Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel (49 page)

Ballston led the way stiffly to a pair of white-brocaded armchairs on opposite sides of a baroque card table. “Here?”

“Sure,” said Gurney. “Very nice table.” His expression contradicted the compliment. He sat down and watched Ballston do the same.

The man crossed his legs awkwardly, hesitated, uncrossed them, sniffled.

Gurney smiled. “Coke got you by the balls, huh?”

“Excuse me?”

“Not my concern.”

A long silence passed between them.

Ballston cleared his throat. It sounded dry. “So you … you said on the phone you’re a cop?”

“Right. I did say that. You got a good memory. Very important, a good memory.”

“That doesn’t look like a cop’s car out there.”

“Course not. I’m undercover, you know? Actually, I’m retired.”

“You always ride with bodyguards?”

“Bodyguards? What bodyguards? Why would I need bodyguards? Some friends gave me a ride, that’s all.”

“Friends?”

“Yeah. Friends.” Gurney sat back, stretching his neck from side to side, letting his gaze drift around the room. It was a room that could be on the cover of
Architectural Digest
. He waited for Ballston to speak.

Finally the man asked in a low voice, “Is there a particular problem?”

“You tell me.”

“Something must have brought you here … a specific concern.”

“You’re under a lot of pressure. Stress, you know?”

Ballston’s face tightened. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Gurney shrugged. “Stress is a terrible thing. It makes people … unpredictable.”

The tightness in Ballston’s face spread through his body. “I assure you the situation here will be resolved.”

“There’s a lot of different ways things get resolved.”

“I assure you that the situation will be resolved in a favorable way.”

“Favorable to who?”

“To … everyone concerned.”

“Suppose everyone’s interests don’t line up the same way.”

“I assure you that won’t be a problem.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that.” Gurney gazed lazily at the big pampered pig of a man across from him, allowing just enough of his disgust to seep through. “You see, Jordan, I’m a problem solver. But I got enough of them on my plate. I don’t want to be distracted by a new one. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

Ballston’s voice was breaking. “There … won’t … be … any … new … problems.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“The problem this time was a freak one-in-a-million accident!”

“This time”? Mother of God, this is it! I’ve got the bastard! But for Christ’s sake, Gurney, don’t let it show. Relax. Take it easy. Relax
.

Gurney shrugged. “That’s the way you see it, huh?”

“A fucking burglar, for shit sake! A fucking burglar who just happened to break in on exactly the wrong fucking night, the one fucking night that fucking cunt was in the fucking freezer!”

“So it was, like, a coincidence?”

“Of course it was a fucking coincidence! What else could it be?”

“I don’t know, Jordan. Only time anything ever went wrong, huh? Only time? You sure about that?”

“Absolutely!”

Gurney went back to stretching his neck slowly from side to side. “Too much fucking tension in this business. You ever try that yoga shit?”

“What?”

“You remember the Maharishi? What a fuckin’ hand job.”

“Who?”

“Before your time. I forget what a young man you are. So tell me, Jordan. How do we know nothing’s going to pop up and surprise us?”

Ballston blinked, sniffled, started to smile with jerky little movements of his lips.

“Did I ask a funny question?”

Ballston’s breathing became as jerky as his facial tics. Then his whole torso began to shake, and a series of sharp staccato sounds burst from his throat.

He was laughing. Horribly.

Gurney waited for the bizarre fit to subside. “You want to let me in on the joke?”

“Pop up,”
said Ballston, the phrase triggering a renewed display of crazy machine-gun giggling.

Gurney waited, didn’t know what else to say or do. He remembered the wisdom an undercover partner had once shared with him:
When in doubt, shut up
.

“Sorry,” said Ballston. “No offense. But it’s such a funny image. Popping up! Two headless bodies, popping up out of the fucking ocean halfway to the fucking Bahamas! Shit, that is a picture!”

Mission accomplished! Probably. Maybe. Maintain credibility. Stay in character. Patience. See where it goes
.

Gurney studied the fingernails on his right hand, then buffed their glossy surface on his jeans.

Ballston’s exhilaration faded.

“So you’re telling me everything’s under control?” asked Gurney, still buffing.

“Completely.”

Gurney nodded slowly. “So why am I still concerned?” When Ballston just stared at him, he continued. “Couple of things. Small questions. I’m sure you got good answers. First, suppose I was really a cop, or working for the cops. How the fuck do you know I’m not wired?”

Ballston smiled, looked relieved. “You see that thing on the credenza that looks like a DVD player? See the little green light? That would be a red light if there was any kind of recording or transmitting equipment operating anywhere in this room. It’s very reliable.”

“Good. I like reliable things. Reliable people.”

“Are you suggesting I’m not reliable?”

“How the fuck do you know I’m not a cop? How the fuck do you know that I’m not a cop who came here to find out exactly what you just told me with all that giggly crap, you fucking moron?”

Ballston looked like a rotten little boy who’d been slapped in the face. The ugly shock was replaced by an uglier grin. “Despite your opinion of me, I am an excellent judge of character. You don’t get as rich as I am by misreading people. So let me tell you something. The odds of you being a cop are about the same as the odds of the cops ever finding those headless cunts. I’m not going to lose sleep over either possibility.”

Gurney mirrored Ballston’s grin. “Confidence. Good. Very good. I like confidence.” Gurney stood suddenly. Ballston flinched. “Good luck, Mr. Ballston. We’ll be in touch if there are any unforeseen developments.”

As Gurney was passing through the front door, Ballston added a little twist. “You know, if I did think you were a cop, everything I told you would have been bullshit.”

“M
aybe that’s exactly what it was,” drawled Becker.

As Gurney emerged from the cool indulgence of the chauffeured Mercedes onto the broiling pavement in front of the airport terminal, he was on the phone to Darryl Becker, giving him as detailed a verbatim report as he could on his meeting with Jordan Ballston.

“I don’t think it was bullshit,” said Gurney. “I’ve had some experience with decompensating psychos. And I’d be willing to bet that some real energy was starting to come loose in that loony laugh and the image of decapitated women that went with it. But the bottom line is, we don’t have time to debate it. I strongly recommend you take what he said at face value and take immediate appropriate action.”

“I assume you’re not suggesting we search the Atlantic Ocean, so what are you suggesting?”

“The son of a bitch has a boat, right? He has to have a boat. Find the goddamn boat, put every tech you’ve got on it. Assume that he transported at least two bodies on that boat. Assume there’s still trace evidence somewhere on that boat—in some crack, crevice, corner—and don’t stop looking till you find it.”

“I hear what you’re saying. However, just to introduce a tiny speck of rational perspective here, let me point out that we don’t even know for a fact that Ballston has a boat. We don’t—”

Gurney broke in, “I’m telling you he has a boat. If anyone in this whole goddamn state owns a boat, he does.”

“As I was saying,” Becker drawled, “we have no evidence that he owns a boat, much less what kind of boat it might be, or where
it might be, or when these alleged transportations of bodies took place, or whose bodies they were, or even if there were any bodies to begin with. You see my point?”

“Darryl, I have other calls to make. I’ll say this one last time. He has a boat. He’s had the bodies of at least two victims on it. Find the boat. Find the evidence. Do it now. We have to make this creep talk. We have to find out what the hell is going on. This thing is a lot bigger than Ballston, and I have a very bad feeling about it. A very urgent very bad feeling.” There was a silence too long for Gurney’s comfort. “You there, Darryl?”

“I promise nothing. We’ll do what we can do.”

As he made his way down an endless concourse to his flight gate, he placed a call to Sheridan Kline. He got Ellen Rackoff.

“He’s in court all afternoon,” she said. “Absolutely not interruptible.”

“How about Stimmel?”

“I think he’s in his office. You’d rather talk to him than to me?”

“It’s a practical need, not a personal preference.” Gurney couldn’t imagine
wanting
to talk to Kline’s relentlessly dour deputy. “There’s some super-urgent stuff he’s going to have to handle if Sheridan’s tied up.”

“Okay, just call this number again. If I don’t pick up, it’ll bounce over to him.”

He did what she said, and thirty seconds later Stimmel was on the line, his voice radiating all the charm of a swamp.

Gurney related enough of the story to convey his current view of the case: that it was potentially huge, that it combined elements of ruthless efficiency with sexual insanity, that Hector Flores and Jordan Ballston and the known deaths so far were just the visible pieces of an underground monster—and that if it turned out that as many as fifteen or twenty Mapleshade graduates were missing, then it was likely that all fifteen or twenty were going to end up raped, tortured, and decapitated.

He concluded, “Either you or Kline needs to get on the phone with the Palm Beach County district attorney within the next hour to accomplish two things. Number one, make sure that the PBPD is allocating sufficient resources to find Ballston’s boat and put it
under a microscope ASAP. Number two, you guys need to convince the Palm Beach DA that full cooperation is the way to go here. You need to be very persuasive on the point that New York is holding the bigger end of the stick on this one—and that some kind of deal may have to be worked out with Ballston in order for us to get to Karnala Fashion, or whatever organization is at the root of whatever the hell is going on.”

“You think the DA in Florida is going to give Ballston a pass to make Sheridan’s life easier?” His tone made it plain he considered this idea absurd.

“I’m not talking about a pass. I’m talking about Ballston being made to understand that lethal injection is an absolute certainty for him unless he cooperates fully. And immediately.”

“And if he cooperates?”

“If he does—fully, truthfully, with no reservations—then maybe other outcomes could be considered.”

“That’s a tough sell.” Stimmel sounded like if he were the Florida DA, it would be an impossible sell.

“The fact is,” said Gurney, “getting Ballston to talk may be our only shot.”

“Our only shot at what?”

“A bunch of girls are missing. Unless we crack Ballston, I doubt we’ll ever find a single one of them alive.”

T
he rapid-fire pressures of the day caught up with Gurney on the second leg of the flight home, and his brain began shutting down. With the jet engines droning in his ears like a formless white noise, loosening his grip on the present, he drifted through unpleasant scenes and disjointed moments that hadn’t come to mind in over a decade: the visits he made to Florida after his parents moved from the Bronx to a rented bungalow in Magnolia, a little town that seemed to be the mother lode of bleakness and decay; a brown palmetto bug the size of a mouse, scuttling under the leafy detritus on the bungalow porch; tap water that tasted like recycled sewage but that his parents insisted had no taste at all; the times when his mother drew him aside to complain with tearful bitterness about
her marriage, about his father, about his father’s selfishness, about her migraines, about her lack of sexual satisfaction.

Disturbing dreams, dark memories, and increasing dehydration through the remainder of the flight put Gurney in a state of anxious depression. As soon as he got off the plane in Albany, he bought a liter bottle of water at the inflated airport price and drank half of it on the way to the bathroom. In the relatively roomy wheelchair-accessible stall, he removed his chic jeans, polo shirt, and moccasins. He opened the Giacomo Emporium box he’d been carrying that contained his own original clothes and put them on. Then he put the new clothes into the box, and when he left the stall, he tossed the box into the garbage bin. He went to the basin and rinsed the gel out of his hair. He dried it roughly with a paper towel and looked at himself in the mirror, reassuring himself that he was again himself.

It was exactly 6:00
P.M.
, according to the parking booth’s clock, as he paid the twelve-dollar fee and the striped yellow barrier arm rose to let him pass. He headed for I-88 West with the late sun glaring through his windshield.

By the time he got to the exit for the county route that led from the interstate down through the northern Catskills to Walnut Crossing, an hour had passed; he’d finished his liter of water and was feeling better. It always surprised him that such a simple thing—you couldn’t get much simpler than water—could have such power to calm his thoughts. His emotional restoration gradually continued, and by the time he reached the little road that meandered up through the hills to his farmhouse, he was feeling close to normal.

He walked into the kitchen just as Madeleine was removing a roasting pan from the oven. She laid it on top of the stove, glanced at him with raised eyebrows, and said with a bit more sarcasm than surprise, “This is a shock.”

“Nice to see you, too.”