Shut Your Eyes Tight

by John Verdon

  He realized he was running too fast, that adrenaline was driving his decisions. It was a mistake that could easily lead to more mistakes. Worse, it deprived him of his main strength. It was in his analytic ability that he excelled, not in the quality of his adrenaline. He needed to think. He asked himself what he knew for sure, whether he had anything resembling a firm starting point for his conversation with Ballston.

  He knew that the man was afraid and that his fear was related to Karnala Fashion. He knew that Karnala was reputedly controlled by the Skard family—who were, among other ugly things, high-end procurers. It also appeared that Melanie Strum had been sent to Ballston to satisfy his sexual needs. It was not too great a leap to imagine Karnala involved in that process. If evidence could be uncovered linking Karnala to both Ballston and Strum, then Ballston’s conviction would be assured. That could explain his fear. Except … Gurney had gotten the impression that the man had been frightened not only by his mention of Karnala, and therefore by Gurney’s knowledge of some link, but by Karnala itself.

  And what was the significance of Ballston’s odd insistence on the phone that everything was “under control”? That wouldn’t make sense if Ballston believed that Gurney was any sort of legitimate detective. But it might make sense if he thought Gurney was a representative of Karnala or of some other dangerous organization with whom he was doing business.

  This was the logic that led to the presence in the car of the two hulking, granite-faced men he’d just picked up in front of Darryl Becker’s gym. Apart from minimally identifying themselves as Dan and Frank and informing Gurney that Becker had filled them in and they “knew the routine,” they hadn’t said another word. They looked like linebackers on a prison football team, whose idea of communication was to smash into something at full speed, preferably another person.

  As the car glided to a stop at the Ballston address, Gurney realized with a sinking feeling that his assumptions were, in reality, too iffy to support the course of action he was taking. Yet it was all he had. And he had to do something.

  At his request, the two big men got out, and one of them opened his door. Gurney checked his watch. It was eleven forty-five. He put on his five-hundred-dollar Giacomo sunglasses and stepped out of the car in front of an ornate iron gate at the end of a yellow-pebbled driveway. The gate was the only break in the high stone wall that enclosed the oceanfront estate on its three land-facing sides. Like its neighbors on that stretch of luxury coastline, the property had been converted from a barrier sandbar of coarse grasses, sea oats, and saw palmettos into a lushly loamed and mulched botanical garden of frangipani, hibiscus, oleander, magnolia, and gardenia blossoms.

  It smelled to Gurney like a gangster’s wake.

  With his two hired companions standing by the car, radiating a barely suppressed violence, he approached the intercom on the stone pillar beside the gate. In addition to the camera built into the intercom, two separate security cameras were mounted on poles on either side of the driveway—at intersecting angles, which covered the approach to the gate as well as a wide segment of the adjacent boulevard. The gate was also directly observable from at least one second-floor window of the Spanish-style mansion at the end of the yellow driveway. In such a leafy, flowery environment, it said something about the owner’s obsessiveness that not a single fallen leaf or petal had been allowed to remain on the ground.

  When Gurney pressed the intercom button, the response was immediate, the tone mechanically polite. “Good morning. Please identify yourself and the nature of your business.”

  “Tell Jordan I’m here.”

  There was a brief pause. “Please identify yourself and the nature of your business.”

  Gurney smiled, then let the smile fade to zero. “Just tell him.”

  Another pause. “I need to give Mr. Ballston a name.”

  “Of course,” said Gurney, smiling again.

  He recognized that he was at a fork in the road. He ran through the options and chose the one that offered the greatest reward, at the greatest risk.

  He let the smile fade. “My name is Fuck You.”

  Nothing happened for several seconds. Then there was a muted metallic click, and without another sound the gate swung slowly open.

  One thing Gurney had forgotten to do in the rush to do everything else was to check the Internet for photos of Ballston. However, when the mansion door opened as he approached it, he had no doubt at all about the identity of the man standing there.

  His appearance fulfilled the expectations one might have of a criminally decadent billionaire. There was a pampered look about his hair and skin and clothes; a disdainful set to his mouth, as though the world in general fell far below his standards; a self-indulgent cruelty in his eyes. There also seemed to be a sniffly twitch in his nose, suggestive of a coke addiction. It was abundantly apparent that Jordan Ballston was a man to whom nothing on earth was remotely as important as getting his own way, and getting it quickly, at whatever cost to others the process might entail.

  He regarded Gurney with ill-concealed anxiety. His nose twitched. “I don’t understand what this is all about.” He looked past Gurney down the driveway at the well-guarded Mercedes, his eyes widening just a fraction.

  Gurney shrugged, smiled like he was unsheathing a knife. “You want to talk outside?”

  Ballston apparently heard this as a threat. He blinked, shook his head nervously. “Come in.”

  “Nice pebbles,” said Gurney, ambling past Ballston into the house.

  “What?”

  “The yellow pebbles. In your driveway. Nice.”

  “Oh.” Ballston nodded, looked confused.

  Gurney stood in the middle of the grand foyer, affecting the gimlet eye of an assessor at a foreclosure. On the main wall facing him, between the curving arms of a double staircase, was a huge painting of a lawn chair—which he recognized from the art-appreciation course he’d attended with Madeleine a year and a half earlier, the course taught by Sonya Reynolds, the course that had launched him on his fateful mug-shot art “hobby.”

  “I like that,” announced Gurney, pointing at it as though his benediction were a form of triage that saved it from the trash bin.

  Ballston seemed vaguely relieved by the approval but no less confused.

  “Guy’s a fucking faggot,” Gurney explained, “but his shit is worth a lot.”

  Ballston made a hideous attempt at a grin. He cleared his throat but couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.

  Gurney turned toward him, adjusting his sunglasses. “So, Jordan, you collect a lot of fag art?”

  Ballston swallowed, sniffled, twitched. “Not really.”

  “Not really? That’s very interesting. So where can we sit down and have a little talk?” From the trial-and-error experience of countless interrogations, Gurney had come to appreciate the unsettling effect of casual non sequiturs.

  “Uh …” Ballston looked around him as though he were in someone else’s house. “In there?” He extended his arm cautiously toward a broad archway that led to an elegant, antique-furnished living room. “We could sit in there.”

  “Wherever you’re comfortable, Jordan. We’ll sit down. Relax. Have a conversation.”

  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.”

  Chapter 61

  Homeward bound

  “Maybe 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 Ba
llston, 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.”