Storm Front

didn’t take long.”
    “Just long enough to call back to his football friend,” Yael said.
    —
    A WAD WAS NOT ELUSIVE . He drove a half-mile into the downtown area, with Virgil a few cars back all the way. Once downtown, Awad dumped the car in a parking space, got out, looked at his watch, and hurried down the street. Virgil pulled into a space at a fire hydrant, and they watched as Awad crossed the next street, looked at his watch again, and disappeared into the Pigwhistle bar and grill.
    Virgil drove a half-block down the street, found a parking space, and put the truck in it. “C’mon,” he said to Yael.
    “Surveillance?” she asked, as they got out of the truck.
    “If the guy he’s meeting came out of the bar first, would we know which one he was?”
    “Maybe,” she said, “if it’s another Palestinian.”
    “And maybe not,” Virgil said. “You want to do surveillance, do it on your own.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “I’m gonna go see if it’s the Turk in there,” Virgil said.
    “How?”
    “I’m gonna ask him.”
    “This is a most unusual technique,” Yael said. “I shall enjoy watching it, but I have little hope for its success.”

6
    T he Pigwhistle bar and grill had a painting of a woodchuck—a groundhog—in the front window under a flickering neon Blatz Beer sign, because that’s what a pigwhistle is.
    In this case, the pigwhistle had been painted by a refugee from the Mankato State fine arts program, and looked, at first glance, like a dachshund, and was the reason that people familiar with the Pigwhistle called it “the Dog,” as in, “Meet you at the Dog.” You had to live in Mankato, and be of a certain
boulevardier
class, to know that. Virgil qualified.
    He stepped inside, with Yael just behind him, and waited a few seconds for their eyes to adjust. In addition to a wide range of exotic beer, and excellent pizza, the Pigwhistle had an extreme degree of bar darkness, along with high-backed booths, the better to attract adulterers. When he could see, Virgil walked down the line of booths, checking each one, until, at the back, by the bowling machine, he found Awad.
    And Derrick Crawford, the local private detective.
    Virgil looked down at Crawford and his battered pinch-front fedora, and asked, “Whazzup, Derrick?”
    Awad looked up, startled, and asked, “You followed me?”
    Virgil said, “Of course. What, you thought we were here by accident?” To Crawford, he said, “Move over, Derrick.”
    Crawford said, “Jesus Christ on a crutch,” and slid over, taking a half-glass of beer with him, and Virgil sat down. Yael sat across from him, next to Awad. She said to Awad, “You want to move your leg, please?”
    Awad moved a quarter inch, which seemed to satisfy her, and she said to Virgil, “Proceed with the interrogation.”
    Virgil nodded and said to Crawford, “Tell me everything you know about this whole thing with the stone.” He pointed to Awad. “And about this Awad guy.”
    Crawford pushed back his hat—he wore a fedora because he thought he looked a little like Harrison Ford in
Indiana Jones
, and, in fact, he did, except that he was several inches shorter and perhaps fifty pounds heavier, and, when his hat was off, bald—and asked, “Right from the beginning?”
    “That’s probably the best place,” Virgil said.
    “Well, this guy”—he pointed at Awad—“called me up and said that he wanted some surveillance done on this Reverend Elijah Jones, to see who he was talking to. We met up, I told him two hundred bucks a day and expenses, and he gave me a grand, in cash. Said there was more where that came from.”
    “Your uncle?” Virgil asked Awad.
    Awad nodded.
    Crawford took a sip of beer—he was one of the few people Virgil knew who could drink beer while keeping a wooden kitchen match firmly in the corner of his mouth—and said, “I asked around and found out that Jones was at the Mayo, so I went over there and talked to him about this stone. He denied knowing anything about it, and that was that. Then, he checked himself out of the place, and a nurse I know called me up and told me, so I put a watch on his house.”
    “How did you do that?” Yael asked.
    “Parked down the block,” Crawford said.
    “He showed up?” Virgil asked.
    “Yup. Last night, after midnight. Driving a rental car, which I thought was a little odd, because his own car is in the garage.”
    “Why do you tell him all of this?” Awad asked. “This