Storm Front

went straight for his throat and the two of them tumbled through a rank of folding chairs amid screaming TV women and fast-moving cameramen still running their machines. The cameraman was on the bottom, and while he was much larger, Virgil saw Ignace land a really terrific right hand to the eye, and then another one, just before the Rochester cops got there and separated them.
    Ignace, who as a child had fought in the 152-pound class in the Philadelphia Golden Gloves, gave Virgil a thumbs-up, and Virgil got Ellen and they went out the back door.
    —
    V IRGIL PLANNED to take Ellen to her home in the Cities, partly because it was the right thing to do, and partly because it would give him a lot of time to work on her head, on the chance that she’d tell him where her father was. They’d just started on the way when the day-watch duty officer called and said, “You wanted to know where that iPhone is?”
    “Very much.”
    “It’s at a McDonald’s at the southeast corner of 14 and 169,” he said. “We just got through the rigmarole with Apple, and we picked it up right away.”
    “On the way,” Virgil said.
    Ellen, who was sitting beside him, said, “I want to be there when you pick him up. He needs to go to the hospital now, and we need to get this stele out of our hair.”
    “Right,” Virgil said. “And maybe he won’t shoot me if you’re there.”
    When they got to the McDonald’s, there was no Jones to be found. The duty officer, however, said that he could see the phone location flashing on his computer screen. Virgil found the assistant manager, and asked him to dump the single external trash can. The assistant manager wasn’t happy about it, but he did it, and after a couple of minutes of probing, Virgil came up with the phone.
    “So he was here,” he said to Ellen.
    “He had a fondness for junk food, and after he got sick, he saw no reason not to eat it,” she said.
    “I have a friend who says he hopes that when he gets old, he contracts some painless but fatal disease, so he can get in a couple of years of smoking before he dies. He quit smoking for his health, but still wants them,” Virgil said. “Makes sense to me.”
    —
    T HEY WERE halfway back to Ellen’s place when Jones called, on Virgil’s phone.
    “I’d give up the stone in a minute in exchange for Ellen—but since I don’t have to now, I won’t,” he said. “It’ll all be over by tomorrow night, and I’ll turn myself in.”
    “They’re going to kill you,” Virgil said, “unless you shoot first and kill somebody else. Is the stone worth killing somebody for? Or dying for?”
    “Of course not—and that’s not what’s going to happen. This Tal woman . . . Did you figure out that it was her?”
    “Yeah, we think so,” Virgil said. “We think she might be looking for you.”
    “I think she might have been tracking me through that cell phone I had,” Jones said. “I threw it in a trash can at a McDonald’s. You don’t have to bother looking for it.”
    “Are you at the hideout now?” Virgil asked.
    “No, no, right now I’m out driving around, in case you can track this call. As soon as I’m done, I’ll pop the battery out and go hide where you can’t find me.”
    “Man, you gotta—”
    “I don’t gotta do anything, except die,” Jones said. “Is Ellen still with you? Could I talk to her?”
    “Hang on.”
    Virgil gave Ellen the phone, and Ellen shouted at him for a minute or so, and called him an asshole, and asked him where his principles were, and then told him she loved him and they hung up.
    “I want you back in the Twin Cities, and I’m going to send somebody to your house to make sure you stay there, and that your old man isn’t hiding out there. I want you somewhere safe.”
    “Don’t hurt him,” she said.
    When they got to Ellen’s house, Virgil pulled the tracker off her car. She was miffed: “You’ve been tracking me like some kind of criminal?”
    “Ellen, you’ve
been
some kind of criminal. I’ve been overlooking that. Now, go inside, eat something healthy, get some sleep.”
    “Tell you what else,” she said. “I’ve got my ex-husband’s .22. I’m going to keep it right by my bed.”
    —
    S INCE HE WAS in the Cities anyway, Virgil called Davenport: “Just wanted to see if you know anything I don’t.”
    “All kinds of things, but one is relevant,” Davenport said. “That is, I managed to pry loose another one of those trackers. You want