Escape Clause

  —

  The scuffling continued for a few more seconds, then a tall, slender, wide-shouldered blonde emerged on the path and chirped, “Hi, Frank.”

  Frankie said, “Sparkle! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m about to go swimming,” she said. There was more scuffling behind her, and a heavyset man who probably thought he looked like Ernest Hemingway, with a Hemingway beard and Hemingway gold-rimmed glasses, stepped out of the woods. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a schematic drawing of a host and chalice, and beneath that, the words “Get Real. Be Catholic,” plus cargo shorts and plastic flip-flops.

  He looked down at them and said, “Hello, there.”

  Sparkle pulled her top off—she was small-breasted and didn’t wear a brassiere—then her shorts and underpants and jumped into the swimming hole. When she surfaced, Frankie snarled, “You really, really aren’t invited.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Sparkle said. She looked at Virgil. “You must be the famous Virgil fuckin’ Flowers.”

  Virgil said, “Yeah. Who are you?”

  Sparkle frowned at Frankie and said, “You’ve never told him?”

  Frankie looked like she was working up a full-blown snit. “No. Why should I?”

  Sparkle turned back to Virgil and said, “I’m Frankie’s baby sister.”

  Virgil said to Frankie, “You have a baby sister?”

  “Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” Frankie said.

  “Careful,” Sparkle said. “You don’t want to piss off Father Bill.”

  They all looked at the heavyset man, who had removed his T-shirt, glasses, and watch and was now stepping out of his shorts to reveal a dark brown pelt, speckled with gray, which would have done credit to a cinnamon bear. “That’s me,” he said. He flopped into the swimming hole, came up sputtering, and said, “Gosh. Nobody told me it’d be this cold.”

  “What’s the Father Bill stuff?” Frankie asked.

  “I’m a priest,” Bill said, shaking his head like a wet dog. “Part-time, anyway.”

  “He’s a priest nine months of the year, and a bartender and libertine the other three,” Sparkle said.

  “I work over at the Hanrattys’ Resort during the summer, tending bar,” Bill said. “I’m a fill-in priest for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis the other nine.”

  “Must be nice for you,” Frankie said.

  “It’s convenient all the way around,” Bill said. He had a mild, low-pitched voice that came out as a growl. “The Hanrattys are always hard up for seasonal help, and the bishop gets a fill-in guy and only has to pay him for nine months.”

  “And you get laid,” Frankie said.

  “A fringe benefit,” Bill said.

  “Hey! I’m a fringe benefit?” Now Sparkle was clouding up, or faking it, pushing out her lower lip. Virgil hadn’t seen the family resemblance before: Sparkle was tall and slender, Frankie was short and busty. They clouded up exactly the same way.

  “Okay, a major fringe benefit,” Bill said.

  “That’s better.”

  “Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” Frankie said again. To Sparkle: “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I thought I’d stop by and see my beloved sister—and I’m also doing the last bit of research for my dissertation.” She rolled over on her back and paddled past Virgil, a not uninteresting sight. “I’m interviewing migrants at the Castro canning factory. I thought Bill and I could share your spare bedroom.”

  Frankie scrutinized her for a couple of heartbeats, then asked, “Does old man Castro know about this?”

  “I haven’t made what you’d call appointments, no,” Sparkle said.

  “You’re going to get your ass kicked,” Frankie said. “He’s a mean old sonofabitch. When it’s about to happen, give me a call. I want to come and watch.”

  “I was hoping Virgil could have a chat with the line manager over there . . . you know, about prisons and stuff.”

  “You don’t be dragging Virgil into this,” Frankie said.

  “What’s your problem, Frankie? Virgil’s a cop, it’s a part of his job,” Sparkle said.

  “He investigates after the ass-kicking, not before,” Frankie said.

  “What’s this all about?” Virgil asked. “Why is . . . Sparkle? . . . going to get her ass kicked?”

  —

  Sparkle, back-floating between the cop and the priest, explained: she was working on her PhD dissertation about seasonal migrant labor, both the social and economic aspects, at the University of Minnesota. She’d spent two years among the vegetable-growing fields of southern Minnesota and was now moving upstream to the factories. When she had incorporated the factory material, she’d have her doctorate.

  “Why would that get your ass kicked?” Virgil asked.

  “Because old man Castro has a deal with this village down in Mexico,” Sparkle said. She dropped her feet to the bottom of the pool. “They provide him couples to pick the cucumbers and work in his pickle factory. He pays the man a buck or two above the minimum wage, which makes him look like a hero, but the wife also works and doesn’t get anything—so his pickers and factory workers are making a little more than half the minimum wage, when it’s all said and done. He would rather not have this documented.”

  “And you’re going to write that in your dissertation?” Virgil asked.

  “I am.”

  “Okay. I can see why you might be headed for an ass-kicking,” Virgil said.

  “See? Crazy shit,” Frankie said to Virgil. “You should introduce her to Lucas, since Lucas likes crazy shit so much.”

  “Who’s Lucas?” Sparkle asked. She’d turned to her sister and stood up in waist-deep water, her back to Virgil. He noticed that she had an extremely attractive back, tapering down to a narrow waist. Backs were largely unappreciated in women, Virgil thought, but not by him.

  “Another cop,” Frankie said. “Actually, ex-cop. He’s the one who saved Michaela Bowden’s life down at the Iowa State Fair last week.”

  “Really!” Sparkle said. “I would like to meet him.”

  “Ah, for Christ’s sakes,” Frankie said a third time.

  Father Bill had ducked his head under water and had come up sputtering. “I don’t mean to be critical on such short acquaintance, but do you think you might find some way to employ vulgarity or obscenity, rather than profanity, at least when I’m around?” Father Bill asked Frankie. “A nice round ‘Oh, shit’ or ‘Fuck you’ is much easier to accept than your taking of the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Ah, Jesus,” Frankie said.

  Virgil said quickly, “She means the Puerto Rican, not the Lord.”

  —

  The two women paddled up the swimming hole, where the creek came in, nagging at each other. Virgil stayed at the bottom end of the pool with Bill, and Bill apologized for their abrupt entrance, saying, “Once Sparkle starts to roll, there’s not much you can do about it.”

  “Is her name really Sparkle?”

  “No, but it’s what everybody calls her,” Bill said. “Somebody at Hanrattys’ told me that her birth name was Wanda.”

  They looked after the women, who’d gotten to the top of the pool, where the water was shallow. They floated there, still arguing, then Frankie stood up and dove forward. Bill’s eyebrows went up as she did it, and he said, “Oh, my. When the Good Lord was passing out breasts, it looks like Frankie went through the line more than once.”

  Virgil said, “Yeah, well . . . I guess.”

  Bill: “You’re embarrassed because I’m a priest and I’m interested in women?”

  Virgil said, in his quotation voice, “‘Kiss and rekiss your wife. Let her love and be loved. You are fortunate in having overcome, by an honorable marriage, that celibacy in which one is a prey to devouring fires or unclean ideas. The unhappy state of a single person, male or
female, reveals to me each hour of the day so many horrors, that nothing sounds in my ear as bad as the name of monk or nun or priest. A married life is a paradise, even where all else is wanting.’”

  “Really,” said Bill, sounding pleased. “Who said that?”

  “Martin Luther. In a letter to a friend.”

  “Luther. I don’t know much of Luther, other than he had horns, a forked tale, and cloven hooves instead of feet. But he said that? You’re the religious sort?”

  “Not so much—at least, I’m not that big a believer in institutions,” Virgil said. “My old man is a Lutheran minister over in Marshall. He used to soak me in that stuff and some of it stuck.”

  “Good for him, good for him,” Bill said. “You’ll have to send me a citation for that letter, so I can read it all. Martin Luther, who would have thought?”

  “Is this relationship with Sparkle . . . a long-term thing?” Virgil asked.

  “No, no, it isn’t. I’ve spent time with her the last two summers, but of course, the other nine months I’m celibate and she doesn’t put up with that.”

  “That seems very strange to me,” Virgil said.

  “It seems fairly strange to me, too, but I find both sides of the equation to be rewarding,” Bill said. “Of course, I may go to hell.”

  “No offense, but I don’t think the Church gets to decide who goes to hell,” Virgil said.

  “I’m not offended,” Bill said cheerfully. “In fact, I agree. Don’t tell the Church I said that.”

  —

  The two women came paddling back and Frankie hooked an arm around Virgil’s sun-pinked neck and said, “Sparkle’s going to be here for a while. You keep telling me you’re going to get a queen-sized or a king-sized bed, and this would be a good time to do it, because I’m going to be sleeping over a couple times a week.”

  “I can do that,” Virgil said. “That old bed is shot anyway.”

  Frankie said to Bill, “You can go ahead and fuck Sparkle, but I don’t want her squealing and screaming and all that—keep it quiet. I got kids.”

  Bill said to Sparkle, “Maybe we ought to find another place.”

  “No, no, no . . . this is convenient and I like hanging out with my nephews,” Sparkle said. “Another thing is that Castro’s goons won’t find me out here. Besides, if you tie me up and gag me, nobody’ll hear a thing.”

  They all looked at Bill, who said, “Sometimes I have to struggle to keep my head from exploding.”

  “That’s called the Sparkle effect,” Frankie said.

  —

  The four of them paddled around for a while, until, from the bank of the swimming hole, a phone began playing the theme from Jaws. Honus stood up and woofed at it, then lay back down, and Frankie said, “Uh-oh.”

  Sparkle: “What’s that?”

  “The priority number from the BCA,” Virgil said. “It usually means the shit has hit the fan, somewhere. I gotta take it.”

  He’d hoped the other two would leave before he had to get out of the water, but all eyes were on him as he manfully waded out of the swimming hole, sat on the bank, and fumbled the phone out of his jeans.

  Jon Duncan calling. “Jon, what’s up?”

  “We need you up here,” Duncan said. “Right away, this afternoon.”

  “What happened?”

  “That whole thing down in Iowa, at the state fair last week, has upset the apple cart,” Duncan said. “You know our fair starts this week, there’re gonna be more politicians up here, campaigning. We’re worried about copycats.”

  Virgil groaned. “Man, don’t make me work the state fair.”

  “No, no, we got that covered,” Duncan said. “But everybody’s committed now at the fair, and we’ve got a new problem. A big one.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Somebody stole the Amur tigers from the zoo last night,” Duncan said. “Apparently shot them with a tranquilizer gun and hauled them out of there. Since it’s a state zoo, it’s our problem.”

  “What? Tigers?”

  “Yeah. Somebody stole the tigers . . . two Amur tigers. Pride of the zoo. Listen, man, you’ve got to get up here,” Duncan said. “There’s gonna be a media shitstorm starting tonight on the evening news. We gotta get the tigers back: and we gotta get them back right now. And alive.”

  3

  They caged the tigers separately in the bottom of the old barn, in what had once been cow stalls. Since a chain-link fence had been enough to keep the tigers separated from any number of chubby, delicious-looking Minnesota Zoo visitors, they’d wrapped the stalls with more chain link. The cage doors, made from chain-link fence gates, were locked with steel snap shackles.

  There’d been no electric power in the barn, the ancient wires gnawed through by rodents, so they’d bought two long orange cables, which they plugged in at the house and then laid across the barnyard into the lower level.

  Inside, the Simonian brothers had rigged up three work lights from Sears, hung from the rafters, and screwed in hundred-watt bulbs. The work lights were plugged into a power strip at the end of one of the orange cables. The light was bright, harsh, and threw knife-edged shadows over the interior of the barn.

  There were no windows.

  Against one wall, they’d installed a makeshift table made of a four-by-eight sheet of plywood, sitting on aluminum sawhorses and covered with plastic sheeting. Five waist-high meat dryers were plugged into the second orange cable. Four plastic tubs would hold discarded guts and unneeded tiger organs. A hose, also strung over from the house, would wash everything down.

  Though the barn had not housed cattle for decades, there was still an earthy odor about it, not entirely unpleasant, which took Hamlet Simonian back to happier days on his grandmother’s farm in Armenia. Happier at a safe distance, anyway.

  —

  They’d wheeled the inert tigers into the barn and into the two separate cages on the dollies, then rolled them off the dollies onto the floor. The male tiger was tough to move, even though they only had to move him a foot or so off the dolly. His formidable muscles were slack as bedsheets and simply hard to get hold of, and the cage was small enough that they couldn’t work standing up.

  When they finally got it done, they locked the cages, locked the outer door, and went and hid. Neither tiger was yet stirring. They’d give it until the next day before they returned to the farm, in case somebody had been watching and got curious about all the activity in the middle of the night.

  —

  They met again at the farm the next morning to start work.

  “Shoot the fuckin’ tiger, Ham,” said Winston Peck VI. Peck popped a Xanax. “Do it.”

  Peck was a tall, round-shouldered man, brown hair now touched with gray. He had a tight brown Teddy Roosevelt mustache and wore gold-rimmed glasses with round lenses. He looked like a college athlete going to seed in middle age: he was thirty pounds too heavy.

  “I dunno, man,” Hamlet Simonian said. He was bulb-nosed, with dark hair, what was left of it, and sweating hard. He had a Remington .308 in one hand. The night before, they’d used a tranquilizer gun, shooting darts, to take the cats out of the zoo. “Now it seems kinda . . . terrible. A terrible thing to do.”

  “You knew what was going to happen,” Peck said. “You knew the plan.”

  “I didn’t know I was going to be the shooter. I thought Hayk . . .”

  The two tigers looked through the bars of their separate cages with a kind of quiet rapaciousness. They were beautiful animals, gold and white with ripples of black, and orange eyes. They were hungry, since it hadn’t seemed to Peck that there was any point in feeding them.

  If the snap shackles on the doors were suddenly undone, Simonian had no doubt what would happen: they’d get eaten. Forget about the gun, forget about running, those tigers would eat his South Caucasian ass like a hung
ry trucker choking down a ham sandwich. A Ham Simonian sandwich.

  “Ham, shoot the fuckin’ tiger.”

  “Why don’t you do it, man? I don’t think I got the guts,” Simonian said. “Maybe we ought to wait for Hayk. He’d do it.” Hayk was Hamlet’s older brother by ten months, and he was much larger, stronger, and meaner than Hamlet.

  “Because I don’t know how to do it,” Peck said. He was getting seriously impatient. Killing the tiger wasn’t the only thing he had to do this day. He was a busy man. “I’ve never shot a gun in my life. And we need to get started. Now.”

  That wasn’t strictly true—he’d shot rifles on several occasions, and a shotgun, in the company of his father, but he wasn’t sure of his skills, and mostly didn’t want to be the one to shoot the tiger.

  “Ah, shit.” Simonian edged up to the male tiger’s cage. He was by far the larger of the two, though that wouldn’t matter much if either one of them got out. The smaller female, Katya, weighed nearly four hundred pounds and to the nervous Simonian, it seemed like twenty pounds of that was teeth and claws. Getting taken down by Katya would be like getting attacked by a four-hundred-pound chainsaw.

  And forget about it with Artur, the muscular male. He was six hundred and forty pounds of furry hunger. He could take your head off with one swipe of his well-armed paw, and then squish it like a grape between his three-inch canine teeth.

  “Shoot—the—fuckin’—tiger,” Peck said.

  Simonian lifted the gun and looked down the iron sights at Artur, who stared calmly back at him, unafraid, even though something about his eyes suggested that he knew what was coming. Drips of sweat rolled into Hamlet’s eyes and he took the gun down and wiped the sweat away with his shirtsleeve, then brought the gun back up and aimed right between the tiger’s eyes, five feet away, and yanked the trigger.

  The gun went off and to Simonian’s surprise, the tiger dropped to the floor, stone-cold dead. Katya, the female, screamed and launched herself at the cage’s chain-link fence, which ballooned out toward Simonian, who scrambled away from the maddened cat. The muzzle blast inside the barn basement had been ferocious, and Simonian could hear his ears ringing; it was a moment before he became aware that Peck was running around the barn shouting, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”