Kirk Russell - Dead Game

“When did she and her mom immigrate here?” Shauf asked.

“In 1989, when Congress upped the amount of Russians who could come over.”

Marquez did the arithmetic, calculating years. “Look at this closely,” Shauf said. “What do you see? You see it, right.”

“Sure.”

“I bet she’s four and a half to five months.” She touched her own belly as if she were pregnant, and Marquez focused on the man standing next to Anna. “She’s just starting to really show.” She looked up at Marquez’s face. “So where’s the kid? Is that the little boy in this other photo?” She picked that one up again.

“There was a photo that came out of the wallet found at the fishing access. Selke showed it to me. There was a kid in it, young, a toddler or a little older. That looks like him.”

“Did she ever say anything to you about a child?”

“No.”

Shauf angled the photo to study it again.

“Well, she’s definitely pregnant in this.

Late in the afternoon Marquez pulled into the lot alongside Beaudry’s Bait Shop. He was still on the phone to Ruax of DBEEP as he parked. She was giving him her take on Richie Crey.

“Crey looks like one of these geeks who screw up the way they look trying to figure out who they are. He’s tall and probably weighs over two hundred. Got a shaved head and tattoos running down his arms, you know, real prison sleeves, not the hip variety you see kids running around with. What else? Let me think, oh, he’s got a couple of silver rings in one ear. Look for torn jeans, cowboy boots, leather coat, kind of like a biker playing businessman. But he does know the delta.”

“Where’d he learn it?”

“Oh, he’s homegrown. He’s one of ours,” and Marquez remembered that she was from Isleton. “I think he was raised in Rio Vista, though I’m sure no one was holding their breath waiting for him to get out of prison and come back. His family is from there. What’s up with him?”

“We’re going to try to sell him some sturgeon. He’s bought a couple of times from Raburn. Do you know anything about two guys who work for Crey?”

“No, but you know what they say about shit and flies.”

Like many bait shops, Beaudry’s sold cold drinks, maps, a medley of hooks, sinkers, and various bait. It was also a source of advertisements and newsletters, a gathering spot for finding out where anyone was getting a bite. Marquez smelled crawdads when he walked in. He picked up a Pepsi and paused near the maps. He opened a copy of the Fish Sniffer , and a young Asian American girl came out to the counter and asked if she could help him. Behind her, silhouetted in the doorway of the old office, was the guy Ruax had just described.

“I’m looking for Tom Beaudry.” The man behind her moved toward the counter. “I’m John Croft, a friend of Tom’s.”

“You’re a year late,” the man said. “I guess you’re not that close a friend.”

“Well, he’s such a mean old bastard I wasn’t in a hurry to get back.”

“So you do know him.” Crey smiled a big yellow-toothed, affable smile, though his eyes were flat. He looked at the card Marquez had handed him. “I bought his business, but why are you looking for Beaudry?”

“We used to do a little sturgeon business on the side.” Marquez waited a beat to see how that registered and added, “I’ve been out of it for a while, but now I’m getting back in.”

Crey pointed toward the door and the pale sunlight outside on the lot. He patted the girl on the rear and stepped around the counter and led Marquez out.

“You and me, we don’t know each other,” Crey said, “and I don’t know what people have told you about me, but I messed up and did some time for it a few years back. One thing I’m not going to do is end up inside again.”

“Abe Raburn said he’d call ahead.”

“Raburn is going to vouch for you?”

“He was supposed to call this morning.”

Crey’s smile was sarcastic. “Then that’s one strike against you already because Raburn can’t keep his mouth shut about anything.”

Marquez gauged Crey. “I’ve got a fish to sell.”

Crey frowned at that, and Marquez wasn’t sure which way this was going to go. He knew Crey was close to telling him to take off.

“You ever been inside, done time?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t understand what it means to not go back. What I’m leading to is I don’t do business with people I don’t know.”

“That’s why Raburn was supposed to call you.”

“Raburn is like the town clown with his little boat with the happy stern. Lincoln is rolling over in his grave. He’s doing fucking cartwheels.”

Marquez spoke slower. He wanted this to work.

“I’m not Raburn, and Raburn is getting some heat from the Gamers, or at least he thinks he is, so I’m not selling to him right now. I don’t take those kinds of risks.”

Marquez let Crey study a face a good fifteen years older than his, and one that had seen more sun and water than his had.

“People seem to respect you, Richie. I can sell you caviar for two hundred bucks a pound.”

“That’s another strike against you. That’s way fucking high.”

“Then let’s get a beer and talk about it. Or if you want, I’ll call you when I have another good one.”

Crey didn’t say yes or no to any of it. He didn’t even say he’d ever done a deal with Raburn. He smiled the affable smile again and said, “Sure, we’ll have a beer sometime.”

They shook hands before Marquez walked up the street to a bar Beaudry used to hold court in. He slid onto a stool, looked at what they had on tap, and ordered a Sierra Nevada Pale, then sized up the handful of people in the premature twilight of the room. A couple of women who looked like bikers, a couple of old boys who might know something, and a middle-aged black-haired man Marquez was pretty sure he’d seen around some other dock, maybe on the north coast when the SOU had worked an abalone poaching case.

One of the two old boys down at the other end called to the bartender and, when the bartender didn’t turn fast enough, got to his feet, wondering aloud what had happened to Mac, the former bartender, and then limped toward the restrooms. Marquez left his beer and followed the man into the restroom, used the urinal next to him, asking, “How long has this kid been tending bar?”

“Not goddamn long enough.”

“Where the hell is the old bartender and where’s Tom Beaudry? I went into the bait shop, and there’s some asshole there who says he bought Beaudry’s shop.”

“Stole it is more like it.”

Marquez washed his hands slowly and took time with the paper towel, and, like many older men, this guy’s flow wasn’t what it used to be. Took him a while but after that he had no problem explaining what he meant.

“Don’t go saying I told you this, but something funny went on when Tom sold the bait shop and his boat.”

Marquez wadded the paper towel he’d dried his hands with and threw it away. The old boy hitched his pants and leaned toward him, turning his head a little bit like he could see better that way.

“That kid that bought it sure as hell didn’t earn the money to buy Tom out.”

Now Marquez sat on a torn leather bar stool between the old men. He bought a round of drinks, a gin and tonic for one and a scotch with a splash of soda for the other.

“Rumor is Tom didn’t want to sell, but then he did it anyway because he had to. In fact, had to sell so bad he couldn’t choose who to sell to.”

When Marquez thought of the bait shop, a single blue neon sign, BAIT, BEER, ICE, faded markers, the dusty windows in a building that listed like a shipwreck, the idea seemed absurd. Beaudry kept his boat in good repair, made a point of saying that’s where the money should be spent, yet even the boat wasn’t worth forty grand. It had to go deeper than that. Marquez took a pull of beer, turned the bottle so the label faced him as he put the beer down. He picked at the label with a fingernail.