Dead Game (16 page)

“They’re starting to make plans. Cairo is going to grow tomatoes.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to shut these guys down before I make other plans.”

Her skin was very smooth. He closed his eyes a moment.

“It would sure be nice to see you more. Keep that in your plans, John.”

“I will.”

“My business really is growing. I know it sounds crazy, but you could think about it.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it.”

He slid his hand higher on her thigh, felt the warm heat there. The way her coffee bars had taken with some good press had caught even Kath completely by surprise. They took all of her time now. Growing the business had become her main thing and maybe a way of dealing with loneliness when he was gone. Undercover had taken its toll, and they’d never talked about the fact that she made so much more money than he did. When she’d opened the
first Presto he’d written her a check for all his savings, twenty-two grand, not much, but all he’d had. She’d opened the store with it, and no one could have predicted how successful the coffee bar would become. He knew that to some of her new friends his job was detached from normal life, and hers was not a situation any of them would want to be married into. And in some insidious way the new money was working against them, as well as providing great opportunities, like this trip she’d just taken with Maria.

Katherine would pay for Maria to go to college, and with his salary he wouldn’t contribute much. Kath had no problem paying the money. In truth, she looked forward to it because it meant Maria would get a better start in the world than she’d had. She was looking at opening more stores, while he was fighting for enough time to finish one undercover operation.

“How would I fit in?” he asked.

“We’d have to come up with a role, but with your charisma you’d make a lot of things happen. And I’d get to see you a lot more. That would be good.”

“Yeah, it would.” He looked over at her. “Hey, remember where Maria was a few years ago.”

“She put herself in that spot.”

“And she worked her way out of it.”

“I don’t want to see her get in another rut. She works at the Presto on Union, and her friends come in and hang out for hours. Her picture of a good life is living with them in the city and going out clubbing at night. I’m around her, I know what I’m talking about. She’ll be with a completely different crowd at college.”

“What I remember of college is everybody having a good time, then working hard for a week or two around midterms and again at finals.”

“It’s not at all like that everywhere.”

The fire burned lower. Colder air drafted from the thin window glass, and Katherine shivered. She drew her robe back over her leg and turned toward him. “I’m sleepy,” she said and then put her head against his chest, and Marquez held her.

“I promise we could create a job for you that you would really like. I promise, and we would get to see each other so much more. You’ve given so many years already. You’ve done your share. We can travel like we’ve talked about.”

He didn’t answer but pressed her close, never wanted to let go of her. He saw Raburn’s face in the last firelight, heard him say again as he held up the poster, “This guy disappeared.” The look on his face like he couldn’t believe it.

Sturgeons are toothless bottom-feeders
that use long whiskers to feel their way along. Their backs carry armored sections called scutes, and they love churned-up water and feed on worms and shrimp kicked up off the bottom, yet they’ll also rise to the surface to eat the bodies of salmon that have spawned and died upriver. Depending on how the storm went through, Marquez figured the bite would be on later today.

The rain started as he crossed the Antioch Bridge. Along the top of the concrete arc of the bridge his truck shook in sheeting gusts. The big SUV ahead of him swayed and overcorrected. He gave it more room and listened to a radio talk show host demanding that Congress force OPEC to bring down the cost per barrel of oil so gas prices would fall again at the pumps.

“We have to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling,” he said. “The namby-pamby, complain-about-everything environmentalists are destroying the country’s strength.”

Marquez knew the vehicle in front of him now on the bridge got no better than sixteen miles to the gallon. His team had used one for a couple of years. They were solid vehicles, but the low gas mileage was a problem, and it was hard to see how it was OPEC’s problem that Americans had embraced gas-guzzling SUVs. Hadn’t the great strength of the country always been in solving problems, rather than in biting accusatory whining or blaming someone else? We’d known for thirty years we had to build more efficient vehicles. After another few minutes he turned the radio off.

Dropping into the delta he called Ruax and continued up the river road past fields of cut sorghum and orchards of apple and pear, their branches near bare and black in the wet morning. Wind had stripped more of the last leaves. The Sacramento River was a dark green, pitted with rain when he turned down the fishing access entrance. He walked the line of cottonwoods and oak bordering the lot, then out to the river, and standing near the water spotted a pair of jeans that had washed ashore into the reeds and were half-buried in mud.

The jeans made a sucking sound as he retrieved them, and his shoes got wet. But that was the doubt still lingering in him. He knew Selke was almost certainly right; she’d staged her disappearance. He found a wallet in the jeans—amazing it hadn’t fallen out long ago. Silt had worked its way between the plastic protector and the driver’s license. He slid the license out and rubbed the mud off with his thumb. Buffington. John Buffington. He dropped the jeans in the trash can on his way out and dropped the wallet on the passenger seat. If he had time later he’d get a phone number for Buffington and give him the good news.

Continuing upriver he drove past redtail hawks hunkered down on the power lines. Rain dripped heavily from the eucalyptus,
oak, and palm trees surrounding the big pink stucco frame of the Ryde Hotel. He parked next to Ruax’s truck.

“Probably best if we go in two vehicles,” she said. “I’ve got some other names for you also. They all have to do with the case we were building against Raburn. I should have turned them over last time I saw you. The pair we’re meeting this morning I’ve bought from twice before.”

Half an hour later Marquez counted out twenties to a couple of guys from San Jose who’d hooked a big sturgeon out in a hole in the river and then dragged it into the slough after jabbing it with a gaff. They were nervous and pushing to get the deal done. Marquez negotiated and recorded their voices and faces, pointed the fiber optic sewed into his sleeve at the face of one and then the other, recording their faces.

He called Crey and left a message that he had the fish, then went into Big Store in Walnut Grove to buy more bags of ice. Bought ten and packed them around the sturgeon, went back and bought another four, told the young guy working the cash register that he was getting a jump on a football party he was having this coming Sunday. He took a call from Roberts as he got back in the truck.

“I found something interesting going back in the newspapers. There was a Federal tax lien on Raburn Orchards, sixty-eight thousand dollars for unpaid taxes in 2001. I’m trying to find out now whether they settled it. I’ll call you back when I know more.”

She called back half an hour later and had gotten an IRS agent to confirm that it had been paid in full.

“Paid off in early November of 2001, including interest. One check paid off the whole thing?”

“So we know they were behind with their creditors.”

“And there were other liens from suppliers.”

She read off the liens. A farm equipment supplier. A firm supplying fertilizers. She’d found five liens by private firms and the IRS lien. He knew it was likely she’d uncover a state tax lien as well.

“Bottom line is Raburn Orchards had money problems in the summer and fall of 2001,” she said.

“Call some of those firms,” he said, “and ask if they ever got paid. You’ll have to make up some sort of cover story. Maybe you’re thinking of doing business with Raburn Orchards and the standard credit checks turned up the record of liens.”

“I’m going to need a business and a name for it.”

“Yeah, and I’ll leave that to you. Ask if they got paid in full or whether it was pennies on the dollar, and would they do business again with Isaac Raburn.”

An hour later he still hadn’t had a call back from Crey. Fairly soon, he’d need a way to refrigerate it. He punched in Abe Raburn’s number, talked briefly to him, then drove to meet him at the pear packing shed.

Raburn had built a wooden platform with slots that slid over the forklift blades the same as a pallet. He drove the narrow forklift around to the back of Marquez’s truck, leveled the platform with the open tailgate, and they wrestled, slid the sturgeon out and onto the platform. In the room in back they slid the sturgeon onto his gutting station.

Raburn pressed the belly of the sturgeon. “You’ve got yourself a cow here.”

They cut in, exposing eggs. For the millions of eggs a female produced, perhaps ten million in a lifetime, few offspring would come of them. Raburn lifted out a brown ovarian sack and carried
it over to his screen. He mixed the salt solution, worked the eggs loose, and was gentle in the way he did it. The eggs were left in the 4 percent salt solution. Salt would penetrate and preserve them. They’d be stored at twenty-nine degrees.

There was little conversation between them, but there was a tension in the room. Marquez knew that with a motion he wouldn’t have time to stop, Raburn could turn and drive the blade into his chest. Raburn’s body language made it clear he wanted nothing more to do with him.

Marquez washed his hands after they’d cleaned off the table. Outside, it was still raining and the morning was dark. He walked back over to the bowl where the eggs were. From here you either ate the caviar or you needed a way to preserve it, a means of production, an understanding of preservatives, vacuum packing, pasteurizing. August wouldn’t go for pasteurizing. There was a stigma about what that did to taste for the market he dealt with.

Marquez rested a hand on the bowl. He smelled the salted roe and dipped his fingers in, slid a few eggs out and tasted with Raburn watching him. The eggs burst with intense flavor.

“Is your brother here this morning?” Marquez asked.

“He took Cindy to the dentist. She has a bad tooth.”

“Are the kids with them?”

“I’m supposed to drop them at school.”

“Let’s go look in a couple of buildings before you take the kids.” When Raburn frowned, Marquez said, “I’ve got active search warrants in the truck, but I’m not asking to search.”

Raburn had a hard time with that, especially after helping out with the big sturgeon. His wide face openly showed his bitterness.

“Never stops,” he said, and they drove down to the equipment storage shed that Marquez had walked through once before. Roberts called as they came inside, and he moved away from Raburn to talk to her. He saw the same look of disgust on Raburn’s face as he’d seen the night Raburn had booted the ovaries off the embankment.

“One of the fertilizer companies talked to me. They settled for sixty cents on the dollar on a nineteen thousand dollar debt. The woman I talked to gave me the name of their lawyer, and I called him. He told me the Raburns settled all their debts at once and told everyone they’d taken on another investor, but only the Feds and the State got paid in full. And you were right, there was a state tax lien as well. I’m trying to call the Secretary of State’s office, but it’s probably going to be easier to drive over there and see if anybody got added to the corporate documents.”

“My guess is no.”

“Mine too. I’ll call you from there.”

The equipment storage building had once been a barn and held more than equipment used to tend the orchards. Marquez walked around with Raburn, asked about the fertilizer stored here and the small repair shop and the tools. There was a greenhouse. They walked inside it, and the air was musty and damp.

“My brother is experimenting with growing mushrooms.” There were flowers and other seedlings in the greenhouse, and Marquez slowed and looked at those before they moved to the door. “I’ve got to take the kids to school.”

“I’d like to see the house.”

“Do you have a warrant for the house?”

“I’ve got a warrant for all the buildings.”

“Why are you such a hardass today? There’s nothing in their house, so why do you want to look in it? If you thought there was anything there, you would have looked before now. Why invade their privacy? Besides, I’ve got to take the kids to school. I’ve got to get going.”

In many ways Raburn was right: Marquez didn’t know what he was looking for, and it was more about pushing Raburn to see what would happen. He’d thought over Raburn shooting up his boat and had decided there could easily be more behind it than just trying to get out of the deal he’d made with time. Or get away because he was afraid of Ludovna. So he’d gotten new search warrants. He was getting in Raburn’s face. He pointed at the canning building. It was small, had cinder-block walls and a metal roof and door, no windows.

“All they do in there is apple and pear butter.”

“Open it for me and go ahead and take the kids to school. I’m fine here alone.”

Raburn unlocked the door, then strode in ahead of him and opened all the cabinet doors. The metal cabinets lined the walls, and their doors banged against each other as Raburn threw them open.

“What’s the problem, Abe?”

“Oh, there’s no problem. Look at whatever you want.”

There were six- and eight-ounce glass jars with the Raburn Orchards label and boxes of jars for both apple and pear butter. Marquez picked up one of the jars, looked at the red-orange label, the color of the top similar to the burned color of the remaining pear leaves on the trees. He moved along looking in the cabinets. On the opposite wall there were four cabinets with locks.

“What’s in those?”

“Same stuff, but they hire seasonal help and were getting things stolen so they bought locks for half the cabinets. Do you want me to go find a key?”

“Do you mind?”

“Hey, why would I mind, and why would the kids mind being late to school?”

“Where are you going to get the key?”

“I don’t even know where one is, and come on, man, this is the canning room. If you’re looking for some apple butter I’ll get you a case. Do you want me to comp you a case of apple butter? Do you want apple butter for everyone on your team? I’ll get as many cases as you want.”

“Take it easy.”

“What do you mean take it easy? I just cut up your fish for you, and now you’re jacking me around.”

“Where are the keys?”

Raburn shrugged, acting now like he didn’t have any idea.

“Isaac can open it for you when he gets back. The key is probably in the house, and it’s stupid for you and me to look for it.”

“Let’s open them now.”

“Why can’t it wait? I’ve got to drop the kids off.”

“I’ll walk down to the house with you.”

When they got there Raburn remembered a key high on a shelf in the kitchen. Marquez walked back up the gravel road and opened the cabinets. Inside, he found more six-ounce and eightounce jars. Then he found the two-ounce glass jars he was looking for. The labels would go on later. August would put those on.

“Those are for pimentos,” Raburn said, as he put his head back in. “He’s got a friend growing pimentos and Cindy jars them for
him. It’s just another way to make a little money at farmers markets. I’m leaving.”

Raburn walked away, and not long after, Marquez heard his truck idling outside. The oldest Raburn boy sat in the passenger seat and Raburn’s niece in the jumpseat in back. Both kids stared at him, wondering who he was, and he waved at them.

“Better take them to school,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

Marquez picked up one of the jars and out of the corner of his eye saw Raburn back in the doorway, agitated, not wanting to leave him here alone. But he didn’t find anything else in the cabinets. He went through each shelf carefully.

“How long will it take you to drop them and get back?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Better do it.”

“There’s nothing more to see, and this is my brother’s space. You don’t need to come in here anymore. He’s got his business, and he’s not involved.”

He drove off with the kids. When he did Marquez walked back to the cabinet that held the two-ounce jars. The jars were the right size. He looked around at the room again. Raburn hadn’t wanted him in here and maybe that was his growing resentment, or he was emboldened, or maybe it was as simple as violating his brother’s space. But his gut told him it was more than that. He’d watched the way Raburn threw open the cabinet doors. Making a show of it, but he couldn’t hide his nervousness. He turned one of the glass jars in his hand and looked around the room again.