Kirk Russell - Dead Game

“Your mom told me she came to visit you last night.”

“Only so she could tell me to come home. It wasn’t like she wasn’t waiting the whole time just so she could say that.”

“She told me she didn’t ask for anything.”

“Lies like that,” Maria said almost under her breath, the comment almost lost in the wind, her anger at her mother surfacing again. Marquez stopped walking when he heard it.

“Lies like what?” he asked.

“That’s why she came by,” Maria said. “She hates me.”

“Or you’re so angry you think you hate her. She’s worried because she cares so much, and like any parent she doesn’t want you to take a wrong turn.”

“Like I’m the first person to ever take a break before going to college.”

“She’s afraid you’ll end up without a college degree and working for minimum wage.”

“My friends don’t have college degrees.”

“It’s like a business card here, Maria. A degree is a bare minimum in a lot of places you might go to work.”

“Well, I don’t want to become a suit. I don’t want to live that kind of life.”

“It’s not about what you don’t want to be; it’s about what you do want to be.”

“Mom thinks I’m ungrateful, lazy, and selfish. She was disgusted when I said I want to go shopping instead of look at a college I could never get into anyway.”

“Things get said, and you’d better learn how to forget, if you can’t forgive.”

“How about when your own mother says them?”

“My mother dumped my sister, your aunt, and me at my grandparents when I was nine and my sister twelve. She was going to come back when she ‘got her head clear.’ But we never saw her again. She got killed in a train wreck in India. She was on a spiritual quest going somewhere to find out about herself, and my father was always going to take us back from his parents and raise us, but somehow he was always in the process of getting his life together. The year before they dumped us we lived in a tent up the coast. I was almost two years behind in school when I started, and all I really knew how to do well was fight. Two years behind and big for my age.”

“How come you’ve never told me about living in a tent?”

“It’s not the kind of thing you brag about. The kids at the funeral today just lost their dad. I knew their father well enough to know they just lost the best friend they’ll ever have. You and your mom are going to have to deal with what you’ve said to each other. The only way to do that is to keep talking and put the bad stuff behind you. It’s time you come home.”

She hung tough. “I’ve got to get back to work, Dad.”

He walked down with her, then drove to the Humane Shelter and picked up the cat that Anna had abandoned and August had dumped on the shelter. Marquez wrote a check to the shelter, and the woman there found Bob’s collar.

“Okay, Bob, you’ve got a new home.”

He put the cat carrier on the passenger seat and crossed the Golden Gate in heavy traffic, feeling very emotional about Douglas’s death. Then he took a call from Crey.

“My man,” Crey said. “I was beginning to think someone mistook you for an FBI agent in a parking lot and blew your ass up.”

“I’ve been laying low.”

“Tell you what, dude, I would have bought tickets to watch that shit go down. I hate those fuckers. They put me in a little room and tried to tell me I was connected to some big-time drug traders and I was going to do twenty years unless I snitched people out. A couple of them were in the bait shop today.”

“What did they want today?”

“They’re everywhere asking questions about the Burdovsky babe. I thought she got smoked, but I guess she’s alive and they’re trying to find her.” He laughed. “More than alive, she’s on the wanted list.”

“I thought it was Russians they were after.”

“Right now, if you’ve got a V in your name they want to talk to you. But look, I’m calling because I’ve got an offer for you. I talked to the boys, and I think maybe your story is just about right. They were going upstairs, which isn’t cool with me. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“You and me partner up in the business.”

“Partners?”

“That’s right, and I’m serious. I’m talking about fifty-fifty. I move it and deal with the customers. You do your end, and we split everything. I got the big boat, you got boats, and we work the delta.”

“I might be interested. Let me think about it. But what about Torp and Perry?”

“There’s some other shit you don’t know about. I think it’s going to catch up to them. They ripped a car off a girl they were staying with, and now I’m getting some calls, people wondering where she is.”

“What’s her name?”

“You don’t even want to know. Think about it and call me.”

A second later he hung up.

That night it rained hard, and in the morning the clouds were low and the wind blew hard over the mountain. Marquez listened to the rain lash the windows and made calls. He talked to his team about the Crey offer, then picked up a message from Raburn and phoned him back.

“This is one you might be interested in or not,” Raburn said. “There’s an old Mexican albino they call Whitey. He called me yesterday because he’s got one.”

“How long have you known him?”

“A while. He’s into peyote and mushrooms and used to live down in the desert in New Mexico. Came up here about a dozen years ago. He knows how to keep a sturgeon alive. He’s got one with eggs. I usually hear from him once every six months, but he called twice yesterday. He says he’s up Razor Slough.”

Marquez had never heard of sturgeon biting up Razor. There was little flow, it was shallow, narrow, and last time he was there it didn’t look like either the Army Corps or the state had done any dredging or clearing of deadfall in years. Razor was out along the edge of the delta, deep in the Central Valley, and there was little up there but mosquitoes in summer and the rotted remains of an evangelist’s attempt to set up an encampment. It was also too early, far too early for a sturgeon to migrate that far.

“He’ll meet you there,” Raburn said. “That’s if you’re interested.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Wouldn’t make any difference if I did or not. I got a number you’ve got to call back before noon if you’re interested.”

Marquez looked outside. Raining hard and his boat was at Loch Lomond. Wouldn’t be easy to launch his boat and run it all the way up to Razor on just the possibility of a sturgeon. But something nagged about it. He copied the number he was supposed to call.

“I’m not saying he’s really got one, but he never calls unless he does. Do you know how to get to Razor Slough?”

“I can probably find my way back.”

“ ‘Cause I can’t go with you. I’ve got to meet my brother.”

“How’s the weather where you are?”

“The rain has let up.”

“Razor is where the preacher left that mess?”

“You got it. One end is closed off, but you can’t get in there

unless you want to hike. You got to go by water, but you can’t go the whole way. If I was you I wouldn’t do it, but you wanted me to call you with every offer.”

Marquez felt a vague unease. He hung up with Raburn and called Shauf to talk it over. There was a Zodiac they could borrow and put in well upriver. That would cut the boat time to forty minutes, and they’d still have the hike.

“Is it worth it?” she asked.

“If I partner with Crey it might be, and the storm is supposed to taper off.”

Marquez looked at Bob the cat sitting on the fireplace mantel where he’d been sitting since last night. Katherine had fed him on the mantel. A little can of something called Fancy Food was sitting in front of him. He’d eaten out of the can without knocking it off the mantel. Marquez looked at him and thought about why he’d brought him home. Maybe because the way Bob had been abandoned angered him, or maybe because when he’d first met Katherine she and Maria had a cat they loved that had died of cancer about four years ago.