“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.”
“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: Will anything we plan to do together ever make a difference? Will any piece of our life together ever be more important than the next step in some investigation? Will our being together ever outweigh your being a detective? Or will chasing whatever you’re chasing always be at the heart of your life?
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, “Flights from Albany NY to Palm Beach FL.”
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.”
“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?”