Night Game jm-2

by Kirk Russell

  He checked a video arcade, a mall, and then in a parking lot next to the In-N-Out Burger where they’d seen him eat several times, he spotted Ungar in his car.

  He parked and punched in Ungar’s cell phone number as he crossed the street, watched him pick the phone up, stare at the screen, and lower it again. That’s my guy, Marquez thought. He came up the passenger side, rapped on the window. Ungar’s startled eyes brightened, then flattened. His hand went reflexively to his mustache and the window lowered.

  “Hey, I forgot, I’m sorry.”

  “No sweat. Good to see you.” Marquez reached through the open window to shake hands, Ungar’s grip light, his fingers wet. “Why don’t we talk here?”

  “How’d you know I was here?”

  “Remembered you talking about the burgers and was hungry.

  Lucky, huh?”

  Of course, it wasn’t, and he watched Ungar’s face tighten.

  When the lock released Marquez swung the passenger door open, and the smells of fast food, cigarette, incense, and dope sucked out into the salt breeze. Ungar moved wrappers off the passenger seat.

  “I just spaced it out,” Ungar said. “Worked all night for a client. I’ve been sitting here listening to music, cools my mind down.”

  “Busy.”

  “Real busy. You ever work for yourself?”

  “Only once and not for long.”

  “Used to getting fed by the government.”

  “Yeah, eating up your tax dollars.”

  Ungar had a computer business that as near as they could tell he ran from his apartment and the trunk of his car, building computers for clients out of generic parts or problem solving, pretty vague about how he got his clients. But they had confirmed that he’d worked in Silicon Valley for years. He was a bright guy, he knew people, his cell phone ringing often when Marquez had sat with him. He was pushing through his thirties with no family. Both parents had died in a car accident. Ungar carried a newspaper clipping of their deaths folded up in his wallet. He’d showed it to Marquez.

  Informants generally wanted money or revenge or to eliminate competition, but Ungar had told them his motive was concern for the environment. He’d had a cathartic moment while watching the Discovery Channel, where they’d run a show on bear poaching. It so disturbed him that he’d called Fish and Game to rat out his cousin’s connection, though not his cousin. That was the catch; he wouldn’t give them the cousin’s name. He’d spun a story for them about not being very connected with the Korean end of his family, but this third cousin and he had partied together when they were younger, and family was family. He couldn’t give his cousin up.

  So they’d figured there wasn’t any cousin and Ungar was worried about getting caught for something he’d done. Or maybe there was a cousin. What he’d given them was a phone number to leave a message for a man selling bear parts and bile products. In June they’d made their first buy after using that number. Marquez had continued to tell Ungar they’d never reached the bear farmer, but then, he knew Ungar was lying to them too.

  “How’s that burger?” Marquez asked.

  “Go get one. You don’t need to order fries if you don’t mind eating after me. You can have mine.” Marquez looked at the fries, saw a stubbed-out cigarette in them. “Oh, yeah, forgot about that,” Ungar said and pulled the cigarette out. “Guess you’ll want to order after all.”

  “You don’t mind waiting?”

  “No problem.”

  Marquez looked back at him as he got out of the car, a cleanfeatured guy, a pleasant if bland face, black hair, small nose, gray sifting in, but keeping himself in shape, a single guy cruising toward forty with a pretty good idea of himself. They’d allowed him to smoke in the interview room because he’d insisted he had to if he was going to talk. He was that kind of nervous underneath.

  Ungar would watch him order now, watch him through the glass, watch everything he did.

  Today Ungar wore jeans and sandals, a wrinkled white shirt rolled up to his elbows, a beaded belt. It was another thing about him, some days dressed hippie nostalgic, smoking a joint, chilling with the music, a computer type working best at night; other times they’d seen him dressed in a suit, tie knotted close to his throat, getting out of his Lexus wearing Armani. None of which figured with the fogbound, middle-income apartment complex, yet it was something Marquez had seen before, both with Fish and Game and the DEA, a guy showing just enough flash to enjoy the money he was taking in, but not so much as to get people really looking closely at him.

  “Talked to your cousin lately?” Marquez asked when he got back with the burger, drink, and fries.

  “You want to do the cousin questions right away?” His hand went to the mustache again, stroking it. “I talked to him yesterday. He’s been selling stolen cell phone chips, taking a break from bear parts, I guess, but he’s gotten a hold of enough weed he wants to sell me as much as I’ll buy.”

  “Where’s he living now?”

  “Somewhere out in the valley, Stockton, Sacramento, maybe one of those foothill towns like Placerville. I don’t ask.”

  “You mentioned a woman once in Placerville.”

  “You here about her?”

  “Just wondering what you remember.”

  “You’ve come across her.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You hoping to get laid or bust her?”

  “You said her boyfriend was a bear hunter.”

  “That’s on the tape?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t remember saying it.”

  Marquez took another bite and remembered Ungar racing down Highway 1 earlier in the summer. After he’d come to them with the tip they’d put him under surveillance for a week. He’d shaken them by passing cars, which had only added to the idea that he was the “cousin.” Even now Ungar was checking his mirrors, probably looking for the rest of the team. Marquez ate some fries, another bite of burger, let the silence work.

  “Let’s say we grant your cousin immunity.” Marquez pulled his phone out and laid it on the dash. “I mean, let’s say I make an offer.”

  “Let’s fast-forward this conversation. Next comes the part where I say I don’t have his number. Then you ask, why not? I say I don’t want you to bust my cousin and then you insinuate I am the cousin. Okay with you if we just skip to the end, because I’m a little wired this morning. I’ve been staring at a computer screen all night, and now I’m watching you use my car as a kitchen table. It depresses me. Why don’t we deal with the rest of the predictable questions, then say good-bye?”

  “What I’m saying is we won’t bust your cousin.”

  Ungar smiled a tight-lipped private smile, kept his gaze through the windshield.

  “That’s for sure, and you say it every time. It’s still not going to happen.”

  “We want to sit down with him, but it could be over the phone. He could give me information that makes it easy to get him immunity. Why don’t we call him?”

  Ungar started fiddling with the CD deck, and Marquez ate the rest of the burger, leaned back in the leather seat, wondering as he had each time if the expensive car had been bought with profits made selling bear parts. He still harbored the thought that Ungar could be their bear farmer. String it together a particular way, factor in his computer skills, trips to the mountains, the house he owned in Placerville that was rented to a family. You could get there, though Ungar didn’t even have a speeding ticket on his record.

  “Still can’t help you,” Ungar said, breaking the silence.

  The CD changer clicked, and “Pass the Courvoisier” started playing. Ungar reached to turn it off and then withdrew his finger.

  “What do you like more, Jay-Z or Busta Rhymes?” Ungar asked, then said, “Music has all gone past us, it’s all about money and making a lifestyle for people like you and me. You got any kids?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never wanted any, but it’s lonely at night. Now I want the money, build myself a lifest
yle.”

  “You’ve got the car, maybe you move somewhere nicer.” Marquez paused. “I think you did a really good thing when you called us the first time. That was a stand-up move.”

  “A cop knocked out my cousin’s two front teeth. Hit him with the baton.” He took his hand off the wheel and play-swung like a baton coming at Marquez’s face. “Real cops too, not fish cops, and no reason for it. Just didn’t like his Asian face. What do you think of my face?”

  “I see tension.”

  “I’m tense because this is getting old.”

  “You told us you went to parties in Placerville with your cousin. You mentioned a woman with black hair.”

  “Already answered that.”

  Marquez tried a few more questions, then crumpled the paper trash from the burger, pushed open his door, and said, “Thanks for seeing me today.”

  “Anytime.”

  A couple of hours later, after he was home, Marquez got a call from their seller, the mechanized rasp coming through his cell. “They carried it too far,” the voice said. “A mistake, humiliating for you, it shouldn’t have happened that way. I’m delivering the galls. I’ll tell you where to find them.”

  “This isn’t working for me. You make it too hard.”

  “I can get you as much as you want.”

  “Why don’t you personally bring me what I bought the other night?”

  The line clicked, and he was gone.

  11

  That night Marquez walked with Katherine along Stinson Beach. Blue starlight reflected off the waves and surf foamed over their bare feet. He loved the salt smell, the long crescent of sand empty in front of them, walking with his hand on the smooth skin of her upper hip, feeling the rhythmic flow of her muscles, the warm heat. They caught up on things, talking about Maria first. More tales about Maria’s driving too fast, having close calls, inches from one accident, and Kath feeling that he needed to have a serious discussion with her. Then talking about the bedroom they were going to add onto the house and a deal Kath had found on the Internet for a week’s stay in a Kauai condo on a website called CondoBob.com. It was so cheap she wondered if they couldn’t go at Thanksgiving.

  She was making pretty good money with her two coffee bars in San Francisco, not great money but better money than they’d seen, though they both knew it was going to take everything they had and then some to do the bedroom addition. A lot of the work he’d have to do himself, and they wouldn’t be able to afford to travel, but tonight it was nice to talk and dream.

  They left Hawaii and talked about the house addition in more detail. Driving around Sausalito she’d seen the work of an architect named Barbara Brown and thought it was great. She wasn’t saying change architects but wanted to show their architect some of the details she was interested in.

  Marquez had hired Josh, a young architect whose plans the county bureaucrats kept sending back for revisions. Though both he and Kath had been enthusiastic about Josh at the start, Katherine had started to talk like she wasn’t directly involved with him. But he knew Josh would get it done, and even if they had a permit now they couldn’t start building.

  All this second-guessing Josh made Marquez think of his grandfather and the patience his grandfather had shown him when he’d been an unhappy kid with a lot of nervous habits, an unintentional loner uncomfortable at school and distrustful of adults. Alongside his grandfather he’d learned the little bit of construction he knew, principles he hoped would help him build this bedroom addition. With his grandfather he’d built a dry rock wall along a dip in the driveway, the deck off the dining room, and a number of other small projects. His grandfather had shown him how doing something well shaped your whole life. Marquez figured his ghost would look over his shoulder as he worked out how to do this addition. He knew also that the architect would eventually deliver an approved set of plans, and the timing would be fine.

  As they left the beach and walked to the truck the conversation turned toward the bear operation. He’d already told her the FBI crime lab hadn’t pulled any fingerprints and had only trace DNA that came off the CD jewel box, probably a combination of the man who’d transported it and himself. Either way, the DNA would only serve to corroborate.

  “Someone hacked into Fish and Game personnel files more than a year ago,” he said.

  “That long ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s being done about it?”

  “We’re getting emergency funding for new firewalls.”

  “Things are that tight?”

  “They are.”

  She was quiet a moment, then said, “So they’re not going to catch him by tracing who hacked in.”

  “The two things might not even connect. Could be some hacker was in and out for a while just because it was a fun challenge.

  May have read something about the Special Operations Unit and hacked into that for cheap thrills.”

  “The CD scares me.”

  She was voicing her feelings but also asking him a question.

  He was the one who did this for a living: how worried was he? He hadn’t told her about this last buy, this shakedown, stripping his shirt on the empty creek road, or the call this afternoon propelling it all forward again.

  “The guy we’re dealing with is a little bit of a psycho, but he’s also very connected, which means he’s not too far out there. He can talk to people, and he’s built a network. One thing, though, it feels like his problem with law enforcement goes beyond business.

  Still, I’m betting business comes first.”

  “Could he have anything to do with the murder of that student? Has anything more come of that? What’s that detective’s name again?”

  “Kendall.”

  “Has he told you anything new?”

  “Not really, and I’ll probably go see Vandemere’s father. I called him today and introduced myself, told him we were working a bear operation and that I was very sorry and wanted to do anything I could to help find who killed his son.”

  “You’re kidding, you really called him?”

  “He calls Kendall once a week. He wants to know where things are at.”

  “But it must be very hard for him to talk about. What did you ask him?”

  “I introduced myself, told him what my Fish and Game team does, and then asked if Jed had ever mentioned anything in conversation or emails about bear poachers.”

  “Because you don’t trust Kendall?”

  “How do you get there from what I said?”

  “I know you.”

  “In a way you’re right. I asked to read the emails his son sent him this summer.”

  “Oh, my God-I could never ask someone to do that.”

  “I think he was glad to get the call, Kath. His twelve-year-old daughter is taking it very hard, and I get the feeling his wife is hurting too much to talk. He said over the years he did a lot of backpacking and fishing with Jed. He blames himself in some ways for Jed being up there in the Crystal Basin alone.”

  Marquez could understand feeling that way and thought briefly about Julie, his first wife. A terrible image came back to him as they returned to the sandy parking area and got in the truck. He and Julie had gone to Africa after the wedding, planning to travel and live on the cheap, camp wherever they could. She’d been abducted from their campsite, and for days he’d ridden around with a constable looking for her. They’d found her by watching the vultures, her body in brush not far from the campsite. A month later he’d thought he’d found the men who’d raped and killed her, and he’d felt something akin to elation at the prospect of killing them, been so ready to do it. But among their belongings he couldn’t find her ring or any of the other things he needed as proof before pulling the trigger.

  Long ago, he’d told Katherine about searching for Julie’s kidnappers and what he’d felt when he found their camp, but you don’t tell your second wife about your continuing dreams of your first. And he didn’t have to tell Katherine about the empath
y he felt with Jed Vandemere’s father. She knew.

  He’d brought Julie’s body home to her parents and buried her where she’d grown up at the base of the Bitterroot Mountains. It had been a long time later, almost fifteen years, when he’d fallen for Katherine. Theirs was a soft, warm-rounded, gentle love, a comfortable easiness together. It wasn’t a lesser thing, but different.

  When he’d gone to Africa with Julie he’d been so in love that the world felt completely open. That was youth and this was middle age and the two were different, even for those that liked to say they felt the same inside.

  “Give me something I can call reassurance or tell me you can’t,” Katherine said.

  “This guy seems to be carefully checking me out. He sent a couple of aggressive guys out on the last buy and called me today to apologize, to keep stringing it along. He wants to keep the money coming.”

  “What’s his trip then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But not like Kline?”

  “No.”

  Kline had been a drug smuggler, a contract killer, a career black marketeer who’d branched into abalone because they brought fifty dollars each and he could gather thousands of them.

  Breaking that ring had been violent.

  “He’s using guys he hires to do these buys with you?” she asked.

  “He insulates himself.”

  “Someone must know him.”

  “That’s what I’m betting, Kath.”

  Marquez turned up the mountain road and they began to climb away from the ocean. They could see the moon over the water, a long line of reflected light.

  “You’ll take him down,” she said and smiled at her own use of those words. She lived a totally different urban life, running her two San Francisco coffee bars. Her friends called her Cappuccino Kathy. She laughed and recovered the earlier mood of the night.

  “And I’m going to take you down when we get home,” she said. “You’re going down tonight.”