‘Not enough to keep you from going to Vegas.’
‘Not that night. You know, I got introduced to him and then we were just out by the pool talking and I think I said I wanted to travel all over the world and he jumped on that and started talking about his houses. I mean, I knew what he wanted. It’s not really any different than most people I go out with. He talked about a place in Argentina, but I can’t remember the name of it. I think it started with a B. I’m sorry I can’t remember.’
‘If you do remember, call me, OK?’
‘Sure.’
‘And thanks for calling it in to CALTIP. A lot of times the tips make a big difference.’
She giggled and said, ‘Now you sound like an ad.’
If the SOU wasn’t standing down, he’d pick up the phone now and relay all this to the warden out of Bishop, Adrian Muller. Instead, he debated driving down there. The tip sounded legitimate. The hunt sounded like it might happen.
Sheryl Javits called before he made a decision.
‘We got through Holsing’s code. It turns out they’re GPS coordinates with some bogus numbers and letters thrown in. The coordinates correspond to addresses. From the addresses we got owners. Then we started digging into the owners.
‘We came up with a few unlikely coincidences and I want to run some names by you, but with only initials for the first names because one of them works for a local DA’s office. So just tell me if you recognize any of these other names.’
‘OK, go for it.’
‘There are nine names. Here’s the first one. F. Garcia.’
‘I once knew a Frank Garcia.’
‘Frank is wrong, and don’t mess with me. This might be bad and it might affect your team. P. Aldred?’
‘No.’
‘O. Castle.’
‘No.’
She read the rest and Marquez didn’t recognize any. Then she asked, ‘Did you talk to Anderson?’
‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘He says don’t get anywhere near Stoval. Stay away from any FBI task force offers.’
‘And what about the leak?’
‘Not much.’
‘Not much to me either.’
When he hung up with Sheryl he made two calls, the first to Anderson. He wasn’t surprised to get him. Sheryl told him that ever since computers came on, the word from headquarters was Anderson never left his desk except in the summer when he went to baseball games.
‘I’ve got a question for you, Kerry. You said Stoval has made several trips into the States in recent years.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What’s he doing on those trips?’
‘I don’t know. He’s hard to track once he’s here. I know he was in Texas twice. And he’s been in California.’
‘Where in California?’
‘He flew into LAX.’
‘Does he still trophy hunt?’
‘Yes, definitely.’
‘Then I’ve got an off-the-wall question for you. We got a tip to our Fish and Game hotline about a trophy hunter planning an illegal bighorn hunt in the southern Sierra, and I know this is highly improbable, but there’s a physical description that sounds like Stoval. Similar height, general build, age, and black eyes with gold flecks – this is coming from a young woman who sounds like she paid close attention to his face. This was at a producer’s party in LA. Our tipster believes this individual is planning to hunt bighorn. He also made comments to her about having houses around the world.’
‘It’s possible. I mean, it really is. Like you, the eye description grabs me. If he’s putting money into movies, that’s news to me, but, sure, it’s possible.’
Marquez called Muller, the warden in Bishop. Muller listened and then jumped in.
‘I got a call from a biologist monitoring the radio collars on bighorn sheep in the zoological preserve on Mount Williamson,’ Muller said. ‘Two collars haven’t moved for a couple of days. He wanted to know if I’d heard anything from anybody coming off Williamson.’
‘Can he pinpoint the locations of the collars?’
‘He can get close.’
Marquez thought about that a moment. He had time available he wouldn’t otherwise have.
‘If I drive down there, do you want to hike up there tomorrow with me?’
‘Let me check what I’ve got going on, but I think I can do that.’
After hanging up, Marquez made another call, this one to Ted Desault.
‘I heard about your warden, so I understood why you didn’t call back,’ Desault said. ‘I’d still like to meet with you.’
‘I’m driving to the southern Sierra in very early morning.’
‘I’m in Reno. Which way are you driving down?’
‘Do you know Lee Vining?’
‘Sure, the little town just before the road up to Yosemite.’
‘Meet me there at 8:00.’
‘Are you going to get there that early?’
‘I’ll get there, and there’s a place near the center of town called the Latte Da. See you there.’
THIRTY-TWO
Desault’s dark blue Bureau car was parked up against a chain link fence on a side street half a block from the Latte Da. He sat upright in his seat, but his eyes were closed and after watching him a few moments Marquez realized he was asleep. He read the fatigue on Desault’s face, dark slashes under his eyes, the sag in his cheeks. Etched lines marked his mouth. We’re all older, he thought, and then rapped lightly on the glass.
They bought coffee drinks at the Latte Da and drove across the highway to the Mono Lake Visitors’ Center in Marquez’s truck. There they walked out through the gray soil and sage to a rock overlooking the lake. Gulls wheeled through a blue sky above the tufa islands in the lake. The water was topaz-colored, the snowless mountains to the east pale. The wind smelled of sage and it struck him that neither he nor Desault could have ever imagined that here was where they would meet and measure each other again.
‘I was too much of a hard charger in those days,’ Desault said. ‘I was full of ambition to make a mark and I made a mistake with your DEA group. I still owe you an apology I’ll make now. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I used to think you get information out of people by being tough. It took me another decade to learn it’s the opposite, but then I’m not a fast learner.’
‘Neither am I. I wouldn’t be here if I was.’
‘You’re here because you have to be. You haven’t forgotten what he did.’
‘So make your pitch.’
‘All right, let’s get to it. What I’m doing with the task force is taking a shotgun approach to bringing down Emrahain Stoval. We’re going to try every angle and one of those is an animal angle, the illegal trophy hunting, the trafficking in animals and animal parts. That’s how your name came up. I’d like to bring you on and make you a TFO, a Task Force Officer. Deputize you for a year and give you a Bureau badge. I’ll also run you by the US Marshal’s office and get you deputized there, so you’d be cleared for both articles twenty-one and eighteen. We give it a shot for a year and when it’s over you go back to Fish and Game, or maybe you’ll like being a Fed again. Maybe that’s the big circle for you and you become the animal guy for the Department of Justice.’
Desault took a sip of coffee and continued.
‘I’m talking about giving you a license to chase Stoval around the world. You’d be the one and only for the Bureau, the James Bond of wildlife enforcement.’
‘James Bond.’
‘Sure, why not? The Department of Justice needs a wildlife agent, so it really could grow into something. I’m told you still talk to Kerry Anderson of the DEA. That says you haven’t forgotten, and this is a funded opportunity, Marquez. We’re going to use terrorist dollars and get him. All we have to do is prove he smuggles mixed contraband into the US and leave a few question marks about the contents of the contraband and we’ll be funded.’