Storm Front

Chapter 13

Three bidders, Jones’s note had said. Hezbollah, the Turks…

Maybe Sewickey would know, Virgil thought. Might as well check in, anyway, since he was right there. He walked back across the street to the Holiday, up the stairs to Sewickey’s room, and found a note on the door: “TV Personnel: We have gone to Custard’s Last Stand.”

Custard’s was a diner and party room, six blocks away.

When Virgil arrived at the diner, he almost kept going: three white TV vans were parked outside. Sewickey, he thought, was having another press conference. He thought that for almost four seconds, at which point Sewickey exploded through the front door, one hand wrapped in the jungle shirt of a man who was punching him in the head.

A half-dozen reporters followed them out, plus two cameramen, rolling. Virgil said to the truck, “Ah, Christ Almighty, now what?”

He stuck the truck into a fire hydrant space, threw it into park, pulled the keys, and jumped out. The cameramen were following the fight, which now had gone to the pavement. Virgil broke through the screen of cameramen, grabbed Sewickey, who was on top, by the shirt, and threw him across the sidewalk. The man who’d been beneath him said, “Thanks,” and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing some blood across his attractively dimpled chin.

Sewickey, showing a trickle of blood from one nostril, was rolling to his feet and Virgil said, “Do not start again, or I’ll kick your ass and then I’ll arrest you.”

One of the reporters shouted, “Who are you?” and another one answered, “Virgil Flowers, he’s with the BCA.”

Virgil looked at the fighters, then the reporters and cameramen, and said to Sewickey and the other man, “You two, get in the truck.” He pointed at the man with the bloody lip and said, “Passenger seat,” and to Sewickey, “Backseat. Now!”

The man with the bloody lip grinned at the reporters and said, “I guess we’ll talk later.” He picked out a female reporter, wiggled his eyebrows at her, and said, “Sheila.”

He was, Virgil realized, disturbingly good-looking, with curly dark hair, somewhat oversized brown eyes, square shoulders, and a three-day beard. He was wearing an olive drab jungle shirt with pockets on the sleeves. The sleeves were rolled up over the elbow, with a buttoned flap holding the rolls up high, showing just a hint of muscle. A loop of Tibetan beads, turquoise alternating with lapis lazuli, decorated one wrist, but in a purely masculine way. The shirt was tucked into khaki cargo shorts, over waffle stomper boots with the socks rolled down.

He was maybe thirty, Virgil thought.

He was going to say something more to Sheila, the reporter, until Virgil repeated, “Now!” Sewickey headed toward the truck, and the good-looking guy nodded apologetically toward Sheila and went to the truck.

In the truck, Virgil turned in the driver’s seat and said, “All right, what was that about?”

Sewickey said, “This cocksucker—”

“Whoa! Shut up,” Virgil said. To the other man: “Who are you?”

“He’s a charlatan,” Sewickey said.

“SHUT UP!”

Sewickey shut up and the other man dug a business card out of one of his shirtsleeve pockets and said, “I’m Tag Bauer. You may have heard of me.”

Virgil looked at the card, but only one faint bell rang. “You mean… like the watch?”

In the backseat, Sewickey laughed. “Yeah, like the watch. Another useless fashion statement.”

“SHUT UP!”

“That’s Tag Heuer,” Bauer said. “My last name is Bauer.”

The card said, “Field Archaeologist — Host of The Bauer Crusade on PBS.”

“You’ve got a TV show?” Virgil asked.

“That’s why he’s wearing makeup,” Sewickey said. “Unless he’s gone transvestite on us.”

Virgil: “If you don’t shut up, I’ll cuff you to the truck bumper. I’m serious, man. Shut the fuck up.”

Sewickey shrugged and looked out the window at the TV corps. Bauer said, “You may have seen my name in the New York Times, and just not remembered. I’m the person who found the Siddhartha’s begging bowl in an obscure Tibetan monastery, smuggled it past the Chinese guards and across the Himalaya, and returned it to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.”

“I may have seen a book,” Virgil said, tentatively. He hadn’t, but there was bound to be one.

“Yes, Bowl of Clay, Ark of the World,” Bauer said.

“Available on Amazon?”

“Yes, both in paper and in Kindle form. Also, through Barnes and Noble, for the Nook.”

“This Sidhay dude…”

“Siddhartha,” Bauer said. “The Buddha.”

Virgil’s eyebrows went up. “Like, the Buddha buddha?”

“That’s right…. Look, maybe I should explain.”

“Uh-oh,” Sewickey said from the backseat. “Watch his lips. If they move…”

Virgil looked at him, and Sewickey held up his hands and nodded again. To Bauer, Virgil said, “Yes. Explain.”

“I roam the world in search of ancient mysteries and artifacts of power,” Bauer said. Sewickey made a farting noise in the backseat, but Bauer continued. “Through my work, my writing, and my connection with PBS—”

“And your inheritance from Daddy,” Sewickey interjected.

“… I am fortunate enough to be able to rescue various artifacts that have been lost or hidden, and return them to their rightful and historic owners.”

“When you say, ‘fortunate enough,’ you mean… buy them?” Virgil asked.

“Sometimes these artifacts have been in the hands of the ‘new owners,’ if I may call them that, for centuries,” Bauer said. He moved his hands as he spoke, in the practiced arcs of the TV presenter. “They naturally feel they have a proprietary interest in them, and if they are valuable, want recompense for their delivery. For example, when I located the gopher wood planks from Noah’s Ark, in Tsaghkaber, Armenia, I was required to make funding available to the current Armenian owners so that the planks might be brought to the United States.”

“Gopher wood,” Sewickey said, laughing again. “They really saw you coming that time.” To Virgil, he said, “You know where he took delivery of the gopher wood? At a gas station in Glendale, California. I’m surprised he didn’t wind up as an extra on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

For the first time, Bauer seemed disturbed. “Where did you hear that? I did not. That’s a slander, and believe me, I have the legal means… I took delivery of them on the shores of the Black Sea, and brought them to America on, first, a lugger out of Vakfikebir, and then on my own boat, The Drifter, out of ’Stanbul.”

Virgil asked Bauer, “Have you made a bid on the Solomon stone?”

Bauer said, “Maybe.”

“Don’t lie,” Virgil said.

“Well… yes. I spoke to Reverend Jones three days ago, and rushed here, on my private plane, The Wanderer.”

“Out of Hoboken,” Sewickey said. “Just like I came here in my Cadillac, The Holstein, out of Austin.”

“I keep The Wanderer at Kennedy International,” Bauer said. “I may have to be somewhere at a minute’s notice.”

Virgil thought, Okay. The third bidder. He said, “Listen, you guys. That stone is stolen property. Three people have been shot over it so far, and it’s only been by a ridiculous streak of good luck that we’ve avoided any deaths. Now. If you go after the stone, and get it, I will arrest you for receiving stolen property. If anyone is killed in the pursuit of it, and if you are one of the pursuers, I will see you charged with felony murder — that’s a death in the course of a commission of a crime. You do not have to pull the trigger. All you have to do is commit a felony that’s relevant to the death. That’s thirty years without parole, in Minnesota. I also want you to know that the Mossad is after it, and their agent here has bragged to me about how good a shot she is.”

“The Mossad,” Bauer said. His eyes flicked back to Sewickey. “I first encountered them in Aswan.”

Sewickey said, “A rough bunch. They’ve already attacked me here — I might be dead if it weren’t for Virgil and some Zen-based self-disciplinary techniques, to keep from choking to death. Reminded me of the time I ran headfirst into Yaniv ‘Che’ Offer in Jaguaruno, Brazil, in my Search for Hitler’s Heart.”

“I refueled The Drifter there, two years ago,” Bauer replied. “I didn’t know you were familiar with the place. Or that Che was hanging out there.”

“Hey, hey. Listen, guys, let’s try to focus,” Virgil said. “Yaniv ‘Che’ Offer is gonna look good to you if you keep fuckin’ around, chasing this stone. I keep telling people this, but they don’t seem to believe me. I will put your ass in prison. Understand? Prison. Look up ‘Stillwater’ in the dictionary, and you’ll find a picture of your ass.”

“I got that,” Bauer said.

Sewickey nodded, looked out the window. “You’ll have to excuse us, Virgil. The reporters weren’t finished yet.”

“No more fighting,” Virgil said. “I’ll—”

“We know,” Bauer said. “You’ll put our asses in prison.”

“That’s right,” Virgil said.

One o’clock, and Jenkins called. “Ma’s gone back home.”

“Goddamnit, I’m going over there,” Virgil said. “But I’ve got somebody else for you to watch. Gotta be careful. This guy is a terrorist, or something. Hezbollah. He’s driving around in a red Kia rental car.” He gave Jenkins the tag number, and told him where they could pick him up at Awad’s apartment. “Watch for a meeting with Jones. I don’t care much about this Hezbollah guy, I just want Jones. And the stone.”

“How much money are we talking?”

“Maybe a couple million. Maybe five.”

“I could use some of that,” Jenkins said. “I could put in a new kitchen.”

On the way over to Ma Nobles’s, Davenport called. “I saw you on TV one minute ago. A brawl outside some diner.”

“Yeah, it’s a couple of these stone hunters. They were fighting each other, I was breaking it up. You got a problem with that?”

“Hell no, I was happy to see that you were actually working, and weren’t towing your boat,” Davenport said. “Keep it up. And keep in touch.”

“I will.”

“You’re not hurt?”

“I’m good.”

At Ma Nobles’s place, Virgil turned in the drive and nearly ran over a towheaded kid, maybe eight, dressed in a Cub Scout shirt and neckerchief, headed out on his rattletrap bicycle. He stopped, rolled down the car window, and said, “Sorry.”

“Scared me,” the kid said.

“Are you Sam?”

“Who’s askin’?”

“I’m a cop, I need to talk to your mom.”

“Sam I am,” Sam said. “Ma walked down to the crick for a swim. There’s a path out past the barn.”

“You going to a den meeting?”

“Yup. Up to the Wilsons’.”

“Take care,” Virgil said.

The kid nodded and took off. Virgil drove down the drive, parked, then walked back out to the end of it, peeked around the edge of the cornfield that came almost to the driveway, and saw the kid pedaling away.

Virgil walked back to the house, pounded on the door, got no response. Thought about going in for a quick look around, decided it was too risky. He walked out to the barn, and past it — a red chicken was pecking gravel around the barn door, and stopped to look at him cockeyed — and saw the trail headed off toward the hill behind the house. What the hell.

The walk took ten minutes, past a sweet corn patch, already showing a little browning silk, and through a pasture dotted with dried cow pies, back to a line of cottonwoods that marked the path of the creek across Ma’s property. He followed the path to the edge of the water, which was not more than ten feet wide, and probably not more than knee-deep at the deepest point. Not a promising swimming spot. The path went north, toward the hill, and two minutes later, he found an old, partly broken-down dam, and Ma splashing around in a pretty little swimming hole behind it.

Her back was toward him, the water up to her neck, when he came up and called, “How you doing, Ma?”

She whirled in the water, saw him, and said, “Well, goddamnit, Virgil, why didn’t you call me and tell me you were coming out? You scared the heck out of me.”

“Excuse me. I just needed to talk to you about where you stashed old Jones.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Of course you do. Last night you went up to the hospital, dressed in a dirndl, with your hair up, and gave him some bolt cutters,” Virgil said. “We got a witness. Probably picked him up after he cut himself loose… but that’s water under the bridge. What I need to know is, where did you stash him?”

“I did not do any of that,” Ma said. “I promise you. Cross my heart.” She paddled a few feet closer, into shallower water, then stood up and said, “I cross my heart,” again, and made the cross. Virgil tried not to goggle, because he was a trained professional. She said, “Why don’t you come in here, and we can talk? It’s too damn hot to be sitting up on some creek bank in the sun.”

“I’m in the shade.”

“Oh, so what?”

Virgil thought about it for a second, then said, “The last time I went skinny-dipping with a woman, somebody tried to shoot me.”

“Virgil…”

“That water’s probably so polluted with fertilizer and other crap that you’ll grow another breast… not that you need one.”

“That’s pure water that you could drink,” she said. “It comes out of a spring at the bottom of that hill, and there’s not a drop of fertilizer that goes into it before it gets here. And — it’s really cool. It’s perfect.”

She dropped onto her back and did a scissors kick into deeper water.

“Oh, all right,” he said, taking off his hat.

So Virgil jumped in the water, which must have been thirty degrees cooler than the air temperature. The change nearly stopped his heart, and caused his testicles to retract up as far as his liver, but after a couple of minutes, felt delicious.

“I don’t know why you think I’m a criminal,” Ma said, as she floated around the pool on her back, doing a little finger paddle to keep herself moving. The water glistened on her breasts and belly, and it was better, Virgil thought, than seeing a fifty-seven-inch musky in the water. Or, at least, really, really close to that.

“I’ll tell you, Ma, I don’t see you so much as a criminal, as a woman trying to make her way in the world, without as many tools as other women might have.”

“I’ve got a couple tools,” she said. “I studied agronomy at South Central.”

“Really? I didn’t know that. I studied ecological science at the U up in St. Paul.”

“Really.”

So they floated around and talked about life, about the summer and the heat, and about the possibility that lumber was aging at the bottom of the Minnesota River, and about the likely location of Jones and the stele. Virgil told her about the fight at Custard’s.

“Tag Bauer? Really? I mean, you know him now?”

“Well, I talked to him,” Virgil said. “You know who he is?”

“Sure, he has a show on Channel Two. The Bauer Crusade. He’s always looking for artifacts. He sails someplace on his yacht, The Drifter, or he flies someplace in the airplane…”

“The Wanderer…”

“Yeah. And he goes on expeditions in Jeeps, and he takes his shirt off when he swims these rivers, or when he’s sailing.”

Virgil could see that in his mind’s eye. “Not when he’s flying?”

“Not so much when he’s flying,” Ma said. “He’s got this spider tattoo on his shoulder blade, given to him by a tribe in New Guinea, and now he’s a member of the tribe and is pledged to fight with them. Anyway, I’d like to meet him, you know…”

“Because of your interest in archaeology?”

Ma floated up to Virgil and wrapped both her legs around one of his and said, “C’mon, Virgie, I need this something fierce.”

Virgil said, “Ma, if a guy takes it out and waves it at you, you get pregnant. I don’t need any redneck kids running around my house, and even if I was inclined to scratch your itch, which is, I confess, not an entirely unattractive proposition—”

“I can tell,” she murmured. “Judging from the evidence at hand.”

“… I don’t happen to have any protection with me, and I’m not going to take the chance that you’re on the pill—”

“They’re not good for you, the pills,” she said. “They cause hormonal imbalances.”

“… so, I’m going to have to pass. And, by the way, I suspect you already have hormonal imbalances.”

“Well then, the heck with you,” she said, letting go of the evidence. “Maybe I’ll introduce myself to Tag.”

“Why? Because you know where the stone is?”

“Of course not.”

So, they got dressed and walked back to the farm, companionably enough, getting there just as Sam arrived back on his bike. He eyed them for a moment, both of them with wet hair, then said to Virgil, “I guess you found her.”

Virgil said, “Yup. How was the den meeting?”

“Same old shit,” Sam said. “You arrest her?”

“Not yet,” Virgil said. “But you should talk to her, and tell her to stop messing with the law. And you shouldn’t say ‘shit.’”

“Okay,” the kid said.

“That’s really not fair,” Ma said. “Bringing in the children.”

“Ma, what the hell do you think is going to happen to the kids if you wind up in the joint for eight to ten?” Virgil asked. “You think that’s going to be good for them? Sam’ll be in college before you get out.”

For the first time she looked a little shaken. “I gotta think,” she said. She took her son’s hand. “Come on, Sam. We gotta go think.”

Before Virgil left Ma’s, he checked the tracking tablet. Ellen was still showing at the farm, and he wondered if that might be where the sun came through. He turned that way.

As he drove, he called Shrake, who was watching the Hezbollah guy. “Nothing happening. They went out to a McDonald’s, and then back to the Awad guy’s apartment. I’m watching the back and both cars, and Jenkins is out front. It’s really, really boring.”

At Jones’s old farm, Ellen’s Jeep was parked halfway up the drive. Virgil pulled in, found the house and sheds unoccupied; one exterior wall of the house had had several boards removed. He walked past the last shed and saw Ellen on her hands and knees at the back fence line. He walked that way; she saw him coming and stood and waved. When he came up she asked, “Want some rhubarb?”

“Jeez, I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he said. She had a pasta pot, which she’d half-filled with cut rhubarb stalks. “I don’t cook much.”

“If I’m down in the next couple of days, I’ll bring you a pie,” she said.

“I do eat rhubarb pie,” Virgil said. “You’re just getting a last harvest?”

“I’m thinking about trying to move the whole bed, and some of the asparagus,” she said. “I’m going to have to talk to somebody about the best way to do it. And there’re some old yellow farm iris I’d like to move. There’re some roses and lilacs I’m afraid will have to stay. They’re just gonna get plowed under, but they’re so senile that they’re not worth moving. Ma says she’ll take down the apple trees — people like the wood to burn in their fireplaces.”

“Sad,” Virgil said. “It’s happened all over, though, old farms going under.”

She wiped a sleeve across her forehead and asked, “How come you look so cool?”

“I haven’t been cutting rhubarb in the sunshine,” he said. “Listen, I need to talk to you. Seriously. Let’s find some shade.”

“I know about Dad, but I don’t know where he is,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when the Mankato police called me.”

They wound up sitting on the porch steps. Several planks had been removed from the porch floor, and Virgil said, “I hope you’re getting some money from Ma.”

“We will get some,” she said. “I checked on the Internet, and we’re getting an okay price from her. Better than burning it, anyway. I like her. She’s an interesting woman.”

Virgil said, “Whatever. The crime-scene crew went over the cabin where your father was shot. When the shooting was still going on, but apparently after he was shot, he began writing a note. When we got there, and he realized he wasn’t going to die, he wadded it all up and threw it in a corner, behind some firewood, and hoped we wouldn’t find it. The note was to you.”

“To me? What did it say?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. First, I’d like to ask you to stop all of this. You can stop it. I think he calls you, I think you talk to him, I think you know what’s going on here,” Virgil said. “I need to know that. What in the heck is he doing? He’s a lifelong minister, never broke a law in his life, and now people may die because of what he’s doing? Ellen: tell me.”

She turned away from him, staring off across the summer fields. Then, “I don’t know the details. I had no idea about this stone. But it has to do with Mom. I think he’s trying to get enough money together to make sure she’ll have a place in an extended care facility, when he’s gone. She’s sixty-five. She has early-onset Alzheimer’s, but other than that, she’s healthy enough. She could live for years yet.”

The extended care facility, she said, cost seven thousand dollars a month. She couldn’t afford that, nor could her brother, even if they pooled their resources. “Dad tried keeping her at home, with a babysitter, but she needed professional watching. The thing is, she’s healthy, and strong, but something happens, and she panics and tries to fight her way out of the house, or she sneaks out, and then… she’s lost. When Dad got sick and had to go to the hospital, I tried to keep her at my place. It was impossible. I would have needed professional nurses sixteen hours a day, and there was just no way to pay for that. I couldn’t stay home myself — somebody had to work.”

“I’m sorry,” Virgil said, and meant it.

“Dad’s frantic about it. He knows he’s going to die. There’ll be some Social Security survivor’s benefits for Mom, and we’ll sell his house and put that in a fund, but it’s not nearly enough. She’ll wind up in a warehouse, minimal care, minimal conditions, unless we can come up with a solution. That’s what this auction is — a solution. I don’t know how he can set up the payments, but he’s a smart man, and apparently thought of something.”

“But…” Virgil took off his hat and smoothed his hair back. “But it came down to finding this stone? That’s the solution? That’s less likely than winning the lottery.”

“I don’t think he had a solution,” she said. “He went to Israel to say good-bye to friends. He just saw his chance and took it.”

“A miserable situation,” Virgil said. He made a sneaky mental note to check on Jones’s wife’s location. Jones was probably looking in on her, he thought; but he couldn’t ask Ellen where her mother was, because she might warn Jones away.

“Anyway,” she said after a moment, “what did Dad put in that note?”

“He said he loved you kids, and the worst pain was thinking that he wouldn’t see you again. He said he’d hidden the stone. Obviously, he hid it where you could find it. He was depending on you to sell it, apparently.”

“Where did he put it?” she asked.

“You’ll know where it is, and you have to tell me,” Virgil said. “Ellen — three people have been shot. It’s not reasonable to let people die, to make things better for a woman who won’t even know that they’re better.”

She thought about that and said, “If I know where it is, I’ll tell you.”

Virgil took the chance. “He said it’s where the sun comes through.”

“Yeah.” She stood up and dusted off the seat of her shorts, and said, “It’s at the house. His house.”

“We’ve looked through there pretty thoroughly,” Virgil said. “I was there today, looking around.”

“It’s not inside, it’s outside,” she said. “The house next door to his has a big tree in the backyard, next to the garage. On exactly the day of the summer solstice, and only on that day, you can see the sun come up in the crack of space between the tree and the garage. He used to say it was like one of those ancient observatories. It’d put this shaft of light across our yard, and it’d hit this clump of hollyhocks on the fence on the west side of the yard. He’d get up at dawn on the first day of summer just to see it, and he’d make Mom and me and Danny get up, too.”

“All right,” Virgil said. “Let’s go look.”

“Might not be there,” she said. “He might’ve figured you’d find that note, and that’s why he ran away last night. He might’ve gone over to get it.”

“Let’s look anyway,” Virgil said. “Then we’ll know.”