call. He walked back slowly, found the guy he’d first talked to.

  “He give you a price?”

  “Way over what I can afford. I just want to knock out the dent and throw some Bondo on it.” Marquez handed him a card. “What I want doesn’t need to be done in a shop.”

  “How much you want to pay?”

  “Three hundred.”

  “If I call you tonight are you going to be around? I might be able to do it for you.”

  “I’ll be around.”

  “I get off work at 6:00. You’d have to bring it to me.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I’ll call you when I get off.”

  23

  Auto body Ray checked in a little after 5:30. He was off early and wanted to get started.

  “You’re going to stop at an ATM on the way here, right?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll have the money to pay you.”

  “I can’t take a check.”

  “I’m not writing one. I’ll have cash, but what I need right now is an address.”

  He copied down the address and made a stop on the way, at a convenience store for beer and a bag of potato chips. But it turned out Ray didn’t want to drink while working, and he dismissed the potato chips.

  “You eat the grease, man. I get enough at work.”

  But then as the Bondo dried they opened a couple of beers. They sat on the curb. Ray had plugged in an extension cord in his garage but hadn’t wanted to work there because Bondo dust would get all over everything stored inside. Out here on the street the wind would take care of the dust.

  ;That’s a big operation there at Weisson’s,” Marquez said. “How many employees?”

  “Something like a hundred.”

  “Come on, not that many.”

  “I’m not shitting you. Sometimes they run twenty-four hours a day.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Two years too long.”

  Marquez nodded as though he understood that. He let a beat go by.

  “When I was there today I saw some guys carrying a big cooler like they were going to a tailgate party. What do you have to keep cold in a body shop?”

  “The boss is a big fisherman.”

  “He brings his fish to work?”

  “Naw, they deliver to him there. You know, he’ll catch something on the weekend, drop it off to have it cleaned and cut up, and then they’ll deliver it to him.” He smiled at some memory. “We get fish deliveries all the time, and he does all kinds of trades for that. You wreck your car, and Al will end up owning your boat before it’s over.”

  “The way that shop is running he probably could afford a fleet of boats, especially if the estimates are like mine was.”

  “He’s got three businesses in there. One shop is union so he can get some of the city and county contracts. And he’s got a specialty shop with a different crew. They don’t talk to us, and they do a lot of custom shit. The building is divided up, and they’re off by themselves. You’ve got to have the lock code to even get in there, but, yeah, the shop does a lot of business, runs overnight on the bodywork sometimes. They got mechanics, detailers, upholsterers, a lot of work going on. He buys and sells cars like no one’s business, wrecks out of auctions, that kind of work. Why do you want to know?” “Just got curious walking through today. You wouldn’t really know it from the outside, but it’s a big deal once you get inside.”

  “Damn straight, and low pay for lousy hours.”

  He crumpled his can. Bondo had d
ried on his fingers, and he picked at it. He stood and tried to get a crick out of his neck.

  “Look, I got to get going,” he said.

  Marquez went around to the driver’s side and got his wallet. He counted out the twenties and said, “I saw a gold Le Mans parked in there. Kind of a beater but I wouldn’t mind having it. Cars like the Le Mans were right about my time.”

  “Too late, man. Car’s going to be rebuilt and sold as a classic. The guys who brought it in traded for a van. I’m supposed to do some work detailing a couple of things on it in the morning. They got a high-mileage piece of shit, a ‘99 Ford E-150, half ton with a V-6 for trade, but if you ask me they wanted to get rid of the Le Mans.”

  “Get rid of it for what reason?”

  “You’ve got me, I don’t know.”

  At the safehouse that night Marquez cooked dinner with Roberts and Cairo. Too often they ate fast food. That was just the way it was with surveillances. But late this afternoon Roberts had bought a bass from a commercial fisherman she ran into at the Benicia dock. She had cleaned the fish, salted and oiled the fillets. Coals glowed in the grill in the backyard. But it was Cairo who’d taken the real interest in eating better, and when the SOU had been larger they had pooled their per diems and had given him the money to work with.

  One of the things about moving around California undercover was they saw what was for sale along the road in the different seasons. Marquez knew where to buy Gravenstein apples in August in Sonoma and when the best tomatoes showed up in the farmers markets, or when Last Chance peaches came down from Donner in October, right about the time the bear hunters were gearing up. If you worked for the department you could always find out where the boats were bringing in the first salmon or crab. He knew which towns had farmers markets and when, and from time to time he’d stop and buy apples because Maria loved the tart ones, or tomatoes, something on his way home to Mill Valley, and in some ways undercover for the SOU was the perfect job for knowing where to find the best produce and fruit.

  But it was most fun when the team was still ten wardens, and on a given night six could make it to dinner at a safehouse. It became a way to relax and step away from an ongoing operation. Information and ideas got passed around.