“That piece of the situation. But we got more to talk about.”
There was a pause. “You’re not really a cop, are you?”
“Of course I’m a cop. Why would I say I was a cop if I wasn’t a cop?”
“Who are you really, and what do you want?”
“I want to come see you.”
“See me?”
“I don’t like the phone so much.”
“I don’t understand what you want.”
“Just a little talk.”
“About what?”
“Enough bullshit. You’re a smart guy. Don’t talk like I’m stupid.”
Again Ballston seemed stunned into silence. Gurney thought he could hear a tremor in the man’s breathing. When Ballston spoke again, his voice had dropped to a frightened whisper.
“Look, I’m not sure who you are, but… everything is under control.”
“Good. Everyone will be glad to hear that.”
“Really. I mean it.
“Good.”
“Then, what more…”
“A little talk. Face-to-face. We just want to be sure.”
“
“Like I said, Jordan
Another silence. This time Ballston hardly seemed to be breathing at all.
Gurney brought his tone back down to a velvety calm. “Okay, nothing to worry about. So here’s what we do. I come up to your place. We talk a little bit. That’s all. See? No problem. Easy.”
“When do you want to do this?”
“How about half an hour from now?”
“Tonight?” Ballston’s voice was close to breaking.
“Yeah, Jordan, tonight. When the fuck else would half an hour from now be?”
In Ballston’s silence, Gurney imagined he could sense pure fear. The ideal moment to end the call. He broke the connection and laid the phone down on the end of the dinner table.
In the dim light beyond the far end of the table, Madeleine was standing in the kitchen doorway in her pajamas. The top didn’t match the bottom. “What’s going on?” she asked, blinking sleepily.
“I think we have a fish on the line.”
“We?”
With a twinge of annoyance, he rephrased his comment. “The fish in Palm Beach seems to be hooked, at least for the moment.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Now what?”
“Reel him in. What else?”
“So who are you meeting with?”
“Meeting with?”
“In half an hour.”
“You heard me say that? Actually, I’m not meeting with anyone in half an hour. I wanted to give Mr. Ballston the idea that I was in the neighborhood. Ratchet up the uneasiness. I also said that I’d come
“What happens when you don’t show up?”
“He worries. Has some trouble sleeping.”
Madeleine looked skeptical. “Then what?”
“I haven’t worked that out yet.”
Despite the fact that this was partly true, Madeleine’s antenna seemed to detect the dishonesty in it. “So do you have a plan or don’t you?”
“I have sort of a plan.”
She waited, staring at him expectantly.
He couldn’t picture any way out of the spot he was in other than straight ahead. “I need to get in closer to him. It’s obvious he has some connection with Karnala Fashion, that the connection is dangerous, and that it frightens him. But I need to find out a lot more about it-exactly what the connection is, what Karnala is all about, how Karnala and Jordan Ballston are connected to the other pieces of the case. There’s no way I can do all that over the phone. I need to see his eyes, read his expressions, watch his body language. I also need to take advantage of the moment, while the son of a bitch is wriggling on the hook. Right now I have his fear working for me. But that won’t last.”
“So you’re on your way to Florida?”
“Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
“
“Most likely tomorrow.”
“Tuesday.”
“Right.” He wondered if he’d forgotten something. “Do we have some other commitment?”
“What difference would it make?”
“Well, do we?”
“As I said, what difference would it make?”
Such a simple question, yet how strangely difficult to answer. Perhaps because Gurney heard it as a proxy for the larger questions that these days never seemed far from Madeleine’s mind:
Then again, maybe he was reading too damn much into a cranky comment, a passing mood in the middle of the night. “Look, tell me if I’m supposed to be doing something tomorrow that I somehow forgot about,” he said earnestly, “and I’ll tell you if it makes a difference.”
“You’re such an accommodating man,” she said, mocking his earnestness. “I’m going back to bed.”
For some time after she left, his priorities were jumbled. He went to the unlit end of the room, the sitting area between the fieldstone fireplace and the iron woodstove. The air smelled cold and ashy. He sank into his dark leather armchair. He felt uneasy, unmoored. A man without a harbor.
He fell asleep.
He awoke at 2:00 A.M. He pushed himself up out of the chair, stretching his arms and back to work out the kinks.
The customary currents of his mind had reasserted themselves and seemingly resolved whatever doubts he might have had about his plans for the coming day. He got his credit card out of his wallet, went to the computer in the den, and typed on the search line,
As his round-trip electronic tickets were printing out, along with a Palm Beach Tourist Guide, he was heading into the shower. And forty-five minutes later, having scribbled a note to Madeleine promising he’d be home that evening around seven, he was on his way to the airport, carrying nothing but his wallet, cell phone, and printouts.
During the sixty-mile drive east on I-88, he made four phone calls. The first was to a high-end limousine service, open twenty-four hours a day, to arrange for the right kind of car to meet him in Palm Beach. The next was to Val Perry, because he was going to be spending her money on some expensive but necessary purchases, and he wanted it on the record, if only by voice mail in the wee hours of the morning.
His third call, at 4:20 A.M., was to Darryl Becker. Amazingly, Becker not only picked up but sounded wide awake-or as wide awake as a man with a drawl could sound to northern ears.
“I’m just on my way out to the gym,” Becker said. “What’s up?”
“I have some good news, and I need a big favor.”
