John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

He sat back and closed his eyes.

He opened them with a start.

The dashboard clock said it was 5:55 P.M. He looked down the street at the house where Meese lived. The sun was low in the sky, and the house was now in the shadow of the giant maple in front of it.

He got out of his car and walked the hundred yards or so to the house. He went to Meese’s door and listened. Some kind of techno music was playing. He knocked. There was no response. Again he knocked, again no response.

He took out his phone, blocked the ID, and called Meese’s number. To his surprise, it was picked up on the second ring.

“This is Robert.” The voice was smooth, actorish.

“Hello, Robert. This is Dave.”

“Dave?”

“We need to talk.”

“Sorry? Do I know you?” The voice had tightened a bit. “Hard to say, Robert. Maybe you know me, maybe you don’t. Why don’t you open your door and take a look at me?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your door, Robert. I’m outside your door. Waiting.”

“I don’t understand. Who are you? Where do I know you from?”

“We have friends in common. But don’t you think it’s kind of stupid to be talking on the phone when you’re right there and I’m right here?”

“Wait a second.” The voice was confused, anxious. The connection was broken. Then the music stopped. A minute later the door was opened tentatively, not quite halfway.

“What do you want?” The young man who asked the question was standing partly behind the door, using it as a kind of a shield or, Gurney thought, as a way of concealing whatever he was holding in his left hand. He was about the same height as Gurney, just under six feet. He was slim, with finely cut features, tousled dark hair, and shockingly blue movie-star eyes. Only one thing marred the picture of perfection: a sour look around the mouth, a hint of something nasty, something spiteful.

“Hello, Mr. Montague. My name is Dave Gurney.”

There was an infinitesimal tremor in the young man’s eyelids.

“Is that a familiar name to you?” asked Gurney.

“Should it be?”

“You looked like you recognized it.”

The tremor continued. “What do you want?”

Gurney decided to follow a low-risk strategy, one that he found particularly useful when he was uncertain how much a target subject knew about him. The strategy was to stick to the facts but play with the tone. Manipulate the undercurrents.

“What do I want? Good question, Robert.” He smiled meaninglessly, speaking with the world-weariness of a hit man whose arthritis was acting up. “That depends on what the situation is. To start with, I need some advice. You see, I’m trying to decide whether to accept a job I’ve been offered, and if I do, what the terms ought to be. You familiar with a woman by the name of Connie Clarke?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“You’re not sure? You think maybe you know her, but not definitely? I don’t get that.”

“The name is familiar, that’s all.”

“Ah. I see. Anything come to mind when I tell you her daughter’s name is Kim Corazon?”

He blinked rapidly. “Who the hell are you? What’s this about?”

“Can I come in, Mr. Montague? This is pretty personal stuff to be talking about in a doorway.”

“No, you can’t.” He shifted his weight slightly, his left hand still out of view. “Please get to the point.”

Gurney sighed, scratched his shoulder in a vaguely absent way, and fixed a dead stare on Robby Meese. “The thing is, I’ve been asked to provide personal security for Ms. Corazon, and I’m trying to decide how much to charge.”

“Charge? I don’t… I mean… I don’t see… What?”

“The thing is, I want to be fair. If I don’t really have to do anything-if I just have to hang around, keep my eyes open, be ready to handle what comes along-then that’s one kind of fee schedule. But if the situation requires, shall we say, preemptive action, then that’s another kind of fee schedule. You get my question here, Bobby?”

The eyelid tremor seemed to be getting worse. “Are you threatening me?”

“Am I threatening you? Why would I do that? Threatening you would be against the law. As a retired police officer, I have great respect for the law. Some of my best friends are police officers. Some of them are right here in Syracuse. Jimmy Schiff, for example. You might know him. Anyway, the thing is, I always like to do a fee analysis before I commit to a job. You can understand that, right? So let me ask you again: Do you know of any reason why my provision of personal security services to Ms. Corazon would require me to charge anything more than my normal fee?”

Meese started getting a shaky look in his eyes. “What the hell am I supposed to know about her security problems? What’s this got to do with me ?”

“You’ve got a good point there, Bobby. You look like a nice young man, very handsome young man, who would never want to cause anybody any trouble. Am I right?”

“I’m not the one causing trouble.”

Gurney nodded slowly, waited, feeling the current shifting.

Meese bit his lower lip. “We had a great relationship. I didn’t want it to end the way it did. These stupid accusations. False charges. Lies. Defamation of character. Bullshit complaints to the police. Now you. I don’t even understand what you’re here for.”

“I told you what I’m here for.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense. You shouldn’t be bothering me. You should be visiting the scumbags she brought into her life. If she has security problems, it’s because of them.”

“Who would these scumbags be?”

Meese laughed. It was a wild, caroming sound. A theatrical sound effect. “Did you know she’s fucking her professor, her so-called academic adviser? Did you know she’s fucking everybody who could possibly advance her trashy career? Did you know she’s fucking Rudy Getz, the biggest scumbag in the whole fucking world? Did you know she’s completely fucking crazy? Did you know that?” Meese seemed to be riding an emotional horse that was getting away from him.

Gurney wanted to keep it going, see where it would lead. “No, I didn’t know any of that. But I’m grateful for the information, Robert. I didn’t realize she was crazy. And that’s the kind of thing that could affect my fee schedule, big-time. Providing security for a crazy woman can be a huge fucking pain in the ass. How crazy would you say she is?”

Meese shook his head. “You’ll find out. I’m not saying another word. You’ll find out. You know where I was this afternoon? At my attorney’s office. We’re taking legal action against that bitch. My advice to you is to stay away from her. Far away.” He slammed the door.

The slam was followed by the sound of two locks snapping in place. It might all be an act, thought Gurney, but it sure as hell was an interesting one.

As Gurney followed the directions of his GPS back toward the interstate, the murky reflection of a fuchsia sunset was spreading across Onondaga Lake. On just about any other upstate body of water, it might have been beautiful. What lurks in the backs of our minds, however, has a profound effect on the way we process the data our optic nerves transmit. Thus what Gurney saw was not a reflected sunset but the imagined hell of a chemical fire burning on the toxic lake bed fifty feet below the surface.

He was aware that remediation efforts were addressing the damage to the lake. But this movement in the right direction made little difference in how he saw the place. In an odd way, it made it worse. Like seeing a guy coming out of an AA meeting makes his problem look more serious than seeing him coming out of a bar.