“I didn’t pull you into it, just offered you an opportunity.”
“Right, fine. So what did you think this ‘opportunity’ was about?”
“Never got far enough into it to form a solid opinion.”
“Bullshit.”
“Anything I’d say would be pure speculation, so I’m not saying.”
“I don’t like games, Jack. Why did you want me involved? While you’re figuring out how not to answer that one, here’s another one: Why is Blatt bent out of shape? I ran into him yesterday, and he was beyond unpleasant.”
“No relevance.”
“What?”
“No relevance. Look, we had a little shake-up here. Like I told you, some static between me and Rodriguez re the direction of the investigation. So I’m off it, and Blatt’s on it. Ambitious little prick, no ability, just like Captain Rod. I call him Junior Shithead. This is his chance, prove himself, show he can handle a big case. But deep down he knows he’s a useless little turd. Now you come along-big star from the big city, genius who solved the Mellery murder case, et cetera. Course he hates you. The fuck you expect? But there’s no relevance. The fuck’s he gonna do? Keep doing what you’re doing, Sherlock, and don’t lose any sleep over Blatt.”
“Is that why you got me involved? To make Junior Shithead look bad?”
“To see that justice is done-by peeling the layers of a very interesting onion.”
“That’s what you think it is?”
“Don’t you?”
“Could be. Would you be surprised if we found out that Flores came to Tambury with a plan to kill someone?”
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t.”
“So tell me again why you got kicked off the case.”
“I told you-” Hardwick began with exaggerated impatience, but Gurney cut him off.
“Yeah, yeah, you were rude to Captain Rod. Why am I thinking it was more than that?”
“Because that’s what you think about everything. You don’t trust anybody. You’re not a trusting person, Davey. Look, I’ve got to take a wicked piss. Talk to you later.”
Nothing the man liked better, thought Gurney, than to make a wiseass exit. He put down the phone and restarted his car. A thin overcast still hung over the valley, but the white sun-disk behind it was brightening and the telephone poles were starting to cast faint shadows across the deserted road. The array of blue tractors for sale, still wet from the morning rain, began to gleam on the green hillside.
During the final half of the trip home, odd bits and pieces of the affair occupied his mind: Madeleine’s comment that the placement of the machete made no sense, the decision by a superrational man to marry a profoundly disturbed woman, Carl’s train going around and around under the tree, the Schindler’s List interpretation of the bullet through the teacup, the morass of sexual disorder in which everything seemed mired.
By the time he’d left the county highway and was following the dirt road that meandered up from the river valley into the hills, his thoughts had exhausted him. There was a CD protruding from the dashboard player. Craving distraction, he pushed it in. The voice that emerged from the speakers, accompanied by some bleak chords on an acoustic guitar, had the whiny singsong rhythm of Leonard Cohen at his bleakest. The performer was a sad-eyed middle-aged folkie by the unlikely name of Leighton Lake whom he and Madeleine had gone to see at a local music venue to which she’d acquired a season subscription. During intermission she’d purchased one of Lake’s CDs. Of all the songs on it, Gurney found the one he was listening to now, “At the End of My Time,” by far the most depressing.
There once was a time
When I had all the time
In the world. What a time
I had then, when I had
All the time in the world.
Lied to my lovers,
Chased all the others,
Left all my lovers behind,
When I had all the time
In the world.
Took what I wanted.
Never thought twice.
Had the time of my life
When I had all the time
In the world.
Lied to my lovers,
Chased all the others,
Left all my lovers behind,
When I had all the time
In the world.
No one’s left to lie to,
No one’s left to leave,
In this time of my life
At the end of my time
In this world.
Lied to my lovers,
Chased all the others,
Left all my lovers behind,
When I had all the time
In the world.
When I had all the time
In the world.
While Lake was crooning the final maudlin refrain, Gurney was passing between his barn and pond, with the old farmhouse just in sight beyond the patch of goldenrod at the top of the pasture. As he hit the player’s “off” button, wishing he’d done so sooner, his cell phone rang.
The caller ID displayed the words REYNOLDS GALLERY.
Jesus. What the hell did she want?
“Gurney here.” His voice was all business with an edge of suspicion.
“Dave! It’s Sonya Reynolds.” Her voice, as usual, radiated a level of animal magnetism that could get her stoned to death in some countries. “I have fabulous news for you,” she purred. “And I don’t mean a little fabulous. I mean change-your-life-forever fabulous! We have to get together ASAP.”
“Hello, Sonya.”
“Hello? I’m calling to give you the biggest gift you’ve ever been given, and that’s all you can say?”
“It’s good to hear from you. What are we talking about?”
Her answer was a rich, musical laugh, a sound as disturbingly sensual as everything else about her. “Oh, that’s my Dave! Detective Dave with the piercing blue eyes. Suspicious of everything. As though I were-What do you call it? A ‘perp’ like on TV? As though I were a perp-that’s what you call the bad guy, right? As though I were a perp giving you a fishy story.” She had a slight accent that reminded him of the alternate universe he’d discovered in the French and Italian movies of his college years.
“Never mind ‘fishy.’ So far you haven’t given me any story.”
Again that laugh, bringing to mind her luminous green eyes. “And I’m not going to, not until I see you. Tomorrow. It must be tomorrow. But you don’t have to come to me in Ithaca. I’ll come to you. Breakfast, lunch, dinner-anytime tomorrow you want. Just tell me what time, and we’ll pick a place. I guarantee you won’t be sorry.”
Chapter 25
He still had no final name for the experience. Dream missed all the power of it. It was true that the first time it happened he was in the process of falling asleep, his senses disconnected from all the shabby demands of a disgusting world, his mind’s eye free to see what it would see, but there the superficial resemblance to common dreaming ended.
Vision was a larger, better word for it, but it, too, failed to convey even a fraction of the impact.
Guiding light captured a certain facet of it, an important facet, but the soap-opera association polluted the meaning hopelessly.