Valdez’s unblinking gaze grew more intense.
Gurney went on. “The man agreed to help Lenny on the condition that Lenny would pretend he knew something terrible about Slade and was planning to extort a fortune from him. He told Lenny to start keeping a diary, and he told him what to write in it. He told him what to say to his boss and to his son and daughter. He told him how to handle three phone calls to Slade and how to describe them in his diary. He told him to come here to Slade’s property the day before Thanksgiving, a day he knew that Slade would be occupied in the kitchen, preparing the following day’s dinner. He had an associate meet Lenny here, knock him unconscious, drag him to a secluded spot, behead him, cut off his fingers, partially bury him, and plant all the pieces of evidence that later led to Slade’s conviction.”
Valdez was sitting rigidly upright in his chair. “This relative of Lenny’s, instead of doing whatever favor he’d promised, had him killed as part of his own plot against Ziko. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Not exactly. In fact, Lenny’s murder wasn’t really a murder at all.”
Confusion entered Valdez’s eyes. “Not a murder? What was it?”
“The one thing everyone was sure it couldn’t have been. Suicide.”
“You just told me that an associate of the relative killed Lenny by cutting off his head? How can that be suicide?”
“Because that was the favor Lenny had asked for.”
“To be killed?”
“In a way, he was already a dead man. His cancer would have killed him very soon. All he was giving up was another three or four weeks of life, most of which would have been pure misery. Rather than suffer, he chose a quick, painless death—and an opportunity to give his son and daughter a million dollars.”
“Through an insurance scam?”
“Because of the terminal cancer, he couldn’t get ordinary life insurance, but he was able to get a large accidental death policy. In most of those policies murder is considered an accidental death, but suicide isn’t. That’s the reason Lenny asked his head be removed—fear that if the terminal cancer were discovered the insurance company would suspect that the murder was actually an arranged suicide and refuse payment.”
Valdez nodded slowly. “So, Lenny had nothing to lose and a lot of money to gain.”
“Money he hoped would buy the respect of his son, the thing he’d always wanted more than anything else.”
Valdez’s nodding gave way to growing confusion in his eyes. “It is a strange but believable story of why Lerman was killed. But it tells me nothing of why the Lerman relative wanted Ziko blamed for the murder. What explains such hatred?”
“Fathers and sons,” said Gurney, looking into the fire. “Relationships between fathers and sons have been on my mind from the beginning. But I didn’t realize until today that a father-and-son relationship held the key to the entire case.”
“What does Lerman’s relative’s desire to frame Ziko have to do with fathers and sons?”
“He framed Ziko because he believed that Ziko had stolen his son.”
“What are you talking about? What son?”
“The son who turned his back on him. The son who stepped away from the family, away from the ties of blood. The son who called Ziko Slade his new father.”
72
FOR A LONG WHILE VALDEZ SAT PERFECTLY STILL. HE opened his mouth twice, as if to speak, then closed it. Finally, without looking at Gurney, he asked, “How do you know this to be true?”
“It’s the only explanation that accounts for everything.”
“You have found evidence that he had Ziko murdered?”
“Not yet. But I will.”
Valdez shook his head. “There will be no evidence.”
Gurney stared at him. There was a strange transformation occurring in him—a kind of hardening of his eyes and posture, a readying for battle. The impression was not of a man putting on armor, but of letting a softer outer layer melt away, revealing the steel beneath it.
“Why do you say that?”
“He is a powerful man with powerful protectors. There is never evidence of what he has done.”
“Powerful people can be arrested and prosecuted like anyone else.”
“How many international assassins have you arrested and prosecuted?”
Gurney said nothing.
Valdez continued. “There are people high in government and world finance whose reliance on his expertise put him beyond the reach of any ordinary justice system.”
“What if I were to go straight to the media and tell the story to the whole world?”
“Your first problem would be his name. He has none. Actually, he has so many, it is the same as none. Dimitri Filker, Gligor Leski, Jurgen Kleinst, Hamid Bokar, Piotar Malenkov, Ivan Kurilenko, Gerhard Bosch. A hundred more.”
“And Valdez? Is that one of them?”
“No. Valdez was my mother’s name. Everything he owns, he owns in someone else’s name.”
“What name is on his driver’s license? His social security card?”
“He doesn’t have either one. Officially, he doesn’t exist. But his anonymity would not be your only problem, if you took your story to the media. A direct attack on him could result in your disappearance, or your wife’s disappearance, or your son’s disappearance. Now, or a month from now, or a year from now. He forgets nothing. Everything must be repaid.”
“That doesn’t leave me with a lot of options.”
Something in Gurney’s tone caused Valdez to regard him more closely. “No, there are not many options.”
That led to a speculative silence, broken by Gurney.
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Apart from his being an embodiment of everything evil?” Valdez’s gaze returned to the fire, his voice now oddly bland. “He’s a middle-aged man of average height, soft-spoken. He prefers dark places to bright ones, a genetic defect in his vision. Light is painful to his eyes. He goes outdoors only when his business requires it. He spends most of his time in the shadowy place where he keeps his pets.”
“His pets?”
“The lowest level of the house is full of snakes. He collects and breeds them. Constrictors and pit vipers. Many species, with two things in common. They are all deadly. And they can all digest animal bodies, even bones. When they eat their prey, all that is left are a few pellets of hair.”
“Sounds creepy.”
“More creepy is his excitement watching this happen.” Valdez paused, the tiniest tremor in his expression. “Apart from that, he appears normal, just an ordinary man, unremarkable in every way.” Valdez paused again. “Except when he eats. He gnaws on his food like a rat.”
It took Gurney a while to assimilate all this.
“Is he as wary of you as you are of him?”
“He is wary of everyone. No one can get near him who he has not invited. As for me, he regards me as a piece of his property that he is determined to regain control of. Everything you have said about his attacks on Ziko proves this. I believe you because I know this man. I can feel in my heart that he would frame Ziko for murder, then set up his faked suicide—all to destroy Ziko in my eyes, to destroy my belief that a new life is possible, to make me come back to him. It is the strongest desire in him—to be in control of everything and everyone.”