The broader man led, came up, stopped ten feet away, and asked, “Reverend Jones. Good to see you again. You seem better.”
“The bleeding stopped,” Jones said. “That’s always good. You have the money?”
“Do you have the stone?”
“I do.”
“May we see it?”
“You may,” Jones said. He fumbled with the zipper on the bowling bag, got it open, reached inside with both hands, and with some effort, pulled out the rock and placed it in the center of the table, where it seemed to soak up most available sunlight; the atmosphere around it literally seemed to grow dimmer, and the two Turks looked around uneasily. Jones looked into the sky and saw that a bass-boat-sized cloud had momentarily covered the sun.
The sun came back and the bigger Turk stepped forward and seemed about to reach toward the stone, when Jones put his arm around it and pulled it toward himself. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Not until I see the money.”
The Turk straightened. “We don’t have the money, here, exactly, because we thought it unwise to walk about with five million dollars in a briefcase.”
“Then where is it?” Jones asked. The spark of hope was dying.
“At our hotel.”
“You left five million dollars in cash in your hotel room, where fifty minimum-wage workers have keys to your room? You can’t possibly be that dumb, so I can’t possibly believe you.” Jones pulled the stone closer, and again fumbled with the bowling bag, to put it away.
“Don’t do that,” the big Turk said. “We will take it with us.”
“I don’t think so,” Jones said. He lifted a hand overhead. He said, “I have a friend in the woods with a deer rifle. If you try to take the stone, he will shoot you dead. All I have to do is drop my hand.”
The big Turk said, “This is, mmm . . .” He turned to his smaller partner. “The American idiom. The one we spoke of.”
The smaller man—who was not small—said, “Shit from the cow.”
The big man shook his head and said, “No, no, no, this is one word, this . . . cowshit. No, bullshit.”
“Same thing,” said the smaller man.
“But this is not how you say it,” the big man said. He turned back to Jones. “This gunman, this is bullshit. Drop your hand, tell him to shoot me.”
“Ah, you’re right,” Jones said, and dropped his hand.
“The stone, please,” the Turk said.
“Nope.”
The Turk slipped his left hand into his jacket pocket and took out a switchblade. He squeezed once, and the blade flicked out. He kept it against his leg, so the stoners couldn’t see it, smiled to show his thick white teeth, and said, “We insist.”
Jones smiled back, showing slightly bucked but yellower teeth, and said, “There is another American idiom that you should know: ‘Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.’”
With the right hand, he pulled back the right side of his jacket, to display the stock of a handgun tucked under his belt buckle.
The Turk considered it for a moment, and then said, “I have some experience with the knife. Do you think you can withdraw the gun before I can reach you with the knife?”
Jones said, “You’re fifteen feet away. You’d have to jump over the picnic table to get to me. I don’t have to jump over the picnic table to get to you.”
The bigger man said, “We will take the stone.”
“No.”
The smaller man said to his companion, “Be very careful. I think he is tense.”
The bigger Turk said, with a quick backward glance, “He is a man of religion. He will not shoot us. We will take the stone.”
He took a step forward and Jones pulled the gun, a large frame revolver. One of the stoners said, “Holy shit,” and Jones sensed all three of them running away.
The Turk said, calmly, “You will not shoot.”
Jones said, “Well,” and looked down at the pistol, and then up at the Turk, and the Turk lifted a hand as if to say, “Wait,” but Jones shot him in the middle of the chest and he went down.
And he didn’t stop. The other Turk half-turned and Jones shot him in the neck, the gunshots echoing like thunderclaps off the amphitheater-type hills to the side of the park. The bigger Turk rolled and climbed back to his feet to run, and Jones shot him in the back, then turned to the other and fired two shots at him, into the back and the back of his head, then fired another shot into the big Turk’s back.
They were both half-running, half-stumbling away, and Jones lifted the stele and put it back in the bag. The stoners were halfway across the park, the two men far in the lead, the woman running frantically after them; and at the far end, parents were screaming for kids, and both parents and kids were running out of the park toward cars—balls, bats, and gloves forgotten.
Jones felt a moment of pride. He’d given thousands of sermons in his life, and had never before gotten a response so universal and enthusiastic. Everyone was running.
He had time for only that spark of pride. Then he took the bag and shambled back into the trees, and up the hill. He’d just gotten to his car when he heard the sirens, some way off, yet.
By the time they arrived, he’d gone around three corners and was accelerating away.
—
WHEN VIRGIL AND YAEL got to the park, eight patrolmen and four detectives were walking the area, with two crime-scene people crawling around the picnic table, and three highway patrolmen parked on the street watching. Part of the turnout was the result of children being nearby, and the school-shooting scares. The other part was sheer excitement: this just didn’t happen much in Mankato.
The cops were basically looking for anything they could find, and had rounded up two stoners, a boy and a girl, and said that a third one had been with them, but he’d kept running and hadn’t yet been located.
“I called you because of that Reverend Jones thing,” said the lead detective on the scene, whose name was Don Scott. “We think this was Jones. Big guy, black beard, wearing a black suit with a ministerial collar.”
“Yeah, that’s him,” Virgil said. “You find anything that would point to him?”
“Well, we’re doing the crime-scene things, because he apparently wounded the two guys he was talking to. We haven’t found them yet, but we will—the witnesses said they were shot bad. Head, stomach, back wounds. One guy, who seemed like he knew what he was talking about, said they drove off in a Mercedes-Benz SUV. We got all the hospitals looking out for them, and we’re looking for the car. We found a switchblade where the two unknowns were, so Jones may have been threatened. We’ll get at least one good print off the knife, because I could see it, just looking at it. And we’re doing the usual—footprints and so on, got some blood from the ones that got shot.”
Virgil filled him in on what he’d found, and Scott said, “Well, if he’s dying, then he doesn’t have much to lose.”
Yael said, “We have considered that, and you are correct. I think his behavior, from the time he stole the stele, is influenced by his illness. This is not an excuse for him, but a motive.”
Virgil asked, “You mind if we talk to the kids?”
“Go ahead. I think we wrung them out, though, and they don’t have much.”
“Just want to hear it, myself.” Virgil ambled over to the two stoners, who were perched on a picnic table, introduced himself and Yael, and said, “Tell me what you saw.”
They told the tale of the two men walking up to the reverend, about the stone coming out of the bowling bag, about some kind of dispute—they hadn’t been close enough to hear the words, but they could hear the tone of it. The discussion hadn’t turned into a screaming argument, but had been tense.
“I’ll tell you what,” the boy said, “that sucker opened up with that pistol, the first thing I thought was, he was gonna hit some of those kids for sure. They we
re lucky he didn’t, too. They were right in the line of fire.”
“That wasn’t the first thing you thought,” the girl said. She was way past a simple pout. “The first thing you thought, asshole, was, Run. You completely left me behind, you, you, stupid.”
“What was I gonna do, carry you?” the boy whined.
Virgil broke in: “Did this minister look sick? Or hurt?”
The girl shrugged. “We were playing Hacky Sack and didn’t pay too much attention until they started talking louder . . . but he seemed okay to me. After he started shooting, I didn’t see him. I just ran.”
“The two men who were shot—they didn’t get the black stone?”
“No. They just started running like everybody else,” the girl said.
Virgil got descriptions of the men who were shot, and looked at Yael, who said, “Turks. Two of them.”
“I think so. Let’s get some cops and go down to the Holiday.” He thanked the two kids and walked back to Scott and said, “If you could give us a couple of cops, we have an idea where the two wounded guys might be . . . if they haven’t checked into the hospital.”
“Here in town?”
“Holiday Inn downtown,” Virgil said.
“Well, hell, let’s go,” Scott said.
—
THE HOLIDAY INN was an older building downtown, left over from the sixties or seventies, slowly failing in place, with most potential patrons going to the Downtown Inn, where Yael was, or the City Center Hotel, or a newer Holiday Inn Express out on the edge of town.
On the way down, Yael said, “I don’t understand how they could flee . . . if they were shot so badly. Why didn’t they stay? Why aren’t they in a hospital?”
“Good question. Ellen Case said he’d never hurt anyone.”
“He’s gone crazy from the illness, or the pain, or the drugs.”
“Maybe,” Virgil said.
—
AT THE HOLIDAY INN, they all unloaded, Virgil, Yael, Scott, the other plainclothesman, and three patrolmen. One of the patrolmen said, “You see the ass end of that green SUV down there?” He pointed to the far end of the hotel parking lot. “That’s a Benz.”
Scott positioned the patrolmen around the parking lot and exits from the hotel, and he and the other detective, along with Virgil and Yael, walked down to the Mercedes and looked in the windows. Both the front seats were stained with what looked like blood, and Yael said so.
“Doesn’t look like blood, it is blood,” Scott said.
Scott told the other detective to sit on the car, but the cop said, “Bullshit, I’m coming with you,” so they got a patrolman to watch it, and the four of them walked down to the hotel office and explained the problem to the manager, who then summarized what they’d said: “They’re bleeding to death in my room?”
“That’s why we need the key,” Scott said.
They got the key and walked down to the Turks’ rooms—they had two rooms, as it happened, with a connecting door. Virgil listened at the first one, and heard two men talking. He listened at the second and heard nothing. So he pointed at the first one, and Scott knocked.
“Who knocks?”
“Mankato police. Open the door, sir,” Scott said, and he and the other detective pulled their pistols. Yael looked at Virgil, who said, “Back in the car,” and she rolled her eyes.
Scott pounded on the door again. “Mankato police. Open up.”
A chain rattled on the door, and a man looked out. He was bare-chested, had a bloody bandage on his ear and neck, and was holding a pair of tweezers.
Scott said, “Step back, please.”
The man stepped back. Inside, a larger man sat on a chair, also shirtless, with a bloody patch on his furry chest.
“We are . . . cleaning up,” he said.
Scott turned to the other detective and said, “Get a goddamned ambulance over here.”
“We are not hurt so bad,” the bigger man protested.
“You’ve been shot.”
“But only with these baby bullets.” He looked at a room service menu by his elbow, whose black plastic cover was dotted with tiny lead shot.
“Snake shot,” Virgil said.
Scott said, “You’re going to the hospital anyway. You can’t just sit here and pick shot out of your skin. You could get infected. And we need to talk to you about the Reverend Jones.”
“We have no time for hospitals,” the big Turk said.
“You’re gonna take time,” Scott said.
“You did not get the stele?” Yael asked.
The Turk looked at Scott: “Why is there an Israeli here?”
Scott: “How’d you know she is an Israeli?”
“She looks like one,” the Turk said. “Why is she here?”
“We are trying to recover property that belongs to the state of Israel,” Yael said.
The big Turk said to the smaller Turk, “Mossad.”
“It’s so,” the smaller Turk said.
Yael, impatient, asked, “You did not take the stone?”
“What stone?” the big Turk asked. To Virgil: “Why am I in the USA, and yet I am interrogated by the Mossad?”
“Beats me,” Virgil said.
—
THE TURKS did not want to talk: about Jones, about the stone, about what they were doing in Mankato. Six minutes after the cops went into the room, the other plainclothesman said, “The ambulance is here.”
“I can’t understand why you won’t help us,” Scott said to the big Turk. “Jones shot you guys.”
The big Turk shrugged: “It’s only business.”
—
YAEL ASKED, “NOW what?”
“Stop asking that,” Virgil said. He scratched his chin, then said, “We could go back to the farmhouse—he might’ve run there. He’s gotta be staying somewhere. Or we could see if the guy from Texas is upstairs.”
She thought for a moment and then said, “We can always find the man from Texas—besides, I looked, and there is no Cadillac in the parking lot. If we hurry to the farmhouse, perhaps we will catch Jones.”
But they didn’t.
They did find Ellen Case talking to Ma Nobles. Ma walked over to them as Virgil and Yael got out of the truck. It was a warm day, and Ma had a fine mist of sweat on her face, and hadn’t bothered to encumber herself with a brassiere. She said, “Hey, Virgie. Want to thank you for this. We got a deal. I’ll get Rolf and Tall Bear over here to pull it down and load it up.”
“So you gonna tell us where that fake lumber is?”
She ignored him, and instead took a long look at Yael. “Who’s this?”
“An investigator from Israel.”
“Ah, looking for Ellen’s old man. She was telling me about that, about this stone,” Ma said. She looked back at Yael. “So, you’re a Jew?”
Yael said, “Yes. You have trouble with this?”
“No, no. Moses is a Jew, I guess. At least half.”
Yael: “Moses?”
“My third boy. His daddy was one good-lookin’ Hebrew, if I do say so myself. Line-dance instructor, met him down at the Coop. Used to wear these silver and turquoise bracelets around his wrist, and custom cowboy boots. That sonofabitch could talk. Talked me right out of my undies. Next thing I know, I looked like I swallowed a watermelon, and he was run off to Mexico.”
Yael said, “Watermelon?”
Ellen walked up. Green eyes, cool, even in the heat. She asked, “Did you find Dad?”
“He just shot two Turks, down in Mankato,” Virgil said.
This time she showed the shock. “Shot them? That’s impossible. There’s no—”
“Didn’t kill them,” Virgil said. “He used snake shot. But they identified him—and he had the stone.”
“That snake shot, that had to sting,” Ma sa
id.
“And would have put out their eyes, if he’d shot them in the face,” Virgil said.
“Is that why you’re back here?” Ellen asked Virgil.
“Yeah. He’s gotta be hiding out somewhere, and after the shooting, he must have been in a hurry to get out of sight.”
“Well, he’s not here,” Ellen said. “Ask Ma. Or look around.”
Virgil said, “Ahhh . . .”
Yael said quickly, “I’ll look. We’re here, I’ll look. Can I borrow your Glock?”
“No.”
Yael muttered something in a foreign tongue and stalked off to the truck, got her purse, and headed for the house.
Ma looked after her and said, “Hope she doesn’t want to use the bathroom. I can tell you, Virgie, there’s no old man in there, but there is a whole bunch of yellow jackets in the upstairs bathroom.”
“Why would you think she’s headed for the can?” Virgil asked.
Ma caught the speculative tone in his voice, and asked, “Why else would she take her purse?”
“Okay.” To Ellen: “Your father is now being hunted by everyone, for aggravated assault. If you know anything about what he’s doing, or where he is, I can talk him down. If you don’t tell me, or if you really don’t know, and he runs into a nervous cop, there’s a good chance he’ll be shot to death.”
“He never even called me when he got back in the U.S.,” she said. “He didn’t even call me from the Mayo. He did call me when he left there, and told me not to look for him, told me he was in a lot of trouble, but he didn’t tell me what it was. He said he thought he’d be dead in two or three weeks, and that was almost a week ago.” Her lower lip trembled. “But he would never shoot anyone. Never.”
Virgil said, “Well, he did. You have to understand, he doesn’t seem to be acting like himself. Could be drugs, maybe the disease is affecting his brain, who knows?” He took out his notebook and asked, “Who are his friends? Who might be inclined to hide him? Who’d keep hiding him after the evening news? Because he’s going to be on the evening news, big-time.”
Storm Front Page 8