“You stay for one more drink. We are almost finished talking, but I want you to understand.”
“I think I do understand, but I don’t want to recite my Social Security number or tell you all the places I’ve lived or the people I know so you can check on me. It’s not worth it to me.”
Marquez moved back along the couch and sat down, and Ludovna moved over and sat alongside him. Their thighs pressed against each other. Ludovna refilled the shot glasses.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, then pretended to backhand Marquez’s face. “Sometimes you have no choice but to use force. With a woman I hit one side, then the other. Always the back of my hand, okay. Never hard enough for her to lose consciousness, but always I wore a ring that tore the skin. Women don’t like to lose the way they look. Even the ones who are very tough hate to lose that. Even the ugly ones.” He brushed knuckles across Marquez’s face. “Never too hard, but scarring each time until I get a specific answer. That was my other career before fish and real estate, before I came to America.”
He sat back. The vodka had reached him, opened his tongue, reddened his cheeks and the starburst of capillaries on his nose. The attempts at physical intimidation didn’t mean much to Marquez, but he felt the touch of paranoia he’d felt when he’d walked in tonight. Ludovna would work hard to find out everything he could about him. Ludovna leaned back, his leg still pushed against Marquez, stone-washed jeans, soft leather shoes.
“Raburn is lying. I know this, and if you are not who you say you are, you should leave now and nothing will happen to you.”
“I’m just trying to make some money.”
“Okay, I want to hear you talk about what you know. Tell me about the land of the delta, the seasons, what you know about the sturgeon.”
So he did, talking for another twenty minutes but drinking little more, drawing an image of the Sacramento River coming from the north, San Joaquin from the south, the Consumnes, the Mokelumne, the levees and sloughs branching, where the tide ran, the brackish water, the shifting through the year. He named fishermen he knew, people Ludovna knew or could check out or wouldn’t know how to approach and who’d rebuff him anyway. He made up a couple of names and put people in boats they didn’t own and along Montezuma Slough and fishing between the Mothball Fleet.
Sometime later, after the women were back in the house complaining that they were lonely, a car pulled into the driveway. Marquez heard doors slamming, voices. The doorbell rang, and Ludovna greeted a friend who introduced himself as Mickey, which he said was short for Mikhalov. Mickey had four two-ounce jars of caviar with August’s import label on them, and Marquez felt Ludovna follow his eyes to the labels.
“Time for you to go,” Ludovna said, walked him out and then to his truck on the street. “If things are not right, then Raburn and his brother are responsible. Do you understand?”
Marquez wanted to ask about the brother but didn’t want to reveal he didn’t already know. “I hear you,” he said, got in the truck, and Ludovna was still standing in the road as he drove away.
20
Brad Alvarez had left the SOU in April. By then they’d heard the first rumors of the poaching ring they were after now. Alvarez had returned to the central coast as a warden, and Marquez hadn’t seen him since June, so it was great to walk in and spot him in back in a booth. Alvarez already had a beer and was watching a cook make pizzas, fire them in the woodburning oven.
“Did you drink him under the table?”
“No, Ludovna can put away the vodka, but I did my part.”
“How are you feeling?”
“A little buzz, but I’m okay.” Marquez looked around. “Hungry.”
It smelled like cheese melting in the open wood-fired oven. Alvarez had grown a goatee again. He looked like the resistance leader of a guerrilla unit who’d come out of the jungle for a beer.
“It’s time to check out the KGB story, and he told me tonight he had a wife here who went into the Sacramento River in her car and drowned. Doesn’t seem very troubled by that.”
“Where are we at, overall?”
“Not much closer with August. Not any closer, really. We’ve documented sales to a Richie Crey and Ludovna, though some of the videotape is sketchy. We’ll need several sales to make a case. Burdovsky is an open question.”
“Cairo told me she burned us.”
“Looks like it.”
They ordered a pitcher of beer and a pepperoni pizza. Alvarez filled a glass for Marquez and refilled his own after the pitcher arrived.
“Long drive here,” he said. “I’m starving. Hey, what’s the deal with the FBI?”
“They’re getting close to making a bust and they’re nervous. They’re not saying what it’s about, only that it’s Eurasian Organized Crime and there’s a possibility we might go blue on blue, in which case we get backed away.”
“So is Eurasian the Russian mob?”
“Yeah, and it sounds like these guys are Ukrainian.”
“Where’s Ludovna from?”
“Moscow. They haven’t said what this group is into, but the FBI has wiretaps where Jo Ruax of DBEEP is mentioned. They also claim her house was cased. DBEEP is being pulled back.”
“You mean, like off the water?”
“Yeah.”
“No kidding.”
“So there’s some sort of overlap. And we have until Christmas.”
“I would have been in Mexico.”
Marquez lifted his beer glass to Alvarez. “Good that you’re here instead.”
They ate the pizza, and the beer was quickly gone, but it was nice to sit in the warmth and firelight from the oven. When the bill came they paid and Marquez said, “See you back at the house.”
At this late hour he didn’t expect a call from Maria or Katherine, but he got one from Maria. It was after 1:00 on the East Coast.
“We went to Vassar.”
“Yeah, how was it?”
“The library is beautiful, but now we’re in New York City. We went to dinner at some place called Bellavitae tonight that mom thinks is the greatest.”
“What did you think of it?”
She paused and admitted, “It was good. It’s new and like a crostini-and-wine-bar type thing.”
“How was the crostini?”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Yeah.”
“It was really good but you kind of have to drink wine.”
“If you go to college they hand out fake IDs when you register. So where are you tomorrow?” He tried to remember. He parked outside the safehouse and tried to remember. “Cornell?”
“We’re skipping the tundra. We would have to fly up there anyway.”
Marquez listened to the clipped answers, the grudging explanation of why they’d changed their schedule, the sort of bitchiness that drove Kath crazy but never really got under his skin. Maybe it was one advantage of being a stepfather. Perhaps that role made it easier to see her as a separate person. He read through the sarcasm and saw a teenager still sorting out who the enemy was. It definitely wasn’t her mother.
“Okay, then where? Columbia?”
“Mom probably should since she wants to go back and finish her college degree some day. It might be a good school for her. For me it’s a ‘reach school,’ and I’m already applying to enough reach schools.”
“You don’t think you’d get in?”
“I definitely wouldn’t.”
“You’ve flown all the way back there. Walk the campus.”
He could add, the money has been spent to send you back there for this special trip that very few kids get to make and the walk wouldn’t be any more than you’ll make in your average shopping mall. What Maria needed was her world shaken up, and he’d have to find the words to reach her, but he didn’t have them tonight.
“I have to say good night,” Maria said.
“Try to connect with your mom.”
“Right.”
The next morning Marquez drove into the delta to meet Ruax at Mel’s in Walnut Grove. There were a couple of tables inside and they were empty, but any room would have been too small for her today. She’d gotten the word last night. He bought a coffee to go while she waited outside in the wind. By the time he walked out she’d crossed the road to the river and looked like someone who’d come out of a movie theater and found her new car had been totaled. She wanted to be angry but was still too shocked.