“So it was, like, a coincidence?”
“Of course it was a fucking coincidence! What else could it be?”
“I don’t know, Jordan. Only time anything ever went wrong, huh? Only time? You sure about that?”
“Absolutely!”
Gurney went back to stretching his neck slowly from side to side. “Too much fucking tension in this business. You ever try that yoga shit?”
“What?”
“You remember the Maharishi? What a fuckin’ hand job.”
“Who?”
“Before your time. I forget what a young man you are. So tell me, Jordan. How do we know nothing’s going to pop up and surprise us?”
Ballston blinked, sniffled, started to smile with jerky little movements of his lips.
“Did I ask a funny question?”
Ballston’s breathing became as jerky as his facial tics. Then his whole torso began to shake, and a series of sharp staccato sounds burst from his throat.
He was laughing. Horribly.
Gurney waited for the bizarre fit to subside. “You want to let me in on the joke?”
“Pop up,” said Ballston, the phrase triggering a renewed display of crazy machine-gun giggling.
Gurney waited, didn’t know what else to say or do. He remembered the wisdom an undercover partner had once shared with him: When in doubt, shut up.
“Sorry,” said Ballston. “No offense. But it’s such a funny image. Popping up! Two headless bodies, popping up out of the fucking ocean halfway to the fucking Bahamas! Shit, that is a picture!”
Mission accomplished! Probably. Maybe. Maintain credibility. Stay in character. Patience. See where it goes.
Gurney studied the fingernails on his right hand, then buffed their glossy surface on his jeans.
Ballston’s exhilaration faded.
“So you’re telling me everything’s under control?” asked Gurney, still buffing.
“Completely.”
Gurney nodded slowly. “So why am I still concerned?” When Ballston just stared at him, he continued. “Couple of things. Small questions. I’m sure you got good answers. First, suppose I was really a cop, or working for the cops. How the fuck do you know I’m not wired?”
Ballston smiled, looked relieved. “You see that thing on the credenza that looks like a DVD player? See the little green light? That would be a red light if there was any kind of recording or transmitting equipment operating anywhere in this room. It’s very reliable.”
“Good. I like reliable things. Reliable people.”
“Are you suggesting I’m not reliable?”
“How the fuck do you know I’m not a cop? How the fuck do you know that I’m not a cop who came here to find out exactly what you just told me with all that giggly crap, you fucking moron?”
Ballston looked like a rotten little boy who’d been slapped in the face. The ugly shock was replaced by an uglier grin. “Despite your opinion of me, I am an excellent judge of character. You don’t get as rich as I am by misreading people. So let me tell you something. The odds of you being a cop are about the same as the odds of the cops ever finding those headless cunts. I’m not going to lose sleep over either possibility.”
Gurney mirrored Ballston’s grin. “Confidence. Good. Very good. I like confidence.” Gurney stood suddenly. Ballston flinched. “Good luck, Mr. Ballston. We’ll be in touch if there are any unforeseen developments.”
As Gurney was passing through the front door, Ballston added a little twist. “You know, if I did think you were a cop, everything I told you would have been bullshit.”
Chapter 61
“Maybe that’s exactly what it was,” drawled Becker.
As Gurney emerged from the cool indulgence of the chauffeured Mercedes onto the broiling pavement in front of the airport terminal, he was on the phone to Darryl Becker, giving him as detailed a verbatim report as he could on his meeting with Jordan Ballston.
“I don’t think it was bullshit,” said Gurney. “I’ve had some experience with decompensating psychos. And I’d be willing to bet that some real energy was starting to come loose in that loony laugh and the image of decapitated women that went with it. But the bottom line is, we don’t have time to debate it. I strongly recommend you take what he said at face value and take immediate appropriate action.”
“I assume you’re not suggesting we search the Atlantic Ocean, so what are you suggesting?”
“The son of a bitch has a boat, right? He has to have a boat. Find the goddamn boat, put every tech you’ve got on it. Assume that he transported at least two bodies on that boat. Assume there’s still trace evidence somewhere on that boat-in some crack, crevice, corner-and don’t stop looking till you find it.”
“I hear what you’re saying. However, just to introduce a tiny speck of rational perspective here, let me point out that we don’t even know for a fact that Ballston has a boat. We don’t-”
Gurney broke in, “I’m telling you he has a boat. If anyone in this whole goddamn state owns a boat, he does.”
“As I was saying,” Becker drawled, “we have no evidence that he owns a boat, much less what kind of boat it might be, or where it might be, or when these alleged transportations of bodies took place, or whose bodies they were, or even if there were any bodies to begin with. You see my point?”
“Darryl, I have other calls to make. I’ll say this one last time. He has a boat. He’s had the bodies of at least two victims on it. Find the boat. Find the evidence. Do it now. We have to make this creep talk. We have to find out what the hell is going on. This thing is a lot bigger than Ballston, and I have a very bad feeling about it. A very urgent very bad feeling.” There was a silence too long for Gurney’s comfort. “You there, Darryl?”
“I promise nothing. We’ll do what we can do.”
As he made his way down an endless concourse to his flight gate, he placed a call to Sheridan Kline. He got Ellen Rackoff.
“He’s in court all afternoon,” she said. “Absolutely not interruptible.”
“How about Stimmel?”
“I think he’s in his office. You’d rather talk to him than to me?”
“It’s a practical need, not a personal preference.” Gurney couldn’t imagine wanting to talk to Kline’s relentlessly dour deputy. “There’s some super-urgent stuff he’s going to have to handle if Sheridan’s tied up.”
“Okay, just call this number again. If I don’t pick up, it’ll bounce over to him.”
He did what she said, and thirty seconds later Stimmel was on the line, his voice radiating all the charm of a swamp.
Gurney related enough of the story to convey his current view of the case: that it was potentially huge, that it combined elements of ruthless efficiency with sexual insanity, that Hector Flores and Jordan Ballston and the known deaths so far were just the visible pieces of an underground monster-and that if it turned out that as many as fifteen or twenty Mapleshade graduates were missing, then it was likely that all fifteen or twenty were going to end up raped, tortured, and decapitated.
He concluded, “Either you or Kline needs to get on the phone with the Palm Beach County district attorney within the next hour to accomplish two things. Number one, make sure that the PBPD is allocating sufficient resources to find Ballston’s boat and put it under a microscope ASAP. Number two, you guys need to convince the Palm Beach DA that full cooperation is the way to go here. You need to be very persuasive on the point that New York is holding the bigger end of the stick on this one-and that some kind of deal may have to be worked out with Ballston in order for us to get to Karnala Fashion, or whatever organization is at the root of whatever the hell is going on.”