“I can’t believe they made the decision without talking to me,” she said. “Why were you at that meeting and I wasn’t?”
“Because I’d already been to the FBI Field Office in SF and met Ehrmann. He heads the Russian mob squad there, but no one told me he was coming to Sacramento and I didn’t know he’d be there when I got there. My chief called me in, and you didn’t miss anything. He brought a blacked-out transcript so we’d have something to hold when he told us they want DBEEP pulled. The idea was to make it seem like Chief Baird’s decision.”
“Okay, then will this Ehrmann blow me off if I call him?”
“No, he’ll talk to you. He’s not shy. I’ll give you a cell number, and if you want you can try him.”
He wrote the cell number down and watched her fold the paper and jam it in her pocket. She exhaled and looked away, looked down at the dark green roll of the river.
“We’ve got a bunch of things we’re working,” she said. “You’re going to have to take a ride with me. I’ll have to show you where we’re at.” She shook her head, reminded him of Shauf with Raburn. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“We can take my boat,” Marquez said. “It’ll get us where we need to go.”
“What boat do you have? I didn’t even know you knew how to drive one.”
Marquez let it go, let her lash out without coming back at her. He’d worked with DBEEP before, had worked well with them and figured he would again.
“I’ve got a Fountain I bought damaged at a DEA auction years ago. The bow got a hole punched in it when the driver rammed a boat with a couple of DEA agents onboard and tried to sink it. I bought it on the cheap and then it sucked all my savings into the repair. It’s not for sneaking up on people, but we won’t look like surveillance either. It’s docked down in San Rafael at Loch Lomond. We’d have to meet there.”
They set a time, and he left her and drove across the river. The palm trees in Ryde were framed against a white sky. The river was muddy green and running with whitecaps. The Sacramento/San Joaquin drainage formed the largest delta facing the Pacific on the northern or southern hemisphere. It drained two thirds of the water that left California. The web of sloughs, the agricultural land along the levee islands, wasn’t like any other place he knew of in the state. There were relatively few buildings, and he drove past deep orchards of pear and apple and vineyards that stretched as far as he could see.
On the drive home he talked again with Selke, who’d been talking to Ehrmann.
“I ran the photos by Ehrmann that you found in her kayak as well as the photo we found in her wallet. He told me Burdovsky had a short marriage and a son she doesn’t see anymore because he was kidnapped by the father. The photo from her wallet was taken outside Moscow. That’s her ex in the photo, the same guy who kidnapped the boy. His name is Alex Karsov, and according to Ehrmann, he started with computer crime but went on to become a big wheel in arms dealing. For years Burdovsky made trips back to Russia to try to find her son. The deal was her ex didn’t want his boy to disappear to America, didn’t want him to grow up fat wearing baggy pants falling off his ass and watching TV when he’s not playing videos. Forget that last part about the kids, Marquez; I’ve got some issues with my ex-wife.”
“Are the Feds looking for Anna?”
“It’s not clear, but Ehrmann talks like she’s alive and they might know where she is. I told him you were very worried about her. I played it up. You haven’t slept at night since she vanished. You’re consumed with guilt, that kind of thing. I’m trying to get him to tell us more, so this is your heads-up on that.” He chuckled. “You cry every night over Burdovsky.”
“When did the father run with the boy?”
“She was in school in Moscow, got pregnant, married, and then things went south. He didn’t want her to take their son, so he grabbed the boy and took off. Russia was a mess so there was no one to go after him, or he was connected enough to keep it from happening.”
Ehrmann had formed the boundaries of an imaginary tumor with his hands as he’d described the malignancy Eurasian Organized Crime represented. He wasn’t against the word mob but said it didn’t cover it.
“I think Ehrmann will tell us more if we both work him,” Selke said. “They’ve got their investigation and there’s more overlap than he’s let on. He’s returning calls too quickly. I just get that feeling. We need to play off each other when we work him.”
Marquez doubted that either he or Selke would work Ehrmann successfully for information. And he wasn’t even sure he wanted to know what Ehrmann saw when he looked at a county detective and an undercover warden. But neither did he really care. He knew why his team was here. They weren’t shutting down arms traffickers, but they were trying to protect a species that had been on this earth since the dinosaurs. An arms trafficker might come up with an elaborate rationalization for how the arms they sold actually helped the oppressed, the same as market poachers taking bear might claim to feed a market for traditional medicines. Fundamentally, both were about greed, and he had the feeling Ehrmann was sympathetic to what the SOU was trying to do because he understood the commonality.
But, like Selke, Marquez felt the hand of the Feds brushing closer. He knew if the stakes were high enough with this arms trafficker, then the FBI might even be listening in on the SOU conversations. Unlikely. Still, he turned the idea as he drove home to Mill Valley.
21
When Marquez pulled up to Loch Lomond Marina, Ruax was sitting in her truck. He backed the boat trailer down the ramp, and the Fountain slid into the water. He waited until Ruax was on the boat and the engine idling, then eased the boat trailer back up the ramp and parked. Calm water broke smoothly off the bow as they headed out the channel.
“I brought a thermos of coffee and picked up some cinnamon rolls on the way in,” he said. “They’re from a bakery in San Rafael.”
“I don’t eat that kind of stuff.”
“I know you drink coffee; I’ve seen you do that.”
“I had a cup earlier.”
He poured her one anyway, and they came slowly through the buoys, keeping to the five-mile-per-hour limit. He opened the bakery bag, showed her the cinnamon buns, fresh, still hot and sticky, and she shook her head, a look of disgust crossing her face.
“Take the coffee, Jo. It’ll keep your hands warm even if you don’t drink it.”
He wasn’t much of a pastry eater himself, had only a bite or two, and checked out the bay ahead, looking for other boats. Ruax fixed her gaze on the seismic work underway on the Richmond/ San Rafael Bridge. Sparks flew from welding work. Then they were out of the channel, turning the stern to the bridge and San Francisco Bay behind it. He bumped the speed, and they ran across the gray water toward the red light at the horizon.
The sky streaked with pink and magenta. Marquez tapped the throttle gently forward, and the bow rose. A deeper roar came from the engine, and Ruax wouldn’t have to talk now. She could look through the windshield at whatever she was thinking about and brood. He pushed the speed past fifty, adjusted the flaps, and the boat began to plane across San Pablo Bay. Along the east shore commuter traffic was already thick. Ahead, the new span of the Vallejo Bridge stood like a gray sentinel, and the sun began to rise through delta fog. They left a white wake under the bridge, swept past Benicia and into the wide shallow upper bays.
He cut their speed, clicked on the baffling system to dampen the engine noise, slowed more as they left the last sunlight and moved into fog that at first was thin wisps, then wrapped thick around them, cold on their faces. He steered around a log floating off to their left, a branch from it extending like an arm reaching for the sky.