Tim Jones

Tim Jones is a fugitive criminal who steals a cameo from Jim Browning after stabbing him outside a New York bar, then carries the object into a widening pursuit involving the FBI and competing claims to the stone. His attempt to sell it to Ramondo Cardoso in Kansas City brings together two kinds of danger: the authorities tracking the stolen jewel and the inexplicable light and smoke that seem to emanate from it.

Identity and Criminal Background

Jones is described as a notorious repeat offender, known to law enforcement and skilled at staying ahead of the police. His criminal life is presented not through a sustained biography but through the practical details of his flight: changing hideouts, avoiding well-traveled roads, and using disguises that range from feminine presentation to the appearance of a businessman in a suit, tie, and briefcase. The outfit he wears to meet Cardoso has been stolen from an unknown secondhand shop. Such transformations make concealment a practiced resource, though they do not free him from the pressure of being recognized and pursued.

His recorded violence begins with the encounter that links him to the cameo. After leaving a bar near Harlem with his friend Ron, Browning comes upon a violent altercation between drug dealers and tries to intervene. Jones stabs him; while Browning is being hurriedly robbed, Jones takes the cameo from his pockets and escapes with it. The theft is opportunistic, but it changes the course of Jones’s flight: he has acquired an object both valuable enough to sell and conspicuous enough to attract attention.

The Cameo and the Motel

By June 2002, Jones has traveled through a series of detours to the vicinity of Carthage, Missouri. In a shabby motel, red glows erupt across the room and wake him abruptly. At first he mistakes them for police lights and curls up around the revolver he has placed beneath his pillow. When the red flickering continues without the sound of a nearby car, he discovers that it comes from the imitation-leather case holding the cameo. A thin smoke rises from the case as if it might catch fire.

The narration briefly imagines that an additional astral eye might have revealed painted warriors galloping spectrally through the motel. It offers no ordinary explanation for the glow, but keeps the image at the edge of Jones’s perception rather than confirming that he sees the warriors. His own response is more definite: superstitious terror sends him back to childhood memories of his mother taking him to Baptist churches to seek forgiveness for her life as a prostitute. He wonders whether the devil has entered the stone stolen from the man he stabbed, then makes the sign of the cross, a religious gesture he has nearly forgotten. The glow stops and the smoke disperses immediately afterward. The sequence does not establish what caused the phenomenon, but it makes the cameo more than merchandise in Jones’s eyes: the object becomes a source of fear that he wants to be rid of quickly.

Flight and the Attempted Sale

The FBI is already pursuing Jones, and he knows that his record has long been on file. With the cameo in his possession and the motel experience fresh, he decides to sell it without delay. He knows a buyer in Kansas City who will take the jewel without asking questions: Ramondo Cardoso, a Cuban dealer in bric-a-brac with whom he has done business before. Jones sets out by less-traveled roads to avoid the police, expecting to reach the city before the end of the morning.

Cardoso has previously bought ordinary stolen goods from Jones, usually electronic gadgets such as mobile phones and cameras, and only occasionally jewelry. Jones arrives at Cardoso’s shop on Oak Street, near downtown Kansas City, dressed as a businessman and carrying the cameo in its makeshift imitation-leather case. The stone’s fine setting, expertly carved layers, and onyx material make Cardoso recognize at once that this is an unusually valuable object. Jones refuses to explain where it came from and insists that Cardoso name a price. He asks for one million dollars; Cardoso offers nine hundred. The gap between Jones’s demand and the dealer’s offer turns their encounter into a test of what each thinks the other knows: Jones wants a fast, uncomplicated sale, while Cardoso recognizes a potentially extraordinary bargain and conceals his excitement behind a practiced, impassive manner.

Surveillance and Narrative Role

Cardoso’s apparent opportunity is already compromised by the FBI. Two months earlier, agents had visited his shop and asked whether he had recently bought precious stones. While one questioned him, the other secretly installed an electronic listening device behind the shelves. Cardoso does not know it is there. The authorities are watching small secondhand businesses across the country because they suspect Jones will try to turn the stolen stone into money; the intended operation could locate both the jewel and the fugitive.

The investigation has also grown beyond the identification of Browning’s attacker. Ron Gilbert, Browning’s friend, gave police a description of the cameo. Federal agents then learned of two claims, supported by similar photographs, for a jewel matching that description: one from France and one from Canada. Each claim named a person considered a potential September 11 victim, though neither appeared on the list of dead or missing. Georges D’Anjou’s claim arrived in New York after Charles de Castelmont’s, while D’Anjou had also supplied Roger Bolduc’s genetic profile, believing his son-in-law had been a victim of the World Trade Center attacks. These unresolved claims explain why Jones’s sale matters beyond its immediate criminal stakes: without knowing the cameo’s history, he is trying to dispose of an object already at the center of a bewildering investigation.

Jones functions as a link in the cameo’s movement from Ground Zero into the criminal marketplace. He neither investigates the competing claims nor uncovers the stone’s past; his response is to steal, conceal, and sell. Yet the motel’s red light and smoke interrupt that ordinary logic. The object he treats as loot becomes, briefly, something he cannot control, while the law closes in through a listening device he does not appear to anticipate. His attempted escape through disguise and a hurried bargain therefore carries the story forward while exposing the limits of his usual methods.