The Clouds Roll Away (33 page)

My mother looked up as I walked through the den to the kitchen.

“Did I hear something upstairs?” she asked. “It sounded like a door slamming.”

“The wind. Wally's window was open, so the wind slammed the door.”

“You talked to him?”

I nodded and she returned to her show.

In the kitchen, I lifted the discarded Butterball wrapper and stuffed the broken pipe into the garbage can. I washed my hands again and was carrying the trash can back when I saw Wally coming down the hall. Shifting the trash can to my left side, I stood behind my mother's chair, reaching under my bulky sweater, placing my palm on the Glock.

“Don't touch anything,” he said. “I don't know when, but I'll be back.”

“Are you going out?” my mother said. “You could use the fresh air, Wally. You've been cooped up in that room for days.”

His molten eyes fixed on me. He didn't seem able to look at her.

“Do you need Raleigh to drive you somewhere?” she asked. “She put chains on my car.”

He turned without a word. I followed him down the hall. He opened the front door and stepped outside. I latched the dead bolt behind him, parting the curtain over the leaded glass sidelight. He walked across Monument Avenue, passing by General Lee, his head down against the cold. His new car was snowbound at the curb.

In the front parlor and living room, I checked the window locks. I put the wastebasket back in the bathroom and was coming through the den when my mother said, “I just don't know. Wally seems like a different person. Do you think he's all right?”

I nodded, pretending to look outside at the snow, checking the den's window locks. Then the kitchen, where I took the phone book from under the rotary-dial phone and carried it into the front parlor. Using my cell phone, I called down the list of locksmiths until one of them agreed to come tonight after midnight, charging double his usual rate to change the door locks.

When I hung up, my phone rang.

The sheriff. He wanted to inform me that RPM just kicked the officers off his property. “And there's nothing I can do about it,” the sheriff drawled. “But maybe you got a federal law regarding stupidity.”

When I hung up, I stared at the Christmas tree. Ornaments smothered the fir's pale green limbs. My mother's overdone Christmas. And yet the house felt so empty. When something brushed against my leg, I looked down. Madame stared up at me.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Don't bark when the locksmith shows up.”

I pretended to watch TV with my mother, wondering whether I should notify the Bureau. I tried to imagine how Phaup would twist the whole thing. I rented a room to a crackhead, who lived in the house with my mother. Then I considered calling the Richmond police. But it would sound ridiculous. Wally had no priors. Not even a traffic ticket. He wasn't violent—yet. And I'd flushed the evidence.

“Did you hear me?” my mother asked.

“I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“Can you drive me to the Christmas Eve service tomorrow?”

“Where?” I asked.

“St. John's.”

“It's probably canceled.”

“Oh no, I called. Remember how your father never missed one?”

I stared at the television. Scrooge realized he was alive, really alive. Throwing open the bedroom window, he yelled to the boy in the street to go buy the biggest goose in the butcher's shop.

“I just love this part,” my mother said.

When the movie ended, she said she was turning in for the night. I promised not to forget tomorrow night's service.

“Do you mind if I keep Madame down here?” I asked. “I'm going to stay up awhile.”

“My goodness, what a refreshing night. First, Wally comes out of his room. And here you are, relaxing for a change.”

I channel-surfed with Madame on the couch, listening to my mother's feet pad across the bedroom floor upstairs. When she finished her beauty routine and climbed into bed, I waited another forty-five minutes, until just after 11 p.m. The house was dead silent. The security lights were on over the back patio, and I raced over the glittery snow to the carriage house, grabbing my toothbrush, geology kit, and briefcase with T-III notes.

I was back in the big house in less than five minutes, and when I opened the kitchen door, panting, Madame was standing right where I left her, staring out the bottom pane cleared of fake snow. She was one of those dogs with the intelligence to understand certain things had greater meaning. Things like suitcases and sudden phone calls and surreptitious behavior.

I set my geology kit on the kitchen table. She didn't lie down at my feet.

She stood beside my chair, watching.

No bigger than a book, the mineral testing kit was a gift from my father on my sixteenth birthday. I plugged in the power cord, changed the backup AA batteries, and waited for the instrument to warm up. Under the kitchen sink, I took out my mother's jewelry cleaning machine. The best ionic cleaner on the market. I should know. It was the same one we used in the FBI's mineralogy lab.

I took one of the octahedral double pyramids from Zennie's box of rocks and placed it inside the cleaner's basket, adding the diluted solution. While electrolysis and bubbles did their work— weakening the surface tension between mineral and debris—I petted Madame, trying to soothe her. Sixty seconds later, the machine beeped. I rinsed and dried the stone, checking it with my loupe, the small magnifier jewelers use. The loupe looked like a tiny top hat and magnified the growth artifacts covering the flat surfaces. Tiny triangles like frost, the atomic replication of the mineral's crystal structure.

Next, I held the stone in front of my mouth and breathed. I tried to fog it. But it refused condensation, immediately dispersing the heat from my breath just as it dispersed the heat from Zennie's radiator.

I chose a stone from my test collection, placing it on the testing machine. Also octahedral, to the naked eye it looked identical to Zennie's rock. Only I'd collected it from Sunset Beach, New Jersey, on a field trip with my dad, right after he gave me the test kit. We rode the ferry over from Delaware, hunting the famous Cape May “diamonds,” and he told me the difference between real and fake. I touched the testing stylus to the Cape May diamond, measuring the stone's thermal conductivity and reflectivity. The needle on the gauge swung up then down. When the machine beeped, the needle pointed to the correct answer: quartz.

I performed the same procedure on samples of cubic zirco-nia and moissanite, a mineral simulate. Each time, the machine answered correctly. There was no doubt about calibration and accuracy.

Finally I placed Zennie's clean rock on the testing pad, touching it with the stylus, watching the needle go wild.

The rock wasn't quartz. It wasn't cubic zirconia. And it wasn't a counterfeit.

What Zennie had was a diamond.

Lots and lots of diamonds.

Christmas Eve dawned with more snow, every inch bringing palpable relief. Every inch meant Wally was less likely to trudge back to the house today.

At the kitchen table, I wrote a note for my mother, informing her that Wally had called very late last night after losing his wallet and keys. He recommended we change the locks immediately, in case somebody linked the address on his license with his keys. But he was fine, I added, no need to worry.

I stared at my boldfaced lies.

They were getting easier to tell.

That's what bothered me.

I locked the door with one of the keys and jogged through the snow to the carriage house. I showered, changed into fresh clothes, and made coffee. Then I called Zennie.

My eyes felt grainy from four hours of sleep on the couch in the den, and I prepared myself for her cranky morning attitude. But she sounded relaxed for once. The voice of someone who had cried a long time and was finished with it.

“If you're asking me to go back to that cold storage,” she said, “you can forget it.”

“No, I wanted to ask you about some things the gang said.”

“Like what?”

I looked down at the list. After the locksmith came and went, I pulled out my T-III notes and the transcripts that Stan gave me. I went over the wiretap conversations again and again, trying to fit the pieces together.

“They used the word ‘blowflies,'” I said.

“Something stinks,” Zennie said. “Something's not right.”

Sully was a blowfly; that made sense.

“How about PeeWees?” I asked.

“Guys in the gang they don't care about. Like, if they get killed, it's no big deal.”

“How about Minks?”

“What?”

“Minks. Somebody's name. XL called him a couple times. You've never heard of Minks?”

“No. I need breakfast.”

“One more,” I said. “Greens.” It was on the transcript Stan gave me. I thought it meant money, but the context didn't work. “It sounds like it's a person's name.”

“It's that Jew down on Broad Street.”

“Excuse me?”

“Greenstreet, Greenberg. Somebody like that.”

“Greenbaum?”

“That's him, the green bomb. Only XL wouldn't let Moon say it that way.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's who they were talking about!” She gave a snort, something a mean bull emits before charging. “Moon bought my jewelry down there. Only I never did get my ring.”

She said it without pity. It was a sad fact, that was all.

“You sound better, Zennie.”

“I'm seeing clear, if that's what you mean. Guess who called me last night?”

I froze. “Who?”

“RPM.”

My mind shifted the pieces, scrambling the jigsaw again. “How did he get your number?”

“I don't know.”

My heart accelerated. “Did you tell him where you were?”

“You still think I was born last night.”

I started writing notes on my pad. “What did he want?”

“Said he wanted to tell me how sorry he was Moon was dead.” She gave another snort. “And I'm supposed to go crazy because he's the big superstar.”

“He knew Moon was dead?”

“I told him, ‘You can be sorry all you want, it won't bring my man back.'”

I scribbled madly. “What did he say?”

“He felt sorry for me, wanted me to spend Christmas with him. So I wouldn't be all alone.”

“But—”

“I'm not going,” she interrupted. “Can you see me coming back, looking like a leper?”

I waited a moment. “Pardon?”

“He said he's sick of the snow and wants to go somewhere warm. He said he'd fly me over to Africa,” she said. “But I hung up before he got it all out.”

chapter thirty-nine

I
n a city whose best strategy for snow was always hope, the roads looked as bad as I'd ever seen. Richmond always hoped the snow didn't come. Then it hoped the snow didn't stay. And when that didn't work, residents hoped to ignore the whole thing by staying inside with hot chocolate and good liquor.

From the looks of traffic, most people were doing just that. But I drove the mighty Benz out the interstate, heading west into a shifting white curtain that dangled from the gray clouds. Visibility was beyond ten feet, and I followed the eighteen-wheelers driving in first gear.

And I dialed Phaup's cell number.

“Victoria Phaup speaking.”

I heard several quick puffs of air, as if she were running. I identified myself, since for security reasons agent names never appeared on caller ID.

There was no reply. Only more puffing.

“We have a situation with RPM, the rap musician on the James River,” I said.

“What kind of
situation
?”

I started telling her about the triple homicide at his estate, but she interrupted.

“Does the media know about this?”

“Not yet. The snow's shut things down and unless he released the news, the sheriff won't be talking to reporters.”

That seemed to open her ears, and I explained how the sheriff offered twenty-four-hour protection, since his bodyguard was among those killed. “But RPM kicked the officers off his property. Additionally, I have solid information suggesting that he intends to leave the area, perhaps the country. I think it would be wise to place him on the no-fly list.”

“What—you're accusing him of
terrorism
?”

“No, ma'am. Not exactly. But his behavior is highly suspicious. It looks like his trips to Africa are—”

“His trips to help the poor? Those trips to Africa?”

“His trips to Africa are somehow tied to the gangbangers on Southside. He called my source—”

“Oh, now I get it,” she said. “This is about your screwup.”

“Excuse me?”

She was not puffing anymore. “You screwed up the task force and you tried to blame me. When that didn't work, you started reaching for straws. Is this some way of trying to kill two birds with one stone?”