Storm Front

door.”
    Virgil went out to the Mini and found the tracker in ten seconds, taped to the Mini’s frame.
    “That goddamned Zahavi,” he said. He was lying on his back in the driveway, looking at the tracking unit, and thinking that a spy would check.
    “Fooled you, huh?” the woman said. She seemed amused.
    “Fooled me, fooled himself,” Virgil said. “It’s a regular fools’ paradise around here.”
    The woman said, “If ye should lead her into a fool’s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behavior.”
    Virgil got to his feet and said, “Really? Shakespeare?”
    “
Romeo and Juliet
,” the woman said. “I’m surprised you recognized it at all.”
    “Not that many people say, ‘it were,’” Virgil said. He dusted off the seat of his pants and added, “And I can tell you, just between us, there’s about to be some seriously gross behavior.”
    —
    W HEN HE went back to his truck, he called Davenport, who said, “You got lucky: I’ve been up for ten minutes.”
    “You know, Lucas, I don’t really give a shit about that. I got all kinds of trouble, here. I need to borrow Jenkins and Shrake. I’m on my way up to the Twin Cities, and somebody needs to look up a limo driver named Max Car.”
    “Max Car, the limo driver?”
    “That’s what I said. Call me when Jenkins and Shrake are awake, and find Max Car.”
    “I’m far too important to do that, but I’ll have it done,” Davenport said. “You okay?”
    “No. I’ll be up there in an hour and a half.”
    —
    A N HOUR LATER , Virgil was coming up to I-494, the interstate loop highway around the Twin Cities, when he got a call from Davenport’s researcher, Sandy.
    “Max Car, C-a-r, is actually Maxamed Ali Kaar, K-a-a-r, and it would have been a lot easier to find him if we’d known that.”
    “If I’d known that, I would have told you,” Virgil snapped.
    “Don’t get shirty with me, Flowers,” she said. They’d once had an extremely brief fling—four hours and nine minutes, by Virgil’s cell phone clock—and she was less patient with him than other people might have been.
    Virgil backed away: “He’s a limo driver, right?”
    “With Polaris Service, out of south Minneapolis.”
    “Text me a screen shot of his driver’s license,” Virgil said. “Have you heard from Jenkins and Shrake?”
    “Yes. They’re up and complaining.”
    “Good. Tell them to meet me at Kaar’s address.”
    —
    H E RANG OFF , and a minute later the phone vibrated, with a message: Kaar’s address and cell phone number, and a note from Sandy: she’d taken a quick look at Google Maps, which showed his address as a small detached house not far from the car service, and adjacent to an industrial area in south Minneapolis.
    “Careful going in,” she’d texted. “Looks like a bear trap.”
    Five minutes after that, a screen shot of his driver’s license came in. Kaar was a thin, dark-haired, dark-eyed, bewildered-looking man who wore a gray work shirt for his photo.
    —
    V IRGIL WAS at the address forty minutes later. Kaar’s house was an old shaky white clapboard place with a tiny porch and a surprisingly green lawn, which, at the moment, was being mowed by a heavy white man in red tank top and cargo shorts. The mower was a manual reel-type.
    Neither Shrake nor Jenkins was around, so Virgil called Shrake, who said they were in separate cars, maybe five minutes away. Five minutes later, they pulled in beside Virgil’s truck, a half-block and around the corner from Kaar’s house. They all got out to talk.
    “I need to talk to a guy name Maxamed Ali Kaar, who’s a driver here. He’s supposedly in Mankato, but I was thinking about it last night, and I somewhat doubt it.”
    “But not entirely doubt it?” Jenkins asked.
    “Not entirely. Anyway, his house is right down the street, and the lawn is being mowed by a fat guy in an undershirt, who doesn’t look like the lawn service, but who also doesn’t look like a Maxamed Ali anything. So, there’s a question. Maybe Kaar doesn’t live there at all. But if he does, and if he’s here, we can’t let him see us—but if he does see us, we need to grab him before he can make a phone call. That’s critical.”
    “So let’s one of us brace the fat guy, while the other two wait,” Shrake said. “Find out what’s up, and if he’s there, we rush him.”
    Virgil nodded. “Can’t let him make a phone call.”
    “So who talks to the fat guy?” Shrake asked.
    —
    V