John Verdon - Shut Your Eyes Tight

“Any other ideas?” asked Gurney blandly, scanning the far corners of the room. The wiry man looked disgusted.

After a long pause, one of the three women attendees spoke up in a low but confident Hispanic-accented voice. “Establish and maintain trust.”

“What was that?” The question came from three different directions at once.

“Establish and maintain trust,” she repeated, a bit louder.

“Interesting,” said Gurney. “What makes that the most important goal?”

She gave a little shrug as though the answer were the most obvious thing on earth. “Because if you don’t have their trust, you have nothing.”

Gurney smiled. “ ‘If you don’t have their trust, you have nothing.’ Very good. Anybody disagree with that?”

Nobody did.

“Of course we want the truth,” said Gurney. “The whole truth, with all the incriminating details, just like Detective Falcone here said.”

The man eyed him coldly.

Gurney went on, “But as this other officer said-without trust what do you have? You have nothing. Maybe worse than nothing. So trust comes first-always. Put trust first, you’ve got a good chance of getting the truth. Put getting the truth first, you’ve got a good chance of getting a bullet in the back of the head.”

That got some nods, plus some increased attention.

“Which brings us to the second big question for today. How do you do it? How do you go about establishing the level of trust that will not only keep you alive but also make your undercover work pay off?” Gurney felt himself warming to the subject. As his energy level rose, he could see it starting to spread out into his audience.

“Remember, in this game you’re dealing with naturally suspicious people. Some of these guys are very impulsive. Not only might they shoot you on the spot, but they’d also be proud of it. They like looking bad. They like looking sharp, quick, decisive. How do you get guys like that to trust you? How do you survive long enough to make the operation worthwhile?”

This time the responses came quicker.

“By acting and behaving like they do.”

“By acting exactly like whoever you’re supposed to be.”

“Consistency. Stick to your cover identity, no matter what.”

“Believe the identity. Believe that you really are who you say you are.”

“Stay cool, always cool, no sweat. Show no fear.”

“Courage.”

“Brass balls.”

“Believe your own truth, baby. I am who I am. I am invincible. Untouchable. Do not fuck with me.”

“Yeah, make believe you’re Al Pacino,” said Falcone, looking for a laugh, not getting it, just creating a hiccup in the group momentum.

Gurney ignored him, glanced inquiringly at the Hispanic woman.

She hesitated. “You have to show them some passion.”

This triggered a few wiseass laughs around the room and a leering grin from Falcone.

“Grow up, assholes,” she said calmly. “What I mean is, you have to let them see something real in you. Something they can feel, that they know in their gut is true. It can’t all be bullshit.”

Gurney felt a pleasant rush of excitement-his reaction whenever he recognized a star student in one of his classes. It was an experience that reinforced his decision to participate as a guest lecturer in these seminars.

“ ‘It can’t all be bullshit,’ ” he repeated, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Absolutely true. Authentic emotion-credible passion-is essential to effective deception . Your undercover persona must be based on a real emotional piece of yourself. Otherwise it’s all posing, all imitation, all fake, all bullshit. And superficial bullshit rarely works. Superficial bullshit gets undercover people killed.”

He did a quick survey of the thirty-nine faces and found he now had the positive attention of at least thirty-five. “So it’s all about trust. Credibility. The more your target believes in you, the more you’ll get out of him. And a big part of his belief in you depends on your ability to channel real emotion into your artificial role, to use a real piece of yourself to bring your cover personality to life-real anger, rage, greed, lust, disgust-whatever the moment calls for.”

He turned away from them, ostensibly to insert an old VHS videotape into a player beneath a large monitor set against the front wall and to check that everything was plugged in. When he turned back, however, his expression-in fact, the whole attitude of his body, the way he moved, the impression he gave of a man struggling to stifle a volcano of rage-sent a shock wave of tension through the classroom.

“You gonna get some crazy motherfucker to buy your act, you better find a sick place in you, then you talk to him from that place, you let that crazy motherfucker know that deep down inside you there’s an even crazier motherfucker who someday is gonna tear some motherfucker’s heart out, chew it up, and spit it in his fucking face. But for now, just for now, you’re keeping that rabid dog in your gut under control. Just barely under control.” He took a sudden step toward the first row and noted with satisfaction that everyone, including Falcone-especially Falcone-jerked back into a position of defensive readiness.

“Okay,” said Gurney with a reassuring smile, resuming his normal demeanor, “that’s just a quick example of the emotional side. Credible passion. Most of you had a gut-level reaction to that anger, that lunacy. Your first thought was that it was real, that this Gurney guy’s got a screw loose, right?”

There were some nods, a few nervous laughs, as the body language in the room relaxed about halfway.

“So what are you saying?” asked Falcone edgily. “That somewhere inside you there’s a fucking lunatic?”

“I’ll leave that question open for now.”

There were a few more laughs, friendlier.

“But the fact is, there’s more shit, nasty shit, inside each of us-all of us-than we realize. Don’t let it go to waste. Find it and use it. In the undercover life, the shit you normally don’t want to look at in yourself could be your biggest asset. The buried treasure that saves your life.”

There were personal examples he could have given them, situations in which he had taken a dark tile from the mosaic of his childhood and magnified it into a hellish mural that fooled some very perceptive antagonists. In fact, the single most compelling example of the process had occurred at the end of the Mellery case, less than a year earlier. But he wasn’t about to go into that now. It was attached to some unresolved issues in his life he didn’t feel like stirring up, not now, not for a seminar. Besides, it wasn’t necessary. He had the feeling his students were already with him. Their minds were more open. They’d stopped debating. They were thinking, wondering, receptive.

“Okay, like I said, that was the emotional part. Now I want to take you to the next level-the level where your brains and emotions come together and make you the best undercover operative you can be, not just a guy with a stupid hat and baggy pants falling off his ass trying to look like a crack addict.”

A few smiles, shrugs, maybe a defensive frown here and there.

“Now-I want you to ask yourselves a strange question. I want you to ask yourself why you believe the things you believe. Why do I believe anything? ”

Before they had time to get lost in, or put off by, the abstract depths of this line of inquiry, he punched the “play” button on the videotape machine. As the first image appeared, he said, “While you’re watching the video clip, keep that question in the back of your mind: Why do I believe anything? ”