Marquez nodded. “Lisa, I want to give you a number to call me at if any of these men come back here.”
“Then, what? What are you going to do if I call you?”
“We’re just trying to put some pieces together and keep track of them.”
“Is Richie getting in trouble again?”
“He’s trying to.”
“That’s too bad. I’m not surprised, but it’s too bad.”
Marquez thanked her for the coffee and told her he’d be back to stay soon. He talked with Shauf and Roberts as he drove away, checked in to see where they were at with Torp and Perry.
“They’re in about the seediest bar in south Sacramento,” Shauf said. “So maybe they’re on their way home to Sherri La Belle’s in Stockton. Or maybe this is home. This place is called Tommy’s. Have you ever heard of it?”
“Yeah, I know Tommy’s.” He heard her say to Roberts over the radio, “He knows it. What did I tell you?” Then Shauf was back, talking to him. “Are you coming here now?”
“No, I’m on my way to headquarters.”
“What’s going on there?”
“Bell called while I was meeting with Lisa and wants me to come in.”
When Marquez walked into a conference room at headquarters he was surprised to see Ehrmann talking with Bell and Baird.
“This is about an officer named Jo Ruax,” Ehrmann said. “I understand she runs the DBEEP boat.” Ehrmann said that like he knew what it was, so maybe he did. Maybe the FBI was working in the delta. “We’ve had wiretaps in place on individuals who have referred to Ruax in their conversations. Some of the conversations are disturbing, and we know her residence has been cased. There’s a lot of chatter about an undercover team of wildlife officers that they think she runs. Take a look at these, Lieutenant.”
Ehrmann walked a transcript over, acted like he’d worked here all his life. He laid an inch-thick record of conversations down in front of Marquez and watched him start flipping through. A lot of blacked-out sections in the first pages and then whole sections twenty, thirty pages blacked out.
“Can I read the blacked-out sections?” Marquez asked. “Because there’s not much else here.”
“Keep turning pages. The sections I want you to look at are highlighted in yellow.”
He flipped through five more pages and was looking at a conversation.
“Donny will come see you.”
“He didn’t show up last time. He called and said he was coming and then didn’t show, the fuckhead.”
“There was a problem.”
“Ah, there’s always a problem with him. He makes the problems and we take care of them. Now he’s all worried again.”
“He says you’re the problem.”
“Fuck him. He doesn’t know anything. Tell him to stay in his store. Besides, we’ve information on some of the others. We’ll deal with it.”
“Then back off Donny. It’s working so leave him the fuck alone.”
“He made the problem with her.”
“No, he didn’t and anyway it’s over. Forget about it because you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about anyway.”
Marquez read the conversation twice and flipped through the next stretch of blacked-out pages. He glanced at Ehrmann.
“There’s too much blacked out.”
Ehrmann shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Another one of them is a woman. The unit is called DBEEP.” “What does that mean? Besides, how do you know it’s about caviar and not LA?”
“Because they work off a fucking boat.”
“What’s going on in LA?” Marquez asked and then flipped through another run of blacked-out sections. The transcript might be an inch thick, but it could be five inches thick and with this much blacked out he still wouldn’t be able to tell what the conversations were about. But, of course, Ehrmann knew that.
“In LA?” Ehrmann asked, and Marquez glanced at him, wondering why he didn’t just say. “In LA it’s car theft, but let’s talk about DBEEP.” He addressed his next comment to Chief Baird. “You should consider pulling that team for a while,” Ehrmann said. “This is a bad group.”
“Are we talking about organized crime?” Marquez asked.
He was sure everyone in the room knew they were, but Ehrmann hadn’t said it, and he wanted to hear him say it. Ehrmann gave a faint nod, and Marquez put one piece together.
“You’ve known for a while they’re buying sturgeon roe.”
“We’ve had some idea, yes. What I’m here about today is to communicate that Lieutenant Ruax and possibly her crew are in some danger. We think you should shut that unit down.”
“Shut it down for how long?” Baird asked.
“I can’t answer that, but I will say we intend to move soon.” He nodded toward Marquez. “You may want to pull your team back as well.”
“Do we show up in the transcripts?”
“Not unless they’re referring to a different woman warden than Ruax. They’re concerned about an undercover team they think Ruax is part of. They’ve done the work to find out where she lives, so that means they’re serious about her. It may be they think Ruax is connected to you.”
“But now you’re speculating?”
“Yes.”
They went back and forth on that for a few minutes, and then Ehrmann got tired of it. He looked at his watch, must have figured out he was done here. He picked up the transcript and thanked them.
After Ehrmann left, Baird closed his eyes as if meditating. When he opened them he asked, “Should we pull the SOU?”
“Absolutely,” Bell said.
“No,” Marquez answered. “The SOU isn’t mentioned.”
“Just that Ehrmann has come here to warn us is reason enough to pull back and evaluate, I think,” Bell said.
Marquez didn’t respond. He kept his focus on Baird, waited for the chief to decide.
18
The Le Mans drifted north along a frontage road, then doubled back and drove into a residential area and parked down the street from an elementary school. They didn’t stay long, pulled away from the curb a few minutes later, and turned into a gas station about a mile up the road. Marquez watched Perry fill the tank and Torp walk down the street and go into a drugstore. Then they cruised by the school again as it was letting out.
Minivans and SUVs were lining up, kids getting on buses. Some of the kids started walking home, and a few of those were alone as they went past the two men in the car.
“So maybe one of them has a kid here and lost any custody rights when he went to prison, but I wouldn’t bet on it,” Shauf said. “I’m going to call the locals. What do you think?”
“Yeah, make the call.”
Not long after she did the Le Mans moved again. Torp and Perry drove north on 5 and then worked their way to west Sacra??mento and a failed industrial park called the West Sacramento Commerce Center.
Only a handful of the buildings had been completed. The three-story low-income units were framed and wrapped in lath, but stucco had never been applied and the black paper under the lath had faded in sun and storms, windows broken out. There’d been articles in the Sacramento Bee, a fraud indictment, new owners, an appeal for city money, and Marquez remembered hearing something about some of the spaces being leased. They were looking at one of those right now.
The Le Mans bounced across a wide asphalt lot and ran toward a long cinder-block building at the rear of the industrial park like a bad dog coming home. A sign on the building read Weisson’s Auto Body and Repair. The car pulled into an open bay, and Marquez looked at the twelve-foot, razor-wired fence surrounding the building and protecting the rows of vehicles with body damage waiting for repair. From here the fence looked like a moat.
“Maybe they’re going to get the Le Mans cherried out,” Shauf said. “They seem like classy guys.”
The building was at least two hundred feet long, twenty feet tall, paved all around, the chain-link fence standing away from it forty yards. Marquez spotted four police vehicles waiting for bodywork, so they had the right prices or an in with somebody at the city. The police vehicles suggested the place was at least legit. Shauf drove around back to check out what was there and found another road leading out and more open bays.