Storm Front

Chapter 19

Ma Nobles drove along the back road, not quite sure that she had it right, until she saw the “Sawyer Pottery” sign on the left side of the road, with a gravel driveway climbing up a low hill into an old, poorly maintained pine plantation.

At the top of the hill, she found a red-cedar-and-glass house, wrapped with a walkway at the second level. Visible out back were a gray wooden shed, built of boards that she could sell in thirty seconds, if she could get them to western Massachusetts; a garage; and farther away, a low, wide structure that looked a little like a yurt. She wouldn’t have known what it was, except for a sign in a pathway that said, “To Wood Kiln.”

She got out of the truck, and as she did, she heard a glass door sliding back, and then Jones came out on the balcony and said, “The door is open.”

She went inside, and found Jones standing at the top of a short stairway. “Please come up,” he said. “I’m too weak to go up and down too much.”

“Nice place,” Ma said, as she climbed the stairs and followed Jones to a sitting area. He dropped on a couch, and she took an easy chair.

“Yes. It’s charming. Maybe a little too charming. But then, they’re charming people,” Jones said. “They would be somewhat unhappy if they knew I was here.”

“Where are they?”

“England. Supposedly studying pottery,” Jones said. “Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t, but I’ll tell you what — they’ll write it off.”

“I brought the food,” she said.

“Do you know where Flowers is?”

“He said he had to go to Rochester — I don’t know what for.”

“You believe him?”

“I asked him if he’d like to come over and go skinny-dipping, and he said he had to work. I know he likes to skinny-dip, so… I believe him. Hasn’t called me today.”

“Hmm. If I were younger, and not a minister, and not married, and not dying… anyway…”

“He would never find this place,” Ma said. “I could hardly find it myself, and I knew where it was.”

“I know that — that’s not why I wondered,” Jones said. “The thing is, Florence, I need another favor from you, and having Flowers on his way to Rochester is perfect.”

“What do you need?”

“My wife is in a home in St. Peter. I need somebody to drive me up there.”

Ma looked at him, then shook her head. “Sir, everybody in the state is looking for you, and your picture is everywhere.”

“Yes, they know exactly what I look like. That’s why I need another favor.”

“Another one?”

“I need you to cut my hair. I can shave myself, but I can’t cut the hair.”

After the conversation with the spies, Virgil drove to the Rochester convention center, called Davenport on a hardwired phone, and filled him in. “I’m not sure I was supposed to tell you any of this, because I was sworn to absolute secrecy, but I want somebody at my back who knows what’s going on.”

“I got your back, but to tell you the truth, I’m confused as hell,” Davenport said. “Assuming they take out this Hatchet guy, you’ve got the rest of it covered? The stele, the Israelis, the Hezbollah, this Bauer guy, and the Texan?”

“I’m not sure,” Virgil said. “I’m trying to narrow things down — at this point, it seems to be coming down to the Hezbollah and Bauer. They seem to be the only ones with any money. If I get killed, pick up Ma Nobles and run her through the wringer. It’s possible that she knows more than anybody about what’s going on.”

“You know I’d never second-guess you—”

“Yeah, right.”

“But if it had been me,” Davenport said, “I’d have sicced the Iranian Hatchet man on the Turkish nut-cutter and called it a day.”

Virgil headed home. When he was thirty miles out, he took a minute to check on Bauer’s location: and his location was moving, out toward Ma’s place. Nothing he could do about that — he was forty-five minutes away. Was it possible that Ma had Jones, and the exchange was about to happen?

He called Awad, who answered and said, “I can talk.”

“What are the chances that an exchange could take place today, and that you’re being cut out of the deal?”

“Do you know something?”

“I know nothing at all — that’s my major problem,” Virgil said.

“I don’t think we’re being cut out. Al-Lubnani talked to Jones — Jones called him — and al-Lubnani told him that the money was coming in cash, and Jones says, ‘Good.’”

“All right. Stay in touch.”

“What about that other thing we talked about?” Awad asked.

Meaning, the Hatchet.

“Don’t even think about it,” Virgil said. “This is no longer your responsibility. If you don’t think about him, and al-Lubnani doesn’t think about him, you’ll be fine. If you think about him, this man will see it.”

“I will not think, and will advise Mr. al-Lubnani to do the same.”

“Is Mr. al-Lubnani there now?

“Yes.”

“I need to talk with the two of you, together. It’ll only take a minute,” Virgil said.

“Come now. We will arrive at the laundry room on the first floor.”

On the way into town, Virgil had a stray thought: What if the stele was a bait, an artificial lure, so to speak, and Jones, who’d shown no reluctance to use a weapon, simply planned to hijack the money from both Bauer and al-Lubnani?

He’d keep the possibility in mind, but as he chewed on it, he decided that Jones probably was not doing that: in his own terms, it would seem unethical. The gunplay had all been in self-defense, which he would think of as ethically excusable.

But then, he was a thief, so his ethics, by definition, had to be somewhat flexible.

The Riverside Transitional Center looked like a small elementary school of yellow brick, with a flag circle out front, and two dozen cars in a narrow parking lot that was less than a third full.

Inside, the place was painted in colors meant to be cheery, and the bulletin boards were pinned with cartoons and felt animals and pictures of collies in pastures with fuzzy sheep.

“Place is like the waiting room for hell,” Jones muttered as they went up the steps. He was using a cane he’d found in a closet at the pottery, and he needed it. It also worked as a disguise, because the athletic, bearded, long-haired Reverend Jones never used one.

Jones had always worn his hair preacher-long: not hippie long, but nothing like a military cut. Now you could see his pale scalp through Ma’s buzz cut. And Jones had always worn a beard, and now Ma knew why. With the beard, he looked fierce, almost Old Testament warrior-like. Without it, he was a moonfaced man with a severely receding chin. The transformation was so complete that Ma could hardly keep from staring at him.

Inside, they went to a front desk, and Jones introduced himself as Clarence Haverford, Magda Jones’s elder brother, “up from Iowa.”

The cheerful woman led them into a locked dayroom, chatting cheerfully and filling them in on Magda. “She’s very healthy, very cheerful, but she’s not very aware of personalities or what’s going on around her anymore. But always cheerful.”

“She always was,” Jones muttered. And then, “I bet you haven’t seen that damn husband of hers around here. I’ve been reading about him.”

“We don’t talk about that. But I can tell you, we’ve got our eye out.”

“Good,” he said. “I’d like a few words with him myself. Or maybe not words. What I’d like to do is take this cane and shove it—”

“Clarence!” Ma said severely, as Jones turned toward her, and she thought she saw a twinkle in his eye. They were a good team.

The dayroom was filled with people sitting in chairs, looking around, plus a couple of orderlies. That was it. People looking around, until an orderly walked up to a man and sniffed at him, and said, “Bob, we better go back to your room. You need to change.”

“Change?”

Ma looked away.

Magda was sitting on a glider, gliding. She looked up and smiled when Jones and Ma walked up, and said, “Hi!” but there was no recognition in her eyes.

Jones got close and said, “Magda, how are you feeling?”

“I feel fine. Are you James?”

“I’m Elijah,” Jones said.

“Where’s Elijah?” Suddenly she looked frightened, and peered around the room, her smile disappearing. “Why don’t they let me see him?”

Jones took her hand, and Ma suddenly realized she couldn’t deal with it, and said, “I’ll wait outside.”

Jones looked at her, then nodded. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”

He was more like ten minutes, and Ma, looking through the glass plate in the locked dayroom door, saw him holding Magda’s hand, talking gently with her, saw her shaking her head. But then the smile came back, and she began to talk. Jones listened to her for a minute or two, then said something to her, kissed her on the forehead, stood, kissed her again, and walked toward the door, looking reluctantly back. She was following him with her eyes, and he stopped and went back and kissed her on the lips, but she pulled away, as if shocked, and he kissed her on the forehead again, and then came through to the door.

Ma said, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Jones said, tears running down his moon face. “Tonight I’ll pray to the Good Lord, and thank him for taking me with cancer.”

Then Ma started to cry, and, leaning on each other, they went out the door.

Virgil met al-Lubnani and Awad in the laundry room, and as Virgil had said, the conversation didn’t take more than a couple of minutes. At the end of it, they all shook hands, and Virgil headed out to Ma’s place, where his tracker said that Bauer’s car was still parked. He was a few hundred yards out when a beat-up black Toyota pickup turned out of her driveway and headed toward him. As it passed, he recognized her oldest son, Rolf, at the wheel.

Virgil had been cooperating with the Blue Earth County sheriff’s office on the lumber scam. He hadn’t actually talked to Rolf, though he’d seen photos of him. On a hunch, he rolled past Ma’s driveway — Bauer’s Range Rover was parked in the side yard — and kept going until the black pickup was hidden in its own gravel dust. He made a quick three-point turn and went after it.

He was three hundred yards behind when the truck reached Highway 169, which paralleled the river as it turned north toward the Twin Cities. Virgil slowed as the pickup waited for a car to pass, hooked right onto the highway. Virgil drove to the intersection, thinking Rolf was probably going to Mankato — though he was taking a long way around — but then, a quarter mile down the highway, the pickup slowed, signaled a turn, and crossed over to a road on the other side, where it disappeared again.

Now Rolf was only a few hundred yards from the river. Virgil followed. The road down to the water dead-ended, but Rolf turned at the very end of it and disappeared again. An unmarked track? Virgil pulled to the side of the road, dug out his iPad, and looked at a satellite view of the area on Google Maps. As far as he could see, there was no track or other road extension. Rolf was right at the river.

Virgil drove on down, parked fifty yards out, got out, put his gun in the small of his back, and walked down to the end of the road.

The Toyota had been pulled off and parked in a notch in the riverside trees. Virgil found a path going back into the woods — more than a game trail, but less than a regular fisherman’s access.

The problem was, the woods were so dense that if Ma’s kid wanted to ambush him, he could. Virgil didn’t think that was likely, because Ma’s kids, those he’d met, seemed mellow enough. Still, he didn’t know this one, and he really needed to see what was going on.

As he hesitated, the silence was broken by the sound of a gasoline engine, rough at first, then smoothing out, well down toward the river. Virgil plunged into the brush, moving quickly, but not trying to be especially quiet: he could still hear the engine, probably a gas generator, and nobody who was near it would hear him coming. Two hundred yards in, he found that he was correct: the kid had mounted an electric winch on a tree, and was using the generator to run it. A steel cable ran down into the water, where Rolf was standing, in hip boots. He was a muscular young man, blond and round-faced like his mother, intent on the work.

As Virgil watched, a foot-thick stack of wire-bound boards surfaced, hooked up by the winch cable, and Rolf horsed them over toward the shore. There, he threw the winch into neutral and squatted to look at the boards. After he’d spent a couple of minutes scraping at them with a knife, he horsed them back out into the river.

Not antique enough, Virgil thought. Not yet, anyway.

He thought about the possibilities, then eased back into the trees. When he was a hundred yards back, he jogged the rest of the way to his truck, turned it around, and headed back toward Ma’s.

When Virgil pulled into the yard, he got a quick flash of Ma’s face at a kitchen window, but she ducked away and Virgil thought, Is Jones in there?

He walked up to the door and knocked once and then went through and stood on the landing of the stairs that went down to the basement and up to the kitchen, and called, “Anybody home?”

A moment later, Ma called, “Who’s there?”

“Virgil. I thought we were going skinny-dipping.”

Ma appeared at the top of the stairs, arms akimbo, and said, “I’m entertaining.”

“Well, hell, I’m happy to join in,” Virgil said. “I’m a pretty good singer, actually.”

Ma couldn’t help herself, and smiled, and said, “I’ve got Tag Bauer on my couch.”

“That’s fine, Tag and I are old buddies,” Virgil said, as he climbed the four steps up to her. She was wearing a cornflower blue linen blouse and white shorts, with flip-flops. “I was wondering, though, if you’ve got Elijah Jones under your bed?”

“I don’t even know Reverend Jones—”

“C’mon, Ma, this is that fuckin’ Flowers you’re talking to.” She backed into the kitchen, which smelled liked mashed potatoes and gravy, and maybe pie of some kind, and Vigil swerved around her and stuck his head into the kitchen and found Bauer sitting on the couch. His shoes, Virgil noted, were on and firmly tied, which meant that he hadn’t gotten too comfortable. “How’s it going, Tag?”

“Going fine,” Bauer said, with a cheerful grin. “I’m thinking about leaving town, though.”

“Not with the stele.”

“I can’t promise anything — I’d say that the recovery of the stone is something that we all are working toward.”

Ma said, “Virgil—”

Virgil said, “Ma, Tag, let’s sit down and have a little conference. I’ve been doing a lot of investigating and have things to report.” He raised his voice and shouted, “And Reverend Jones, if you’re up there, this is something you might want to hear, too.”

There was no response, not even a squeaky board, and Ma said, “Virgil: he’s not here.”

“All right,” Virgil said.

“So what’d you find out?” Bauer asked.

“I’ve been doing research, Tag, and I know a few things that I didn’t know before,” Virgil said. “You’ve got this urge to be a movie star, which is just fine with me and everybody else. And you’ve got some money — my best estimate is that when your father died, you probably inherited three or four million dollars. You spent a good piece of that on The Wanderer and The Drifter and so on. Then you’ve got that apartment out in the Hamptons, you pay on that time-share in Malibu, you rent a place in Paris.”

“Cool,” Ma said.

“You probably don’t quite break even with your TV show, because they’re so cheap about the travel money,” Virgil said. “And there’s a good chance that the show won’t be renewed — there’s been talk about Bauer’s Last Crusade… and I figure you’re probably down to your last million or so.”

“They’ll renew,” Bauer said. “They know I could be on the History Channel in one second.”

Ma: “If you’re down to your last million… how’re you gonna buy the stone?”

Virgil: “He can’t.”

“Well, poop,” Ma said.

“This is all speculation,” Bauer said. “I—”

Virgil cut him off. “Let me finish. The thing is, the information I’ve developed over the past day suggests that you’ve got no chance to win the auction, because you don’t have enough ready money. Jones is dying, he’s got no time to waste on promises, and Hezbollah is going to show up with three million dollars in hundred-dollar bills. He’ll take it, if he has a chance. I’ve also found out exactly who we’re dealing with. Now, you’ve got no chance to actually get the stone, but if you interfere with the deal, or if the Hezbollah guys think you’re for real, they will kill you. And they won’t be nice about it. They will cut your head off. I’m not exaggerating.”

Ma and Bauer exchanged a quick glance, and Bauer said, “I’m sure there’s a little exaggeration there—”

“No. There isn’t. Ma knows me, and she knows I can be a pretty sincere guy. I’m telling you, they will kill you. They have a killer right here, on tap. I promise you, this is the truth.”

Ma said to Bauer, “I think he’s serious.”

Virgil said to Ma, “And I’ve got some news for you, too. I know you’re messing around with Jones. I haven’t found out exactly why, yet. I know you’re a little pinched for money, from time to time, but you’ve got that big red Ford, so you can’t be too pinched. But Ma — I found out something in the last hour or so. I’m ready to let it go, but if you fuck with me on this Jones thing, your whole family is going to have a problem. I want you to know I’m serious about that, too. This is a threat, and I’ll carry it out.”

“What’d you find out?”

Virgil shook his head. “I won’t tell you, but I give you my word: if you knew, and if you thought I’d act on it, you’d drop Jones like a hot potato.”

“Something to do with Rolf?” Like she’d picked it right out of his brain.

“What do you think?”

So they all sat in a long quiet spot, and then Bauer said, “What should we do? Walk away? If we walk away, Jones will meet the Hezbollah someplace quiet, and you’ll never see the money or Jones again.”

“What I want is for you to go ahead with the auction, wherever you were planning to hold it. But I want you to tell me where it is — I’m going to bust it up. I want to grab the money, and Jones, and the stone, and the Hezbollah guys. If you go along with that, I’ll tell the TV people that you, Tag, were instrumental in recovering the stone. I’ll tell them that you were a hero. And Ma, I won’t let you sell that fake lumber, I won’t let you keep running that scam, but you go along with me, and I’ll let bygones be bygones. You stop with this Jones bullshit, and I won’t try to hang any old stuff on you or your kid.”

They sat some more, then Bauer said, “I’ll take your deal, but it really burns me up. Tell the TV people that I’m a hero? You know how long they’ll remember that? About a nanosecond. But I don’t see much choice. I don’t want to get my head cut off.”

“Where’s the auction?” Virgil asked.

“I don’t know yet. Jones said he’ll call me tomorrow night at nine o’clock, and tell me where to meet him. He says it’ll be a public place, and the other bidders will be there.”

Ma said, “And I’ll take the deal, though it’s a bitter pill. I can’t help you with Reverend Jones. I don’t know where he is, but he wants me to back him up at the exchange. He’s going to leave the stone for me, someplace, and call me at the last minute and tell me where. When he sees the money, I’m supposed to show up wherever it is, and flash the stone at them.”

“That’s… perfect,” Virgil said. “You could drop the stone with me instead.”

Ma shook her head. “Won’t do it, Virgil. I won’t leave the man hanging that way, with this killer. Now: I know he’s going to do something tricky with the exchange, but he hasn’t told me what it is. So what I will do is, I’ll play my part. The money will be there, and I’ll show up, with the stone, and if he’s tricky enough, Reverend Jones will wind up with the money and you’ll wind up with the Hezbollah and the stone. If he’s not tricky enough to pull it off, then that’s his problem, and you’ll get all of it — Jones, the stone, and the money.”

“You won’t tell him that I’m going to bust it up?”

“No. I won’t betray anybody,” Ma said.

“Seems to me like you’re betraying everybody,” Bauer said.

She shook her head: “This is really starting to hurt me,” she said.

Virgil sighed and said, “Ma, I really don’t want to do that.”

“Can’t see how we can avoid it, now,” she said. “We’re all jammed up here.”

“You really don’t know where Jones is?”

“No,” she lied, and steered Virgil in another direction. “I know where the red Volvo is, but I don’t know where he is, or what he’s driving now.”

“Where’s the Volvo?”

“Up in one of the Gustavus’s parking lots.”

“All right,” Virgil said. “Now. Let’s work through some details.”

They worked through a plan for the next day. Bauer agreed that he would call Virgil with the exchange point as soon as he got it.

“You’re not going to try to sneak up on me and take the stone away, when I get it, will you?” Ma asked.

“I’m not sure I could, out here in the countryside,” Virgil said, but he didn’t say yes or no.

“Think real hard about that, because I don’t think you could, either. I’ll make a whole bunch of stops, and if you jump me before I get the stone… I just won’t show up at the auction, and the whole deal will fall through.”

“I’ll think hard about it,” Virgil said.

When Virgil left, he looked back and saw a light go on, on the second floor. And he wondered, was Ma going up to the bedroom with Tag? Or was Jones up there, and now on his way down? Or what?

He watched for anyone looking out at him, then got in his truck, retrieved the extra GPS unit, stepped over to Ma’s truck, and stuck it on the frame.

Back at the house, Ma came down from the bathroom, paused on the landing to watch Virgil’s taillights rolling out the driveway, then walked the rest of the way down and said to Bauer, “I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck between two men.”

“Take me,” Bauer suggested.

“You’re not in the running, sweetheart,” Ma said. “I was talking about the Reverend Jones and Virgil.”

“Flowers is pretty sweet on you,” Bauer said. “That’s obvious.”

“I’m not sure of that, not at all,” Ma said.

“Take my word for it: he is,” Bauer said.

Ma sat on the arm of an easy chair. “So what do you think I should do?”

“Play it by ear. Get the stone from Jones, take it to the auction, like Virgil said. But meet me first. I’ve got a camera, we’ll put it on a tripod. I want to handle the stone, show it off for the camera. That’s all I need, and then I’ll be happy.”

“I guess I could do that,” Ma said. “I don’t see any harm in it.”