Holy Rollers (39 page)

“Let me.” Chase took it from him and pushed a button, trying his best to mimic the guard’s voice. “Post Two here.”

“Everything check out with that truck?”

“Roger that.”

“Ten-four.”

The radio went silent and Chase handed it back to his partner.

“Close the door,” Grant ordered. “And let’s find out what’s in this damn desk.”

Farraday returned to the cab, closing the door behind him and turning off the rear dome light. As Leonard trained the guard’s flashlight on the two open drawers, Grant rifled through them and found a lot of paperwork, although none of it was the shade of green they were looking for. He moved to the left side of the desk and began to work his magic on the lock.

$ $ $

Special Agents Patrick Waverly and Oliver Tolan sat in their SUV as it idled at the side of the road a half mile down Cathedral Boulevard from the Virginia Cathedral of Love. Waverly brushed a lock of hair off his forehead and glanced at his watch.

“Now they’re fifteen minutes late.”

Tolan, who was behind the wheel, tapped a few salted peanuts out of a packet into his palm. “Want to go in without them?”

“Yeah, right.” Waverly chuckled. “Love you, Ollie, but you and I aren’t
The
Untouchables.
” He took another look at his watch, then sat back in the less-comfortable-than-it-looked seat. “Let’s give them five more minutes. Or ten. It’s not like anyone’s going anywhere.”

$ $ $

“Nothing,” said Grant, on his knees and surveying the contents of the remaining desk drawers as they lay strewn across the floor of the truck. “All of this for nothing.”

“We got the Desk of Christ,” said Leonard, hovering over his shoulder. “Maybe we could hold it for ransom.”

Grant looked up at him. “You seriously think Hurley’s gonna drop seven mil for a beat-up old desk?”

“Well, uh…I guess not.”

“Then shut up.”

“But he might pay a million.”

Grant blinked twice, then looked back in the direction in which Leonard held the torch. “You been drinking? He could have a new one made for twenty bucks.”

“You don’t understand.” Leonard nervously played with the zipper on his coveralls. “It’s not the quality of the craftsmanship. The Desk of Christ has become iconic! People come from all over the world to touch the Desk of Christ. Hurley has it insured for…well, I can’t really remember now, but at
least
a million dollars.”

Grant motioned at the pile of moving pads covering the security guard. “Outside.”

They climbed out of the truck and walked to a quiet area near the loading dock. When they had some privacy, Grant said, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes sense,” said Leonard. “It makes sense the same way the government pays all kinds of money to preserve and protect the original Declaration of Independence, which—when you think about it—is only an old, tattered piece of parchment. Same thing with this desk: its value exceeds the materials. The Desk of Christ is a symbol of the Virginia Cathedral of Love, and by extension, a symbol of Dr. Oscar Hurley’s power and influence. Which is apparently worth a million dollars to him.”

“So…you’re saying without this desk, he loses his power and influence?”

Leonard shook his head. “No, not at all. But it’s a symbol, and it means a lot. Enough that he insures it for a lot of money. Enough that I’d be willing to bet he’d pay a lot of ransom to get it back.”

To Grant, that still didn’t make sense, but, well…maybe it did. In a way.

Chase finally spoke, and Grant could forget about the concept of non-tangible value that had almost worked its way into his head.

“I’d still rather have the seven million.”

“One million is better than nothing,” said Leonard.

Grant muttered. “Everyone will have to take a lot less. But I guess we’d make a profit.”

“I’m willing to drop my share to a half million.” Leonard probably thought he was being magnanimous.

“You are, huh?” Leonard raised the flashlight and saw Grant fix him with a stare that made him instantly recalculate.

“I’m, uh, sure we’ll come up with a fair number.”

“That’s better.”

They walked a few yards to the truck and crawled back inside.

Grant turned to Chase, rubbing his hand against the rough grain of the desk. “Text the girls. It’s time to get out of here.” He looked at the bundle in the corner. “We’ll drop the guard out on Cathedral Boulevard. He’ll be fine. This’ll give him a story he can tell for the rest of his life.”

Farraday asked, “Should we take the chairs?”

“Nah. Consider them our contribution to the Virginia Cathedral of Love. Until St. Agnes’s Orphanage comes looking for ’em, at least.”

Grant and Leonard began sliding the drawers back into the desk, and Farraday slowly walked to the cab. As they did what they had to do, Chase took a few steps back into the parking lot and pulled out his cell phone.

Then he paused with one thumb over a button, unable to type.

True, one million dollars—if they could get that, which he doubted—would make for a nice payday. There’d still be a few hundred thou left after divvying the money with the rest of the gang. But he still couldn’t get past the belief—no, the
knowledge
—that they’d somehow managed to overlook a much bigger payday.

It wasn’t in the safe, and Merribaugh hadn’t taken it to DC, but Chase knew that somewhere in their immediate vicinity was hidden seven million dollars they’d managed to overlook. In crisp, easy-to-spend cash.

And if they left now with only the Desk of Christ, they’d never have the opportunity to get at it again.

Maybe the others had given up the idea they could get their hands on that money, but Chase didn’t want to give up. He
couldn’t
give up.

But where the hell could the money be? They had looked everywhere, and found nothing but trouble.

Where the hell
was
it?

He looked up at the 199-foot cross towering over their heads. If there was ever a time for divine intervention, he thought, it was now.

“Chase!” He jumped, then realized it was just Grant hollering at him from the truck. He heard the truck’s rear door slide shut and latch. “Text those other guys. It’s time to get out of here.”

Chase’s eyes traveled above the scaffolding to the top of the cross towering over him. He muttered an almost-silent prayer. “Give me a sign where the money is.”

His answer came in the form of a memory…

Spirals.

“Chase! Let’s go!”

Reluctantly, Chase began to type out a text message. Then, again, his thumbs stopped working.

He slowly turned and stared again at the Great Cross, and it was almost as if he could hear the Hallelujah Chorus.

“Grant…” His voice was a hoarse whisper as he backed up, slowly and steadily. “I think I know where it is.”

“The
cross
?” asked Grant, as he stood at the back of the truck with Chase and Leonard. “You want to go up in the
cross
?”

“I think so,” said Chase, although—now that a half minute had passed since his divine inspiration—he wasn’t quite as sure as he
had
been, and in any event he wasn’t going to tell them about his moment of piety. They’d sense weakness.

Grant still couldn’t grasp it. “Why the cross?”

“Why not? Who’d look there?”

“Lots of people.”

“Not us.”

Grant thought about that for a moment. Maybe Chase had a point.

“So what gave you this great idea, boyfriend?”

“The spirals on the drawing in the office. I just assumed someone had doodled…until I had this revelation they weren’t doodles. Someone drew in a staircase.”

“Inside the cross?”

“Yeah, inside the cross.”

Leonard had been stammering since Chase announced his revelation, but now finally managed to speak in a more or less understandable sentence as he worked his zipper up and down. “But…but…there’s nothing there! It’s solid!”

“Says who?” asked Chase.

“Merribaugh.” With that, his hands flew to his face. “Unless he lied!”

Grant couldn’t look at him. “Now why would a crook lie about his hiding place? Jesus, Leonard, we could have been out of here a week ago.”

“It…it…it just never occurred to me that the cross
wasn’t
solid.”

“That was the point,” Chase said. “You can’t blame Leonard. Why would someone lie about it? They tell everyone it’s solid, everyone believes it’s solid.” He thought about it a bit more. “And that would also explain why there are no cameras around. Merribaugh and Hurley didn’t want anyone to know what they were up to. Didn’t want photographic proof that every now and then one or both of ’em were going inside a structure they’d been claiming couldn’t be gone into.”

Grant mulled that over. He was starting to warm to the idea, if not the fact that Chase stumbled upon it first.

“Hey, guys,” said Farraday, who was now with them and staring into the back of the truck. “We should get this desk out of here.”

“Hold on a second,” said Grant. “We’re taking one last look around. This might be a seven-million-dollar job after all.”

“Eight,” said Leonard, pointing to the Desk of Christ. “A million’s a million, right?”

And Grant started to think that he might end up respecting Leonard after all.

Underneath the dirty moving pads, Chris Cason tried to follow what he could of the conversation. These thugs had stolen the Desk of Christ, they were discussing the Great Cross, one man called another man “boyfriend,” and he’d even heard blasphemy.

None of this was good. Someone would have to stop them.

$ $ $

They left Leonard in the cab of the truck—figuring someone should guard the Desk of Christ and he’d be the most useless in the field—and made their way across the grounds, creeping behind the overgrown bushes lining the walkways and squeezing past one of the ground-mounted floodlights illuminating the Great Cross. The appearance of that security guard was a fresh reminder that even though they wouldn’t be under surveillance by cameras, they might still be under surveillance by actual people.

“Where’s the door?” Grant asked in a whisper as Chase and Farraday crouched beside him. “I don’t see a door.”

They skittered through the bushes to the other side of the cross, but still couldn’t find a way in.

“Okay, this is ridiculous. If it’s hollow there has to be—” He stopped, spotting movement in the shadows near the rear of the auditorium, not far from where Leonard sat in the truck. The men disappeared back into the bushes.

“Merribaugh,” said Chase, as the Cathedral’s chief operating officer passed under a light and crossed the loading dock before disappearing into the building.

“What was he doing out here?” Grant looked up the cross. “You think he was coming from the cross?”

Chase nodded. “Probably hiding the stash they raked in tonight.”

Moments later they were creeping through dark bushes until they reached the spot where they’d seen Merribaugh emerge. It was Farraday, out from behind the wheel and therefore out of his comfort zone, who finally found the windowless door at the far end of the building. It was locked, but Grant dipped into his pocket, found what he needed, and had them past that obstacle in less than twenty seconds.

$ $ $

Tap tap tap.

Leonard was sitting nervously in the darkness, half-covered with a moving pad. He didn’t like being left alone, so his thought upon hearing the taps against the side of the truck was that his partners in crime had returned. He felt great relief.

Until Captain Joseph Enright’s face appeared in the window, just inches away. Leonard screamed and scrambled to push down the door lock but wasn’t fast enough, and he half tumbled from the seat as Enright flung open the door.

“Hello, Mr. Platt. I figured we’d see you again one day. I just hadn’t imagined it’d be so soon.”

$ $ $

The windowless door led to a basement storage room. Above them, they heard applause as the curtain went up on the second act of
The Sound of Music.

Grant pulled the flashlight from his rear pocket and ran the light once around the room before shutting it off. It was totally empty. He’d sort of hoped they’d find the money there and could forget that nonsense about the cross, but no.

“Okay, so we found a basement. Which isn’t the same thing as finding a way into the cross. You sure about this?”

“No,” Chase confessed. “But it’s an idea, and we don’t have any more of those.”

Even in the darkness, Chase could feel Grant frowning. He distracted himself by blindly groping the nearest wall, hoping against hope that he’d somehow find a way into the cross.