“Are you going to pick up Ludovna tonight?”
“No.”
Torp would have a lawyer by tomorrow, but that was about Sherri La Belle, and Torp wouldn’t be calling Ludovna anytime soon to chat. Neither would Perry or Crey.
“You’re waiting for him to make a phone call.”
One of the agents nodded. Marquez got up and made coffee. The agents stood. They were almost done here, and now everyone watched as Marquez’s cell phone rang and he checked the screen. “Selke,” he said to the agents as he answered.
“We just got a confession from Perry on La Belle, and he says he was there when the Raburns were killed but did not participate. The charge will get cut to manslaughter for Perry on the La Belle murder, and he’s going to testify that Torp stabbed her to death and cut her up. Perry helped Torp dispose of the body.”
“Who killed the Raburns?”
“He claims the shooters were Torp and Ludovna. Ludovna shot Abe. Torp shot the kids, and I can tell you Perry is lying, that he was part of the Raburn killing, but we’ll get that from the others. But get this, he says he doesn’t know why they killed the Raburns. He says for Torp it was just about money. He got paid for it. I’m going to throw something else at you. This is from piecing together what Perry told us. I think Crey knew his ‘boys’ were going to get offed out in that vineyard and he came up with you as a lure to get them out there, but that pissed off Ludovna, who just wanted them driven out there and shot. That’s why Ludovna was angry when he drove up and found you chained to the Blazer.”
The pager of one of the agent’s went off, then a cell phone. Marquez hung up with Selke, and the agents thanked him and were suddenly more forthright as they were leaving.
“It’ll be no later than tomorrow,” one of them said.
“Are you hoping he’ll try to contact Karsov?”
“We are. We’re sorry we couldn’t tell you before. We’ve monitored every call Ludovna has made for the last year.”
51
DBEEP picked Marquez up at the Benicia dock the next morning. They glassed a couple of fishing boats out along the Mothball Fleet then rode up the San Joaquin River before backtracking and going up the Sacramento with a strong wind at their back. Marquez and Ruax compared notes, looking at fishing holes and sloughs and docks and boat launches they’d determined had been used by poachers. They rode past Raburn’s houseboat. They pooled their notes on who was left, talking above the wind and boat noise and much more quietly as they docked and dropped Marquez in Walnut Grove.
The day was bright and clear, the sky wind-scoured. He bought coffee at Mel’s and waited outside across the road looking down at the river, the coffee keeping his hand warm. DBEEP was gone, and the SOU operation was basically done, though it felt unfinished. He turned as Shauf and Cairo drove up, and they bought a couple of sandwiches and sodas and sat and talked about where they were at with everything. With the exception of August, the players they’d tracked were going down or had gone down, but in some larger sense the importance of stopping the poaching had been subsumed by human crimes. The Raburn murders. The grisly killing of Sherri La Belle. The deaths of the FBI agents and the intrigue still surrounding what the Feds were after. It left a disturbing sense of incompletion or imbalance.
Shauf drove Marquez into Sacramento, and he picked up an old Ford Explorer, one of the early models before they’d become so large. He liked the vehicle and hadn’t driven it in a while. He made sure it still started and then walked over to Shauf’s window.
“Time to go see your niece and nephew.”
“I’m leaving tonight. What about you, John?”
“I’ll be home.”
And he would have been, but for taking a call from Ehrmann. The call could have come from another special agent in the Sacramento Field Office, and it wasn’t clear from the questions he’d asked yesterday that Ehrmann was still part of the investigation. He’d gotten the impression Ehrmann might be on involuntary leave.
“Ludovna made a call we were hoping he’d make, and we’re going to take him down tonight,” Ehrmann said.
“I’d like to be there.”
“Sure, if you want.”
Ludovna was at a girlfriend’s, a woman who lived alone not two blocks from his house. She was very surprised when she opened the door. It was all very polite. There were eight of them and one of her. Two agents went in and buttonhooked left with their guns drawn, two went right, and four straight ahead. Ludovna was in the shower. When Marquez saw him, Ludovna stood naked and handcuffed on the tiled floor of the kitchen. He’d come out of the shower and tried to get a gun from near the bed, and they’d taken him down on the bedroom floor. Water dripped from the dark hairs of his chest, abdomen, and groin. Ludovna’s eyes focused on Marquez.
“You’re FBI?”
Marquez shook his head, showed his badge. Special Operations Unit, Department of Fish and Game.
“I should have killed you,” Ludovna said, and an FBI agent cut him off.
The last Marquez heard was an agent telling Ludovna they were going to unhook him so he could dress. They’d already read him his rights, and he was demanding a lawyer. Marquez walked outside with Ehrmann.
“I’ll drop you back at your car,” Ehrmann said. As they drove away he added, “I guarantee you he won’t be buying fish for a very, very long time.”
52
And that was the way it ended, except it wasn’t the end of everything. There were the poachers they tracked down that came from Ludovna’s list of contacts, and with Baird’s approval Marquez was still chasing those after Christmas. There was enough in Ludovna’s computer to bring trafficking charges against August, though what came later far surpassed those. It was the end of the SOU, or the end until new money was found in the state budget. It was the end of Sacramento Fresh Fish and Beaudry’s Bait Shop and Sportfishing, and the end of August Food’s caviar line.
Torp and Perry got charged in the La Belle killing, and Ludovna, Torp, Crey, and Perry in the Raburn slayings. The FBI had other pending charges against Ludovna that Marquez was told might eventually include arms trafficking but definitely included further counts of murder, auto theft, RICO violations, and drug smuggling.
Marquez didn’t doubt that August would hire the best lawyer. He laughed when he heard it was Batson, but it didn’t surprise him. It was also the end of Anna’s ability to pay Batson when the FBI located, and was able to get a judge to freeze her access to, a Cayman Island account.
Maria moved back home on Christmas Eve, walked in around dusk carrying a bagful of presents, and rode with Marquez a couple of days on his trips into the delta, said she wanted to understand better what it was he did. She was with him this New Year’s Day morning, and it was one of those California winter days when it was bright and clear and warm. The light shone like polished gold on Suisun Bay, and the sturgeon bite was on.
He figured the kid, Julio, would be out, guessed he’d think he was clever getting out early New Year’s Day and fishing for sturgeon when everyone was recovering from last night. Marquez knew Julio had taken more sturgeon since he’d last bought from him. He knew from talking to him where he liked to fish, and they went there now after buying coffees at a convenience store.
“This coffee is terrible,” Maria said.
“Not to your refined tastes.”
“I don’t see how you can drink it.”
Marquez drank it anyway and then carried the Styrofoam cup as they walked along the shore. He glassed the few boats out there and found Julio.
“This guy I may bust is about your age,” he told Maria. “He’s got a fish, but I don’t know what it is yet.”
He felt the sun on his face and watched the kid bring the fish in, then work a gaff. The gray armor of a sturgeon rolled in the water. He’d brought a pair of binoculars for Maria, and she watched Julio secure the sturgeon, and now they trailed him toward the dock. At the dock a couple of Julio’s friends were there to help. They carried the sturgeon up to a pickup and covered it with a tarp.