The Knights of the Cornerstone (21 page)

“Either he’s upping the ante or he doesn’t trust you to make that deal happen out at the Gas’n’Go, so he’s giving you more incentive. I’d have thought Lamar Morris would be enough to throw at you, but apparently he wants to push it a little further. He figures you’ll run, otherwise. They’re in an all-fire hurry to get this thing done.”

“How about George Fowler? Maybe he can do something.”

“George is just one man out there in a little bitty substation. If he needs a deputy he calls down to Ludlow. We don’t want to put in any calls down to Ludlow or anyplace else. And besides, this is bigger than that. We want to keep it in-house.” He fell silent for a moment and then said, “How are you getting along, Nettie?”

“I’m doing well, Miles. Awfully well. Today was my first trip into town in I don’t know how long. It’s like a miracle. Prayer is what did it. That’s what Al says.”

Calvin glanced at Taber, who nodded heavily. “I’ve got to ask,” Taber said to her. “Did Al tell you much about the veil?”

“Which veil would that be?” she asked.

“The one that Calvin brought out”

“Not a thing, although when I was under the weather my mind wasn’t worth a nickel. Today’s different, but like I said, I haven’t felt like this in a couple of years. It’s like a weight’s been rolled away, and I’ve come out into the light.”

“Good,” Taber said. “That’s good, Nettie.”

“I praise God for it. What’s this veil, though? Is that what they’re after? That’s why they took Al?” Her eyes narrowed, and it was clear to Calvin that she wanted an answer, and he decided to let Taber give it to her.

“Yes, it is. What Cal brought out here was the Veil of Veronica, which I believe you’ve heard of.”

“I remember it, yes. I know the story well. They say it has healing powers. Al and I saw a carving in stone in Rosslyn Chapel, in Scotland, when we were out there in the nineteen sixties. We were traveling with Warren Hosmer and his wife, and I remember that he and Al made a connection concerning the veil with a man named MacLaine, but nothing came of it, as I recall. Al and Hosmer were always on the trail of something.”

“Well, Hosmer got hold of the veil some time back. He’s had it out in Orange City, and he sent it on to us when things started to heat up out there. Our old friend de Charney and his crowd want it, and they know we have it. I expect we’ll hear a ransom demand, so we’ve got to figure out where it is.”

“You just said you had it,” she said. “Didn’t you say that Calvin brought it out here?”

“Yes, I did,” Taber said. “It was here in the Temple on that first night Cal arrived—Al brought it over with him—but now it’s not here. At least it’s not in the antechamber, where we put it.”

She nodded slowly. “And you think Lymon took it over to the house? You think that’s why I’m here right now. Why I’m better? He made use of the veil?”

“That’s what I believe, Nettie. I think he wanted to use it to take up some of your burden. To take it on himself.”

She sat for a moment thinking, staring straight out in front of her, as if putting two and two together. “Yes,” she said finally. “He must have had it over to the house. I’m sure he did. Of course he did. That explains the change.” She began to cry silently, and Calvin looked away. “Did he take on the
cancer
?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Nettie. We can’t …”

“Yes, that’s it. I don’t even have to ask. He took on the cancer. I can feel it’s gone. He used it to heal me. He was laid up pretty bad this morning. I shouldn’t have left him alone. I should have known.”

“You
couldn’t
have known, Nettie. You didn’t even know about the veil. You said so yourself. And what’s done is done. The faster we sort this out, the more chance we’ve got to put things right. If they got hold of the veil when they kidnapped Al, we have to know.”

She nodded. “Then let’s take a look.” She wearily got up out of the chair. Calvin wondered suddenly if she still wanted to thank God for the way she was feeling, but the question was unworthy, and he pushed it out of his mind.

“Cal,” Taber said, “why don’t you go on up to the house with Nettie and see if the veil’s there. Bring it back down if it is. I’m going to do some telephoning. We’ve got to be ready before that ransom call comes in.”

Calvin and Nettie went out into the sunlight and crossed the footbridge. The afternoon had somehow turned into evening. His aunt stopped and looked out over the river, down toward Needles, as if she could see something on the
water—the ghost of hope, perhaps. “He’s a good man,” she said, “but he’s a God-blessed fool sometimes.”

Calvin’s cell phone rang again, and he flipped it open, ready to make his report to Hosmer. But it wasn’t Hosmer. It was Bob Postum.

“Cal,” he said heartily. “I just wondered whether we were still on for that little meeting tomorrow out on the highway. From where I stand, it looks like a better idea now than it did yesterday, and yesterday it looked pretty good. Pot’s bigger now, too. Too high for a player like you to try to bluff. Like the man used to say on the news, Cal, ‘See you at ten, see you then.’”

Calvin listened to nothing for a moment before flipping the phone shut.

T
hey won’t buy it,” Whitey Sternbottom said. “A fake? Not a chance. They’d grab you, too, and then we’d have another person to spring. Except they’d probably just shoot you and dump your body in the lake out behind the Gas’n’Go. Lymon’s got too much stature for them to kill him without any gain, but you don’t, Cal—no insult intended.”

“None taken,” Calvin said. “But if it
really
looked like the original, how would they know for sure? They’ve never seen it. I’d deliver the box, wait till they opened it, walk out, and drive back toward Needles with the money in the trunk and Al in the front seat and give you a call on the cell phone. You could be waiting up the way to run interference if you had to.”

“You’d never leave the parking lot,” Taber said. “Forget about any money. And what
about
Lymon? What if Lymon isn’t there? What the hell did Postum say, that the
stakes
were higher? That doesn’t mean they’ll have Al along with them. That means they can do what they please.”

“Okay,” Calvin said, “then what if I took along a jar of kerosene and a lighter. If they don’t have Uncle Lymon, or won’t agree to let him go as a condition, then I threaten to dump kerosene over the box and burn the veil right there in the parking lot.”

“Then they’ll know for damn sure it’s not the genuine article,” Taber said. “We’d never do a thing like that.”

“You wouldn’t, but I would,” Calvin said. “Why not? It’s like burning an old flag or a bale of old money. It seems like a big deal, but once it’s gone, it’s gone—it’s just ashes. And right now it’s just a legend anyway, as far as anyone knows for sure, except us.”

“Dust to dust,” his aunt said.

“Exactly.”

“Betty, what do you think?” Taber asked.

“Whitey’s right,” Betty Jessup said. “It’s a fool’s errand. Even if they thought they had the veil, they wouldn’t let that money go. At best that pillowcase in the trunk will be stuffed with bundles of cut-up newspaper. Even if you asked to see the money before you handed the veil over—which anybody would—it wouldn’t make any difference. You’ve got no leverage.”

“So what? I won’t ask to see it. I’d take the cut-up newspaper and drive away.”

“You’d be lucky if you went anywhere,” Whitey said. “Even if you were good enough to convince them it was the veil, they wouldn’t tell you where they were holding Lymon. And your fancy analogy won’t work. This isn’t old money and it isn’t a worn-out flag. It isn’t any kind of symbol. It’s the Veil of Veronica. And just to put it in
perspective, this transaction is the
start
of things, not the end. You’re thinking short term, but they won’t be.”

“Then if it goes bad, I’ll make them take me along. Do they know Donna’s a Knight?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Taber said. “Donna’s not part of this equation.”

“Of course not,” Calvin said. “I wouldn’t ask her to be part of it, although maybe someone
should
ask her. Someone asked me, and she’s more competent than I am.”

“I’m
not going to ask her,” Taber said. “I won’t stop her if she’s willing, but I won’t ask her. And nobody asked you in so many words. Sounded to me like you made up your own mind. ‘I think I’ll stay,’ is what you said.”

“That’s right, I did, and I thank you for the opportunity to say it.” Calvin listened to the wind, rustling through the willows. Two nights ago he had been outside looking in.

“But it
was
a choice,” Taber said. “You could have gone right on being uncommitted, with no skin off your nose, except maybe a little pride. Donna was committed from the get-go. She’s already a Knight. And besides, I like that girl. I just don’t want her in the vicinity.”

“We’re all put to the test, Miles,” Nettie said. “If we never take the test, we don’t know how we’ll fare. It’s like how we stand up to temptation. It’s the only thing that shows what kind of mettle we’ve got. You know that. You preached that little sermon yourself more than once.”

“Nettie’s right,” Betty Jessup said. “You and Lymon gave Calvin the opportunity to make his own mind up. We all did. We’ve been waiting for him to sign on ever since he rolled into town. Cal had the choice, and he up and did the right thing. So to answer your question, Cal, Bob Postum’s crowd doesn’t know Donna from Adam. There’s no reason they
should. She just recently moved back out to New Cyprus, and she’s been a Knight for about a month.”

“They shouldn’t have known that Hosmer had the veil, either,” Whitey said, “but they did.”

Betty shrugged. “I think we ought to let Calvin say what’s on his mind, and then if it sounds like anything at all, we’ll call in Donna and ask her. Let the girl speak for herself.”

“And remember one thing,” Taber said. “They don’t know Donna from Adam
unless
they saw her rescue Cal out there in the quarry. We
know
they saw her car.”

“I don’t think they saw
her
,” Calvin told him. “They were behind us the whole time.”

“What about today, out on the river, when you were coming back up on the Whaler?”

“We were pretty far upriver, and they headed the other way.”

Taber remained silent now.

“She can drive
any
car,” Whitey said to Taber. “She doesn’t have to drive her own. We’ll put her into that new Mustang Doc Hoyle bought. He won’t argue about it.”

“All right, Cal,” Taber said finally, “what’s the plan? And whatever it is, we’ve got to have an alternate take on the whole thing. We’re going to give Donna a comfortable way out, and I’m going to encourage her to take it.”

C
alvin passed the stone marker, heading out toward the highway in his pockmarked Dodge, the heat through the broken-out windows mixing with the cold air from the air conditioner. The wind was still blowing, now and then peppering the side of the car with sand, and the desert shrubs shuddered in the gusts. In the light of day, his Gas’n’Go plan seemed pitifully naive for about a half dozen reasons, not the least of which was that it depended on Postum’s wanting the veil so badly that he would play by some variety of rules—that he would be willing to barter Uncle Lymon for it. But why would he start that now? “Everything he says is a lie,” Hosmer had told him, and so far everything Hosmer said was the truth.

By now Donna was somewhere down 1-40 just west of Needles in Doc Hoyle’s white Mustang. She had called Calvin a couple of minutes ago, and was twenty minutes behind him if he held it to sixty miles per hour. That
would give him time to negotiate. She was his first line of defense—or rather retreat. A car full of Knights—further backup—was waiting beneath the bridge over the river right outside Needles. He only had to hold down the number two on his cell phone to send out the distress signal, and then they would move into action, whatever that meant. The whole thing looked likely to be a fine kettle of fish. He clanked down over the wash and up onto the empty highway, heading west.

The last few miles to the Gas’n’Go seemed to take no time at all, and he set the turn signal and slowed down, spotting the Postum-mobile in the parking lot as well as an old-model Chevy van, painted white and primer gray and with a two-by-four front bumper and no front plate. As far as he could see, no one sat in either one of the vehicles. He and Donna could outrun both of them easily in the Mustang if it came down to it, which he hoped to God it wouldn’t.

He wondered suddenly if his uncle was being held in the back of the van, and he angled across the lot and pulled alongside it, then got out slowly, glancing in through the rear window. But there was a plywood partition like a bulkhead just inside the double doors, marked with a glued-on explosives warning—another Beamon truck, probably, and perfect for hiding a prisoner. He rapped against the side panel—the first notes of “Shave and a Haircut”—as he walked by, listening for an answering “two bits,” but there was nothing. Could be Uncle Lymon was tied up. …

He glanced in through the driver’s side and noticed that the keys were in the ignition, and for one wild moment he considered climbing in, starting it up, and driving the hell out of there like Mr. Toad, leaving his beaten-up Dodge
behind. It would be heroic if Uncle Lymon was in fact tied up back there, and sheer idiocy if he wasn’t. …

“Don’t even think about it,” a voice said, and he looked up to see his old friend the Bullhead City smoker regarding him from a few feet away.

“Think about what?” Calvin asked. The man had his hand in the pocket of a pair of khaki cargo pants. Plenty of room for a weapon.

“Whatever you were thinking about.”

“I was thinking about getting some chili cheese fries and a soda,” Calvin told him.

“Then you came to the right place. Bob says to go ahead and bring the box, if you’ve got it. And you better hope you’ve got it.” Calvin returned to the car, got the box out of the trunk, and followed the man toward the door, studying his back. He was short and wiry, and Calvin was fifteen years younger, although the last time Calvin had been in a fight was in the third grade when a girl named Yolanda Kleemer had given him a bloody nose and ruined his life in elementary school. He wondered if Donna could fight like Yolanda Kleemer. He nearly laughed.