The Clouds Roll Away Page 5

  “Pardon?”

  “Mac’s fiancé. Stuart. He says he met you over at Flynn’s.”

  So that’s how he heard I was back. Phaup got one thing right: Charles City County was too small. I glanced over at his sister, Mac.

  “I thought she got married in September.”

  “That was the plan,” he said. “You left before all the fireworks.”

  I wanted to ask, but the pipe organ burst with fresh vigor and the congregation stood. Feet scuffed the old wooden floor, hymnals fluttered open, and our voices joined the chorus, each of us proclaiming joy to the world and wonders of his love.

  And wonders, and wonders of his love.

  chapter nine

  Later that Sunday, I walked into the Bureau’s wiretap room with two bags of fast food. I was branching out. One bag from McDonald’s, one from Burger King.

  Stan was cleaning up his mess, moving with a speed uncharacteristic for a man his size. Beside him, Beezus Jackson talked over the dead audio feed.

  “If I tried to eat the food you people bring in here, why I’d be doubled up for weeks. And if you don’t mind me saying, you look a little bloated. Have you ever been tested for gluten?”

  Stan tossed his trash in the tall garbage can, which had been emptied at least once since Thursday and now was only three-quarters full. The stench hovered just below pass-out proportions.

  “They kept busy last night,” Stan said. “Asleep all day today. Pollard wants updates after every shift.”

  “Got it.”

  “They’re talking like a hit’s about to go down. We’re still trying to decipher the code, so keep your ears open. And call Pollard right away if anything sounds imminent.”

  “Are you saying they’re going to kill somebody?” Beezus said.

  Stan walked out the door and I set my greasy feedbags on the table. Taking a seat at the laptop, I put on the Bose headphones. The cursor pulsated on the audio feed, ready for a phone call.

  “Did I hear him right?” Beezus said. “A hit?”

  I unwrapped one Big Mac, careful not to knock any sesame seeds off the bun. My mouth watered. I was one of those junk food addicts who could recite the Big Mac’s ingredients by heart, but even I doubted the all-beef part.

  When Beezus started to say something, I held a finger to my lips. “We need to be very quiet tonight,” I said before taking the inaugural bite. “No talking. Okay?”

  “My lips are sealed,” she said. “You won’t hear another word out of me. You just watch. I can keep quiet with the best of them. That’s why Ms. Phaup put me on this assignment.” She placed her finger to her lips. Bright fuchsia lipstick made her mouth look like she’d just eaten a Popsicle.

  I bit into the two supposedly all-beef patties with their special sauce, lettuce, cheese, and onion—no pickles for me—and Beezus reached into her embroidered bag and lifted out two shawls. She silently offered me one. With a stab of shame I accepted her generosity, and we settled in for a long, cold night of listening.

  “What’s up?”

  That was the usual greeting. Never hello. Not even hi.

  “You hear from him?”

  I kept paper beside the computer, jotting down words, anonymous pronouns. Him—who? Beezus leaned toward me. She wore her own headphones but liked the conspiratorial atmosphere.

  “Yeah, he called. Going down tomorrow night. In time for Christmas, baby. Santa’s coming to town.”

  Laughter.

  “You watching the game over here?”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Mule’s bringing Peanut, Hooligan, and Smoke.”

  “Can I bring Zennie?”

  “Aw, dawg. Peanut’s bringing broads. Zennie ain’t cool with that.”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Ask all you want. But Zennie Lewis ruins it for everybody. You hear what I’m saying?”

  I clicked off the digital receiver, counting silently to fifteen. My teeth clenched.

  “Oh, hurry,” Beezus said.

  But there was no hurrying. Title III wiretaps were written in very specific language. They covered only certain topics of conversation, and we were forbidden to listen beyond the stated boundaries. This wiretap, for instance, specified criminal gang activity. Personal affairs, including watching a basketball game and arguing about “broads,” were off-limits, and highly paid defense attorneys liked to examine our wiretaps making sure we obeyed the law. Any topic change from crime required cutting away from the conversation for at least fifteen seconds, then cutting back in to see if the topic had changed again. Since the recordings were digital, anything less than fifteen seconds meant the defense attorneys could buy more Maseratis.

  At fifteen, I snapped the tape back on. The caller said, “. . . be there for the tipoff.”

  Then the phones went dead.

  Beezus snapped a carrot. “Rats.”

  But the second line suddenly lit up.

  “Goody,” she said.

  “Yo, baby,” the caller said. “I was sitting here thinking about my Z-girl.”

  “The girl.”

  “You are, baby, you are.”

  “Granny says she’ll watch Zeke. Come get me.”

  “Yeah, little change in plans, baby. Here’s the thing. I gotta work tonight.”

  There was a significant pause.

  I waited, hoping he would say something about work, something that was even vaguely criminal.

  “You said we’d watch the game together, Moon,” the woman said.

  “Baby, that’s what I want. But XL, he just called. Says I gotta work. Pow-wow on the Christmas party, know what I’m saying?”

  “XL? You’re hanging at XL’s?”

  Beezus glanced at me, raising her eyebrows.

  “He’s lying,” I said, trying to stretch my limit. “Lying is criminal.”

  “Man’s the boss,” he said. “I gotta work, girl. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I hear you, Moon, I hear you good. I hear you choosing home-boys over me.”

  “Zennie, be cool.”

  “XL,” she said. “He’s extra large, all right. Extra-large liar.”

  I hit the digitizer, starting my count to fifteen.

  “He’s still lying,” Beezus said.

  “But now it’s a lovers’ quarrel.” And I’d already stretched jurisdiction. Six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . .

  “But what if their argument tells you something about the gang? Doesn’t that make it okay to listen?”

  “Not according to the lawyers.” Thirteen . . . fourteen . . . fifteen . . .

  “I’m blocking your number, Moon. Don’t call me.”

  “Baby, I’m telling the truth. I swear. I’m working tonight.”

  “Yeah, working your zipper.”

  She hung up.

  I watched the monitor, sensing it wasn’t over. And sure enough, the man named Moon dialed the guy named XL—or Extra Large, if the woman could be believed.

  I wrote the names on my notepad, waiting for the line to pick up.

  “How bad I gotta be there?” asked the man named Moon.

  “Girl runs you like a pony. All the booty in town, you gotta pick Zennie Lewis?”

  “I asked you”—Moon’s voice was almost growling—“do I gotta be there?”

  “I don’t know, Moon. You wanna see the fat man come down the chimney or not?”

  There was a pause.

  “Moon, what’s the book say?”

  “My brother and I are one, for I know what he’s done.”

  The line went dead.

  “Men,” Beezus said. “They always stick together.”

  I was writing notes, trying to capture the words and slang, when the monitor lit up again. The number belonged to the guy named XL but the number he dialed came up “unknown.” I wrote the local area code so that Pollard Durant could decide whether to subpoena the phone company for a name and address. While the FBI was sworn to uphold laws, the rest of the world used Google,
and judicial approval for our wiretaps sometimes took longer than the phone’s free minutes—meaning the cell got tossed in the trash and we had to start all over again. Cell phone surveillance was a long, rotten game of darting mice chased by a lumbering cat.

  “Keep your eyes on Moon tonight,” XL told the caller.

  “Whazzup?”

  “You don’t need to know. You need to do what I say.”

  “Just asking.”

  “Everybody asking,” XL said. “Nobody wanting to obey.”

  “So what do I look for?”

  “Loyalty,” XL said. “We might got a loyalty issue.”

  When XL hung up, he called Domino’s and I cut the line. Pizza orders weren’t exactly criminal, unless they mugged the driver. I stayed off until XL started dialing the 212 area code. New York City. I made a note for Pollard. The gangbanger asked long odds on tonight’s game with the Chicago Bulls and I didn’t cut the line because gambling definitely qualified as criminal activity.

  “Betting is so foolish,” Beezus said.

  I put my finger to my lips.

  XL said, “I need some quick turnarounds, Minks.”

  “Depends on how dice gets rolled.” His voice was foreign, the r rolling.

  “What if I need to call in a favor, Minks? Can I do that?”

  The pause lasted three seconds. Four, five.

  “I grant such favors. For you,” said the man in New York.

  “Cool. That’s cool, Minks. I like you. Really, I do.”

  Then the line went dead.

  “He didn’t even explain the favor,” Beezus said.

  Later that night, two more calls connected to the man named Minks. More bets. I added them to the note for Pollard and when my shift ended at 9 p.m., the game headed into overtime. Two agents came to take our places, young guys from the cybercrimes unit, and Beezus toodle-ooed a good-bye. I walked to my desk by the stairwell door and typed up notes, e-mailing them to Pollard Durant, cc’ing Phaup.

  My old files sat on the floor by my desk, still packed. Dates scrawled in black marker.

  I dug through the years, searching for notes from another task force. Also for drugs. Also gangs. It had put half a dozen men behind bars and kept one man out.

  His name was Milky Lewis. And I was hoping he had a smart-mouthed relative named Zennie.

  chapter ten

  Monday morning’s sky pulled up a blanket of washboard clouds, agreeing as I hit the alarm’s snooze button— twice. After showering, trying to wash troubled T-III voices from my brain, I walked over to the big house.

  My mother stood at the kitchen stove making pancakes.

  “Ready for breakfast?” She wore pressed wool slacks, a white sweater with a giant green tree smothering the front, and black velvet flats, a bad sign. Down the hall, Judy Garland hoped I had a merry little Christmas.

  As I sat down at the table, her dog, Madame, curling at my feet, I closed my eyes, silently praying for a gracious attitude toward whatever landed on my plate. Pancakes, in my mother’s kitchen, consisted of wheat-germ-and-honey monstrosities, dense disks that tasted like chemistry textbooks.

  But I opened my eyes to two perfect silver dollars, golden and light, and a platter of wavy bacon strips glistening with melted fat.

  “Is that real bacon?”

  “Of course it’s real bacon!” she said, as if she’d never served soybean strips stained pink to resemble pork.

  In moments like this, I usually caught Wally’s eye, sharing in the bewilderment that was my mother. Sometimes they were good moments, when she tottered on high heels and uttered piercingly accurate wisdom; more often, though, bad moments, when her mind stumbled across an invisible string that stretched across her soul like a trip wire, sending up paranoid explosions.

  “Where’s Wally?” I asked.

  “I knocked on his door.” She went back to the stove.

  “And?”

  “And he said he wanted to sleep. The third time I knocked, he said he had a stomachache.”

  Having used these same sleep and stomachache excuses myself, I was tempted to tell him it was real food this time. But she was shuttling among the stove and sink and fridge, working like a woman preparing brunch for twenty.

  “Is Helen coming?” I asked.

  “Helen?” She took orange juice from the fridge, decanting it into a glass pitcher. No carton for this morning. “Helen has finals this week; she’s much too busy.”

  She poured me a glass of OJ, using the good leaded crystal, and I glanced down at my plate again. Tiny holly leaves danced around the gold rim. Her best Christmas china.

  “So who’s coming?” I asked.

  “For what?”

  “Breakfast.”

  “Nobody.”

  “Just me?”

  “But she promised to see us for Christmas.”

  “Who?”

  “Helen.” She tilted her head to the side. Normally it was one of her most endearing gestures, the long, dark curls cascading next to her porcelain face, a gesture of pure femininity as she looked at me with a mother’s evaluative love. But today her hair didn’t move. It was stuck, sprayed stiff into some dark helmet. And she didn’t seem to see me.

  “Is something the matter with Helen?” she asked.

  “No.” I picked up my fork. “Helen’s great. Helen’s always great.”

  She watched me take the first bite. The golden crust broke delicately, a fluffy texture inside. I smiled, chewed, smiled, and within seconds a sharp metallic flavor seeped across my tongue. My throat closed, tasting aluminum. Baking soda. Way too much baking soda.

  “How are the pancakes?” she asked.

  “Wow.” I grabbed the orange juice. “It’s been a long time since I tasted something like this.”

  “I’ve got plenty more where those came from,” she said. “Eat up.”

  Just as his secretary said, the sheriff for Charles City County was sitting at the small table beside the window facing Route 60, eating his breakfast at Jean’s Country Diner in Providence Forge. Newspaper in one hand, biscuit in the other.

  “Mind if I sit down?” I asked.

  He looked up. Reading glasses perched on his small Irish nose, his blue eyes flickering with unspoken assessments.

  “Best biscuits in town.” His voice drawled rural Virginia, the vowels slow and undulating.

  I took the seat across the table, my stomach aching from my mother’s metallic pancakes. But I’m a girl who never refuses good food, particularly good Southern food, and the diner smelled of butter and salt, milk and flour. Hot biscuits. Food heaven. The sheriff raised his hand, signaling the young woman behind the counter, and slipped his glasses into the chest pocket of his brown uniform. He glanced out the window, his eyes following a truck thundering past the diner, heading east on the Pocahontas Trail.

  “What can I do for you, Agent Harmon?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast, sir. I wanted to speak with you in private.”

  “You tell my secretary you were with the FBI?”

  I shook my head, sliding my card across the table. Last summer the sheriff took my statement down by the river. It wasn’t a professional encounter; it was victim and law enforcement, and we never spoke again. His sparsely populated county—as close to Williamsburg as Richmond—consisted of working farms and river plantations and boasted one of the lowest crime rates in the state. Our records showed just one FBI arrest, nearly a decade ago. Hale Lasker.

  He picked up my card, slipping it behind the reading glasses. His old skin looked weathered and ruddy, the face earned by a committed fisherman. “Y’all looking into the cross burning?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Your department responded to the 911 call, is that right?”

  “I was there.”

  “Can you tell me what you saw?”

  “You investigating me?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “I’m old, but don’t treat me like a fool.”

  The w
aitress appeared, a pretty girl in faded blue jeans, and set down a plate of steaming biscuits. She poured me a cup of coffee, topped off the sheriff ’s mug, and walked away.

  “I don’t consider you a fool, Sheriff.”

  “But you want to come here and talk to me, real casual, to find out if I’m covering up something. And I’m not supposed to figure out that’s what you’re doing. So either I can act like that fool or you can quit playing games.”

  “How would you handle this, in my position?”

  He leaned back, casting his blue eyes out the window again.

  “First thing I’d do is take a good look at my deputies. They’re white, they’re black, their grandparents couldn’t sit at that counter together, but we get along. We get along just fine.”

  “Somebody isn’t getting along.”

  “You think I can stop that? You want me to wave a magic wand? But here you come throwing gasoline on the fire.”

  “The man who owns that property claims your department isn’t taking the threat seriously. The FBI agrees.”

  “Take what seriously?” He picked up the newspaper, shaking it. “We had somebody spray-painting swastikas over at St. Peter’s cemetery. I had reporters calling from Virginia Beach to D.C. I even had a TV reporter stand outside my office for two days, demanding we do something about the county’s ‘white supremacist’ problem.”

  “When was this?”

  “September.”

  I was in Seattle. “Hale Lasker—”

  “They kept bringing up Hale Lasker too,” he said, heat rising in his voice. “Hale Lasker, the guy is literally a dead horse. Everybody accused me of not taking it seriously. They wrote stories for weeks and pretty soon we had swastikas in every cemetery. And then what happens? More stories. More reporters. That woman even showed up from New York—the news girl?”

  I shook my head.

  “My wife used to watch her in the mornings. She looks like a troll. Katie somebody.”

  “Katie Couric?”

  “That’s the one. She came down here and did an ‘in-depth’ look at our ‘white supremacist’ problem. I kept saying knock it off. But soon as she ran that story on national television, Karl Stein’s plumbing truck got covered with swastikas. Karl Stein. The guy’s a Lutheran, for crying out loud.”