“How good and how big?”
“I took a wild swing at Ballston on the phone, and I hit a soft spot. I’m on my way to see him, to see what happens if I keep punching.”
“He doesn’t talk to cops. What the hell did you say to get through to him?”
“Long story, but the son of a bitch is going down.” Gurney was sounding a lot more confident than he really was.
“I’m impressed. So what’s the favor?”
“I need a couple of big guys, nastiest-looking big guys you know, to stand next to my car while I’m in Ballston’s house.”
Becker sounded incredulous. “You afraid someone’s going to steal it?”
“I need to create a certain impression.”
“When does this impression need to get created?”
“Around noontime today. By the way, the pay is pretty good. They get five hundred bucks apiece for an hour’s work.”
“For standing next to your car?”
“For standing next to my car and looking like mob muscle.”
“For five hundred an hour, that can be arranged. You can pick them up at my gym in West Palm. I’ll give you the address.”
Chapter 59
Gurney’s plane departed from Albany on schedule at 5:05 A.M. He switched planes in D.C., barely making a tight connection, and arrived in Palm Beach International Airport at 9:55 A.M.
In the designated limo-pickup area, among the dozen or so uniformed drivers awaiting incoming passengers, there was one driver with a sign bearing Gurney’s name.
He was a young Latino with high Indian cheekbones, hair as black as squid ink, and a diamond stud in one ear. He seemed at first a bit thrown off, even annoyed, by the absence of luggage-until Gurney handed him the address of their first stop: the Giacomo Emporium on Worth Avenue. Then he brightened, perhaps reasoning that a man who traveled light for convenience, later picking up what he needed at Giacomo, might be a lavish tipper.
“Car is right outside, sir,” he said, with an accent Gurney guessed to be Central American. “Very nice one.”
A power-assisted revolving door propelled them from the controlled, seasonless, indoor climate common to airports everywhere into a tropical steam bath-reminding Gurney there is nothing autumnal about southern Florida in September.
“Right over there, sir,” said the driver, his smile revealing surprisingly bad teeth for a young man. “First one.”
The car, as Gurney had specified in his predawn call, was a Mercedes S600 sedan, the sort of six-figure vehicle you might see once a year in Walnut Crossing. In Palm Beach it was as common as five-hundred-dollar sunglasses. Gurney slipped into the backseat-a quiet, dehumidified cocoon of soft leather, soft carpet, and softly tinted windows.
The driver closed the door for him, got in the front seat, and they glided soundlessly into the stream of taxis and shuttle buses.
“Temperature okay?”
“It’s fine.”
“You want music?”
“No, thank you.”
The driver sniffed, coughed, slowed to a crawl as the car passed through a pond-size puddle. “Been raining like a bitch.”
Gurney did not answer. He’d never been prone to conversing simply for the sake for conversing, and in the company of strangers he was more comfortable with silence. Not another word was spoken until the car came to a stop at the entrance to the very posh little shopping plaza where the Giacomo Emporium was located.
The driver looked at him through the rearview mirror. “You know how long you want to be here?”
“Not long,” said Gurney. “Fifteen minutes, max.”
“Then I stay here. Cops tell me no, then I circle.” He made an orbital gesture with his forefinger to illustrate the intended process. “I circle, keep coming around, passing this spot, until you’re here. Okay?”
“Okay.”
The shock of stepping back out into the hot, humid atmosphere was intensified by the visual impact of moving from the car’s tinted light into the full glare of the midmorning Florida sun. The plaza was landscaped with planting beds of palms and ferns and potted Asiatic lilies. The air smelled like boiled flowers.
Gurney hurried into the store, where the air smelled more like money than flowers. Customers, blond women from thirty to sixty, drifted through the meticulously crafted displays of clothes and accessories. Salespeople, anorexic boys and girls in their twenties, looked like they were trying to look like the anorexic boys and girls in Giacomo ads.
Gurney’s eagerness to flee this chic environment had him back on the street in ten minutes. Never had he spent so much on so little: an amazing $1,879.42 for one pair of jeans, one pair of moccasins, one polo shirt, and one pair of sunglasses-selected with the assistance of a willowy male exhibiting the fashionable ennui of a recent vampire victim.
In a changing room, Gurney had removed his battered jeans, T-shirt, sneakers, and socks and put on his pricey new apparel. He removed the tags and gave them to the salesperson along with his old clothes, which he asked to be wrapped in a Giacomo box.
It was then that the salesperson offered the first small smile Gurney had seen since entering the shop. “You’re like a Transformer,” he said, presumably referring to the popular toy that is instantly convertible from one thing into another.
The Mercedes was waiting. Gurney got in, checked his printed-out tourist guide, and gave the driver the next address, less than a mile away.
Nails Delicato was a tiny place, staffed by four dramatically coiffed manicurists who appeared to be teetering on the shaky fence that separated high-fashion models from high-priced hookers. No one seemed to notice or care that Gurney was the only male customer. The manicurist to whom he was assigned looked sleepy. Apart from apologizing several times for yawning while she was working on his nails, she said nothing until she was almost at the end of the process, applying a transparent polish.
“You have nice hands,” she observed. “You should take better care of them.” Her voice was both young and weary, and it seemed to resonate with the matter-of-fact sadness in her eyes.
As he was paying on the way out, he bought a small tube of hair gel from the display of creams and cosmetics on the counter. He opened the tube, spread a bit of the gel on his palms, and rubbed it into his hair, aiming for the disarranged look so popular at the moment.
“What do you think?” he asked the blankly beautiful young woman in charge of collecting the money. The question engaged her to a degree that surprised him. She blinked several times as if being summoned from a dream, came around to the front of the counter, and studied his head from various angles.
“Can I…?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
She ran her fingers through his hair in rapid zigzags, flicking it this way and that and pulling up on bits of it to make it spikier. After a minute or two, she stepped back, her eyes lighting up with pleasure.
“That’s it!” she declared. “That’s the real you!”
He burst out laughing, which seemed to confuse her. Still laughing, he took her hand and, on an impulse, kissed it for no sensible reason he could think of-which also seemed to confuse her, but more pleasantly. Then he stepped
