Storm Front

911, identified himself, and asked for an ambulance: “You better hurry.”
    —
    W HEN J ONES was on his way to the hospital, with Shrake following behind the ambulance, Virgil called Ma, but got no answer, so he headed over to Awad’s apartment.
    Awad came to the door, and was effusive: “This was wonderful. Wonderful.” He embraced Virgil, who pulled his head back, afraid he was about to be kissed on both cheeks. “What can I tell you, as Americans say? I have already chosen the airplane. This is a 1999 Cessna 206H, slightly used, I am offered a deal of the lifetime.”
    “Better not tell me about it,” Virgil said. “I’m a cop.”
    “Ah, of course,” Awad said. “But . . .”
    Al-Lubnani was packing clothes into a suitcase.
    “You’re out of here?” Virgil asked.
    “Indeed. Tonight. I will drive the Kia to Chicago. I hope the Hatchet will not interfere?”
    “I have good reason to believe that he will not,” Virgil said.
    “Good,” al-Lubnani said. “I need two days of freedom in France. After that, they will not find me.”
    “I don’t suppose you kept the money here,” Virgil said.
    “With the possibility that you would come? Of course not,” al-Lubnani said. “I trust you like my brother . . . but I’m afraid my brother is a rascal.”
    “Well, like I said, I don’t really care. Where’s the stone?”
    Al-Lubnani and Awad exchanged glances, and Virgil thought al-Lubnani might have gone a shade paler. “You don’t have it? Your assistant was here—”
    “I don’t have an assistant,” Virgil snapped. “What the hell is going on? We had a deal.”
    “But she said it was over—that you arrested the Mossad agent and this Bauer, that you were arresting Jones. That you sent her to get the stone.”
    “Aw, for Christ sakes,” Virgil said. He cupped his hands. “Was she . . . ?”
    They both nodded.
    —
    O NE LAST TRIP that night, out to Ma’s place. The truck was parked in the yard, and there were lights on all over the house. It was still raining, but now, more of a drip than a drumbeat. Ma met him at the door: “My goodness, look what the cat dragged in. Come on inside, we just finished making caramel corn.”
    Inside, Virgil found her three youngest, eating caramel corn out of plastic bowls and watching
Iron Man 2
. Sam said, “We’re coming to a good part. You wanna watch?”
    Virgil said, “I’ve got to talk to your mom.”
    “We better go outside,” Ma said.
    Virgil followed her out. She was moving right along, out across the yard to the barn. Virgil trotted to catch up, and inside the barn, she flicked on a light, a single bulb that showed up a tractor, a Bobcat, and a bunch of related machinery. She said, “Back here,” and threaded past the machinery to a ladder that went up into the loft.
    Virgil said, “Ma, we gotta—”
    “Up here,” she said. Virgil climbed up into the loft, into the slightly acid smell of the hay that was stored there. There was no light in the loft, except what came through the loft door from a pole light out by the driveway; the rain made a pleasant tickling sound on the roof.
    Ma was sitting on what appeared to be a mattress. She said, “Rolf and Tall Bear sometimes bring their girlfriends up here.”
    Virgil said, “Ma . . .”
    Ma patted the mattress and said, “Virgie, there’s only one way you’re gonna get that stone.”

23
    Sometimes, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

24
    V irgil had found a pair of water wings in the barn, the cheap plastic kind that you blow up and roll up your arms, and he lay back in the creek water. With the barest flutter of his feet, and the support of the water wings, he could keep himself moving. The air temperature had to be in the high nineties, he thought, and when the sun beat down, his body had to be near the boiling point. And when he kicked through the shade of an overhanging burr oak, he felt as though he’d been doused with cool water. At this point in time, there couldn’t be a better place to be, not in the whole universe.
    “We better stay in the shade as much as we can, or we’ll burn into a couple of cinders,” Ma said. “That sun is scorching hot.”
    She had no trouble floating, Virgil thought, probably because she had built-in water wings. In any case, she was an attractive sight, as they flutter-kicked around the swimming hole. The whole environment was reminiscent of a moment from a Disney movie, Virgil thought, with the lush dark green