“Okay, I exaggerate,” Lucas said. “But you’ll be very, very good.”
“But . . .”
Lucas turned and gazed out the living room window, over the November fields at the back of the house. They showed a bit of snow from an early storm, a hint of the coming Minnesota winter. He turned back to Virgil and said, “I talked to the people at the Marshals Service and they understand that you’ve got a family and kids. You could take Frankie and the kids with you. You’ll get an Airbnb house, I don’t know about the view. You’d leave here around the first of December . . .”
“But . . .”
“. . . and fly to the Big Island. Of Hawaii.”
Frankie said, “Wait! The Big Island? With the kids? Instead of December and January in Minnesota? Can Virgil’s mom come to help with the babies and Sam?”
Sam was her youngest child by another father. He hopped in front of Lucas with wide eyes. “I wanna surf!”
Lucas smiled. “We’re talking about a four-bedroom house. Should be room for everybody.”
* * *
It hadn’t all gone as smoothly as Lucas had suggested it might, but Virgil had never believed that it would. He spent parts of thirty-five days and twenty-four nights in the water, trained by two ex-SEALs who did contract work for the Marshals Service. When Virgil asked why they didn’t send the SEALs on the Florida deal, Lucas said, “Look at them.”
They looked more like cops than cops: they looked like cops in movies. Virgil said, “Okay.”
When he was finished with the dive training, Virgil flew back to Minnesota, and a day later, made a trip to the Iowa State Prison at Fort Dodge for a late-night visit. He wore a ski mask as he toured the cells, the cafeteria, the workshops, making photos and movies with his cell phone. The Hawaii house had been rented for two months, and Frankie, Virgil’s mother, and the kids would stay on until the rent ran out at the end of January.
* * *
The South Florida task force under Weaver had spotted Michael Behan and Jack Cattaneo as the key members of Sansone’s South Florida organization and began tracking them, identifying two other men, named Regio and Lange, as other major members of the group. Jimmy Parisi, the killer, spent most of his days sleeping, and most of his nights with hookers, putting cocaine up his nose and running over curbs with his tricked-out Jeep. He didn’t seem to supervise anything, but was available for any needed murders.
The feds decided that Virgil should approach Cattaneo, since he reliably ate at the same deli three or four times a week.
* * *
On January 20, a Monday, Virgil and Rae moved into a shitty apartment in a shitty pink building on Hollywood Boulevard in the city of Hollywood. On their first night there, they’d no more than closed the door when a high-polished brown cockroach the size of a baby’s shoe scuttled out from under a bed and disappeared into a closet.
“I’ll take the other bedroom,” Rae said.
She was back in ten seconds: “Nope. I’m taking the cockroach room.”
Virgil looked in the bedroom she’d just left: “That one’s worse?”
“That one smells like a man’s been sleeping in there. If you know what I mean,” Rae said.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Virgil said.
Rae made the universal jerking-off motion, pumping with her right fist, and Virgil said, “Aw, Jesus. You know what? Let’s go get some plastic bedcovers and wrap the beds. And some bug spray. And a gallon of air freshener.”
“Good. And new sheets and pillows and pillowcases. We’ll just sleep on top of everything. It’ll still look shitty.”
“Deal.”
“The guy who rented this for us—I wonder what he was thinking?”
“He was going for authenticity, I guess.” Authenticity. Virgil scanned the fully furnished living room, with the nicotine-colored walls and overhead lights with 40-watt bulbs and a seasoning of dead moths, and asked, “What do you think? Should we wrap the sofa?”
Rae looked at the seven-foot green sofa, crouched against the wall like an overgrown fungus. “I don’t think that color is the natural one. I mean, how could it be? And those brown spots . . .”
“I’ll wrap it. We’ll throw a blanket over the plastic. That’ll still look authentic.”
“You think the Marshals Service would buy us a new TV?”
They both looked at the eighteen-inch TV sitting on a window ledge. Virgil scratched his chin and said, “Lucas told me that they were picking up a bunch of electronics that we supposedly stole from some guy. I’ll tell them to make sure there’s a better TV in it. We’ll leave this on the floor.”
“More authenticity. I’ve never seen an eighteen-inch flat panel before. Must have been a special order.”
* * *
They went out to a Home Depot and a Bed Bath & Beyond, wrapped the beds and then covered them with sheets and new pillows, threw all the old bed stuff in the cockroach closet. They covered the couch with a fuzzy blue blanket that began to pill as soon as they sat on it. They hosed the closet down with the bug spray and the rest of the place with lilac-scented air freshener.
A plastic tablecloth covered the square kitchen table, a dozen plastic glasses, four cups and plates in a package, along with a box of stainless-steel flatware, completed the move.
“Just like home,” Rae said, pleased, looking at the line of red plastic tumblers next to the rust-stained sink. “All we need now is to throw a rubber on the bedroom floor.”
That night, Lucas showed up with an FBI agent and a van.
“Place stinks,” Lucas said. “Smells like a funeral home.”
“The floral spray,” Rae said. “It’s the Fred’s Mortuary scent.”
* * *
They moved in a bigger TV along with two used laptops and a printer, stereo speakers and a turntable, two pawn-quality electric guitars, a Korg electric piano with three inoperable keys, a bronze statue of a little boy peeing with a small gauge brass pipe bent and dangling from the bottom of the statue—“The kid’s supposed to pee vodka,” Lucas said. There was a lot of other crap, including a tool chest, bottles of high-end liquor, a load of men’s size 46-short suits with a bunch of Hermès neckties, and four Porsche wheels, all with a newly stolen vibe.
Rae picked up an unopened bottle of Don Julio Real tequila and said, “Oooh. Somebody’s got good taste.”