After he parked, Marquez checked out the rest of the building and doubted the developer put in anything like the heavy-gauge steel the bay doors were made out of. The fence with the razor wire, the floodlights on the tall cinder-block building, gave the place a prison look and said something either about vandalism and theft in the area or about what went on inside. Body shop workers in blue coveralls. Plenty of them. He caught the eye of one.
“Can I help you?” the man asked.
“Yeah, some asshole hit my Scout.” Marquez walked him over and pointed at the damage. “I’d like to get a price to fix it.”
“Looks like it happened a while ago.”
“It did.”
“Go talk to the estimator, but if you want my opinion the cost to fix it is probably more than this bucket is worth.”
“It’s just a fender.”
“You’ve got a rust problem.”
“I know, but I’m going to drive it at least another year.”
The man shrugged and pointed him toward the estimator’s office at the far end of the building. When he got to the estimator’s office Marquez found a heavyset guy with a cluttered desk. They walked back together, then back down to the office, and the estimator consulted a computer and came up with $1,854. Marquez expressed his shock, folded the estimate, and said he’d call. He walked back slowly, found the guy he’d first talked to.
“He give you a price?”
“Way over what I can afford. I just want to knock out the dent and throw some Bondo on it.” Marquez handed him a card. “What I want doesn’t need to be done in a shop.”
“How much you want to pay?”
“Three hundred.”
“If I call you tonight are you going to be around? I might be able to do it for you.”
“I’ll be around.”
“I get off work at 6:00. You’d have to bring it to me.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’ll call you when I get off.”
23
Auto body Ray checked in a little after 5:30. He was off early and wanted to get started.
“You’re going to stop at an ATM on the way here, right?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll have the money to pay you.”
“I can’t take a check.”
“I’m not writing one. I’ll have cash, but what I need right now is an address.”
He copied down the address and made a stop on the way, at a convenience store for beer and a bag of potato chips. But it turned out Ray didn’t want to drink while working, and he dismissed the potato chips.
“You eat the grease, man. I get enough at work.”
But then as the Bondo dried they opened a couple of beers. They sat on the curb. Ray had plugged in an extension cord in his garage but hadn’t wanted to work there because Bondo dust would get all over everything stored inside. Out here on the street the wind would take care of the dust.
;That’s a big operation there at Weisson’s,” Marquez said. “How many employees?”
“Something like a hundred.”
“Come on, not that many.”
“I’m not shitting you. Sometimes they run twenty-four hours a day.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Two years too long.”
Marquez nodded as though he understood that. He let a beat go by.
“When I was there today I saw some guys carrying a big cooler like they were going to a tailgate party. What do you have to keep cold in a body shop?”
“The boss is a big fisherman.”
“He brings his fish to work?”
“Naw, they deliver to him there. You know, he’ll catch something on the weekend, drop it off to have it cleaned and cut up, and then they’ll deliver it to him.” He smiled at some memory. “We get fish deliveries all the time, and he does all kinds of trades for that. You wreck your car, and Al will end up owning your boat before it’s over.”
“The way that shop is running he probably could afford a fleet of boats, especially if the estimates are like mine was.”
“He’s got three businesses in there. One shop is union so he can get some of the city and county contracts. And he’s got a specialty shop with a different crew. They don’t talk to us, and they do a lot of custom shit. The building is divided up, and they’re off by themselves. You’ve got to have the lock code to even get in there, but, yeah, the shop does a lot of business, runs overnight on the bodywork sometimes. They got mechanics, detailers, upholsterers, a lot of work going on. He buys and sells cars like no one’s business, wrecks out of auctions, that kind of work. Why do you want to know?” “Just got curious walking through today. You wouldn’t really know it from the outside, but it’s a big deal once you get inside.”
“Damn straight, and low pay for lousy hours.”
He crumpled his can. Bondo had dried on his fingers, and he picked at it. He stood and tried to get a crick out of his neck.
“Look, I got to get going,” he said.
Marquez went around to the driver’s side and got his wallet. He counted out the twenties and said, “I saw a gold Le Mans parked in there. Kind of a beater but I wouldn’t mind having it. Cars like the Le Mans were right about my time.”
“Too late, man. Car’s going to be rebuilt and sold as a classic. The guys who brought it in traded for a van. I’m supposed to do some work detailing a couple of things on it in the morning. They got a high-mileage piece of shit, a ‘99 Ford E-150, half ton with a V-6 for trade, but if you ask me they wanted to get rid of the Le Mans.”
“Get rid of it for what reason?”
“You’ve got me, I don’t know.”
At the safehouse that night Marquez cooked dinner with Roberts and Cairo. Too often they ate fast food. That was just the way it was with surveillances. But late this afternoon Roberts had bought a bass from a commercial fisherman she ran into at the Benicia dock. She had cleaned the fish, salted and oiled the fillets. Coals glowed in the grill in the backyard. But it was Cairo who’d taken the real interest in eating better, and when the SOU had been larger they had pooled their per diems and had given him the money to work with.
One of the things about moving around California undercover was they saw what was for sale along the road in the different seasons. Marquez knew where to buy Gravenstein apples in August in Sonoma and when the best tomatoes showed up in the farmers markets, or when Last Chance peaches came down from Donner in October, right about the time the bear hunters were gearing up. If you worked for the department you could always find out where the boats were bringing in the first salmon or crab. He knew which towns had farmers markets and when, and from time to time he’d stop and buy apples because Maria loved the tart ones, or tomatoes, something on his way home to Mill Valley, and in some ways undercover for the SOU was the perfect job for knowing where to find the best produce and fruit.
But it was most fun when the team was still ten wardens, and on a given night six could make it to dinner at a safehouse. It became a way to relax and step away from an ongoing operation. Information and ideas got passed around.
“Are we going out again tonight?” Roberts asked.
“No, we’re down.”
“Good, I bought some wine.”
“Open it up.”
They grilled the fish, roasted potatoes and red bell peppers, and drank the wine, which was smooth going down and left him wishing he was home with Katherine tonight. There was some existentialist quality to being here, as if they weren’t legit anymore because they were going to get shut down. He listened to Roberts talking about working at headquarters and in the Region IV office, and the changes she saw coming inside the department. Then there was gossip about Bell’s divorce papers and a more earnest discussion of Cairo’s dry-farming tomato idea, which none of them, including Cairo, knew much about. But he had books on it, loved tomatoes, and he had a friend already farming tomatoes who wanted a partner.