When Kay finally concluded her recounting of the Spalter family saga, Gurney was the first to speak. “So Carl’s Anticrime Party and his ‘Scum of the Earth’ speeches about smashing organized crime in New York were nothing but—”
She finished his thought. “A lie, a disguise. For a politician secretly in bed with the mob, what better cover could you have than an image as the state’s most aggressive crime fighter?”
Gurney nodded, trying to let the twisty soap opera narrative sink in. “So your theory is that Carl eventually had some kind of falling-out with this Angel character? And that’s the reason he was killed?”
“Angel was always the most dangerous player in the room. Carl wouldn’t have been the first or even the tenth of Angel’s business associates to end up dead. There’s a saying in certain circles that the Greek only puts two offers on the negotiating table: ‘Do it my way. Or I blow your fucking head off.’ I’d bet anything that there was something Carl refused to do Donny’s way. And he did end up getting his head blown off, didn’t he?”
Gurney didn’t answer. He was trying to figure out who the hell this brutally unsentimental woman really was.
“By the way,” she added, “you ought to look at some pictures of Carl taken before this thing happened.”
“Why?”
“So you understand what he had going for him. Carl was made for politics. Sold his soul to the devil—with a smile made in heaven.”
“How come you didn’t leave him when things got ugly?”
“Because I’m a shallow little gold digger, addicted to power and money.”
“Is that true?”
Her answer was a brilliant, enigmatic smile. “You have any more questions?”
Gurney thought about it. “Yeah. What the hell is the Cyberspace Cathedral?”
“Just another God-free religion. Type the words into a search engine, you’ll find out more than you ever wanted to know. Anything else?”
“Did Carl or Jonah have any kids?”
“Not Jonah. Too busy being spiritual. Carl has one daughter, from his first marriage. A demented slut.” Kay’s voice sounded as flatly factual as if she’d been describing the girl as “a college student.”
Gurney blinked at the disconnect. “You want to tell me more about that?”
She looked like she was about to, then shook her head. “Better that you look into it yourself. I’m not objective on that subject.”
After a few more questions and answers and after arranging a time for a follow-up phone call, Hardwick and Gurney stood to leave. Hardwick made a point of looking again at Kay’s bruised cheek. “You sure you’re all right? I know someone here. She could keep an eye on you, maybe separate you from the general population for a while.”
“I told you, I’ve got it covered.”
“Sure you’re not putting too many eggs in Crystal’s basket?”
“Crystal’s got a big, tough basket. And my nickname helps. Did I mention that? Here in the zoo it’s a term of great respect.”
“What nickname?”
She bared her teeth in a quick, chilly smile. “The Black Widow.”
Chapter 10. The Demented Slut
Once they’d put the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility behind them and were heading for the Tappan Zee Bridge, Gurney brought up the subject that was eating at him. “I get the impression you know some significant things about this case that you haven’t told me.”
Hardwick gunned the engine and veered around a slow-moving minivan with an expression of disgust. “Obviously this asshole has no place to get to and doesn’t care when he arrives. Be nice to have a bulldozer, push him into a ditch.”
Gurney waited.
Hardwick eventually responded to his question. “You’ve got the outline, ace—key points, main actors. What more do you want?”
Gurney thought about this, thought about the tone. “You seem more like yourself than you did earlier this morning.”
“Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“You figure it out. Remember I can still walk away from this, which I will do if I don’t get the feeling that I know everything you know about the Spalter murder case. I’m not playing front man just to get that woman to sign on with your lawyer. What did she say his name was?”
“Take it easy. No sweat. His name is Lex Bincher. You’ll meet him.”
“See, Jack, that’s the problem.”
“What problem?”
“You’re assuming things.”
“Assuming what things?”
“Assuming that I’m on board.”
Hardwick fixed a concentrated frown on the empty road ahead of them. The tic was back. “You’re not?”
“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. The point is, I’ll let you know.”
“Right. Good.”
A silence fell between them that lasted until they were across the Hudson and speeding west on I-287. Gurney had spent the time reflecting on what it was that had him so upset, and had come to the conclusion that the problem wasn’t Hardwick. It was his own dishonesty.
In fact, he was on board. There were aspects of the case—beyond the appalling photograph of Carl Spalter—that had him intrigued. But he was pretending to be undecided. And the pretense had more to do with Madeleine than with Hardwick. He was pretending—and letting on to her—that this was a rational process he was conducting according to some objective criteria when, truth be told, it wasn’t anything like that. His involvement was no more a matter of rational choice than the idea that he might choose to be, or not to be, affected by gravity.
The truth was that a complex murder case attracted his attention and curiosity like nothing else on earth. He could make up reasons for it. He could say it was all about justice. About rectifying an imbalance in the scheme of things. About standing up for those who had been struck down. About a quest for truth.
But there were other times when he considered it nothing but high-stakes puzzle-solving, an obsessive-compulsive drive to fit all the loose pieces together. An intellectual game, a contest of mind and will. A playing field on which he could excel.
And then there was Madeleine’s dark suggestion: the possibility that he was somehow attracted by the terrible risk itself, that some self-hating part of his psyche kept drawing him blindly into the orbit of death.
His mind rejected that possibility even as his heart was chilled by it.
But ultimately he had no faith in anything he thought or said about the why of his profession. They were just ideas he had about it, labels he was sometimes comfortable with.
Did any of the labels capture the essence of the gravitational pull?
He couldn’t say.
The bottom line was this:
Rationalize and temporize as he might, he could no more walk away from a challenge like the Spalter case than an alcoholic could walk away from a martini after the first sip.
Suddenly exhausted, he closed his eyes.
When he finally opened them, he caught a glimpse of the Pepacton Reservoir dead ahead. Meaning they’d passed through Cat Hollow and were back in Delaware County, less than twenty minutes from Walnut Crossing. The water in the reservoir was depressingly low, the result of a dry summer, the kind of summer likely to produce a drab autumn.
His mind returned to the meeting at Bedford Hills.
He looked over at Hardwick, who appeared to be lost in his own unpleasant thoughts.