Kirk Russell - Night Game

“Where’s his dad now?”

“Heart attack when Nyland was nineteen. Probably having a kid like Nyland killed him. Okay, so we go out there in a couple of patrol cars and drive up to the first trailer, the one he lives in, and she answers the door, not Nyland.”

“Sophie?”

“See, you know where this story is going. You know her better than you let on. Anyway, Nyland is standing behind her, and she’s wearing a thin T-shirt, and I mean thin and tight, a pair of ragged jeans and is barefoot. Looked like she’d just pulled the clothes on as we drove up. She got right in my face, said she’d been in the sack with Nyland all night and they’d had sex, and we could swab her right there in the doorway if we wanted. I’m not kidding. She started unzipping her jeans, and there weren’t any panties underneath.

Then she told me I could be the one to do it.”

Kendall paused, waiting for his reaction, the image of her opening her jeans, the place to make a comment. But what caught Marquez was not her body exposed, and she had a nice one, but rather, the aggressiveness, same thing he’d seen at the Creekview.

“Nyland came in for questioning and we worked on her separately, but she never wavered on the alibi. I believe Nyland was the pickup driver in Yosemite, and I can promise you she’s damaged goods. That’s who your warden is head over heels about. We’ve also suspected Nyland’s involvement in meth manufacture and a burglary ring, but never been able to pin anything on him. He may look like a pinup for the steroid crowd, but he’s a schemer and smart. Knows what he can get away with. Did Petroni tell you Nyland works for a hunting guide business?”

“No.”

“Sierra Guides out of Placerville-they’ve got an office off Main Street.”

“I know where it is.”

“That’s where Nyland’s truck came from. The owner there loaned him the money to buy it.”

“Have you ever met the owner?”

“Never seen his face, don’t even know his name.”

Marquez didn’t say his team had already checked out the owner, a Joe Durham, who lived in Sacramento and worked as a lobbyist and consultant. As near as they could tell the guide business didn’t do much trade. They’d looked at all the local guide businesses, but they would backtrack now on Sierra.

When he hung up with Kendall he drove across lower Marin and into Mill Valley, up Mount Tamalpais and home. His house had been built by his grandfather in 1915 on a flank of Mount Tam when land was still cheap. It had a stone fireplace, redwood casement windows that had lasted seventy years, floors of quartersawn white plank oak pegged with mahogany dowels cut from wood his grandfather found on Muir Beach after a cargo ship had foundered. The house looked down along a forested ridge to the ocean. It was where his paternal grandparents had raised him and his sister, Dara.

When he unlocked the door and walked in he smelled the lime tang of the shampoo Katherine used and saw some of Maria’s schoolbooks stacked on the dining table. Both were comforting, though the house felt empty without their presence. He pulled the clothes he needed from the bedroom, switched his gear into the old two-tone Explorer, and left.

He crossed the Golden Gate and went out Nineteenth Avenue through the park. Kim Ungar lived down this direction. Ungar drove a late model Lexus and lived in a drab white stucco apartment out in the avenues near the ocean in San Francisco. The apartment units had small decks with Spanish-style iron railings painted black, and Marquez drove past, checking for the Lexus or an open door on the apartment deck before parking around the corner. He didn’t see the car, and when Ungar didn’t answer a knock on his door he figured Ungar had blown him off, which wasn’t surprising. Ungar’s game was agreeing to meet, then not showing.

For a couple of weeks in the early summer they’d put Ungar under surveillance, despite his being the referring party and their informant. From watching him they’d learned his routine, so after Ungar didn’t answer his door, Marquez decided to run some of the route they’d followed him on when they’d had him under surveillance.

He checked a video arcade, a mall, and then in a parking lot next to the In-N-Out Burger where they’d seen him eat several times, he spotted Ungar in his car.

He parked and punched in Ungar’s cell phone number as he crossed the street, watched him pick the phone up, stare at the screen, and lower it again. That’s my guy, Marquez thought. He came up the passenger side, rapped on the window. Ungar’s startled eyes brightened, then flattened. His hand went reflexively to his mustache and the window lowered.

“Hey, I forgot, I’m sorry.”

“No sweat. Good to see you.” Marquez reached through the open window to shake hands, Ungar’s grip light, his fingers wet. “Why don’t we talk here?”

“How’d you know I was here?”

“Remembered you talking about the burgers and was hungry.

Lucky, huh?”

Of course, it wasn’t, and he watched Ungar’s face tighten.

When the lock released Marquez swung the passenger door open, and the smells of fast food, cigarette, incense, and dope sucked out into the salt breeze. Ungar moved wrappers off the passenger seat.

“I just spaced it out,” Ungar said. “Worked all night for a client. I’ve been sitting here listening to music, cools my mind down.”

“Busy.”

“Real busy. You ever work for yourself?”

“Only once and not for long.”

“Used to getting fed by the government.”

“Yeah, eating up your tax dollars.”

Ungar had a computer business that as near as they could tell he ran from his apartment and the trunk of his car, building computers for clients out of generic parts or problem solving, pretty vague about how he got his clients. But they had confirmed that he’d worked in Silicon Valley for years. He was a bright guy, he knew people, his cell phone ringing often when Marquez had sat with him. He was pushing through his thirties with no family. Both parents had died in a car accident. Ungar carried a newspaper clipping of their deaths folded up in his wallet. He’d showed it to Marquez.

Informants generally wanted money or revenge or to eliminate competition, but Ungar had told them his motive was concern for the environment. He’d had a cathartic moment while watching the Discovery Channel, where they’d run a show on bear poaching. It so disturbed him that he’d called Fish and Game to rat out his cousin’s connection, though not his cousin. That was the catch; he wouldn’t give them the cousin’s name. He’d spun a story for them about not being very connected with the Korean end of his family, but this third cousin and he had partied together when they were younger, and family was family. He couldn’t give his cousin up.

So they’d figured there wasn’t any cousin and Ungar was worried about getting caught for something he’d done. Or maybe there was a cousin. What he’d given them was a phone number to leave a message for a man selling bear parts and bile products. In June they’d made their first buy after using that number. Marquez had continued to tell Ungar they’d never reached the bear farmer, but then, he knew Ungar was lying to them too.

“How’s that burger?” Marquez asked.

“Go get one. You don’t need to order fries if you don’t mind eating after me. You can have mine.” Marquez looked at the fries, saw a stubbed-out cigarette in them. “Oh, yeah, forgot about that,” Ungar said and pulled the cigarette out. “Guess you’ll want to order after all.”

“You don’t mind waiting?”

“No problem.”

Marquez looked back at him as he got out of the car, a cleanfeatured guy, a pleasant if bland face, black hair, small nose, gray sifting in, but keeping himself in shape, a single guy cruising toward forty with a pretty good idea of himself. They’d allowed him to smoke in the interview room because he’d insisted he had to if he was going to talk. He was that kind of nervous underneath.