Plain Heathen Mischief

by Martin Clark

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m indebted to you for sticking up for me at our meeting. Thanks. I should’ve called or something.”

  She rested against Sarah’s desk, and Joel could see her thigh’s outline take shape in the fabric of her skirt. “I wasn’t defending you. I was simply trying to make certain you were credited for your efforts and fairly punished for your crimes.”

  “Dixon was right about you.”

  “Don’t wear that button out, Mr. King. You’ve pushed it to death.”

  “Sorry,” Joel said.

  “So here’s where we are.” Lynette rose from the desk, stood without support, her arms folded behind her, her hand clasping her wrist. “I’m here in person because I’m not sure about the phones. I think they’ve discontinued the intercept, but I’m not positive. I’ve spoken with Alden Hinton, the U.S. attorney for our district. Alden’s not a bad fellow for a fed, and he’s married to a girlfriend of mine from Bozeman. We’ve agreed to bypass Ms. Starke and her henchman Mr. Hobbes to some extent. You help us make the case against Sa’ad and Brooks, we delay the arrests so as to give Hobbes and Starke and their Washington handlers sufficient opportunity to corner Van Heiss and the painting, and you receive nine months federal time and a fine, two years probation. A single conviction for insurance fraud. The incarceration will be at a minimum-security facility—you can play volleyball and get pointers for your next crime from tax cheats and greedy CEOs. The Virginia sentence will be revoked, but you get to pull it concurrently—”

  “Meaning what? Concurrently?” Joel questioned her.

  “You serve the sentences simultaneously, together. It won’t lengthen your stay—you’ll do nine months, and the Virginia authorities can say they’ve revoked your sentence and punished you. It’s a formality that allows them to cover their butts. The truth of the matter is they don’t want to go to the trouble and expense of extraditing you over some worthless misdemeanor.” “That’s not what I’m hearing. Detective Hubbard told me it was a done deal, that I was headed to Virginia for a probation violation.”

  “It’s taken care of as part of the arrangement. There’s a lot of bluff in our business.”

  “I don’t want to go to another jail. I don’t mind the pen, but I think I’d go crazy if I have to serve time back in Roanoke.”

  “You’ll most likely wind up in Arizona, in a federal facility.”

  “Okay,” Joel said. “So it’s a given I have to do time?”

  “Nine months. No negotiation. Take it or leave it.”

  “Ummm,” Joel winced, the sound guttural and raw, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “I hate going back. Lord knows I do. I’d thought there was a slim chance, a possibility, some way . . .” Almost a year of his life would be wasted. “Okay,” he said softly, sadly.

  “Here are the catches. One, you have to testify against Brooks and Sa’ad and tell the truth. Two, you have to work with us to obtain some type of hard evidence against them. This may take months, possibly years, and would include phone taps, wires, perhaps introducing an undercover agent to them. If you don’t give us something we consider satisfactory, the deal’s off and you’re back to square one. We need something solid, something more than your unsupported story. Three, and most important to me, you must testify truthfully in the case against Karl Dillen.”

  “Sure,” Joel said, reviving, his voice gaining character. “I was planning to anyway. Did you hear the stuff he said over the phone?”

  Lynette appeared baffled, and Joel told her about his conversation with Karl, how he’d lured him into several incriminating statements. “I figured Hobbes and Ms. Starke would’ve clued you in, and I meant to tell you myself when we all met, but I got so flustered and disappointed that it slipped my mind.”

  “I’ll certainly research it,” she replied, a frown spreading through her lips.

  “It should put the last nail in his coffin,” Joel said. “He admitted hitting her.”

  “Great. Finally, we have to know for sure you had nothing to do with Christy Darden’s disappearance.”

  Joel rolled his eyes. “Who put that idea in your head? That whole ridiculous theory is out of left field, just stupid and ludicrous. Did that Hubbard character tell you he thought I was involved?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’re serious?”

  “His thinking on it is, and here I’m quoting verbatim, ‘it’s possible the skunk knows more than he’s letting on, but not probable.’ Detective Hubbard informs me they have a reliable sighting they’re pursuing, a tip that she and her boyfriend took her civil settlement and headed to the Caribbean. I guess they have you and your base instincts to thank for the funding, huh?”

  “Wow, there’s a big surprise.” He wouldn’t even respond to her dig about his misconduct.

  “We want to start by trying some phone taps, then a face-to-face with you and Sa’ad.”

  “I’ve already told you they won’t say diddly over the phone, especially now, and they always frisk me before we talk. You’re setting me up to fail.”

  “We have some state-of-the-art transmitters and a few other cards up our sleeve. You do your part and let us take care of the rest.”

  “How do I know I’ll really get the deal? Hobbes may override you, or something might go wrong, or someone might have a change of heart. From what you’ve said, I’ll be banking on Sa’ad and Edmund making a mistake—and that’s out of my control. On top of that, there’s as much sleight of hand, trickery and lying on your side as there is with the guys in black hats. Hidden agendas, infighting, dissembling—everything but the by-the-book justice I studied in civics class. You blame me for being skeptical?”

  “You’ll have my word and the written promise of the United States attorney. I hope that’ll be adequate. If not, then don’t sign the agreement, and take your chances with Hobbes and Hubbard.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll enroll with you guys. That was my plan when I talked to you and came clean, and it’s still my plan today.”

  “I’ll see about the paperwork. And you’re certain you want to continue on without a lawyer?”

  “The deal is very decent. I don’t see how a lawyer could do any better for me. I just wish I didn’t have to be incarcerated. I’d thought, because of something . . . well . . . I’d acquired a sort of expectation recently, based on this occurrence several days ago . . . Oh, heck, I’m babbling. I need to shut up. I know I’ve been saying all along I don’t mind going to jail, but when it finally hits home, it’s a different story. Difficult.” Joel paused. Lynette didn’t provide him any relief, didn’t speak or offer any sympathy in her body language. “What do you think will happen to Sa’ad and Edmund? Their punishment?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Edmund’s actually a likable guy. I hate it for him.”

  “You’ll get over it.”

  “May I ask you something?”

  “What?” She sounded irate.

  “Well, I discovered . . . I went to the library, and like Agent Starke said, there’s a website for the FBI’s stolen art program. I found it on the Internet.”

  “So?”

  He dropped his head, focused on a cylinder full of pens and pencils at the edge of Sarah’s desk. “There’s a reward for the painting and jewelry.”

  Lynette’s hands flew out from behind her, her face shrank and her eyes turned incendiary. She pointed at Joel. “Not for the thief, there isn’t. Not for criminals. Have you lost your sanity? Do people like you ever stop trying to beat the system?”

  “I’m not the thief,” Joel said calmly. “And I wasn’t planning to collect the money for myself.”

  “Good, because you won’t be. Try to play this straight for a change, Mr. King.”

  “I am. I will.”

  “You better,” she warned and pushed past him, left without saying anything else, shook her head the whole time she was walking to the exit. “Damn,” he heard her mutter as she left the restaurant and mer
ged into the night.

  Joel was still befuddled, still uncertain what ought to be done, and he attempted to keep his mind uncluttered, waiting for the Lord’s will to become apparent. He would tell the truth and practice his faith and do everything reasonable to remain patient, but the stark mention of jail was depressing him, and the euphoria of the green sister’s discovery had totally vanished. He felt stymied, and the basement celebration seemed remote and watered-down, the delight dwindling to dismay as it became obvious he had a stolen ring but no inkling how he could use it to advance himself or mend his mistakes.

  To compound his despair, he’d experienced pangs of paranoia the last couple days, wondered if he might be the unwitting whipping boy in the script, wind up busted with the stolen ring stuffed in a tube sock and taped to a plastic cellar pipe. He said silent words, asked for direction and aid in making sense of his situation, and watched from the office as Lynette cranked her car in the parking lot, his view cropped by the door frame and the limits of the front window.

  As he was leaving, Joel noticed a sign on Sarah’s desk, a revised set of guidelines she’d not yet posted. She’d written lost-and-found instructions for the staff, six paragraphs telling them what to do with forgotten hats, glasses, wallets, credit cards and purses. The first sentence advised the Station workers to MAKE EVERY ATTEMPT TO RETURN LOST PROPERTY TO THE OWNER IMMEDIATELY. Ah, Joel thought, now there’s an idea, and he imagined himself seated at the foot of Sa’ad’s lofty desk, asking questions and getting nowhere, Lynette and Woods eavesdropping from an unmarked car, incensed because Joel wasn’t extracting any corroborating details from the cunning, shifty lawyer, he and Sa’ad trading Mona Lisa smiles, sparring silently, each certain he knew more than the other.

  Right at that moment, an electrical surge coursed through the Station, and the illumination, machines, fans, stoves, neon beer signs, blenders and ice machines flickered and sputtered and went dead, and then sparked again. Diners glanced at the ceiling, and a pair of bar patrons toasted the power’s restoration after the sudden glitch. It struck Joel, as a plan began to coalesce in his mind, that the disappointing events of the last months were beginning to lodge a maul’s tapered steel blade between him and his faith, and for the first time since impassioned college union debates and the drowning death of an adolescent cousin, he gagged on his own beliefs and actually considered alternatives, allowed the possibility he might be deluding himself.

  He felt flushed, sickly, and he stood faltering at the doorjamb and wondered if his pole star of two decades was celestial hokum, his rituals and litanies on a par with fezzes and Masonic passwords. There was such meager progress toward fulfillment, and his redemption was arduous, and he was staring at nine penitentiary months, and there were so many miles to go, and he was supposed to follow tenets contrary to every instinct known to mankind while agnostics, Hindus and robber barons lived blithely and died peacefully at ninety-five. Pagans prospered and missionaries perished in botched kidnappings. Perhaps the ring was a fluke, no more than a chunk of metal attached willy-nilly to an elastic band, the result of a loose drawstring and an automatic wash cycle rather than Providence’s intervention.

  Less than two weeks ago he was positive of his fate and good standing, rapturous, joyous and worshipping full throttle, and—snap, poof—now he was on the verge of another retreating-tide drift, unmoored and miserable. Maybe Sophie was correct, maybe there were three or four general rules, along with gravity and the laws of nature, and that was the extent of it, and he inhabited the world of a chaise-longue deity who’d created the earth and retired to mint juleps and a silver centerfold sun reflector. Or worse, perhaps the universe was simply a helter-skelter accident, a collection of atoms, chemistry, big bangs and quirks in the genes of dumb apes, and there was no sentry at the gate—religion was merely a well-executed scarecrow or the ultimate con game, just a grandiloquent hustle backed up by the threat of damnation and pitchforks.

  As he added details to the schematic taking form in his head, he decided this was it, that this clear, creative plan streaming into his mind had to be the solution, the answer to his entreaties, and if it wasn’t he shouldn’t be held accountable for the mistake because the notions were arriving with the pomp and trimmings of a revelation. He was going to toss his homestead deed into the pot and bet the ranch—together with the dogma that had sustained him for so many of his years—on one card from the deck, on a whiff of misdirection and the dexterity of his five fingers.

  Near the end of February, Joel and Lynette met with a Las Vegas detective and two Montana cops from Helena and tried to coax Sa’ad into an admission over the phone. They placed the call from the Missoula police station, and Agent Woods, wearing a suit and cowboy boots, arrived as they were dialing Sa’ad’s number. The gear was basic, a pair of headphones and a recorder tied into Joel’s line, and everyone was gathered around a table. “So this is state-of-the-art?” Joel asked as they were plugging in wires and testing the equipment. “You’re going to listen on an extension?” He grinned at Lynette.

  “We have to start somewhere,” she told him.

  “I feel like I’m armed with a slingshot and trying to destroy a Sherman tank.”

  “You better hope your aim’s good,” Woods said.

  They instructed him not to force the conversation, to speak in code as always, to look at the large canvas and the long term. A word here, a reference there, and sooner or later the slips would multiply and give them what they required. Joel was barely nervous when the number started to ring, convinced the entire enterprise was a farce and there was nothing at stake. Joel recited the “my divorce” pass-phrase to the receptionist, and she promptly banished him to the heavy-duty classical music on hold, left him there for longer than usual and then returned to tell him Mr. Sa’ad was not available. She’d leave Joel’s message and have Mr. Sa’ad return his call. “I’m at a pay phone,” Joel fibbed, following his script. “Don’t worry about it.”

  They tried again later in the day and got the same stonewall, kept at it for the remainder of the week and never got past the secretary. “I told you so,” Joel said during the last attempt as he bounced his head in rhythm with the phone music and waited to hear Sa’ad’s prerecorded message for the umpteenth time. Joel imagined a Serengeti beast, its nostrils flared and neck hair erect, sensing a shift in the wind or an aberrant odor and trotting away with springy steps, gone and more guarded than ever.

  Next they had him attempt to ensnare Edmund, and this strategy proved equally unsuccessful. When Joel rang Edmund’s home in Roanoke, the number had been disconnected, and everyone at the table in Missoula groaned, turning to Lynette with “what now?” expressions. “We go to them,” she said, and Joel quickly agreed that was their only chance. “I’m ready,” he said.

  Joel was careful to keep Sophie abreast of each development, told her about his deal and the jail time and what he’d promised to do. She agreed with him that Lynette was being fair, and that they owed Dixon Kreager the sun and moon. When the phone plan was declared a failure, Joel advised Sophie he’d be traveling to Las Vegas to meet with Sa’ad, and he assured her he was sanguine about the trip, thought something might come of it. She seemed concerned, worried he might work for months and never catch Sa’ad and Edmund, might never satisfy the police. For no reason, she bought him a coconut cake from the grocery-store bakery and a new shirt from Sears, left the shirt on his bed with a silly card so he’d find it when he arrived home from the Station.

  Without fail, Joel asked each night to be forgiven of his sins and reiterated the all-or-nothing nature of his plan, made it apparent to the heavens that he’d marshaled the totality of his faith and strapped it to this endeavor, was expecting either Antietam or a parade through the streets of Paris. He was nervous, anxious, keen to leave for Las Vegas.

  On the last Saturday in February, they took Baker to High Pines for a visit with his Wild West grandma, and she doted on the boy even though she had no idea who he was, inviting
him to her reading circle and saying bizarre things that made him laugh. They tried to persuade her to go for a ride in the Volvo, but she was afraid she’d miss lunch, wouldn’t hear of it.

  “It’s shitty growing old,” Sophie remarked on the drive home, cursing in front of her son. “Shitty to wear out like the flattened bristles of a toothbrush, to squirt urine when you cough and have your fingers curl into ghastly hooks.” But there was something gentle and upbeat in her short outburst, a lesson imparted to her boy and her brother, a reminder to be thankful for sound health and the immediate moment. There was also a shared awareness of what they’d just experienced, a recognition of how blood and family kept them wedded to a giant continuity, how they were the three center segments in an arc that disappeared below the horizon line in both directions, a mother, her daughter and a whip-smart grandson. “You realize, Baker,” Sophie said, “that I knew your grandma’s mother, used to help her make chicken and dumplings. And one day you’ll tell your kid’s children that you knew Grandma Helen.” And the boy got it, felt the same visceral bond, told his mom he thought it was cool, wished he could’ve met his great-grandmother and her mother, too.

  That night, Sophie brought Raleigh to town and they went to eat at a pizza parlor, mingled their kids for the first time and carted Joel along as chaperon, jester and buffer zone. Raleigh was a kind, introverted man, and he was attentive to Sophie without being fresh or showy. He paid for everyone’s meal and slid a satisfactory tip under the big tin pizza platter. Sophie and Raleigh were going to a student play at the university, and Joel was to take the boys for ice cream and hot chocolate, then home to Sophie’s for movies, Sweet Tarts and video games. He was glad to do it, loved children, and Sophie gave him a wink and a compact wave after she and Raleigh had buttoned their winter coats and donned their gloves; she came back to the table and bussed his cheek and told him she loved him.

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