Dead Game

by Kirk Russell

  “This coffee is terrible,” Maria said.

  “Not to your refined tastes.”

  “I don’t see how you can drink it.”

  Marquez drank it anyway and then carried the Styrofoam cup as they walked along the shore. He glassed the few boats out there and found Julio.

  “This guy I may bust is about your age,” he told Maria. “He’s got a fish, but I don’t know what it is yet.”

  He felt the sun on his face and watched the kid bring the fish in, then work a gaff. The gray armor of a sturgeon rolled in the water. He’d brought a pair of binoculars for Maria, and she watched Julio secure the sturgeon, and now they trailed him toward the dock. At the dock a couple of Julio’s friends were there to help. They carried the sturgeon up to a pickup and covered it with a tarp.

  Marquez looked at Maria holding small binoculars to her face, hiding the binos with her hands. Julio wouldn’t be armed, and his friends were gone. He was alone and back down at his boat, tying it off. He might have a place he needed to deliver the sturgeon to, but they weren’t going to follow him there.

  “Let’s walk on down there,” Marquez said, and Julio smiled but was leery as they approached.

  “Do you recognize me?” Marquez asked.

  “Sure, I sold you that one that time.”

  “That’s right. Is this your boat?”

  “My uncle’s.”

  “The uncle who taught you about sturgeon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s he at today?”

  “Home.”

  “How’s that college account coming along?”

  Julio hesitated at the change of subject, then pride got the better of him.

  “I got in,” he said, and his eyes were full of hope and light. “I got the scholarship, and I’m earning the rest. I’ll be the first one ever in my family to go to college. But how come you remember all that?”

  Julio looked to Maria’s face for the answer, then back at Marquez.

  “Maybe because Maria has applied to colleges. This is my daughter, Maria. We saw you wrestling with the fish, and I recognized you. We watched your friends help you load it into the pickup.”

  “Do you want to buy another one?”

  “No, but I want to talk to you. Why don’t you walk with me a minute?”

  “What for?”

  “Because I don’t want you to sell it to anyone, and I think I can convince you.”

  Marquez showed him his badge, and the kid’s face fell as they walked down to the end of the dock. He told Julio what he could cite him for and what that might do to the scholarship, told him the sturgeon had been here two hundred fifty million years, but it was going to take the ones like the fish in the back of the pickup to keep the species going.

  “I’m sorry,” and he was a big strong kid but close to tears. “I’m really sorry.”

  “How about you give me your word you’ll do something to make up for it, and I don’t bust you on the first day of the year you start college?”

  Of course Julio gave him his word, gave it immediately, and Marquez got his full name, wrote it into his notebook. Julio Rodriguez.

  “I’m letting you go on this because I think you’re good for your word.”

  Julio was scared but trying to face him. He squared his shoulders, looked Marquez in the eye, then looked away.

  “I can’t remember the last time I let someone go who has taken as many as you have.”

  “I’ll never do it again.”

  “Everyone says that, but make that the truth, and I want you to tell your uncle what happened out here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Last time it was Abe Raburn you called. How did you meet Raburn?”

  “Isn’t he dead?”

  “He is.”

  “I met him through my uncle. We delivered a couple of fish to him.”

  “To the orchard? Was there a packing shed or did you take them to the houseboat?”

  Julio didn’t seem to know either of those places. He shook his head, then described a two-story blue house out in vineyards and another man who was also there and talking in a foreign language his uncle said was Russian.

  “What town was it in?”

  “It was up from Courtland in the delta. We followed Raburn there.”

  “How far off the levee road?”

  “Like a mile or so.”

  “And when you got there the Russian guy was there?”

  Julio nodded.

  “Would you recognize him if I showed you photos?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, I’ve got some photos in my truck.”

  Julio looked at a stack of photos that included August, Ludovna, Crey, Torp, Perry, and six other poachers they’d taken pictures of.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fair enough. How long ago was this?”

  “Like four months.”

  “Okay, look at these photos and eliminate the people you know it isn’t.”

  Julio laid the photos on Marquez’s hood in the sunlight, and the air was just gentle enough today to where they didn’t blow off. He began to take away photos. He picked up the shots of Crey, Ludovna, a couple of sturgeon fishermen and put those in a pile by themselves. He hooked a fingernail under the prison mug of Torp, and then Perry, uncannily pairing the two before moving them out of the way.

  “Not one of those two?”

  “No.”

  “And Raburn led you out to this house?”

  “Yeah, we loaded in someone’s car there.” He remembered more about the property now. “You drive through a lot of grapevines first.”

  Now there were only four photos left, and among those remaining, August was the only one fluent in Russian. Juio concentrated on each photo, his eyes moving from one to the next and back. He remembered his uncle had caught a sturgeon in San Pablo Bay. He’d called Raburn from his cell, and when they’d gotten to Raburn’s houseboat, Raburn was already up under some trees near his truck waiting. He’d given Uncle Carlos a beer because the day was hot. It was dusk when they drove out the road to the blue house, and there were a couple of cars there. His uncle drank the beer as they drove, and dust blew in the windows because they were following Raburn. He remembered the house because it was blue like the sky, and now Marquez thought he knew which house it was. One of the photos Raburn had downloaded.

  Julio had heard the man talking, and his uncle said it was Russian he was speaking to somebody else inside the house. The man came outside in the heat, looked over the sturgeon, and paid Raburn, who then paid his uncle. They moved the fish from their pickup to Raburn’s.

  “Raburn was going to clean it,” Julio said, “but he had to show it to the man first.”

  “So you were just there a few minutes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see any other people?”

  “Just the other cars.”

  There were four photos left on the hood, and Marquez pointed at them.

  “And you think that man might have been one of these four?”

  “Maybe one of them.”

  “If you had to pick one, who would you pick?”

  He didn’t pick August, picked a carpenter instead, a guy who was working on a Fish and Game building.

  “I may need to speak to your uncle later today. If I do, I’ll call you this morning, but we’re done here. You can go.”

  When they got in the truck Julio was back down at his boat. He kept his head down as they pulled away.

  53

  “Are we going there, Dad?”

  “Yeah, if you’re okay with it we’re going to take a ride into the delta and look for this house.”

  “That’s fine, and it’s really pretty out here today.”

  “Do me a favor.” Marquez handed her his phone. “Scroll through the address book until you find SEH. Right above it will be SEC. It’s a guy named Stan Ehrmann. He’s with the FBI. The H is for his home number.”

  “Clever.”


  “Yeah, I know, and I try so hard to be cool.”

  “Okay, I’ve got it.”

  Marquez held the phone to his ear, and a teenage boy answered. He said his father had gone to find a store that was open to “get something for my mom.”

  “Tell him John Marquez called. Here’s my phone number. Will you tell him I need to talk to him this morning?”

  The road was empty and clear, and Marquez drove hard. He waited for Ehrmann to call back.

  “That guy was so up about college,” Maria said.

  “Yeah.” He glanced over at her. “You heard where he’s coming from.”

  She didn’t say anymore about it, and they crossed the river and came up past Poverty Road and the pink-stucco Ryde Hotel. People were starting to get out into the day. There was traffic and a long line of motorcycle riders going past from the other direction and a few boats out on the river. They were already to Isleton when Ehrmann called.

  “You shouldn’t be calling me,” he said. “I have to refer the call to my S.A.C.”

  “When you talk to the S.A.C. tell him I only want to talk to you.” He recounted the conversation with Julio. “Raburn should have led us to this house, but he never mentioned it. There’s a skyblue house like the one Julio described among those photos Raburn had stored.”

  “I remember a few photos of houses. We haven’t been looking for a house in the delta, but sure, it’s worth checking out. Do you think you can find this place?”

  “I’ll know soon.”

  “I’ll make some calls in the meantime.”

  He hung up with Ehrmann.

  “What’s that about, Dad? How come you’re calling the FBI?”

  “Because we followed a lot of people and none of them ever went to this house Julio is describing.”

  “But is that really any big deal?”

  “Probably not, but it’s worth checking out. Raburn had downloaded photos he was saving. Some of the photos he might have taken on the sly, and the FBI has been looking for other connections. Still, it probably doesn’t mean anything.”

  There was one house he had in mind and could see now. He’d found it after he’d looked at Raburn’s photos. It wasn’t that far upriver from Raburn Orchards. They rolled down a lightly graveled road for almost a mile, and there weren’t any fresh tire tracks ahead of them. He could tell, driving in the long straight road through the bare vines, that no one had been here through several storms. When they got there the house still looked empty. No other cars.

  It was an older Victorian raised off the ground in what had been a delta habit to avoid yearly floodwaters in the years before the levee system was completed. It sat high on a thick concrete foundation, stood six feet off the ground like a house trying to get a view of the river by looking over the levee road a mile away. He looked at the faded blue siding, at the porch Julio had described, then at Maria.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Sounds like what he described.”

  “I’m going to knock on the door and take a look.”

  When no one answered the door he walked back to the truck and gave Maria his keys.

  “Sit in the driver’s seat and we’ll talk by phone as I walk around the back.”

  “That’s pretty paranoid.”

  “So if anything happens, you head for the road. You call 911.”

  “What?”

  In the back of the house he saw locks and the heavy-gauge steel doors covering an entrance to the big basement space created by raising the house above the floodwaters. He’d seen enough houses raised a similar way, but none with the basement locked up like this. He kept an eye on the windows of the house as he looked at the quarter-inch steel doors and the locks and chains. It would take two men to lift a door.

  “Maria, I’m going to hang up. I’ve got to call the FBI back.”

  Lift one door, then the other, and you’d walk down four or five steps and be in a storage room under the house. He got Ehrmann’s son again when he called.

  “Dad said you should call him on his cell phone. He’s got a new one. I’m supposed to give you the number.”

  Marquez copied it down. The kid was as efficient as his father. He called Ehrmann.

  “I’m on my way to you,” Ehrmann said, “but there are two agents who’ll get there in a few minutes, and if anything looks suspicious, just wait.”

  “Why did you decide to start driving here?”

  “Something fit with a piece of conversation we eavesdropped.”

  “This is one of the two things I really like about the Bureau.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you decide to move, you don’t waste time.”

  “And what’s the second thing?”

  “You don’t seem to need to ask anyone anymore before going in to look at something. I’m here with my daughter. No one seems to be home at the house. There are heavy steel doors and hardened steel chain and two padlocks like you don’t see often around here. Someone wants to restrict access to the basement. You’ll need tools to get in, if that’s what you decide to do.”

  It was half an hour before the first government sedans came through the vineyard. It was another hour before they had the tools to break in. Then the doors got opened.

  Maria was in the truck cab on the phone to her mother. Marquez left her and walked over as the first of the FBI went down into the basement. He knew from their voices they’d found something, and looking down the steps he saw them squatting near long metal boxes. Behind the boxes he saw hundreds of guns.

  “Kalashnikovs,” Ehrmann told him, and then walked a distance away with him. “This is it, Marquez. This is what we were looking for. A whole lot of people are on their way here now.”

  “What else is in there?”

  “Handheld missiles. Some other hardware. They’re going to chase you out of here.”

  “That’s okay.” He looked at Ehrmann. “Are you sure it’s what you were looking for?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got a printed list. We’ve been a buyer, but someone here in the States had outbid us for some of this.”

  “The handheld missiles?”

  “Yeah, somebody really wanted them.”

  “And you don’t know who that other buyer is?”

  It was a stupid question. Obviously, they hadn’t found the other buyer, and no wonder they were so anxious to find the arms cache.

  “Would Karsov have come back for these?”

  “Probably. Eventually. He had the other buyer; he’d try to make it work. It’s all about money.”

  They watched more cars come down the road, and then a couple of special agents started toward them. Ehrmann pointed at a car pulling in.

  “That’s our S.A.C. I’ve got to go talk to him.”

  Marquez stayed where he was and waited for the special agents to walk up to him.

  “You’ve got to back away, sir,” one of them said. “Your daughter and you will need to leave the premises now. We’re closing off the area.”

  “Yeah, Stan just told me.”

  Marquez felt the tension coming off them, and they were trying to be nice. He started toward his truck.

  “They wouldn’t even let me move,” Maria said. “I wanted to come over to where you are, and they told me to wait here. What’s over there?”

  “Come have a look.”

  The first FBI agent who spotted Marquez and Maria walking back knew it was Marquez who’d found the house. He hesitated, and it was the next two who moved to block them.

  “She’s going to see this, and then we’re gone,” Marquez said.

  “No, she’s not, sir.”

  “This is the world she’s inheriting, and I want her to see it.”

  One of the handheld missiles had been carried up into the sunlight, and the box opened. Marquez used his bigger frame to shield Maria’s approach and repeated they were just going to take a look and leave. She got a look and a glance down into the basement.

  A few minutes lat
er they were in the truck, driving back through the grapevines. From the levee road they could still see the government cars down in the field in the distance. Off to their right the river was running hard. Does the way we treat other species say a lot about our chances of making peace among ourselves? Marquez was pretty sure it did. He was thinking about that when Maria spoke again.

  “It’s weird that a sturgeon is how we found those,” Maria said. “Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?”

  Acknowledgments

  Once again, many thanks to Kathy Ponting, patrol lieutenant of the SOU, and to Nancy Foley, whom I first met as a member of the SOU and who now is Chief of Patrol, head of the law enforcement branch of California Fish and Game. It’s probably quite lucky for wildlife in California to have a Chief of Patrol who once ran the undercover team. Thanks also to Lieutenant Troy Bruce, SOU, George Fong, Supervisory Special Agent, FBI, and a gifted writer, whose novels I’m sure we’ll all be reading should he ever retire from the Bureau.

  Thanks also to Patsy for the Klamath stories, Lisa Stouffer for loaning her marina, Adrian Muller, Jennifer Semon, Tony Broadbent, Paul Hansen, Andrew Livengood, Kate and Olivia, Greg Estes, Branch for reading the first draft, Lydia McIntosh, John Buffington, whose wallet blew out the back of the boat and perhaps came to rest along the river bottom with the sturgeons. Anyone who has ever had Philip Spitzer as an agent knows a conversation with Philip can be like a good drink that leaves you happy and looking forward to the future. Many thanks to my tireless editor, Jay Schaefer, and to all at Chronicle Books who have worked to make the crime fiction line happen. And, Judy, always and forever you.

  I’ve written three Marquez novels with the belief that if I wrote a good enough story I could help those who have devoted so much to saving open country and the wildlife in it. I hope in some small way I’ve done that.

  About the Author

  Ex-DEA agent John Marquez, now head of the undercover unit of the California Department of Fish and Game, is closing in on the sturgeon poachers who kill fish for their highly profitable caviar, when his key confidential informant disappears. The trail leads him into the middle of a deadly FBI operation involving the Russian mafia and a web of conflicting loyalties. Fastpaced, thought-provoking, and vivid, this eco-thriller pushes the tough but sensitive Marquez to the limit.