Storm Front Read Free

and I ain’t been laid since March the eighteenth. You’re just the boy to get ’er done, Virgie.”
    —
    V IRGIL SLID out of the booth and walked back toward the men’s room, where nobody was sitting. “What’s up?” he asked Davenport.
    “Got an assignment for you . . . easy duty,” Davenport said.
    “Aw, man. I left my shotgun at home.”
    “No, no, nothing like that,” Davenport said, though he’d been known to lie about such things. “There’s an Israeli investigator who needs to talk to a professor at Gustavus Adolphus, though the professor actually lives there in Mankato. Probably on your block. He’s a minister named, uh, let me look . . . Elijah Jones. A Lutheran minister, like your old man.”
    “An Israeli? What’s that about?”
    Virgil was keeping an eye on Ma as he spoke to Davenport, and it wasn’t particularly hard to do. She was undeniably a criminal redneck, but she was also a pretty blonde, only thirty-four, though she had five children, including a nineteen-year-old. She had a long, thick pigtail down her back, and a short, slender body. If, purely hypothetically, she were lying on a California king with that hair spread out over her . . .
    “. . . some kind of precious artifact—”
    “What? Say that over again,” Virgil said. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to keep an eye on a local criminal here . . . that barn-lumber scam I’ve been working.”
    “I said, the Israeli’s coming into MSP and it’d be nice if you’d pick her up,” Davenport said. “This Jones guy supposedly stole some kind of precious artifact from an archaeological dig and smuggled it back to the States. He apparently left Israel illegally—the Israeli cops tracked him to a port and he caught a boat to Cyprus and then flew home from there.”
    “What kind of artifact?” Virgil asked, now semi-interested. “Does it have mystical powers?”
    “I don’t know about mystical powers, but supposedly it’s a piece of a stele—a steelee? I don’t know how you pronounce it—that’s got some ancient writing on it. The whole thing has apparently got the state of Israel in an uproar,” Davenport said. “Anyway, the Israelis want it back and the State Department says if Jones stole it and brought it into the country, he broke about nine laws. I’ll send you a sheet on it.”
    “That sounds like a federal case,” Virgil said. “Why don’t the Israelis talk to the FBI?”
    “Well, it
is
a federal case. The feds have issued a hold on Jones, based on information from the Israelis, and also because he said he had nothing to declare when he came through customs, which was a lie. The feds asked us in because of local knowledge—that’d be you—and because we owe them one this month, and the boss okayed it,” Davenport said.
    “I bet the stone does have mystical powers,” Virgil said. “Maybe the Israelis can use it to blast Iran, or something. Or maybe it curses the person who has it—your balls rot off, or your seed only falls upon barren ground, so to speak.”
    “My seed’s already got me in enough trouble, so I don’t care anymore,” Davenport said. “Just bust the fuckin’ minister, get the fuckin’ stone, and get the fuckin’ Israelis out of here. Okay?”
    Ma caught Virgil looking at her, and her tongue came out and stroked her upper lip. Just in case Virgil might have missed it, she did it again. Davenport said something else, but Virgil missed
that
, and he said, “Goddamnit, I’m up to my ass on this lumber thing. What time is she coming in?”
    After a moment of silence, Davenport said, “I just told you that: I don’t know. Today, tomorrow, the next day. She’ll either call ahead or send you an e-mail when she knows for sure.”
    “Sorry, I’m really . . . I’m afraid this guy’s gonna run. What’s her name? The Israeli?”
    “Yael Aronov,” Davenport said. He pronounced it “Yale.”
    “Is that Y-a-e-l?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s pronounced Ya-el,”