Storm Front

it?”
    “Yes.”
    “I gotta go out, but it’ll be on my desk.”
    Virgil picked up the new GPS unit, bought some candy at the candy machine, talked to the fingerprint specialist about Zahavi’s fingerprints from the gun—they’d gotten no return from anyone—and drove back to Mankato, to his house. He got a bowl of fruit and sprawled on his bed, the better to think about it, since that had worked so well the last time he’d tried it.
    Three bidders: the Hezbollah, Tag Bauer, and the Turks. Plus three non-bidders, who were nevertheless pursuers: Tal Zahavi, Sewickey, and Yael Aronov. One outside interest, with unknown involvement: Ma Nobles, who Virgil thought had taken Jones out of the hospital.
    The Turks were out of it, so if the deal was going down that night, it had to be with the Hezbollah, or with Bauer. Everybody else was probably out of it—or, at least, nobody else would be invited to attend.
    Except, perhaps, Ma Nobles. Where was she in all of this?
    Virgil thought about it for a moment, but didn’t have anything to work with: she was an absolute wild card.
    So: Bauer and the Hezbollah.
    He picked up the phone and called Awad. “Can you talk?”
    “I don’t think I will be able to attend tonight—I have a sickness.”
    “He’s listening to you?”
    “Something I ate . . . Yes, it’s a bad situation. I will try to do better.”
    “Can you sneak out and call me?”
    “I think so. It’s only a short-time problem. I will get better.”
    “Call as soon as you can,” Virgil said.
    —
    V IRGIL GOT OFF the bed and headed downtown, to the Holiday Inn, and knocked on Sewickey’s door. Sewickey didn’t answer, which worried Virgil, given Sewickey’s track record. He went down to the front desk, and the woman there said she’d seen Sewickey on foot, headed across the street toward the Duck Inn.
    Virgil found Sewickey sitting on a bar stool, with a beer, talking with the bartender. Virgil got on the next stool down and ordered Heineken, since they didn’t have Leinie’s.
    “You got any idea what kind of car Bauer is driving?” Virgil asked.
    “Give you one guess,” Sewickey said.
    “Don’t make me guess, just tell me,” Virgil said.
    “He’s got
The Drifter
yacht, he’s got
The Wanderer
airplane, so he’s got to have a . . .”
    The bartender, who’d been listening in, slid the Heineken down to Virgil and asked, “He’s got a yacht, he’s got a plane—can I play?”
    “Go ahead,” Sewickey said.
    “Gotta be a Range Rover.”
    Sewickey pointed a finger at him and said, “Bingo.”
    Virgil said, “I was gonna say that.”
    “It’s a white Range Rover, the new model, which, if I do say so myself, is still a pig,” Sewickey said.
    “Like you wouldn’t want one,” Virgil said.
    “I really wouldn’t,” Sewickey said with a semblance of sincerity. “I’d take the Lexus GX if somebody offered me one, but the Caddy is fine. If I could find the right set, I’d like to weld a couple of nice longhorns to the hood, but that’s about the only change I’d like.”
    “No itch for a horse trailer?”
    “Horses don’t like me,” Sewickey said. “But that’s okay, because I don’t like them back. Though I did have a fairly good horseburger once, in Ljubljana.”
    “Fuckin’ French,” the bartender said.
    “Ljubljana is in Slovenia,” Sewickey said. “Had some really terrific horseradish mustard with it, too. It was one of those build-your-own horseburgers.”
    “Fuckin’ Slovenians.”
    Virgil finished his beer and said, “I gotta run.”
    “I’ll have another six or eight,” Sewickey said, and the bartender said, “Attaboy.” Sewickey asked, “Any idea of when we’ll know about the stone?”
    “Rumor is, the sale takes place tomorrow night, unless somebody is lying to me.”
    —
    V IRGIL WENT back out into the heat, hitched up his pants, looked both ways, walked back to his truck, and drove to the Downtown Inn, where he saw Bauer’s Range Rover in the parking lot. Sticking the tracker to it was a matter of one minute, and then he was back in the truck.
    Where was Awad?
    Then Awad called and said, “I am going to the store to get potato chips. But: we must talk, face-to-face. I have found out something most important, for everybody.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Not on these phones. Who knows who listens?”
    “Then let’s meet. Now. I’m not doing anything.”
    “This afternoon, I fly. Let us meet at the airport, at four o’clock. You go