“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 lifestyle.”
“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.”