The Clouds Roll Away

by Sibella Giorello

  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

  In 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?”

&n
bsp; “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?”

  “Ma’am, it’s nothing—”

  “Raleigh, he’s the victim of hate crimes. But you’re assuming he’s a criminal because he’s black and works in rap music.”

  “No, I—”

  “Three different magazines called me this week. Do you have any idea what this man has done with his life? He adopts orphans from Liberia. Kids whose parents get killed fighting over those blood diamonds. And do you know what every single one of those reporters wanted to know?”

  I waited. I was thinking of the blood diamonds. The black market in white stones that grow in abundance in West Africa.

  “Every one of those reporters wanted to know why the FBI can’t find the bigots who are trying to kill this man. And I couldn’t tell them. How do you think that makes the Bureau look, Raleigh?”

  “Ma’am, the men who allegedly broke into his house were black. One of them has been identified. He was a member of the gang on Southside, and my instinct tells me—”

  “Your instinct?” she said. “You mean your gut. The same gut feeling that wound up ruining the task force. And here you have the gall to ask that we place this man on the no-fly list, based on this same gut of yours.”

  I took a deep, deep breath, staring at the truck in front of me. There was an 800 number on the mud flaps, followed by the question, “How’s my driving?” Right above that, on the back door, was an ichthus. The fish symbol. There were people who considered faith sentimental, a harmless exercise for the simpleminded. As if Christianity meant cherubs playing harps and angels in the clouds. But the truth was gritty. The truth hurt. It stung. And obedience to it sometimes showed the hallmarks of torture—you could cry out in pain, but there was no guarantee that would stop the agony.

  “Ma’am, with all due respect, this is more than a gut feeling. If you’ll let me explain.”

  “All right. Is the investigative file opened? I presume you have all the necessary documentation—the subpoenas? I’ll send them to HQ for approval and we’ll place this man on the no-fly list.”

  I counted to five. I had nothing, and she knew it.

  She was puffing again. “Why are you calling me, Raleigh?”

  “Because his statements and actions don’t line up with the facts. And if he leaves the United States for Africa, extradition will be almost impossible. Could we at least assign twenty-four-hour surveillance?”

  “On Christmas Eve? Sure, why not. I’ll call SOG, tell them to throw something together.”

  SOG, the Special Operations Group.

  “We are under the microscope with every single civil rights case. And this man, who is a victim, has a direct line to the national media.” She puffed, puffed. “But if you’re sure, I’ll take this straight up the chain of command.”

  The chain of command. The chain that linked Phaup to headquarters and the oversight committees. I stared at the mud flaps. Nothing sentimental about it. Just the opposite. My chain of command told me to respect authority, even when that authority painted a giant bull’s-eye on my forehead and locked me in its crosshairs. I had to obey. And right now, that felt like toothpicks were being shoved under my fingernails. And I knew that pain was nothing compared to what was endured for me by one who remained sinless.

  “I apologize for bothering you, ma’am,” I said. “It sounds like I caught you at a bad time.”

  “Raleigh, it’s Christmas Eve. I’m in the middle of the Arizona desert. And because of you, I’ve lost my group. Is there something else, or can we hang up now?”

  Like most of the city, Richmond’s airport was connected to the War of Northern Aggression. As part of the flat area east of town, the land was originally used by Confederates floating tethered reconnaissance balloons to spy on the enemy in Petersburg. Later it became an airport named Byrd Field, after the Virginia aviator and explorer Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd. But more recently civic leaders suffering from a case of prosaic mercantilism changed the name to Richmond International Airport.

  Folks still called it Byrd Field.

  On Christmas Eve, stranded passengers filled the terminal. They flopped in the plastic chairs and slept on the carpet, and their faces carried that peculiar shade of pale that was produced by travel combined with deprivation. I took the main escalator to the atrium mezzanine and saw more weary travelers waiting out the storm, including one little girl who was twirling her wrinkled Christmas dress and imploring her bleary-eyed mother to watch, watch, watch.

  The FBI’s airport liaison waited at the security checkpoint.

  Known as Sonny, Special Agent Carson McCauley guided me around the X-ray machines monitored by bored-looking TSA agents. He was a fast walker, so fast that strands of his hair lifted as he walked, like masts in search of sails. His white dress shirt was wrinkled; his tie swung from a loosened knot.

  “Tough day?” I asked.

  His short, thick legs chafed against his slacks, raising the cuffs.

  “We started diverting flights yesterday when this storm came in,” he said. “We had emergency staff on the ground, and everything was going pretty well until I got radioed about a flight from Miami. Three Arab guys on board, sitting in back. They were taking fifteen-minute turns in the can, with their cell phones. The stewardesses are freaking out because these guys keep talking about Allah, and I’m heading down to the gate when an elderly passenger comes off a flight from Atlanta and drops dead of a heart attack. And next gate over, some woman’s screaming she’s going to blow up the airport if we don’t get her to Pittsburgh for Christmas. While I’m putting out those fires, these Arab guys slip out on the last flight leaving for LaGuardia.”

  He stopped at a metal door, keyed the code into the touch-pad, and held the door for me. The phone was ringing on his desk. He ran over and picked it up.

  Turning to the window to give him privacy, I watched the plows on the tarmac, churning through the whiteout, the yellow lights blinking on their cabs.

  “Not Kennedy, LaGuardia,” Sonny was saying.

  The visitor’s chair was under a bulletin board glaciated with white paper. New regulations, laws, official standards, all of it sending shivers of despair down my spine. Crimes committed on aircrafts were no different than those on the ground—theft, robbery, sexual assault, extortion, concealed weapons, murder. But when the plane door closed, every one of those crimes turned federal. And they fell on guys like Sonny, our agents monitoring the unfriendly skies.

  “Three of them, yeah,” Sonny was saying. “Lemme look . . . aisle 25.”

  I’ve heard people wonder aloud how nineteen foreigners managed to hijack airplanes and tear a hole through America. I’ve heard all the conspiracy theories. But the truth began with a July 2001 memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix. He noticed an alarming pattern of Arab men taking aviation training classes, and by August the Bureau had counted six hundred Middle Eastern men taking aviation lessons. Most of them turned out to be commercial and military pilots, sent by their governments for official training. But the FBI still had to run background checks on all six hundred, conduct at least twice that many interviews, and scale the college wall—a good portion of these six hundred subjects attended universities where professors and fellow students were openly hostile to law enforcement. To complicate matters further, there was the politically sensitive issue of racial profiling. They were all Middle Eastern men, but we weren’t supposed to say that.

  All this was known by
August 2001.

  September came next.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  It’s always easy to connect the dots later, that 20/20 of hindsight. And maybe things should have moved more quickly. But Western justice is a very slow grind. Unlike our enemies, we can’t just behead suspects.

  Now, on Christmas Eve, I was looking at a guy sweating bullets over three Arab men. We needed to be right every single time; the terrorists only needed one decent shot.

  “Call me soon as you know anything.” Sonny hung up the phone, drawing a hand over his hair. “Now, Raleigh, what do you need?”

  “Quick check on a private plane registered out here. The owner is a guy who goes by the name RPM.”

  “Him?” Sonny said.

  “You know about him.”

  “I’ve wanted to slap a search on that plane for years,” he said. “What do you got?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Can I look at his plane?”

  chapter forty

  I walked from the terminal to the private hangars beside the tarmac. A spiteful wind blew across my face, and by the time I got to the corrugated metal structure housing RPM’s private plane, snow clung to my jeans and I couldn’t feel my lips. Moments later a four-wheeled cart, the kind used for towing luggage carts, pulled up. A man jumped out wearing an insulated snowsuit. Tearing off a thick glove, he inserted a key into the hangar’s lock. We hurried inside, stomping feet on a rubber mat, as he brushed his hand along the wall, turning on the lights.

  It was a cavernous hangar, and he looked like a teenager. Long hair. Gray-blue eyes bright with adrenaline.

  Extending my hand, I introduced myself.

  “Jimmy Gint,” he said.

  “Thanks for coming out in this weather, Jimmy.”

  “Hey, no problem.”

  I walked toward the plane. It was a sleek white jet parked diagonally across the poured concrete floor. Not much more than six feet in height, the plane’s narrow body tapered fifty feet from tip to tail in aerodynamic perfection.