Katherine would pay for Maria to go to college, and with his salary he wouldn’t contribute much. Kath had no problem paying the money. In truth, she looked forward to it because it meant Maria would get a better start in the world than she’d had. She was looking at opening more stores, while he was fighting for enough time to finish one undercover operation.
“How would I fit in?” he asked.
“We’d have to come up with a role, but with your charisma you’d make a lot of things happen. And I’d get to see you a lot more. That would be good.”
“Yeah, it would.” He looked over at her. “Hey, remember where Maria was a few years ago.”
“She put herself in that spot.”
“And she worked her way out of it.”
“I don’t want to see her get in another rut. She works at the Presto on Union, and her friends come in and hang out for hours. Her picture of a good life is living with them in the city and going out clubbing at night. I’m around her, I know what I’m talking about. She’ll be with a completely different crowd at college.”
“What I remember of college is everybody having a good time, then working hard for a week or two around midterms and again at finals.”
“It’s not at all like that everywhere.”
The fire burned lower. Colder air drafted from the thin window glass, and Katherine shivered. She drew her robe back over her leg and turned toward him. “I’m sleepy,” she said and then put her head against his chest, and Marquez held her.
“I promise we could create a job for you that you would really like. I promise, and we would get to see each other so much more. You’ve given so many years already. You’ve done your share. We can travel like we’ve talked about.”
He didn’t answer but pressed her close, never wanted to let go of her. He saw Raburn’s face in the last firelight, heard him say again as he held up the poster, “This guy disappeared.” The look on his face like he couldn’t believe it.
30
Sturgeons are toothless bottom-feeders that use long whiskers to feel their way along. Their backs carry armored sections called scutes, and they love churned-up water and feed on worms and shrimp kicked up off the bottom, yet they’ll also rise to the surface to eat the bodies of salmon that have spawned and died upriver. Depending on how the storm went through, Marquez figured the bite would be on later today.
The rain started as he crossed the Antioch Bridge. Along the top of the concrete arc of the bridge his truck shook in sheeting gusts. The big SUV ahead of him swayed and overcorrected. He gave it more room and listened to a radio talk show host demanding that Congress force OPEC to bring down the cost per barrel of oil so gas prices would fall again at the pumps.
“We have to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling,” he said. “The namby-pamby, complain-about-everything environmentalists are destroying the country’s strength.”
Marquez knew the vehicle in front of him now on the bridge got no better than sixteen miles to the gallon. His team had used one for a couple of years. They were solid vehicles, but the low gas mileage was a problem, and it was hard to see how it was OPEC’s problem that Americans had embraced gas-guzzling SUVs. Hadn’t the great strength of the country always been in solving problems, rather than in biting accusatory whining or blaming someone else? We’d known for thirty years we had to build more efficient vehicles. After another few minutes he turned the radio off.
Dropping into the delta he called Ruax and continued up the river road past fields of cut sorghum and orchards of apple and pear, their branches near bare and black in the wet morning. Wind had stripped more of the last leaves. The Sacramento River was a dark green, pitted with rain when he turned down the fishing access entrance. He walked the line of cottonwoods and oak bordering the lot, then out to the river, and standing near the water spotted a pair of jeans that had washed ashore into the reeds and were half-buried in mud.
The jeans made a sucking sound as he retrieved them, and his shoes got wet. But that was the doubt still lingering in him. He knew Selke was almost certainly right; she’d staged her disappearance. He found a wallet in the jeans-amazing it hadn’t fallen out long ago. Silt had worked its way between the plastic protector and the driver’s license. He slid the license out and rubbed the mud off with his thumb. Buffington. John Buffington. He dropped the jeans in the trash can on his way out and dropped the wallet on the passenger seat. If he had time later he’d get a phone number for Buffington and give him the good news.
Continuing upriver he drove past redtail hawks hunkered down on the power lines. Rain dripped heavily from the eucalyptus, oak, and palm trees surrounding the big pink stucco frame of the Ryde Hotel. He parked next to Ruax’s truck.
“Probably best if we go in two vehicles,” she said. “I’ve got some other names for you also. They all have to do with the case we were building against Raburn. I should have turned them over last time I saw you. The pair we’re meeting this morning I’ve bought from twice before.”
Half an hour later Marquez counted out twenties to a couple of guys from San Jose who’d hooked a big sturgeon out in a hole in the river and then dragged it into the slough after jabbing it with a gaff. They were nervous and pushing to get the deal done. Marquez negotiated and recorded their voices and faces, pointed the fiber optic sewed into his sleeve at the face of one and then the other, recording their faces.
He called Crey and left a message that he had the fish, then went into Big Store in Walnut Grove to buy more bags of ice. Bought ten and packed them around the sturgeon, went back and bought another four, told the young guy working the cash register that he was getting a jump on a football party he was having this coming Sunday. He took a call from Roberts as he got back in the truck.
“I found something interesting going back in the newspapers. There was a Federal tax lien on Raburn Orchards, sixty-eight thousand dollars for unpaid taxes in 2001. I’m trying to find out now whether they settled it. I’ll call you back when I know more.”
She called back half an hour later and had gotten an IRS agent to confirm that it had been paid in full.
“Paid off in early November of 2001, including interest. One check paid off the whole thing?”
“So we know they were behind with their creditors.”
“And there were other liens from suppliers.”
She read off the liens. A farm equipment supplier. A firm supplying fertilizers. She’d found five liens by private firms and the IRS lien. He knew it was likely she’d uncover a state tax lien as well.
“Bottom line is Raburn Orchards had money problems in the summer and fall of 2001,” she said.
“Call some of those firms,” he said, “and ask if they ever got paid. You’ll have to make up some sort of cover story. Maybe you’re thinking of doing business with Raburn Orchards and the standard credit checks turned up the record of liens.”
“I’m going to need a business and a name for it.”
“Yeah, and I’ll leave that to you. Ask if they got paid in full or whether it was pennies on the dollar, and would they do business again with Isaac Raburn.”
An hour later he still hadn’t had a call back from Crey. Fairly soon, he’d need a way to refrigerate it. He punched in Abe Raburn’s number, talked briefly to him, then drove to meet him at the pear packing shed.