The Invisible Hand - A crime novel

Chapter 47

                 

With Gus gone, Red retreats to his basement. He's heard from the feds. Time to wait for the other call. Jane's call.

He plops down at the desk. Figures the phone should be ringing soon. Glances at the two books on the desk. Steps Forward: Finding Courage and Confidence to Make Big Changes. And the Gideon Bible.

Joe is a Gideon. Or was until Wil killed him. That Bible used to bring Joe and Red together. Gideons are a big thing here on the prairie. That and Islam.

Yeah, surprised, right?

Islam's a thorn in Red's side. Nothing to do with the religion on a personal level. A hunting lodge north of town went out of business. A couple bought it up. Muslims. White Muslims, but Muslims. Converted the lodge into a mosque to serve Islamic oil workers.

More signs of the times. Most people considered Catholics a novelty only a few years ago.

Sure, it's nice to talk about freedom of religion. Makes people feel good. Just so long as the right religions are free. That's the dirty little secret.

The mosque's neighbors are always calling Red. "I don't have a problem with Muslims, but I'm pretty sure they're up to something at that mosque," they'd usually say.

Red used to give a damn. A pretty big damn. There are enough out-staters polluting North Dakota. Why throw gas on the fire and build a mosque? Can't they live somewhere else? It's a free country, after all. Nothing stopping them from moving.

Used to give a damn. Then something happened. Something inside him. Made him realize the subjectivity of morality. Of what's right and wrong. The standard "rules" of religion only work up to a certain point.

So prairie dogs worrying about a Christian NoDak turning Muslim, it's bullshit. Doesn't matter. Like paranoid unicorns.

Red still can't give up the Gideon Bible, though. Doesn't feel right. Not yet. It can sit there on the desk. But it won't be opened. If God does exist, He'll forgive Red for the doubt. Any reasonable, omnipotent being must be aware of its own unlikeliness.

That's the direction Red took. Agnosticism. Makes sense. Allows for a kind of weary indifference to perfume existence's frustrating incompleteness. They say after a tragedy, a person's faith gets that much stronger or weaker. He picked the latter. Or it picked him.

But Red can't think about that now. The phone is ringing. He picks it up.

"Yes?" Red says.

Nothing but static on the other end. Then a voice comes through. It's Jane.

"There's been a change of plans," Jane says.

Red listens to what Jane says next. Wants to disagree. But he can't. There's no choice.

The plans are changing. And Red isn't a part of them anymore.

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