by Rob Byrnes
“Where you going with my money?” Constance asked in his wake.
“Somewhere safe. Somewhere you won’t be able to get your hands on it.”
When Merribaugh’s back was turned, Lisa joined Constance and they watched him disappear into the crowd.
Lisa shrugged. “Easy come, easy go, I suppose.”
“That pisses me off. He stole the money you stole fair and square. And Chase’s shirt, too.”
Lisa hiked her now almost-empty handbag. “At least he didn’t get my favorite ashtray. That would have sucked.”
$ $ $
The elderly security guard thought he heard the sound of wood splintering, followed by a thud.
First his mind was playing tricks on him, and now his ears. He wasn’t going to report this and become a laughingstock. No sir…
He looked at the newspaper on his desk and went back to trying to solve the Jumble.
25
Farraday put the panel truck in neutral, and it slowly rolled down the slight slope back to the rear of the auditorium. As the unlit truck neared a Dumpster, he gently applied the brakes—waiting until the last moment because applying the brakes meant illuminating the brake lights—and glided to a stop behind two other trucks parked at the loading dock.
In the back, Grant worked under the dome light on the locks of the Desk of Christ, which had survived the ten-foot drop intact. It seemed to take forever, but finally—about the time Farraday was docking the truck—he heard a gentle click that told him the first one had opened. With a tug, he began to slide out a drawer…
A series of loud blows boomed against the back door.
Grant closed the drawer, threw a moving pad over the Desk of Christ, and told Chase, “Whoever it is, get rid of ’em.”
Chase opened the back door eighteen inches and began to crawl out until he was blinded by a flashlight beam.
“You one of the movers?” asked an agitated voice from the other side of the light.
His eyes almost closed against the brightness, Chase slithered forward a few more feet until he was out of the truck, then stood. Only then did he answer. “Uh…yeah.”
“Got any identification?”
“Depends. You are…?”
“Officer Cason. Cathedral security. You got ID?”
“It’s in the truck,” Chase bluffed, not really sure what he’d do next. “Want me to get it?”
The security guard kept the light fixed on Chase’s eyes and didn’t answer the question. Instead, he asked, “What were you doing up at Cathedral House?”
“You…you mean that building over there?” The flashlight wobbled with the guard’s nod. “Uh…smoke break.” Chase warmed to the idea. “I didn’t want to smoke in the loading dock.” And he warmed a bit more. “You know, because children might come back here. And I’d hate to set a bad example for the children.”
Chase still couldn’t see anything except the blinding light aimed at his eyes, but heard Farraday heave himself out from behind the wheel, step to the ground, and ask, “Is there a problem, Officer?”
The light shifted from Chase to Farraday. Chase blinked a few times and tried to see again, but his eyes were filled with spots.
In the meantime, the guard was interrogating Farraday. “Just checking on how come you took the truck up to Cathedral House. No one’s supposed to have any business up there.”
“We didn’t know that,” said Farraday. “No one said nothin’ about that. This guy wanted a cigarette, is all.”
Now the flashlight bounced back and forth between Chase and Farraday, then across the side of the truck.
“Weren’t you carrying folding chairs?” the guard finally asked.
“Yeah,” said Chase. “Turns out, they needed them.”
Static from the security guard’s radio interrupted him, followed by a tinny voice. “Post Two, come in.”
The flashlight beam dropped to the ground as the security guard unclipped the radio from his belt. “Post Two.”
“What’s the situation with that truck?”
“Chair delivery for the play. Guy here says they drove over to Cathedral House for a cigarette, in order to get away from these premises.”
“And not set a bad example for the children,” Chase reminded him.
“And not set a bad example for the children.”
“All right,” was the response. “Tell ’em that area is strictly off-limits. Workers stay at the loading dock, ’kay?”
“I did, sir.”
“All right.”
There was a long pause as the security officer lowered his radio and began to clip it back on his belt, and Chase felt brief exhilaration that the cover story—flimsy as it was—had passed the test.
Until the tinny voice returned. “Post Two, better check the truck while you’re there. After that, make an inspection of Cathedral House an’ make sure everything’s secure.”
The security officer raised the radio back to his lips. “Roger that.” He turned to Chase and said, “Mind opening it up for me?”
Chase said, “Not at all.” What was going to happen next wasn’t his fault. This security guard had asked for it. Hadn’t he ever heard that story about curiosity and the cat?
He hoped that Grant and Leonard had heard every word of their encounter through the door, but—even if they hadn’t—knew he had no choice. He stepped to the back of the truck, grabbed a handle, and lifted…
…and was relieved to see Grant, sitting alone among a jumble of moving pads. Somewhere underneath those pads were Leonard and the Desk of Christ, but you’d never know it from a cursory view.
“See? Just moving pads.”
The flashlight darted across the interior, finally settling on Grant’s eyes.
Grant squinted and frowned. “You mind getting that thing outta my eyes?”
“Just making sure everything’s on the up-and-up, sir.” Still, the guard moved the light from Grant’s face and trained it on the mounds of pads. “Just you three fellas?”
“Yeah,” said Grant. “Just the three of us.”
The light moved around the back of the truck, then stopped. Chase followed it until he saw one exposed corner of the Desk of Christ Grant had missed in his rush to hide it.
“What’s that?”
“Just furniture,” said Chase, talking quickly. “Another job we picked up this afternoon. Delivery’s scheduled for first thing in the morning, so we figured we’d keep it on the truck overnight.”
The beam of light was now focused on the edge of the desk where the finish had worn off. The security guard blinked his eyes a few times, as if trying to reconcile this image with a familiar one from his time as a parishioner of the Virginia Cathedral of Love.
“Is that…?” he started to ask, then stopped.
“Just an old beat-up desk,” said Chase. “It’s nothing.”
But the security guard was already climbing into the back of the truck. No one tried to stop him…until he tripped over Leonard, hidden on the floor under a moving pad, and they knew it was time for action.
Several minutes later, with Officer Chris Cason now bound with packing tape, muted with an old rag, and secreted under a dusty pad in the back of the truck, the radio squawked to life again.
“Post Two, come in.”
“How do you work this thing?” Grant held the radio like it might explode.
“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 Book of Revelation
26
“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.