John Verdon - Think of a Number

“There’s only one way out of a dead end.”

Of course, he thought. How absurdly obvious. Just walk in the opposite direction .

Stopping a man who has an overwhelming need to be in total control-who has an overwhelming need to kill to achieve that control-required that you do exactly the opposite of what all your instincts told you. And with Madeleine’s sentence clear as spring-water in his mind, he saw what he needed to do. It was outrageous, patently irresponsible, and legally indefensible if it didn’t work. But he knew it would.

“Now! Now, Gregory!” he hissed. “Shoot him!”

There was a shared moment of incomprehension as both men seemed to struggle to absorb what they had just heard, as they might struggle to understand a thunderclap on a cloudless day. Dermott’s deadly focus on Nardo wavered, and the direction of the gun-in-the-goose moved a little toward Gurney in the chair against the wall.

Dermott’s mouth stretched sideways in his morbid imitation of a grin. “I beg your pardon?” In the affected nonchalance, Gurney sensed a tremor of unease.

“You heard me, Gregory,” he said. “I told you to shoot him.”

“You… told … me?”

Gurney sighed with elaborate impatience. “You’re wasting my time.”

“Wasting…? What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The gun-in-the-goose moved farther in Gurney’s direction. The nonchalance was gone.

Nardo’s eyes were widening. It was hard for Gurney to gauge the mix of emotions behind the amazement. As though it were Nardo who’d demanded to know what was going on, Gurney turned toward him and said, as offhandedly as he could manage, “Gregory likes to kill people who remind him of his father.” There was a stifled sound from Dermott’s throat, like the beginning of a word or cry that got stuck there. Gurney remained determinedly focused on Nardo and went on in the same bland tone. “Problem is, he needs a little nudge from time to time. Gets bogged down in the process. And, unfortunately, he makes mistakes. He’s not as smart as he thinks. Oh, my goodness!” He paused and smiled speculatively at Dermott, whose jaw muscles were now visible. “That has possibilities, doesn’t it? Little Gregory Spinks-not as smart as he thinks . How about it, Gregory? Do you think that could be a new poem?” He almost winked at the rattled murderer but decided that might be a step too far.

Dermott stared at him with hatred, confusion, and something else. What Gurney hoped it was was a swirl of questions that a control freak would be compelled to pursue before killing the only man capable of answering them. Dermott’s next word, with its strained intonation, gave him hope.

“Mistakes?”

Gurney nodded ruefully. “Quite a few, I’m afraid.”

“You’re a liar, Detective. I don’t make mistakes.”

“No? What do you call them, then, if you don’t call them mistakes? Little Dickie Duck’s fuckups?”

Even as he said it, he wondered whether he had now taken that fatal step. If so, depending on where the bullet struck him, he might never know. In any event, there was no safe retreat route left. A wave of the tiniest vibrations unsettled the corners of Dermott’s mouth. Reclining incongruously on that bed, he seemed to be gazing at Gurney from a perch in hell.

Gurney actually knew of only one mistake Dermott had made-a mistake involving the Kartch check, which had finally gotten through to him only a quarter of an hour earlier when he’d looked at the framed copy of that check on the lamp table. But suppose he were to claim that he’d recognized the mistake and its significance from the beginning. What effect would that have on the man who was so desperate to believe he was in complete control?

Again Madeleine’s maxim came to mind, but in reverse. If you can’t back up, then full speed ahead . He turned toward Nardo, as if the serial killer in the room could safely be ignored.

“One of his silliest fuckups was when he gave me the names of the men who’d sent checks to him. One of the names was Richard Kartch. The thing is, Kartch sent the check in a plain envelope with no cover note. The only identification was the name printed on the check itself. The name on the check was R. Kartch, and that’s also the way it was signed. The R could have stood for Robert, Ralph, Randolph, Rupert, or a dozen other names. But Gregory knew it stood for Richard-yet at the same time he claimed no other familiarity or contact with the sender than the name and address on the check itself-which I saw in the mail at Kartch’s house in Sotherton. So I knew right away from the discrepancy that he was lying. And the reason was obvious.”

This was too much for Nardo. “You knew? Then why the hell didn’t you tell us so we could pick him up?”

“Because I knew what he was doing and why he was doing it, and I had no interest in stopping him.”

Nardo looked like he’d stepped into an alternate universe where the flies were swatting the people.

A sharp clicking noise drew Gurney’s attention back to the bed. The old woman was tapping her red glass shoes together like Dorothy leaving Oz on her way home to Kansas. The gun-in-the-goose on Dermott’s lap was now pointed directly at Gurney. Dermott was making an effort-at least Gurney hoped it required an effort-to appear unfazed by the Kartch revelation. He articulated his words with a peculiar precision.

“Whatever game you’re playing, Detective, I’m the one who’s going to end it.”

Gurney, with all the undercover acting experience he could bring to the moment, tried to speak with the confidence of a man who had a concealed Uzi zeroed in on his enemy’s chest. “Before you make a threat,” he said softly, “be sure you understand the situation.”

“Situation? I fire, you die. I fire again, he dies. The baboons come through the door, they die. That’s the situation.”

Gurney closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, uttering a deep sigh. “Do you have any idea… any idea at all…?” he began, then shook his head wearily. “No. No, of course you don’t. How could you?”

“Any idea of what, Detective?” Dermott used the title with exaggerated sarcasm.

Gurney laughed. It was an unhinged sort of laugh, meant to raise new questions in Dermott’s mind, but actually energized by a rising tide of emotional chaos in himself.

“Guess how many men I’ve killed,” he whispered, glaring at Dermott with a wild intensity-praying that the man wouldn’t recognize the time-consuming purpose of his desperate ad-libbing, praying that the Wycherly cops would soon take note that Nardo was missing. Why the hell hadn’t they noticed already? Or had they? The glass shoes continued to click.

“Stupid cops kill people all the time,” said Dermott. “I couldn’t care less.”

“I don’t mean just any men. I mean men like Jimmy Spinks. Guess how many men like him I’ve killed.”

Dermott blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about killing drunks. Ridding the world of alcoholic animals, exterminating the scum of the earth.”

Once again there was an almost imperceptible vibration around Dermott’s mouth. He had the man’s attention, no doubt about that. Now what? What else but ride the wave. There was no other transportation in sight. He composed his words as he spoke them.

“Late one night in the Port Authority bus terminal, when I was a rookie cop, I was told to roust some derelicts from the rear entryway. One wouldn’t leave. I could smell the stink of the whiskey from ten feet off. I told him again to get out of the building, but instead of going out the door, he started coming toward me. He pulled a kitchen knife out of his pocket-a little knife with a serrated blade like you’d use to slice an orange. He brandished the knife in a threatening manner and ignored my order to drop it. Two witnesses who saw the confrontation from the escalator swore that I shot him in self-defense.” He paused and smiled. “But that’s not true. If I’d wanted to, I could have subdued him without even breathing hard. Instead I shot him in the face and blew his brains out the back of his head. You know why I did that, Gregory?”