Chapter 33
Every so often Gurney would have a dream that was achingly sad, a dream that seemed to be the heart of sadness itself. In these dreams he saw with a clarity beyond words that the wellspring of sadness was loss, and the greatest loss was the loss of love.
In the most recent version of the dream, little more than a vignette, his father was dressed as he’d been dressed for work forty years ago and in all respects looked exactly as he had then. The nondescript beige jacket and gray pants, the fading freckles on the backs of his large hands and on his rounded receding forehead, the mocking look in the eyes that seemed focused on a scene occurring somewhere else, the subtle suggestion of a restlessness to be on his way, to be anywhere but where he was, the odd fact that he said so little yet managed to convey with his silence so much dissatisfaction-all these buried images were resurrected in a scene that lasted no more than a minute. And then Gurney was part of the scene as a child, looking at that distant figure pleadingly, pleading with him not to leave, warm tears streaming down his face in the intensity of the dream-as he was sure they’d never done in the actual presence of his father, for he could not remember a single expression of strong emotion ever passing between them-and then awakening suddenly, his face still bathed in tears, his heart hurting.
He was tempted to wake Madeleine, tell her about the dream, let her see his tears. But it had nothing to do with her. She’d barely known his father. And dreams, after all, were only dreams. Ultimately they meant nothing. Instead he asked himself what day it was. It was Thursday. With this thought came that quick, practical transformation of his mental landscape that he’d come to rely on to sweep away the residue of a disturbing night and replace it with the reality of things to be done in the daylight. Thursday. Thursday would be occupied mainly with his trip to the Bronx-to a neighborhood not far from the neighborhood where he’d grown up.
Chapter 34
The three-hour drive was a journey into ugliness, a perception amplified by the cold drizzle that required continual adjustment of the intermittent wiper speed. Gurney was depressed and edgy-partly because of the weather and partly, he suspected, because his dream had left him with a raw, oversensitive perspective.
He hated the Bronx. He hated everything about the Bronx-from the buckled pavements to the burned-out carcasses of stolen cars. He hated the garish billboards touting four-day, three-night escapes to Las Vegas. He hated the smell-a shifting miasma of diesel fumes, mold, tar, and dead fish, with an insinuating undertone of something metallic. Even more than what he saw, he hated the memory from his childhood that invaded his mind whenever he was in the Bronx-hideous, prehistorically armored horseshoe crabs with spearlike tails, lurking in the mudflats of Eastchester Bay.
Having spent half an hour creeping across the clogged “expressway” to the last exit, he was relieved to negotiate the few city blocks to the agreed-upon meeting place-the parking lot of Holy Saints Church. The lot was enclosed by a chain-link fence with a sign warning that parking was reserved for those engaged in church business. The lot was empty except for a nondescript Chevy sedan, beside which a young man with a fashionably gelled crew cut was speaking into a cell phone. As Gurney parked his car on the other side of the Chevy, the man concluded his call and clipped the phone to his belt.
The drizzle that had shrouded most of his drive that morning had diminished to a mist too fine to see, but as Gurney stepped from his car, he could feel its cold pinpricks on his forehead. Perhaps the young man was feeling it, too; perhaps that accounted for his expression of anxious discomfort.
“Detective Gurney?”
“Dave,” said Gurney, extending his hand.
“Randy Clamm. Thanks for making the trip. Hope it’s not a waste of your time. Just trying to cover all the bases, and we’ve got this crazy MO that sounded like what you guys are working on. Could be unrelated-I mean, it doesn’t make much sense that the same guy would want to kill some hotshot guru upstate and an unemployed night watchman in the Bronx-but all those stab wounds in the throat, I couldn’t just let it go. You get a feeling about these things-you think, ‘Christ, if I let it go, it’ll turn out to be the same guy,’ you know what I mean?”
Gurney wondered whether the breathless pace of Clamm’s speech was propelled by caffeine, cocaine, the pressures of the job, or just the way his personal spring happened to be wound.
“I mean, a dozen stab wounds to the throat isn’t all that common. There might be other connections we could find between the cases. Maybe we could have sent reports back and forth between here and upstate, but I thought maybe if you were on the scene and you could talk to the victim’s wife, you might see something or ask something that might not occur to you if you weren’t here. That’s what I was hoping. I mean, I hope there might be something in it. I hope it’s not a waste of your time.”
“Slow down, son. Let me tell you something. I drove here today because it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. You want to check out every possibility. So do I. The worst-case scenario here is that we eliminate one of those possibilities, and eliminating possibilities is not a waste of time, it’s part of the process. So don’t worry about my time.”
“Thank you, sir, I just meant… I mean, I know it was a long drive for you. I do appreciate that.” Clamm’s voice and manner had settled down a notch or two. He still had a revved-up, nervous look, but at least it wasn’t off the charts.
“Speaking of time,” said Gurney, “would now be a good time to take me to the scene?”
