Dark of the Moon

But some of the older ones, going three-four-five years back, look like a big garage. Basically, an ethanol plant is a still. What they’re making is moonshine; that’s all it is.”
    Pirelli said, “For the past two years, there’s been an ocean of crank flooding the area between the Mississippi River and the Rockies. Most of it’s going down to Dallas–Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston. Heavy stuff, pure white, not that brown stuff you see out of coffeepots. We’ve been going crazy trying to find the source. One possibility we have is that it has something to do with the Corps. The guys who are dealing more than a few ounces are all tied in.”
    “What about Dale Donald Evans?” Stryker asked. “He ought to be home by now.”
    Pirelli’s eyebrows went up. He took a cell phone from his pocket, scrolled, and punched. A minute later he asked, “Get him?” He listened, and then said, “Stay just like that. He didn’t take the gas cans out of the truck?” He listened some more and then said, “Call me.”
    To Stryker: “He got home forty-five minutes ago. Doesn’t have a garage. Parked the truck.”
    “He’s got a bad taillight,” Virgil said. “You could stop him on a violation, have the cop check the gas cans…It’s a little thin, but it’d hold.”
    “Lucky thing about the taillight,” one of the agents said.
     
    W HEN THEY WERE DONE with the briefing, Pirelli said, “Okay. What we’d really like is, for you two to take the day off. Enjoy your Saturday afternoon, enjoy your Sunday. I’ll call you Monday. Or Tuesday.”
    “Monday,” Virgil said.
    “Or Tuesday. There’s this Sioux Indian guy about to drift into Madison, South Dakota, where his car is gonna break down. He’ll be there for a while, watching that plant, talking with the locals. In the meantime, we’re gonna be on Dale Donald Evans like yellow on a Chinaman. If this turns out to be what you think it is, we’ll give you a call. We appreciate the help of local authorities, and when we take down the Reverend Feur, you’ll be right there with us.”
    Stryker slapped his thighs, and said, “Sounds like a deal.” To Virgil, “Sound like a deal to you?”
    Virgil said, “Okay with me, if it’s okay with everybody.”
    One of the agents said to Virgil, “You know, Modest Mouse music is really sorta gay. ”

15
    O N THE WAY back to Bluestem, Virgil said to Stryker, “I don’t want to bring you down, but I don’t think Feur killed Schmidt or the Gleasons. Might have killed Judd, using the Gleasons as cover.”
    “That brings me down,” Stryker said.
    “Thing is, the Gleasons and the Schmidts…that has the smell of craziness about it.”
    Stryker: “Let me share something with you, Virgil: George Feur is pure, one hundred percent, grade-A high-test bat shit.”
    “In the wrong way,” Virgil said. “If we’re right about him, if they’ve been pumping meth out of that ethanol plant, then you’ve got a guy who believes in organization and networks and conspiracies. He sets up cover companies. He raises start-up funding. The guy who killed the Gleasons, and the Schmidts…this guy believes in chaos and oblivion. He believes he’s the only real soul in an ocean of puppets.”
    “Ah, fuck.” Stryker peered out his side window, watching the summer go by. “Ah, fuck me.”
    “Speaking of fuckin’ you, how are things on the Jesse front?”
    “Shut up.”
     
    T HEY WENT STRAIGHT to the house of Chris Olafson, the accountant. Stryker banged on the door off and on for three or four minutes, before she finally came to the door in a dressing robe. “Come in. I’d just finally gotten to sleep.”
    “We haven’t been to sleep yet,” Stryker said. “What’d you find?”
    She shook her head: “Junior’s goose is cooked.”
    “How cooked?”
    “Very cooked.”
    Junior had gotten all the tax-free gifts he was entitled to, some two million dollars. That meant the total estate was taxable. But the total estate was less than anyone had expected, at a little more than six million, and that included “assets” of two million in loans to Junior.
    “The state and federal government are going to want roughly four million. That means that Junior won’t get anything. He just won’t have to pay off the loans. But the fact is, if Jesse Laymon is entitled to half of the estate, Junior is going to owe her a million. If you look at his earnings from the Subways at face value, he might just be able to do it.