by Johnny Shaw
“Mathilda has already signed one. This includes all the language that gives you and your siblings immunity from prosecution. So long as I get my evidence. If you steal from Dolphus but give me nothing on him, you’ll do time.”
“It’s the best deal I could make,” Mother said.
“What if we just don’t do it?” Kurt said. “What if we walk away right now?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Cronin said. “You know how when you feel like pizza, but then you don’t get pizza. Even if it’s tacos, it’s not satisfying. In this case, pizza is arrests. I’m arresting someone, one way or the other.”
“I can’t lie to my brother and sister.”
“They lie to you.”
“Life isn’t an eye for an eye. I make my own moral choices.”
“An eye for an eye works for the Bible,” Cronin said.
“It’s in the Old Testament. Jesus rejects it in the New Testament. Turn the other cheek.”
“If you only take Dolphus’s money but don’t get me some evidence to convict him, you’re not turning the other cheek—you’re turning a blind eye.”
“That’s good,” Kurt said. “Can I use that as a lyric?”
Kurt and Louder sat on a large boulder, looking down at the Imperial Valley below them. The lights of Mexicali glowed to the south and the much fainter El Centro straight ahead.
“Right now, L,” Kurt said. “You’re the only one I trust. Everyone’s telling me things, but none of the things sound remotely true. It’s all angles and cons and bull.”
“You can always trust me, K.” Louder punched his arm.
“I love you,” Kurt said. “You know that, right?”
Louder punched him harder. “You don’t have to say stuff like that. It ruins it. I know. I’ve known it always. You’re my best friend, stupid.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Right now, nothing. They’re all heading off to do the thing with the preacher. They ain’t asked you yet.”
“They will.”
“When they do, I’ll be there with you. So will Pepe. If he gets early release.”
“My family is going to steal from a televangelist, and an FBI agent knows we’re going to do it. It’s a recipe for trouble.”
“‘Recipe for Trouble’ sounds like a Skinripper tune,” Louder said, slapping a beat on her knees. “Get a bowl made out of rattlesnakes.”
“Add two cups of scorpion venom.”
“Stir in the blood of a barracuda.”
“And a pinch of Levi’s denim.”
Together they screamed “recipe for trouble” over and over again until they both started laughing.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 21
Axel focused on one of the offering bags. He needed to know the exact path the money took from a parishioner’s pocket to the bank for deposit. Like tilling a field, each velvet sack went up one row and down the next. When it finally made it to the end of the aisle, one of the 300 took it. Twelve sacks. Twelve of the 300. At the end of the song, when the men held what looked like cartoon sacks of cash, bulging and round, they joined each other in front of the stage. Standing in formation, they bowed their heads. A quick blessing and prayer. And then they exited backstage.
That was the part of the journey Axel already knew. The part everyone saw. He looked for a flaw he could exploit but found none. He’d have to look elsewhere.
Despite the changing geography of each venue on the tour, the 300 didn’t deviate from their protocol. Whether in a fairgrounds in Georgia or a church in Louisiana, the men found the shortest path from the church exit to the Money Bus. (Just like in the movie Money Train, but a bus instead of a train.) None of the 300 appeared to be armed, but they didn’t look like men who would be threatened easily either. They had the hard glares of war veterans who had stared down the barrel of a gun before.
Axel had tracked all aspects of their protocol and routine but still hadn’t found his way in. The biggest blind spot was what happened to the money once it was in the Money Bus. He hadn’t seen anything come out of the bus, only go into it. Axel couldn’t watch it all the time, so he couldn’t get an accurate read on how long the money remained in the bus, when it was picked up to be deposited, and what methods were used to move the cash.
He needed more time to focus on the bus, but his cover job was getting in the way of his real job.
By the second week of Brother Tobin Floom’s “God’s Country: The Real America” tour, Axel had settled into his new role as “Volunteer Liaison and Coordinator.” The problem was that if he wanted to maintain the position, he couldn’t half-ass it. He needed to actually do the job.
Brother Floom’s tour was similar to a touring rock show. It involved the same personnel from road crew to security to talent. The fleet of buses and trucks seemed constantly in motion. Once one show was over, the next step was all about breaking down and getting to the next town and doing it all over again. There were a few scattered off days, but those were devoted to travel, not R and R.
His big fear was that he would run out of time before he could form a good-enough plan. There had to be a way to steal the cash. He just had to figure out a few small things. Like how to get to the money, how to remove it without being detected, and how to get away without getting caught. Minor details.
The problem was that it was difficult to be creative after a fourteen-hour workday. The four hours of sleep he got every night felt excessive. He would cut it to three. Maybe then he wouldn’t spend half the time staring at the ceiling of his bus bunk, listening to the coughing, snoring, and masturbating of the other male staff.
Thrace McCormick made no secret of not liking him. Convinced Axel was there because he had sucked up to Virginia, McCormick looked for any reason to fire him, demote him, or get him to quit. Luckily, it took a lot to get fired from an unpaid position.
What McCormick couldn’t have known was that Axel lived for hard work. He hated shortcuts. He threw his whole self at tasks. Which meant that no matter his failures, he could leave knowing there wasn’t more he could have done. One hundred and ten percent wasn’t a thing, because math, but Axel came as close as any person could.
McCormick could try to wear him down, but he would lose that battle.
The day before, Axel had spent three hours trying to find pink Post-it Notes. McCormick had asked him to do it personally because of the claimed importance of the task. Axel had survived enough bullshit middle management power plays to know the ins and outs of surviving mediocre pettiness.
Pink Post-it Notes should have been a simple task. Not in the rural South. It turned into an epic journey through the maze of backwater Mississippi. Odysseus’s journey home by way of James Dickey.
He drove toward Tupelo, but a guy in Nettleton said there was an office supply store in Eggville. There was, but it had closed in 1986. The gas station attendant in Mantachie gave him directions to Guntown, which was a wash. They only had the traditional yellow ones. Axel got the hairy eyeball from the cashier when he specifically asked for pink, but it eventually led him to Amory, where there was a Staples outside town that carried them. It would have been considerably less frustrating if he hadn’t started in Amory. He made a mental note to send a scathing letter to Staples regarding their need to update their website.
Working with the volunteers meant he could go virtually anywhere, as volunteers were a part of every level of the operation, from the front of house to backstage to the buses and road crew. Only one area was off-limits. The area he needed to gain access to.
Everyone called it the Pearly Gates. It was the parking lot or hangar or open field where specific buses were parked. Brother Floom’s private travel coach, the bus for his personal staff, the band’s touring bus, and the Money Bus were separated and cordoned off from the rest of the traveling road show. The buses could only be approached by select personnel. The 300 kept guard, walking the perimeter day and night.
Brother Floom only left his coach to
preach. In transit from the bus to the stage, he was unapproachable. The 300 formed a large outer ring to keep everyone at a distance. Only his entourage was within the literal inner circle. All staff and volunteers were specifically instructed not to interact with Brother Floom. Eye contact was discouraged.
When Brother Floom was on stage, Axel found himself staring at his face and trying to see a family resemblance. There might have been a similarity in their eyebrow region, but to Axel they didn’t look related. The Floom character was so fully realized that Axel needed to constantly remind himself that this man was his grandfather.
On one of Axel’s luxurious ten-minute lunch breaks, he walked through the parking lot of the fairgrounds, eating a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich and hoping to bump into Virginia. He knew they were related, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends. That he couldn’t get to know his aunt. Half aunt, to be technical.
Who was he kidding? He still had a crush on her. He knew that was messed up, but he wasn’t going to do anything. Talking was not a crime. He liked spending time with her. Wasn’t that the way it always was? You found the one, but she ended up being the daughter of your current heist victim and related by blood.
As Axel walked the Pearly Gates’ perimeter, one of the 300 walked toward him and silently stood in his path.
“How you doing?” Axel said, flashing his lanyard. The 300 didn’t appear impressed by his title. “You got everything you need? I coordinate the volunteers and can shoot some your way if you need more personnel. There’s juice boxes in the canteen if you’re thirsty.”
“Mr. McCormick takes care of everything for us,” the 300 said.
“Cool, cool, cool,” Axel said. “You ever been to Mississippi before? It’s beautiful here.”
“I spent most of my twenties here. In the Flatlands.”
“That sounds nice. Are the Flatlands worth seeing?”
“The Flatlands is what they call the penitentiary in Parchman.”
“I did not know that,” Axel said, looking for life behind the man’s dead eyes.
“Seven years was a long time. Considering the guy lived.”
“It does seem excessive,” Axel said. “You know, Proverbs says, ‘For a just man falleth seven times and riseth up again.’ Seven years, seven times. You’ve obviously riseth.”
“If not for Jesus, I’d be dead or other people would be dead.”
“Were you saved in prison? Is that where you found the Lord?”
“I found a lot of things. You like questions.”
“Sorry. I’m a chatty guy. Interested in the complexity of human existence. I’ll leave you alone. Have a blessed day.”
“Yeah. God bless you.”
Never had “God bless you” sounded more like a threat.
That had been the fourth one of the 300 he had talked to. He had been wrong about ex-military. It seemed that Thrace McCormick—whom they all identified as their boss—preferred ex-cons for his muscle. Loyalty and faith were strongest with those who needed redemption the most. Men who had time to contemplate their fates. Men capable of darkness but willing to use it for light.
Walking back to the volunteer-corral area—little more than a roped-off spot under a big portable canopy—Axel tried to find an angle to get inside the Pearly Gates. In the tent a floor fan moved around the humidity to create a convection-oven environment. He could bake bread in his pants.
He spotted Virginia. She didn’t look like she was having a good day. The telltale sign was when she threw her cell phone onto the ground and then kicked it. Axel read the subtlety of her body language. He was perceptive like that.
“Is everything okay?” Axel asked perhaps the stupidest question that had ever been asked.
“I’m fine,” Virginia snapped. “I threw my phone on the ground out of happiness.”
Axel picked up her phone, which was miraculously in one piece, although with a cracked screen.
“Sorry,” Virginia said, taking a breath. “Didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Actually, yeah,” Virginia said. “I could use a sympathetic ear. I don’t have my—uh—chrysanthemums on me, but I have a stash of chrysanthemums in the bus. We can—” Her expression changed for the tenth time in ten seconds.
Axel turned. Thrace McCormick approached with two of the members of the Young Lions, the Christian bubblegum pop band on the tour.
“Later,” Virginia said.
“Chrysanthemums,” Axel said.
Virginia winked. “The best time is during Dad’s sermon. Meet me at T-shirts.”
Thrace and the young men reached them. Virginia gave Thrace a bored stare and walked past him, bumping his shoulder.
“Hello, Mr. McCormick,” Axel said.
One of the Young Lions stepped forward. “I’m Robby and this is Todd, but you know that.”
Axel reached out to shake. Robby put a signed photo of the band in his hand.
“God bless,” Robby said, walking past him into the volunteer tent to hand out more photos.
“You busy right now, Fletcher?” McCormick asked. “I don’t care. Drop what you’re doing. Brother Floom needs five dozen highlighters.”
“Right. Let me guess. Pink ones?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They wouldn’t show up on the pink Post-its. Green ones. I’ve already called, and they’re all out of them at the Staples here in town.”
“Of course they are.”
“You might have better luck in Sulligent or Splunge.”
“Now you’re just making up town names,” Axel said as he walked away. Looking back over his shoulder, he watched Robby and Todd standing a little too close to the young female staffers. The Young Lions looked like they were stalking prey. He caught Todd brushing a woman’s breast with his elbow and trying to make it look like an accident.
The band had access to the Pearly Gates. They were in the inner circle.
That’s when Axel saw the plan in wide-screen and Technicolor. He would have to do some calculations, get some outside information, but in theory he knew how to get to the money. Hallelujah!
CHAPTER 22
The farthest east Gretchen had been was the Grand Canyon and the only foreign country she had set foot inside was Mexico. She had always felt worldly, but sitting in the hotel room outside Durham, she realized how sheltered her life had been. Desert rats never made it far from the desert. She needed to change that.
When this job was done, she would see the world. London, Paris, Barcelona, Cleveland, anywhere new. She could picture her and Stephanie drinking wine under the Eiffel Tower while they watched a mime in a beret eat a baguette. Or maybe Spain. She would have to find out when the running of the bulls happened or that festival where everyone throws tomatoes at each other. Spain seemed like a wacky place.
Gretchen and Stephanie had seen each other almost every day for the last couple of months. The fact that Stephanie could put aside someone’s attempt to steal a hundred grand from her definitely suggested a real connection. It would make a better story to tell their grandkids than “I swiped right.”
They hadn’t reached that stage in their relationship where they brought each other in on their criminal schemes. That was more of a six-month-anniversary kind of deal. Fifth base.
Respect of privacy was an essential component of trust. As much as Gretchen wanted to tell Stephanie everything, she wasn’t ready for the awkward moment when she told Stephanie that the guy she had bilked a while back was her brother. Or ready for when Axel found out she was dating the ex-girlfriend who broke his heart and conned him. It would have to happen eventually, but not at that moment. Procrastination solved everything.
With Axel undercover, Gretchen was doing all the advance work. She wished traveling to each of the upcoming tour sites to take pictures and draw up aerial sketches of the area were more exciting. She was a thief, not a location scout. She wanted in on the action. Boredom made her antsy. If things didn’t
get dangerous soon, she would end up doing something stupid.
She stared at the painting of koi on the motel room wall across from the bed. There was something off about it. The fish had three eyes. Why would the artist do that? Was it an act of subversion? Did the actual fish have three eyes? Did it come from waters near a nuclear power plant? A Simpsons reference?
“Losing it,” she said as she popped out of bed. She didn’t know where she was going to go, but she was going to get out of that room. Maybe go for a run, followed by a drink. She had clearly become a city girl in the last decade, not as secure with the nothingness of nothing to do.
When her phone rang, she dove for it. “Oh, it’s you. Hey, Ax. What’s up? Don’t tell me you need more pictures of the fairgrounds in Hickory, because I ain’t driving all the way back out there.”
“The pictures were great. I don’t need them, but they were great.”
“Awesome. It was only a billion degrees with three hundred percent humidity. My clothes felt like they were made of warm slugs. No big deal. Anything else you don’t need that you want me to do?”
“I got a plan. It’s written and done, and it’s awesome. All the pieces.”
“Never doubted you, big brother.” She had definitely doubted him.
“Stop what you’re doing, and head down here to Mississippi.”
“I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “I’m pretty busy.”
“Part one, we get the Young Lions, the church band, fired. Part two, we put Kurt and his band in their place.”
Gretchen closed her eyes.
“Gretch, you still there?”
“Do all your plans involve costumes and disguises and everyone playing a character? This isn’t Halloween.”
“The band has access to the restricted area where the money is kept. A key component of my plan.”
“Kurt has no experience as a thief.”
“Can you sing or play an instrument?”
“I play a wicked tambourine,” Gretchen said. “Maracas in a pinch. I shouldn’t have to remind you: Kurt and his band play Viking doom metal. Not exactly their demographic.”
