“How far did you push it?”
“Not over the line, but I sent the signals.”
“Some of these guys tape their calls.”
The line between entrapment and setting up a sting could be razor thin, and they needed to be very careful how they approached this guide business. But this was a good first step.
“Where you at?” Alvarez asked.
“In Stockton and about to go in and meet a vice cop. They busted someone on a drug rap who had bear parts in the trunk and the last name of Kim. I’ll talk to you on the other side.”
Marquez went in, met Delano, sizing him up as confident and serious, but not as hard-boiled as he’d tried to sound over the phone. Delano sketched a street history of Kim.
“Kim is affiliated with a Vietnamese gang that’s branched into dealing drugs, mostly methamphetamine, which has put them up against the Hispanics who aren’t wild about sharing that market. In fact, the Hispanics are in the process of consolidating.”
“Kim is a hired gun?” Marquez asked.
“We’re pretty sure he hooked up with the Vietnamese because he’s willing to pull a trigger. Usually they keep to their own and when they don’t there’s a good reason.”
“Really, a shooter.”
“Of a kind. He’s known as Nine-O, like nine millimeter with a zero on the end of it, and don’t make any comments to him about it. All the good names like Fast Nine were already taken. The gang he works for used to specialize in carjackings and burglary. For break-in jobs they like to travel out of town. Their burglaries have included a number outside this jurisdiction. Two of them were arrested last month with property stolen from cabins in Kern County.”
“They’ve had similar problems in El Dorado County.”
“Everywhere up and down the Sierras.”
Marquez told him now about the guns stolen and dogs poisoned in Placerville, suggested he call Kendall about that one.
They talked about the similarities as they walked down the corridor to the interview room. No hunting rifles, but a shotgun and five or six handguns had been bagged when they busted Kim.
“You can go in alone with him or I’ll go in with you, either way I should start you off with him,” Delano said.
“Introduce me.”
“I didn’t tell you this over the phone, but Kim’s got two strikes already, a drug and a robbery charge that he did time for separately, neither of which has anything to do with the Vietnamese gang. He made the career move to hit man when he realized he couldn’t go down for a third strike.” Delano tapped his forehead and smiled. “He’s a thinker.”
“Why’s he willing to talk to me?”
“Probably trying to figure out what you’ve got on him, nothing more than that.”
Marquez followed Delano into the interview box and didn’t read any emotion in the eyes across the table, a studied flat blackness, a waiting this out, been here before look, and you cops are all pieces of shit.
“Nine-O, this gentleman is here about the bear parts in your trunk.”
“Nothing to do with me,” Nine-O said.
“We’re looking for the car owner,” Delano explained to Marquez.
“Right now, it’s open whether it’s a stolen vehicle. It doesn’t belong to Nine-O here. Maybe he stole it somewhere and it came with bear parts. You stealing cars out of the mountains again, Nine-O? Find the car in a campground somewhere you could take this officer back to?”
Nine-O shook his head, and Delano worked on him for a while before leaving as they’d prearranged. Delano said he’d be back in ten minutes.
“Where did the bear parts come from?” Marquez asked.
“Fuck if I know.”
“I’m here because they told me you wanted to talk to me.
Were they wrong?”
“Get them to drop this other shit and maybe I can find out something.”
“You give me the people who are trading in bear, and I can probably make the bear trafficking charge disappear. I can’t guarantee that, but otherwise, commercial trafficking is a felony. With two strikes down already you go up for life.”
“Not for fucking bear paws.”
“I’m not saying I think the law is fair.” Marquez didn’t. He thought the way the three-strikes law got blindly applied was immoral. “It’ll make you the first man to get life in prison for killing a wild animal.”
“Bagging a bear is no felony.”
“This isn’t killing a bear. Four gallbladders, the paws, that’s trafficking, and that’s a felony. I’ve got the code right here if you want to read it.” Marquez started to reach for his wallet.
“Fuck your felony, man.”
“Maybe you didn’t know what was in the trunk and you were delivering it for someone.”
“I don’t hunt bear.”
“Someone did.”
“They planted all that shit.”
“The police wouldn’t know where to get bear paws.”
“You want help, make it all go away.”
“I’m only here about the bear.”
“Talk to the man, he likes to deal.” Nine-O looked at the mirror, spoke to it. “Make me an offer.”
“You talk to your lawyer. I’ll talk to the district attorney. Your lawyer can contact me through Delano, but after you’re charged it’s going to get a lot harder.” Marquez stood up. “You don’t know about the bear parts in the trunk and I didn’t write the threestrikes law. It’ll be a couple of days before we move on this, so you’ve got time and your lawyer can check out the statutes.”
Marquez got up and left. He figured if Nine-O knew anything at all the three-strikes fear would sweat it out of him. And he had to know something. Delano walked out of the station with him, telling Marquez about a meth bust he was heading up tonight, SWAT team, the whole deal.
“This is a lab that can produce ten pounds at a time.”
Marquez didn’t share Delano’s excitement but told him he used to be with the DEA. They had a conversation about the increase in meth traffic in California, and then probably out of politeness Delano asked about the SOU.
“Your Fish and Game team moves around a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“You must see some of the mess these drug labs make.”
“Sure, occasionally.”
The cleanup was as bad as the trade, and Marquez’s team had seen the waste products poured in creeks. To get a pound of meth you produced roughly five pounds of waste, hydriodic acid, lye, red phosphorus. He tried now to get Delano interested in the bear problem but didn’t get the feeling he’d reached him, though he knew Delano would keep the heat on Nine-O.
On the drive back he took a call from Kendall, learned that the detective had already gone back up to the hunting shack with crime techs. As he laid the phone down Marquez knew that Kendall had screwed him. Like the vice cop, Kendall had only a vague curiosity about bear poaching. It wasn’t on their radar screens, wasn’t part of their world and never would be. Finding bear paws in a car trunk was a curiosity, a bait pile a quaint throwback to an America that didn’t really exist anymore. Crimes against animals carried no weight when any other human crime was involved, and yet the justice system had produced a strange opportunity today. With two strikes against him Nine-O could only deal his way out. The lawyer hadn’t been born who’d tell Nine-O he had nothing to worry about, so maybe something would come from Nine-O. If it did, it wouldn’t surprise Marquez if it tied into what they had going.
19
The call came after he’d returned to the safehouse. He flipped open his cell phone and heard the now-familiar electronic whine, the pitch-altering adjustments their bear farmer made as he began to talk. You could buy a voice changer on the Internet for either a landline or a cell phone for as little as twenty bucks, but their seller had spent more. The audio expert who’d analyzed the recordings speculated that he had state-of-the-art equipment, near the quality a government spook might have.