After Maria chained her bike to a rack near the Ferry Building they walked south along the Embarcadero waterfront toward the ballpark. Wind carried fog and the fog stripped the brightness from the afternoon.
‘They’re already on to Gant, Maria. There’s an agent named Jane Hosfleter who heads an ecoterrorism squad out of the Field Office here. She’s been looking locally for Gant after getting a tip he was planning an arson fire that would dwarf anything the Earth Liberation Front has ever done.’
‘Did they come looking for me because they think I’m involved?’
‘You’re going to meet this Agent Hosfleter and you can ask her what she thinks.’
Maria was shocked that Hosfleter and another agent had visited where she worked. She was shocked and Marquez was angry.
‘Dad, you know there’s nothing wrong with 1+1Earth. You know that, right? There are two million members. Every time someone new joins that’s one more and eventually the goal is to have everybody, so one earth, one voice. It might sound dorky, but it’s about people working toward sustainability.’
‘Sure, but right now let’s stay on Gant. Tell me everything you can before we go to the FBI.’
‘OK, we went to Los Angeles for the weekend and it was supposed to be our big getaway, except that we got in a bad fight right after we got there Friday night. The next morning I went out to get us coffee and forgot my money, so went back for it. But the truth is I forgot it on purpose because I was jealous. Jack said he had to make some business calls and asked me to get us coffee and something to eat, but I thought that was because he wanted to call a woman named Lisa who lives in LA. I was starting to suspect things. I probably knew it was over between us, but I couldn’t accept it yet, so I faked the thing about forgetting my money because I wanted to catch him talking to her.’
She folded her arms.
‘This is a little embarrassing.’
‘I understand, but it’s human, Maria, and everyone at the table will get it.’
Maria looked out at the water. She looked worried and still shaken that the FBI showed up where she worked.
‘Jack travels a lot and I think he was hooking up with this Lisa whenever he was in LA. Anyway, when I went back to the hotel room to get money I came in quietly. He was on the phone. He was in the bathroom and pretty quickly I figured out that it was Ben Marsten, the founder of 1+1Earth. I could tell from the words he used. It’s a kind of a shorthand way they talk to each other. Jack was talking about a condo project in a canyon in Arizona. He called it Wonder. He talked about being “at Wonder” four days ago, and that made total sense because he disappeared the week before and I couldn’t get a hold of him. It was how our Friday night fight started. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been. On the phone to Marsten he said things like, the grade in the canyon is perfect and the wind funnels through there, so if the wind is blowing hard nothing will stop it. So last night when I was watching TV news and heard the name of the condominium complex it was obvious.’
‘And what did you think that morning?’
‘That they were just talking about something they thought shouldn’t have been built and predicting what was going to happen to it. I’ve heard them sit around and do that before. Anyway, I could tell the call was going to end, so I freed the hotel door and let it shut, and then called his name like I’d just come back for my money. He didn’t come out of the bathroom right away. Maybe he wondered if I overheard him. Maybe he realized I was already in the room and was debating what to do. But I didn’t wait for him to come out and see my face. I left and got the lattes, and when I came back he said, “Let’s just go home.”’
‘Like that?’
‘Yes, like that, let’s go home, as in forget about the rest of the weekend and everything else.’
‘So he probably knew, right?’
‘Yeah, Dad, he probably knew, and there’s something else he said another time that I’ve thought about this morning. Remember how you used to take me up to the delta on the sturgeon stuff?’
‘Sure.’
‘I wanted to show Jack how beautiful it can be there. He borrowed a boat and we motored around looking for an island to picnic on. This was in June and it was windy like this today and we didn’t end up stopping anywhere, but we went past this one with a rotting dock and he said that it was Ben’s island.’
‘Ben Marsten?’
‘Yes, and I asked why would Ben have an island in the delta and he looked at me and said, so we can change things. I thought he meant organic farming or something, but when I asked him he said no, it was a big idea. But he wouldn’t tell me what the idea was and that was sort of weird and when I asked him again on the ride home he got angry. In this real authoritarian voice, like a command or some way of talking he learned when he was in the military, he said, forget that I said anything and don’t ask me again. Then he got all moody. Should I tell the FBI about the island?’
‘Tell them everything and they’ll sort out what’s useful.’
She turned and brushed hair back from her face.
‘OK, let’s go, Dad, I’m ready. I’ll leave my bike here. Let’s just go in your truck.’