Bad Blood

don’t want a play,” Virgil began, but Schickel interrupted.
    “You want an improv,” Schickel said. “So we’ve been practicing, like we’re talking on the telephone with her. We got it going.”
    “All right,” Virgil said. “I’ll bite. Let’s say I’m Roland. . . .”
    They went through the phone call, and Virgil stopped it a few times and went off in different directions, and she always brought him back, sounding appropriately flustered and, at times, frightened.
    “Okay, I’m impressed,” Virgil said. She was a natural bullshitter. “Let’s make the call.”
    “What if he’s not home?” Gordon asked.
    “Then we make the call later,” Virgil said. “Keep making it until he answers. We know he’s around the farm, because Sheriff Coakley has seen him.”
    They made the call and he wasn’t home.
     
     
    THEY SPENT the next half hour going around to the neighbors, and talking about where to leave the cars, and deciding who would be doing what; fifteen minutes into the half hour, Gordon called again, and got no answer. At the end of the half hour, as they were all getting back to Holley’s, she made a third call and suddenly lit up, and asked, in a hushed voice, “Roland? . . . This is Lucy. Lucy.”
    They couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but they could hear the pitch.
    Gordon: “I’m a little scared here. I don’t know how they tracked me down, but this state agent said if I protect you, then I’m an accomplice. I haven’t even been there in forever, and he says that makes no difference. He wants me to testify against you, against the Spirit and Emmett and all them. . . . No, I’m not going to tell you where I’m at. What I’m going to do is, I’m going to get a suitcase and tomorrow morning I’m going to Florida or California or Hawaii or someplace and let you clean up your own messes. . . . I don’t want to hear about any money, you sonofabitch; you passed me around like I was a side of beef, you owed me that money and more. . . . But you . . . I don’t care, I’m just telling you. They’re coming and you better hide out, because this Flowers guy is going to put you all in prison. . . . I didn’t tell him anything, I told him I didn’t have anything to tell, but he knows I was lying. Now I’m going, I’m on my way, and I’ve said what I was going to say, and I only got one more thing to say to you, which is, go fuck yourself.”
    And she slammed the old-fashioned phone back on the receiver and looked around, a thin veil of sweat on her forehead and upper lip. “How’d I do?”
    Shrake launched himself out of his chair and said, “Goddamn! That was so amazing, you oughta be in the theater.”
    “Awful good,” Virgil said. He was beaming, and he beamed on. “Awful good. Okay, folks, the fire is lit. They couldn’t get here in less than a couple hours and probably not less than four or five. I say we order up some pizza and beer, see if we can get a decent movie. . . . Clay’s got a Blu-ray.”
    “Party on,” Jenkins said. “Goddamn, I like this kind of detectin’. You detect good, Flowers.”
     
     
    THEY GOT the pizza and beer and soda and a Bruce Willis Die Hard movie about a computer genius; and Holley got a couple of the cooperating neighbors over, and it was a little like an old-fashioned Christmas.
    While that was going on, Virgil took Shrake and Jenkins in the back bedroom and they sat on a bed with a bowl of chips and Virgil said, “If they come, and if they say or do something that we can pop them for, we’re going to go straight at them. Read them their rights, but roll right through that, threats, whatever it takes. If they ask for an attorney, we’ll tell them that we’re taking them up to Ramsey County, and they’ll get an attorney there. We ask no more questions, but we talk among ourselves, you know . . .”
    “We know . . .”
    “Right at the beginning, even before reading the rights, we break them apart. We’ve got two bedrooms, the kitchen and living room, the car, however many there are, we isolate them. I’ll come and talk to each of them, in turn. I’m looking for one good solid piece of information—”
    “What?” Jenkins asked.
    “I don’t know, but I’ll know it when I hear it,” Virgil said. “I’m looking for something I can use in a search warrant. If I get it, I’m going to take off, and you’ll be on your own for moving these people up north. I haven’t talked to the sheriff here, but we