Barely a Crime

by Robert Ovies

  Kieran scrambled up to the altar to stand beside him, staring with the surprise of what was happening rising to a low boil inside. “What’s that?” he whispered loudly.

  The doctor rolled the second roller quickly over the side-by-side third and fourth major patches, returned the roller to its case, and withdrew a third.

  “What are those?” Kieran asked, this time even louder.

  The doctor completed rolling patches five and six without answering. He replaced the roller without answering. He drew out a fourth roller without answering.

  Kieran didn’t know what to do except to leave the doctor alone and to get out of there with his money. But he knew that the game had been changed, that things were in play that they had not talked about, that Crawl had been right. He said, “You got enough now?” as the doctor zipped the bag at his side shut and started down.

  First Crawl with a gun, and then four damn rollers, Kieran thought. He realized that he was not only trembling but sweating, and that he felt out of breath.

  When Crawl reached Antonio, the Italian was beginning to laser-cut through the steel chain that reinforced the two alloy bolts on the northern doors of the cathedral, just twenty yards from the chapel. The chain was giving way without serious protest.

  Crawl approached Antonio slowly, the Beretta at his side.

  From the chapel, they heard Kieran say in a voice louder than necessary, “Two and forty-five.”

  The chain banged once as it separated, then settled to hang like a dead snake. Antonio slammed open the door’s two bolts. He bent down to stuff both lasers into his large backpack. Holding the backpack in his left hand, he mumbled a quick, “Good luck,” to Crawl and reached for the handle of the door.

  Crawl had the Beretta in the Italian’s face before the door opened five inches, with the muzzle of it just an inch from the startled man’s right eye. “Two minutes left,” he said quietly. “Then we’ll all go out together.”

  Antonio spat out a single expletive in Italian and pulled back; his eyes flared with shock and anger.

  Crawl said, “You don’t go now. In a minute you’ll walk with me all the way to our car.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Antonio broke into a sweat.

  “I get in and drive away, then you get into your car and drive away, too. One, two. Like that. No surprises.”

  The Italian’s dark eyes flashed, then narrowed. He looked at his backpack, then at Crawl. “You think you can take these, too?”

  Crawl shook his head. “I don’t want the lasers. You get them. I just want you beside me when I get to my car. That’s all. If you try and run, I won’t kill you, but I will take out your legs.”

  “But we’re out of time!” Antonio whispered, practically squeaking.

  Kieran and the doctor sprinted from the chapel.

  Crawl spun to look at Kieran, who understood the question in his friend’s eyes and said loudly, “Just tapes. That’s all. We’re done with it.”

  The doctor froze when he saw the weapon in Crawl’s hand. “What are you doing with that?” he asked, straining to remain calm.

  Crawl flashed a smile. “A minute and change left,” he said. He grabbed Antonio’s left shoulder. “Let’s go, friend, but not running.”

  The doctor was trying to push past Kieran to reach for Crawl’s Beretta. “Put it away!” he hissed. But Kieran held him back with both hands and shook his head with such a fierce expression that the doctor quieted.

  Crawl opened the door a foot, saw that the road was clear of traffic, and with Antonio at his side, started for the cars as quickly as his limp would allow.

  There were no brothers of Antonio waiting in hiding. There were no police. There were no middle-of-the-night pedestrians. There was no traffic.

  By the time the motion sensors clicked back on and the cautionary alarm sounded in the rectory of Saint John the Baptist Cathedral, the three cars had started up and were pulling away, unnoticed by anyone at 3:33 in the morning.

  10

  Kieran was behind the wheel as they turned onto the Torino-Trieste Highway and headed toward Milan, and he was practically shouting, “He took four rolls! Four rolls of tape, four of them, five inches wide, each one, like paint rollers! All over the damn thing, back and forth!”

  Crawl clapped his hands and laughed. He said, “He used paint rollers?”

  “Not paint rollers, but like paint rollers. Small ones, but all over it, back and forth!”

  Crawl laughed again, clapped his hands five times more, fast and hard, and shouted, “That’s not for his niece! He didn’t want all that just to touch his niece with a speck of blood! He’s making sure he’s got enough, but it can’t be for her!”

  “He must’ve got two square feet of it,” Kieran said. He was checking his mirrors more than looking at the road ahead. “He could wrap her head with it, all he got!”

  “That’s what he said he wanted, right, was blood,” Crawl said. “Said what he meant, meant what he said.” He laughed again.

  “He told us one touch.”

  “And we got fifty bloody thousand pounds,” Crawl said. “And the police will get there and find nothing missing. That’s the best part. Damaged stuff they can replace, but nothing missing. If he’d have burned it or spray-painted his message to the world on it or something, they’d be after us in armies.”

  He laughed again and reached into the travel bag to get his phone. “We gotta call Michael,” he said. “Right now.”

  Again, Michael answered on the fifth ring.

  Crawl put him on speaker. “Michael!” he shouted, “We’re good! What about the girl? Is there any reason to think she’s dying from cancer?”

  “She’s probably healthier than any of us,” Michael said.

  “I knew it!” Crawl shouted. He slapped Kieran on the arm and grinned wide.

  “She’s only missed one day of school in two years,” Michael said. “And she spent a couple hours at the hospital in Santa Fe last year with a broken finger, but that’s it. Her uncle was in there, too, a couple of years back, for a hernia op, and again for a routine physical last year.”

  “So both of them are okay?”

  “From what I could find.”

  “Do they have a cancer wing or something at that hospital?”

  “A Cancer Center, yeah.”

  “What about the DNA?” Crawl asked. “Did you get how long it can last in blood, or in tiny bits of bone?”

  “In blood, it’s not long. Depends on temperature and all, but in water it breaks down in maybe months. Not like fifty years or anything. But bone keeps DNA like a vault. And the wildest thing about bone is, with the tech they got goin’ today, they can get a whole sample, full strands of it, all connected, from just one nanogram of bone. And do you have any idea how bloody small one nanogram is?”

  “Ten people probably know that. Just tell me.”

  “There’s like five thousand of them in a single grain of sugar. That’s five and three zeroes of nanograms in one grain of sugar! There’s a billion of them in one gram, and they can find and pull out your full DNA from one nanogram of bone dust! Honest to God. That’s wild, isn’t it?”

  Crawl stared at the phone. Then he looked at Kieran and smiled, and his smile spread. He was thinking about the doctor from the Pecos Wilderness, and how hypnotized he was about the beating the man on the shroud took from the Romans, “exploding his skin” with metal balls and pounding down on his ribs and thigh bones and collarbones and arm bones and hip bones. He was thinking about bone splinters pounded into vaults too small to be seen with a naked eye.

  He inhaled and said to Michael, “Yeah, that’s wild. But after two thousand years, could any of it still be good to go? Good so they could still work with it and do things with it?”

  “After two thousand years?”

  “Do you know? Or, can you find out?”

  There was a long pause before Michael said, “Okay. Here’s what I got on that. DNA in bone breaks down—”


  “What does ‘breaks down’ mean?”

  “Comes apart. Not connected anymore, one part to another. It says it breaks down by fifty percent every five hundred and twenty-one years. You notice that? Not five hundred and twenty years, or five hundred and twenty-two, but five hundred and twenty-one years. What the hell’s that about, they got it down to that one more year? But that’s what it is.”

  “Two thousand years, Michael.”

  “I’m figuring your two thousand years now, they got that formula. So, that long. . . you should have. . . something between, like, seven to nine percent or so, still good to go. Still connected. They’ve found DNA in bone that’s a half million years old, talk about a vault, but nothing still good to work with.”

  Kieran had slowed the car and turned to stare at Crawl.

  Michael said, “That what you wanted?”

  Crawl was staring too, straight ahead, not moving, not answering, barely breathing, whispering, “Oh, my God. . .” again and again.

  Michael said, “I won’t press you about it right now, and I understand what phones are good for, but you gotta get me the detail on what you’re into as soon as you can, whenever it’s okay.” He paused. When they didn’t respond, he said, “Do you hear what I’m saying, and are you going to do it?”

  “We may hand-deliver it,” Crawl said, still staring straight ahead.

  “That’d be good, too. Why don’t you do that?”

  “We gotta look at some things first, Michael,” Crawl said. “We’ll let you know about travel plans, but we have some serious thinking we need to do now.”

  When Crawl’s next silence had lasted almost fifteen seconds, Michael simply said a subdued, “Have fun with it, boys. I really want bad to hear, though. But stay safe,” and he was gone.

  Crawl lowered his phone and looked at Kieran and grinned. Then he laughed and pumped his fist in the air and delivered a wildly hard slap to Kieran’s thigh and shouted, “We got him! Maybe seven percent! We got him! We got him! I don’t know whether to stop for a drink or run around the car a few times or wet my pants or get out and hug you till you pass out, but we got him!”

  Kieran laughed and slapped the steering wheel hard, five times, and Crawl laughed with him. Then they settled in, both smiling as if they would never stop, and drove on in silence, still watching for police and listening for sirens, but no longer expecting them. Just feeling good and dreaming and thinking about what the information Michael had passed along meant; about Dr. John Cleary from the Pecos Wilderness in the United States, and about his plans, and about his money, and about what the next day might bring to them, or the next month, or the whole amazing rest of their lives.

  Then, no more than fifteen kilometers farther down the road, Crawl began to think about what their next couple of months might turn out to be like, for him and for all of them, if they were really smart.

  “Kieran,” he said, finally, shifting in his seat.

  “Yeah?”

  “Think about everything we know.”

  “You don’t really mean ‘everything’ we know, do you?”

  “No, but this much for now. We know who Day really is. We know he’s richer than a crooked king. We know he believes the blood on those tapes is Jesus’ blood. We know he thinks he has a real chance of doing what he wants to do with those tapes. And we know something about how much they must be worth to him.”

  “How much is that?”

  “Six million, do you think? Should we settle for six million?”

  At first, Kieran just eased his foot up a bit and looked at Crawl. Then he guided the Fiat to the side of the road and slowed to a stop in front of a large and expensive-looking residence that sat thirty yards back from the road. A stone lion crouched on a pedestal on both sides of its glass and wrought-iron front door.

  “Spit it out,” he said.

  Crawl said, “Think how he acted walking around that house back there, like even the pictures on his walls were holy, right? And now he’s got the real thing. The blood, man. And we know where he lives, or Michael does anyway, and we could soon. So, how quick do you think he’d be to pay six million or so to a few good-lookin’ Irishmen who happened to get into his lab to borrow those tapes for just a short little while?”

  “Wow. You don’t quit, do you?”

  “I’m talking about barely a crime, Kieran. A fifteen-minute operation. Hardly any risk at all. Nothing stolen, just borrowed. No weapons used. Nobody hurt. What kind of crime is it if we threatened to mess up a few pieces of tape? Which he broke the law to get in the first place, remember that. Which means, who’s he going to complain to if we hold his tapes for ransom? The police? After tonight?” Kieran was silent.

  “If getting them was worth a hundred thousand to him on top of all he paid for those lasers and God knows what else, now that he’s got the real blood on those tapes, with the real bone dust in the blood, they’re worth, like I said, I’m guessing at least six million. Two million for you, two million for me, two million for Michael, all cash money.”

  Kieran inhaled deeply.

  “What would you do with another two million pounds?” Crawl said. “Or two million dollars, make it? Seriously. Somethin’ you never thought about in your life before. Two thousand, thousand real-life U.S. of A. dollars? For you and Brenna. You and your mother.”

  Kieran still didn’t answer. He just looked out the windshield. No other response. Yet.

  Crawl said, “Two million dollars, dropped into your lap. Honest to God. What would you do with it? Really.”

  “I think,” Kieran said, finally beginning to relax, and even smiling again, “I think I’d get the prettiest ten or twelve acres of meadows and streams and trees in Ireland. And I’d build a fence of fine wood in it, somewhere close to the stream. And I’d write my name under the top of each post there. And then I’d take my mother there, and I’d tell her that all of that fine meadow, and all that fine fence, and the stream and the trees, it was all hers to keep now; to have for her very own. And then I’d say, ‘Oh, and that beautiful new house in the middle? That belongs to you, too.’ ”

  Crawl gave the picture time to grow quick roots, saying nothing.

  Kieran smiled again and turned the car back onto the highway. When he got up to speed, he said, “What would you do?”

  Crawl didn’t hesitate. “Fast cars, beautiful women, and see the world.” Then he added, “Not all the world, though. Most of the world is a dump.”

  “Do you think he can actually do it?” Kieran asked. “Clone Jesus?”

  “He thinks he can, and that’s the only thing that counts. He’s feeling pretty damned sure, what he knows and what he’s got, or he wouldn’t have risked the cathedral. That’s what’s driving this whole thing so far, and that’s what will make getting money for the tapes a cakewalk, too. He feels sure he can, and he knows a hell of a lot more about what he can and can’t do than we know, right? So who are we to argue?”

  “He wanted it bad,” Kieran said. “He looked like he was ready to pass out just looking at it, back in the church.”

  “So we spend whatever it takes for Michael to get as much more information on him as we need. Where he goes, when he leaves, when he’s back, who else comes and goes, and when, and how often, and for how long. . . and how everything’s protected, for sure. Everything we can get about him and about his sister and niece. I think he’s certain to keep the tapes in his home, too—in his own lab, or safe, or something. I can’t see him leaving them in his company buildings and driving away, can you? Not a chance of that.”

  Kieran said, “Michael can line up a place for us somewhere near those mountains of his.”

  “We can head for the States ourselves in a day or so,” Crawl said. “Drop out of the tours. They won’t give a damn. They’re paid for all the way through, anyway. I’ll tell ’em my fiancee got in a car accident; you tell them your mom got sick. Or, whatever you want. They couldn’t care less. And then, when we get to the U.S. with our new fri
end, Dr. Almost-a-Nobel-Prize, it’s as simple as we just go in and put a gun in his face. We find the tapes and say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna burn the tapes right now if you don’t transfer X amount to this account.’ Or, ‘Get this much cash back here by whatever.’ Just keep it simple. People over think these things, sometimes they screw everything up. If we want it transferred, we hold the tapes close to a fire to make sure he does it, and when we check it all out we call and hide it in other accounts before we leave his place. We do that, and we leave the tapes there for him, all safe and sound, and that’s the end of it. Who’s he gonna go to? What’s he gonna do?”

  “Go ahead and clone Jesus, probably.”

  “So he’s mad at first, but then still feeling good, and we are, too.”

  “You think two million each, though? Really?”

  “We get the information, we get the place, we get the tapes, we get the money. That’s how it’ll go.”

  “We just break in and find them?”

  “It’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like he’s got neighbors dropping in. We’ll take our time. We’ll find them.”

  “What if he’s figured out we’re coming? We told him we know where he lives.”

  “He’ll never think about us again. He’s got his own baby Jesus on the way, that’s all he’ll be thinking about.”

  “That’s a lot to think about.”

  “We’re part of history now, you think about it,” Crawl said. “Someday they’ll have cloning clinics all over the world. Sally Citizen will be able to order up her granddaddy’s clone, like at a restaurant. Or movie stars. I bet they’ll be selling movie-star DNA all over the place. Once it starts it’ll catch on big time. A lonely lady will walk into her local cloning clinic someday and say, ‘I’d like to have a Laura Vavoom baby.’ Or whoever, pick your star. They’ll say, ‘Well, wouldn’t you know it? Laura Vavoom’s estate just put her DNA on sale this week! For one week only. Hey, we’ll give you forty percent off!’ ” He nodded, punctuating his certainty. “It’s going to happen, man. There’ll be a whole new world of money in it, and it’s going to happen, whether we get rich first or not. But for now, we get the tapes. That’s the plan.”