Storm Front (6 page)

“Not yet, but I might. I’m going to poke this beehive a couple more times, but you tell those guys to get ready, in case I call.”

—

V
IRGIL HAD
just stepped back through the door when Awad took a phone call. He listened for a moment, and said, “I will call you back. I cannot talk at this moment.”

He hung up and said to Virgil, “Football friend.” He tapped the soccer ball with a toe.

Virgil said, “Raj, I swear to God, if you run, I’ll have you arrested and shipped to Israel. Not Lebanon, but Israel, for complicity in this theft. You know what they do to Hezbollah agents in Israel? They string them up by their testicles.”

“Do not,” Yael said.

“So I’m going to give you my phone number, and you’ll give me yours,” Virgil continued. “If I call, you drop everything and come running. You understand?”

“Of course, but I did nothing,” Awad said. “I am not Hezbollah—I’m a Lebanese from birth, not a Palestinian.”

“Okay, I’ll accept that, at least at this point,” Virgil said. “Did you know that we found blood on the floor of Jones’s house?”

Awad’s eyebrows went up, and he said, “No,” and then, “The Turk,” and then, “Much blood?”

“Not much, but it wasn’t done shaving.”

Awad shook his head. “This is not good.”

—

V
IRGIL AND
Y
AEL LEFT
,
after one more warning to Awad. Back in the truck, Virgil muttered, “Mossad.”

Yael said, “You cannot believe this Arab.”

“Shut up.”

He pulled out of the parking lot, drove onto a neighboring street, then around the block, and then around another block, and finally parked on a hillside two blocks from Awad’s apartment parking lot, with a view of Awad’s car.

Yael said, “We do this because he lied about the football call?”

Virgil said, “Yes.” He unsnapped his safety belt, got out, popped the back door on the truck, got a pair of image-stabilized Canon binoculars out of his equipment box, got back in the truck, and handed the glasses to Yael. “You watch. I’m going to close my eyes and think about this.”

He thought for thirty seconds, then sat up and called Davenport again. “I’ve got a cell phone number. I need to know where the calls are going, and where they’re coming from.”

“We can do that,” Lucas said. “Hope it’s a smartphone.”

“It’s an iPhone,” Virgil said. He gave Davenport Awad’s cell phone number.

“Piece of cake.”

—

V
IRGIL CLOSED HIS EYES AGAIN
,
then asked, “Will you guys have a file on this Turk?”

“Somebody might,” she said.

“Get it.”

“I will ask,” Yael said.

No mention of the handicap of working for the antiquities authority, Virgil noted.

A minute later, Yael said, “Here he is.”

Virgil sat up: “That didn’t take long.”

“Just long enough to call back to his football friend,” Yael said.

—

A
WAD WAS NOT ELUSIVE
.
He drove a half-mile into the downtown area, with Virgil a few cars back all the way. Once downtown, Awad dumped the car in a parking space, got out, looked at his watch, and hurried down the street. Virgil pulled into a space at a fire hydrant, and they watched as Awad crossed the next street, looked at his watch again, and disappeared into the Pigwhistle bar and grill.

Virgil drove a half-block down the street, found a parking space, and put the truck in it. “C’mon,” he said to Yael.

“Surveillance?” she asked, as they got out of the truck.

“If the guy he’s meeting came out of the bar first, would we know which one he was?”

“Maybe,” she said, “if it’s another Palestinian.”

“And maybe not,” Virgil said. “You want to do surveillance, do it on your own.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna go see if it’s the Turk in there,” Virgil said.

“How?”

“I’m gonna ask him.”

“This is a most unusual technique,” Yael said. “I shall enjoy watching it, but I have little hope for its success.”

T
he Pigwhistle bar and grill had a painting of a woodchuck—a groundhog—in the front window under a flickering neon Blatz Beer sign, because that’s what a pigwhistle is.

In this case, the pigwhistle had been painted by a refugee from the Mankato State fine arts program, and looked, at first glance, like a dachshund, and was the reason that people familiar with the Pigwhistle called it “the Dog,” as in, “Meet you at the Dog.” You had to live in Mankato, and be of a certain
boulevardier
class, to know that. Virgil qualified.

He stepped inside, with Yael just behind him, and waited a few seconds for their eyes to adjust. In addition to a wide range of exotic beer, and excellent pizza, the Pigwhistle had an extreme degree of bar darkness, along with high-backed booths, the better to attract adulterers. When he could see, Virgil walked down the line of booths, checking each one, until, at the back, by the bowling machine, he found Awad.

And Derrick Crawford, the local private detective.

Virgil looked down at Crawford and his battered pinch-front fedora, and asked, “Whazzup, Derrick?”

Awad looked up, startled, and asked, “You followed me?”

Virgil said, “Of course. What, you thought we were here by accident?” To Crawford, he said, “Move over, Derrick.”

Crawford said, “Jesus Christ on a crutch,” and slid over, taking a half-glass of beer with him, and Virgil sat down. Yael sat across from him, next to Awad. She said to Awad, “You want to move your leg, please?”

Awad moved a quarter inch, which seemed to satisfy her, and she said to Virgil, “Proceed with the interrogation.”

Virgil nodded and said to Crawford, “Tell me everything you know about this whole thing with the stone.” He pointed to Awad. “And about this Awad guy.”

Crawford pushed back his hat—he wore a fedora because he thought he looked a little like Harrison Ford in
Indiana Jones
, and, in fact, he did, except that he was several inches shorter and perhaps fifty pounds heavier, and, when his hat was off, bald—and asked, “Right from the beginning?”

“That’s probably the best place,” Virgil said.

“Well, this guy”—he pointed at Awad—“called me up and said that he wanted some surveillance done on this Reverend Elijah Jones, to see who he was talking to. We met up, I told him two hundred bucks a day and expenses, and he gave me a grand, in cash. Said there was more where that came from.”

“Your uncle?” Virgil asked Awad.

Awad nodded.

Crawford took a sip of beer—he was one of the few people Virgil knew who could drink beer while keeping a wooden kitchen match firmly in the corner of his mouth—and said, “I asked around and found out that Jones was at the Mayo, so I went over there and talked to him about this stone. He denied knowing anything about it, and that was that. Then, he checked himself out of the place, and a nurse I know called me up and told me, so I put a watch on his house.”

“How did you do that?” Yael asked.

“Parked down the block,” Crawford said.

“He showed up?” Virgil asked.

“Yup. Last night, after midnight. Driving a rental car, which I thought was a little odd, because his own car is in the garage.”

“Why do you tell him all of this?” Awad asked. “This was secret communication, like with a lawyer.”

Virgil looked at him and said, “Quiet.” And to Crawford: “Go ahead, Derrick.”

“So anyway, when he got to the house, I called up Raj, here, and he said thanks, he’d give Jones a ring. He told me to stay on the job until he called and let me go,” Crawford said. “So fifteen minutes after that, another car pulled up. A rental. I checked on the tag, ran it through a couple of databases, and it turns out it was rented to a guy named Timur Kaya, who’s traveling on a Turkish passport. I happen to know he’s staying at the downtown Holiday Inn.”

“How do you know this?” Yael asked.

“I followed him there,” Crawford said.

“Good work,” Yael said. “Which room?”

“One-twenty.”

“When the Turk left, he didn’t leave with a body-sized bag, did he?” Virgil asked.

“He didn’t leave with any bag,” Crawford said. “Not even a stone-sized bag.”

Virgil: “So you followed the Turk to the Holiday Inn? Then what? You talk to him?”

“Hell, no. Raj told me about the Turk and this thing with testicles, and I said to myself,
That’s not necessarily a guy I want to know
. So I went back to Jones’s house, drinking lots of coffee, making two hundred bucks an hour. I’m standing behind a tree, taking a leak, when another car pulls up.”

“It was like a traffic jam,” Virgil said.

“Yeah,” Crawford said. “I oughta mention, it’s two o’clock in the morning by now, and the light’s still on at Jones’s house. It’s like he was expecting these people. Anyway, a guy gets out of the car and goes up to the house, and I see Jones let him in. I check the tag on the car, it’s a Cadillac SUV. I find out it’s private, owned by a guy named John Rogers Sewickey from Austin, Texas.”

“How do you spell that?” Virgil asked. He was taking notes. Crawford took his own notebook out and spelled the name.

“Never heard of him,” Awad said. “Who is he?”

“He’s a professor who specializes in Ancient Mysteries,” Crawford said, orally capitalizing Ancient Mysteries. “I was about to tell you that when Virgil arrived. He teaches the Ancient Mysteries core course at the Center for Transubstantial Studies at University of Texas.”

“Hook ’em, Horns,” Virgil said.

“Exactly. He’s written a lot of books and papers and so on. I looked at his bank account, don’t ask me how, and he has fourteen thousand dollars in checking and in an investment account. He appears to be writing two alimony checks a month.”

“Then he’s not here for the stone,” Yael said. “He couldn’t afford it.”

“The Turks are agents for somebody else, so maybe he’s an agent for, like, the Iraqis,” Crawford said. “I know he’s been there—he led the search for the Garden of Eden. I guess he found it, at the junction of these two big rivers, the Euphrates and the Ganges.”

“I believe the Ganges is in India,” Virgil said.

“Okay, then it was something else,” Crawford said.

“Where’s he staying?” Virgil asked.

“Well, conveniently at the downtown Holiday Inn, in room two-seventy,” Crawford said.

“Then what?” Yael asked.

“After I watched him check in, I went back to Jones’s house, and the lights were out and the rental car was gone.”

“Ah, crap, you missed him,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Did you try going in the house?” Virgil asked.

“No, no, I didn’t. . . . You know why.”

“Okay. Do you know anything else? Anything at all? Or have any guesses?”

“Well, before you got here, Raj told me that you’d found blood on the floor?”

“Just a smear.”

“Then I suspect the Turk probably created that,” Crawford said. “When Jones came to the door, to meet Sewickey, he looked like he was blowing his nose in a hankie. Now, if there was blood on the floor, I think he might’ve been trying to stop a nosebleed. I mean, how many people would meet somebody at the door while blowing their nose? And keep blowing it?”

“That’s a legitimate question,” Virgil said.

“Thank you,” Crawford said. “Also, when Raj first called me, and before I found out that Jones was at the Mayo, I walked across the street to the courthouse to look up his tax records, to see where he lived. Turns out he has two places—the one here in town, and he’s got what looks like an old family farm off Highway 68 West. I haven’t gone out there yet, just looked at the tax file.”

“Where is it? Exactly?” Virgil asked.

Crawford looked at his notebook again, and gave Virgil the location, which Virgil noted in his own notebook. Crawford spread his hands. “And
that
is all I’ve got. Well, except for one thing. It was the Euphrates and the Tigris.”

Virgil said, “Ah. Good catch.”

Virgil turned to Awad. “Why didn’t you go over to Jones’s house last night, after Derrick called you?”

“Because he told me to come this morning. So I did.”

“Exactly how close are you to the Hezbollah?” Virgil asked. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I am not close, I promise you,” Awad said, holding up his right hand, as though swearing an oath. “I am now calling my uncle and telling him what has transpired here, and telling him I want nothing more to do with it.”

“Probably a little late for that,” Yael said. “Especially if you plan to go back to Lebanon. The Hezbollah do not like people who say ‘no’ to them. They’d cut off more than your testicles, though they might start there.”

“See, I don’t want to hear this,” Awad said. “I am an innocent pilot-in-training. I don’t need ‘Hezbollah agent’ on my résumé.”

—

B
OTH
V
IRGIL AND
Y
AEL
asked a few more questions, but got nothing more of substance. Crawford swore he’d told Virgil everything he knew, and Virgil said, “If you find out anything else, call me up.”

“I think I’m done with this case,” Crawford said. “Hezbollah, the Turk, Mossad. And you
know
if a guy’s from Texas, and he’s driving a Caddy, he’s gonna be carrying a gun.”

“Yeah, probably,” Virgil said. “Staying clear might be a good idea.”

Crawford switched the kitchen match from one side of his mouth to the other, and back. “I understand you’re chasing after Ma Nobles.”

“You got something on that?” Virgil asked.

“Nope. Not other than the observation that Ma has some excellent headlights. I personally wouldn’t mind examining her high beams.”

“Thanks for that,” Virgil said. “I’ll put it in my report.”

“What is this?” Yael asked.

“Car talk. American men love cars,” Virgil said.

“There were ambiguous undertones,” she said.

“You really do speak great English,” Virgil said.

—

W
HEN THEY WERE
back out on the street, in the dazzling sunshine, Yael said to Virgil, “I will confess, this was an amazing interrogation. He tells you everything, because you ask.”

“He’s our only private eye,” Virgil said, as they walked back to his truck. “There’s not a lot of private detective business around here, so he makes ends meet by selling marijuana to the college students. He’s probably got a hundred pounds of it down in his basement, which is why he’s careful about committing any other crime—like going into Jones’s house. If we find a reason to search Crawford’s place, he’d be in trouble.”

“You’re saying that he’s a drug dealer, and yet you don’t arrest him.”

“Well, he sells only California-grown pot, and none of the heavier stuff like cocaine or heroin,” Virgil said. “That mostly keeps the Mexican dope out of here. I mean, we can bust as many people as we want, but somebody will still be selling weed. Better to have it somebody we know, who buys only California, instead of letting the cartel in.”

“Also, it gives you an excellent lever when you need one.”

“That’s the other reason,” Virgil said.

“Interesting,” she said.

“Pretty sophisticated for a rural state, huh?”

“Yes. So, what is next?”

“Next we check out Jones’s farm.”

“Perhaps we should go to the Holiday Inn, instead?”

Virgil said, “Here’s what I’m thinking: if we get hold of Jones, we could probably get the stone. Once we get the stone, everything stops, and right quick. We no longer have to worry about the Turk or the Texas guy, or Hezbollah, because we’ve got the stone. But another possibility would be for me to drop you at the Holiday Inn, you could check in there, too, and keep an eye on the place, while I go out to the farm.”

Yael mulled that over for a moment, then shook her head. “I think I ride with you. You’re a lucky guy. One of my advisers tells me, ‘Good intelligence is important. Good luck is critical.’”

“That would be one of your advisers at the antiquities bureau?”

“Of course,” she said.

—

T
HEY
’
D JUST CLEARED TOWN
running northwest, when Virgil saw a red Ford coming up in the rearview mirror, and it gave off a certain vibration. He said, “Shoot,” and looked around the interior of the truck for a baseball cap—anything but the straw hat he’d been wearing—saw nothing handy, but then spotted a farm driveway coming up. He stood on the brake and swerved down the drive, and pulled up toward the house.

“This is it?” Yael asked, frowning. Instead of an old farmhouse, they were looking at a newer ranch-style house with an above-ground swimming pool and a children’s play set in the side yard.

“No. I’m just . . .” Virgil was watching the mirror, and fifteen seconds later, Ma Nobles went by in her pickup. As far as Virgil could tell, she never looked down the drive. He put the truck in reverse, backed down the drive, and edged out to the highway. “The woman in the truck ahead of us . . . I’m interested in where she’s going.”

“This is not about Jones?”

“No, it’s a different case. Be patient, this won’t take long.”

—

T
HE HIGHWAY RAN PARALLEL
to the Minnesota River, where Ma and her son had allegedly stashed the fake barn lumber. Virgil stayed well back and they drove along four miles, then five, and finally Ma turned north on a gravel road toward the river. Virgil pulled to the shoulder of the road, hooked his iPad out of the pocket on the back of the passenger seat, and called up a satellite view of the area.

“No bridge down there,” he said. “The road does go along the river for a while.”

“She made a lot of dust on that road. If you go down there, she could see it.”

They never had a chance. Ma’s truck reappeared at the corner, and she turned toward them. As she went by, she smiled, twiddled her fingers at Virgil, and continued back toward town.

“She saw us,” Yael said.

“I was almost sure she didn’t,” Virgil said. “She never looked at us when she turned off.”

“Then . . . she has an outlook. They saw us coming behind, they saw us go to the shoulder, they telephoned her.”