Shut Your Eyes Tight

by John Verdon

  Various guttural exclamations of disgust around the room were followed by a silence.

  “You gentlemen still there?” There was a touch of amusement in Becker’s voice.

  “We’re here,” said Rodriguez coldly. There was another silence.

  “You gentlemen have any more questions, or does that pretty much wrap up your missing-person case?”

  “I have a question,” said Gurney. “How’d you make the positive ID?”

  “We got a DNA near hit on the sex-offender segment of the NCIC database.”

  “Meaning a close family member?”

  “Yep. Turned out to be Melanie’s biological heroin-addict father, Damian Clark, who’d been convicted of rape, aggravated sexual assault, sexual abuse of a minor, and several other unpleasant offenses about ten years ago. We tracked down the mother, who had divorced her rapist husband and remarried a man by the name of Roger Strum. She came down and ID’d the body. We also took a DNA sample from her and got a first-degree family confirmation like we did with the biological father. So there’s no doubt about the identity of the murdered girl. Any other questions?”

  “You have any doubt about the identity of the murderer?” asked Gurney.

  “Not a lot. There’s just something about Mr. Ballston.”

  “The Strums seem pretty upset that he’s out on bail.”

  “Not as upset as I am.”

  “He managed to convince the judge he’s not a flight risk?”

  “What he managed to do was post a ten-million-dollar bail bond and agree to what amounts to house arrest. He has to remain within the confines of his estate here in Palm Beach.”

  “You don’t sound happy with that.”

  “Happy? Did I mention that the ME concluded that before she was decapitated, Melanie Strum had been forcibly raped maybe a dozen times and that virtually every inch of her body had been lacerated with a razor blade? Am I happy that the man who did that is sitting next to his million-dollar swimming pool in his five-hundred-dollar designer sunglasses while the most expensive law firm in the state of Florida and the fanciest public-relations outfit in New York City are doing everything possible to position him as the innocent victim of an incompetent and corrupt police department? Are you asking me if I’m happy about that?”

  “So it would be an understatement to say he’s not cooperating with the investigation?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes indeed. That would be an understatement. Mr. Ballston’s attorneys have made it clear that their client will not say one word to anyone in law enforcement about the bogus case fabricated against him.”

  “Before he decided to say nothing, did he offer any explanation for the presence of a murdered woman in his freezer?”

  “Only that he has had frequent work done on his home, has had many household employees, and Lord only knows how many people might have had access to his basement—not to mention the burglar himself.”

  Kline looked around the room, his hands palms up in a questioning gesture, but no one had anything to add. “Okay,” he said. “Detective Becker, I want to thank you for your help. And for your candor. And good luck with your case.”

  There was a pause. Then the soft drawl. “Just wondering … if you gentlemen might know anything about this case up there on your end that could be useful to us down here?”

  Kline and Rodriguez looked at each other. Gurney could see the wheels turning as they weighed the potential risks and rewards of openness. The captain finally offered a glum little shrug, deferring the decision to the DA.

  “Well,” said Kline, making it all sound iffier than it really was, “we think it’s possible we may be looking for more than one mis-per.”

  “Oh?” There was a silence, suggesting that Becker was either taking time to absorb this or wondering why it hadn’t been mentioned sooner. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its softness. “Exactly how many are we talking about?”

  Chapter 54

  Unpleasant stories

  On the long drive home, Gurney was obsessed by the situation in Palm Beach, by the image of Jordan Ballston beside his pool, by the desire to get to the man and get to the bottom of this bizarre case. But getting to the man would not be easy. Having insulated himself behind a wall of legal and PR spokespeople, Ballston sure as hell was not about to sit down for a friendly chat about the body in his basement.

  Just outside the little village of Musgrave, Gurney pulled in to a Stewart’s convenience store for coffee. It was close to 3:00 P.M., and he was on the verge of caffeine withdrawal.

  As he was getting back into his car with a steaming sixteen-ounce container, his phone was ringing.

  It was Hardwick. “So what do you think, Davey? Whole new ball game?”

  “Same game. New camera angle.”

  “You see something you didn’t see before?”

  “An opportunity. Just not sure how to get at it.”

  “Ballston? You think he’s going to tell you anything? Good luck!”

  “Only key we’ve got, Jack. Got to find a way to turn it.”

  “You think he’s somehow behind this whole thing?”

  “I don’t know enough yet to think anything. I can’t imagine any way he could have killed Jillian Perry. But I’ll say it again—he’s the only key we’ve got. He’s got a real name, a real business and personal background, and his ass is planted at a real address. Compared to him, Hector Flores is a ghost.”

  “Okay, ace, you let us know when that genius brain of yours figures out how to turn the key. But that’s not why I called. Some more stuff on Karnala and its owners just drifted in.”

  “Kline told me you discovered it wasn’t really a clothing company?”

  Hardwick cleared his throat. “Tip of the proverbial iceberg. Or more like the tip of an insane asylum. We still don’t know for sure what business Karnala is in, but I got some data on the Skards. Definitely not people you want to fuck with.”

  “Hold on a second, Jack.” Gurney opened his coffee container and took a long swallow. “Okay, talk to me.”

  “We’re getting this in bits and pieces. Before they came to the U.S. and went international, the Skards originally operated out of Sardinia, which is part of Italy. Italy’s got three separate law-enforcement agencies, each with its own records, plus local stuff, and then there’s Interpol, which has access to some of it but not all of it. Plus, I’m getting snatches of stuff that’s not in any file—old rumors, hearsay, whatever—from a guy at Interpol I’ve done some favors for. So what I have is disconnected chunks, some of it unique, some of it repetitive, some of it contradictory. Some reliable, some not, but no way of knowing which is which.”

  Gurney waited. It never helped to tell Hardwick to skip the preamble.

  “At the visible level, the Skards are high-end international investors. Resorts, casinos, thousand-dollar-a-night hotels, companies that build million-dollar yachts, shit like that. But the betting is that the money they use to acquire those legal assets comes from somewhere else.”

  “From a nastier enterprise they’re concealing?”

  “Right, and the Skards are very effective concealers. In the whole bloody history of the family, there has been only one arrest—for an atrocious assault ten years ago—and not a single conviction. So there are no real criminal files, almost nothing on paper. Rumors keep surfacing that they’re into very-high-end prostitution, sex slavery, extreme S&M pornography, extortion. But none of that can be verified. They also have very aggressive legal representation that pounces with an instant libel suit when anything remotely critical appears in the press. There aren’t even any photographs of them.”

  “What happened to the mug shot from the assault arrest?”

  “Mysteriously disappeared.”

  “Nobody has ever testified against these guys?”

  “People who might know something, people who might be persuaded to say something, even just people who happen to be in the general vicinity of the Skards in times of stress, have a he
ll of a time staying alive. The few people who cooperated with media stories about the Skards, even anonymously, disappeared within days. The Skards have only one response to trouble—they erase it, totally, without compunction, and without a hint of concern for collateral damage. Perfect example: According to my Interpol contact, about ten years ago Giotto Skard, presumed head of the family, had a business disagreement with an Israeli real-estate developer. After a meeting in a small Tel Aviv nightclub during which Giotto appeared to agree to the Israeli’s terms, he said good-night, stepped outside, barred the exits, and burned the place down. He managed to kill the real-estate developer, along with fifty-two other people who just happened to be in there.”

  “Their organization has never been penetrated?”

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  “They have no organization in the usual sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Skards are the Skards. A biological family. The only way in is by birth or marriage—and right off the bat I can’t think of any female undercovers devoted enough to the job to marry into a pack of mass murderers.”

  “Big family?”

  Hardwick cleared his throat again. “Surprisingly small. Of the oldest generation, only one of three brothers is believed to still be alive. Giotto Skard. He may have killed the other two. But no one will say that. Not even whisper it. Not even as a joke. Giotto has—or maybe had—three sons. No one knows how many of them are still alive, or exactly how old they are, or where they might be. As I said, small as they are in numbers, the Skards operate internationally, so it’s presumed that the sons are in various places around the world where Skard interests need to be looked after.”

  “Wait a second. If only family members are involved, what do they do for muscle?”

  “The word is, they take care of problems themselves. The word is, they’re very prompt and very efficient. The word is, the Skards over the years have personally eliminated at least two hundred human obstacles to the family’s business objectives, not counting the nightclub massacre.”

  “Nice people. With three sons, presumably Giotto had a wife?”

  “Oh, indeed he did. Tirana Magdalena—the only member of the whole rotten Skard menagerie about which anything is actually known. And maybe the only person on earth who ever seriously inconvenienced Giotto and lived to tell it.”

  “How’d she manage that?”

  “She was the daughter of the head of an Albanian mafia family. I should say she is his daughter—she’s still alive, somewhere in her mid-sixties, in an institution for the criminally insane. The Albanian don is about ninety. Not that Giotto would be afraid of a mafia don. The word is, it was purely a business decision on Giotto’s part to let his wife live. He didn’t want to have to waste time and money killing the angry Albanians who would try to avenge her death.”

  “How the hell do you know all this?”

  “I don’t, really. Like I said, it’s mostly rumors from the guy at Interpol. Maybe mostly bullshit. But it sounds good to me.”

  “Hold on. A second ago you said she was the only member of the Skard family about which anything is actually known. Known, you said.”

  “Ah. But I haven’t gotten yet to the part that’s known. I was saving that till the end.”

  Chapter 55

  Tirana Magdalena Skard

  “Tirana Magdalena was Adnan Zog’s only daughter.”

  “Zog being the don?”

  “Zog being the don, or whatever they call that exalted position in Albania. Anyway, his daughter was drop-dead gorgeous.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Her beauty was the stuff of legend. At least in the seedy underbelly of Eastern Europe. At least according to my Deep Throat contact at Interpol. Also, there are photographs. Many photographs. Unlike the Skards, the Zogs, particularly Tirana Magdalena, had no problem with fame. In addition to being gorgeous, she was also high-strung, weird, artsy, and obsessed with wanting to be a dancer. Papa Zog didn’t give a shit about what she wanted. He just saw her as something of potential value. So when the ambitious young Giotto Skard took an interest in the sixteen-year-old Tirana at the same time as he was negotiating a business alliance with Zog, Zog tossed her in as part of the deal. Probably saw it as a win-win. Zog gives Skard something Skard values that costs Zog nothing, plus he gets rid of his nutty, pain-in-the-ass daughter. This makes him and Giotto like blood brothers without even having to prick their thumbs.”

  “Very efficient,” said Gurney.

  “Very efficient. So now this wacky sixteen-year-old who has been raised by a lunatic Albanian murderer is married to a lunatic Sardinian murderer. And all she wants to do is dance. But all Giotto wants is sons—a lot of sons. Good for the business. So she starts having Giotto’s babies, which turn out to be all sons, just like he wants. Tiziano, Raffaello, Leonardo. Which makes him pretty happy. But all Tirana wants to do is dance. And each kid is making her a little crazier. By the time she has number three, she’s ready for the loony bin. Then she makes her big discovery. Coke! She discovers that snorting coke is almost as good as dancing. She snorts a lot of coke. When she can’t steal any more money from Giotto—a very dangerous activity, by the way—she starts fucking the local coke dealer. When Giotto finds out, he chops him up.”

  “Chops him up?”

  “Yeah. Literally. Into little pieces. To make a statement.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Right. So then Giotto decides to move the family to America. Better for everyone, he says. What he really means is, better for business. Business is all Giotto cares about. Once they’re over here, Tirana starts fucking American coke dealers. Giotto chops them up. Everyone she fucks gets chopped up. She’s fucking so many guys he can hardly keep up with it. Finally he kicks her out, along with son number three, Leonardo, who is now about ten years old and either gay or schizo or just too fucking oddball for Giotto to deal with. She takes the money Giotto gives her as a good-bye-and-get-lost present, and she opens a modeling agency for kids whose parents would love to get them into commercials, TV, whatever—offers acting and dancing classes to enhance their budding careers. Giotto meanwhile settles down with his two older sons to focus on their sex-and-extortion empire. Sounds like a happy ending for all concerned. But there was a flaw in the ointment.”

  “Fly.”

  “What?”

  “A fly in the ointment, not a flaw.”

  “Fly, flaw, whatever. The problem with cokehead Tirana’s modeling agency is that she’s molesting the kids. Not only is she still fucking coke dealers, now she’s fucking every ten-, eleven-, twelve-year-old boy she can get her hands on.”

  “Jesus. How did it end?”

  “It ended with her being arrested and charged with about two dozen counts of sexual abuse, assault, sodomy, rape, you name it. She ended up being committed to a state mental hospital, where she remains to this day.”

  “And her son?”

  “By the time she was arrested, he was gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Either ran away or was taken back by his father or was spirited off through some kind of private adoption. Or, knowing the Skards, he could very well be dead. Giotto would never let sentimentality keep him from tying up a loose end.”

  Chapter 56

  A matter of control

  Halfway between his Stewart’s stop and Walnut Crossing, Gurney’s phone rang again. Rebecca Holdenfield’s voice was smart, edgy—as reminiscent of the young Sigourney Weaver as were her face and hair. “So I guess you’re not coming?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Don’t you check your messages?”

  He remembered. That morning there had been one text and one voice mail. He’d checked the text first—the message that had spun him off into a world of speculation about his brownstone blackout. He’d never checked the voice mail.

  “Christ, I’m sorry, Rebecca. I’m running too damn fast. You expected me this afternoon?”<
br />
  “It was your request in your voice mail to me. So I said fine, come.”

  “Any chance we could do it tomorrow? What’s tomorrow, anyway?”

  “Tuesday. And I’m jammed all day. How about Thursday? That’s my next free time.”

  “Too far away. Can we talk now?”

  “I’m free till five. Which means we have about ten minutes. What’s the topic?”

  “I’ve got a few: the effects of being raised by a promiscuous mother, the mind-set of women who sexually abuse children, the psychological weaknesses of male sex murderers … and the behavior range of adult males under the influence of a Rohypnol cocktail.”

  After a two-second silence, she burst into laughter. “Sure. And in the time we have left after that, we can discuss the causes of divorce, ways to eliminate war, and—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. Pick the topic you think we have enough time to talk about.”

  “You planning on spiking your next martini with Rohypnol?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Just an academic question, then?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Hmm. Well, there’s no standard range of behavior for intoxication in general. Different chemicals skew behavior in different directions. Cocaine, for example, tends to produce a heightened sexual drive. But if what you’re asking is, are there limits to the behavior that a nonhallucinogenic disinhibitor will allow, the answer is yes and no. There’s no specific limit that applies to everyone, but there are individual limits.”

  “Like what?”

  “There’s no way of knowing. The limitations on our behavior depend on the accuracy of our perceptions, the strength of our instinctive desires, and the strength of our fears. If the drug is a disinhibitor that removes our fear of consequences, then our behavior will reflect our desires and be limited mainly by pain, satisfaction, or exhaustion. We’ll do whatever we would do in a world with no consequences, but not things we have no desire to do. Disinhibitors give free rein to one’s existing impulses, but they don’t manufacture impulses that are inconsistent with the underlying psychic structure of the individual. Am I answering your question?”