Kirk Russell - Dead Game

The women stripped their clothes near the sliding door and walked out to the tub, both men watching as they dipped their feet in the water and then climbed in. Ludovna gestured toward them with his glass.

“They’re good for me. I don’t have a wife anymore. In my last year in the KGB I taught interrogation. If you interrogate a wife about sex, it’s very complicated. But not with these women. With them it’s very simple, and for now that’s okay for me.”

“You were KGB?”

“Yes, and I was very good at knowing when I was being lied to. That was my talent. Yesterday, I read in the newspaper that the FBI told the military not to torture the prisoners in the Guantanamo Base. The military didn’t listen to the FBI, but the FBI was right. It’s easier to get them to talk if you don’t torture them. The important thing is to scare them deep inside, but not make them hate you. You want them to talk, of course. I could take a man like Raburn and make him tell me everything he has ever done. A man like that is easy to break. You see the way he is nervous. I could break him down so he shakes all the time the rest of his life. The brain is very delicate.”

“That’s an interesting story.”

“It got me here.”

“What got you here?”

“What I knew got me here. Everything is information. That’s what everyone is trading. I could put you in a chair in a room, and it would take days, maybe weeks, but in two weeks I promise you would want to make me happy. If I told you to smile, you would smile. If I told you to urinate in a cup and drink it, you would do that too. You would drink my piss.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know, but I know. This is what I was good at. Where is your house in Sacramento?”

“What?”

“Where do you live? What street?”

“I’ll invite you over, and you can come see how we live. We don’t drink our urine, but we have a good time.”

“When do I come to your house?”

“How about later this week? Let me check with my wife and I’ll call you.”

Ludovna seemed okay with that. He reached for the bottle again, then built a cracker with caviar, asked Marquez to eat it and tell him where the caviar was from.

“From here,” Marquez said after taking a bite.

“You’re right.” He leaned forward, got closer. “I don’t like your friend Raburn, but I understand him. I know the ways he is weak, but you I don’t know yet. You hide things.”

“Who doesn’t?”

Ludovna refilled Marquez’s glass. They ate different caviar, small black beads of sevruga, flavor bright and intense. Marquez lifted his vodka and downed it.

“All the bullshit in this country,” Ludovna said. “I started with an American wife, like Raburn’s brother, only in reverse. I didn’t have to mail for mine; she was already here.”

“So what happened to her?”

“She went off the road into the river in her car in the fog.” He pointed at Marquez’s hand. “Why don’t you wear your ring?”

“It catches on fishing gear.”

“See, all the bullshit.” Ludovna smiled. “Everybody has the answer ready. Everything is bullshit. In this country there are people who want to save every kind of animal, but with the sturgeon it’s the United States who helped to get the ban on Caspian sturgeon lifted. No other country eats so much caviar, not even the French. The U.S. wants to make better relations with Iran so they are willing to let the poachers kill the rest of the Caspian. They’re helping the wrong poachers. They should help us ban everything from the Caspian so the price will rise here.”

Marquez looked at his watch. “Nick, I’ve got to take off, but I’ll call you and invite you over.” Marquez stood. “Thanks for the drinks. Enjoy your girls.”

“No, sit down, don’t go yet.”

Marquez started to move out from around the coffee table. He stopped at the end of the couch, knew Ludovna had to control the situation.

“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.

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.”