“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.
“Either of you have a phone number on Beaudry?”
“Hell, no, but he’s up along Lake Berryessa. He’s got a house across from the lake. I bet you can find him if you really want to.”
Marquez laid another twenty on the dark wood bar. “A final and then I’ve got to take off.”
“Well, as long as you’re buying let me tell you another story that went around. Tom Beaudry had a sister who died in a fire down in Henderson, Nevada. Her house burnt up with her in it, and the rumor up here was Tom borrowed money from the wrong people and couldn’t pay them back fast enough, so they killed his sister. There was a retired FBI fellow who used to live around here who told us that.”
“Is he still around?”
“No, he moved to the desert. He knows things about Roswell, New Mexico, that the government has been suppressing. He’s going to write a book about it so he’s got to be somewhere they can’t find him first.”
Marquez thanked the old boys and left enough money for yet another round. He walked out into a cold wind, and from his truck he called the Las Vegas police and ran the arson story by a captain he knew there, who as it turned out knew about the fire and the controversy. He gave Marquez the name of an officer in the Henderson PD that he said was a pretty straight-up guy, but he suggested Marquez call the FBI first.
“Why would I want to screw up my operation?”
Heard the laugh on the other side, the understanding, then got the explanation.
“Because there may be an organized crime angle and that’s the Feds’ turf.”
“What kind of organized crime?”
“The new boys in town are Russians, and that was the rumor.”
Marquez thanked him and sat in his truck still holding his cell phone before deciding against a cold call to the FBI in Vegas. He was holding the phone when Shauf called. She’d followed Ludovna and another man to a cafe on old Main Street in Isleton. She sounded angry or disturbed or both.
“Guess who just pulled up, parked, and went inside a cafe here to meet Ludovna.” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Raburn is at a table with Ludovna and the running suit. Did he call you and say anything about meeting Ludovna?”