Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel (39 page)

The question facing him, back in his car a minute later, was what to do with it.

T
he fact that the Nineteenth Precinct station house was just a few blocks away on East Sixty-seventh Street focused Gurney on a mental list of the contacts he had there. He knew at least half a dozen detectives in the Nineteenth, maybe two of them well enough to approach for an awkward favor. And getting a set of prints lifted from the pilfered cordial glass and run against the FBI database—a process that would demand some wiggling around the need for a case number—was definitely awkward. He wasn’t about to explain his interest in knowing more about his luncheon host, but he wasn’t about to invent a lie that could later blow up in his face.

He decided he’d have to find another way to go about it. He placed the little glass carefully in the console compartment, put his cell phone on the seat beside him, started the car, and headed for the George Washington Bridge.

The first call he made along the way was to Sonya Reynolds.

“Where the hell have you been? What the hell have you been doing all afternoon?” She sounded angry, anxious, and completely ignorant of the day’s events, which he found reassuring.

“Great questions. I don’t know the answer to either one.”

“What happened? What are you talking about?”

“How much do you know about Jay Jykynstyl?”

“What’s this about? What the hell happened?”

“I’m not sure. Nothing good.”

“I don’t understand.”

“How much do you know about Jykynstyl?”

“I know what’s reported in the art media. Big buyer, very
selective. Huge financial influence on the market. Likes to be anonymous. Doesn’t allow his photograph to be taken. Likes there to be a lot of confusion about his personal life, even where he lives. Even whether he’s straight or gay. The more confusion, the more he likes it. Kind of obsessed with his privacy.”

“So you’d never met him, never even seen a photo of him, before he dropped into your gallery one day and said he wanted to buy my stuff?”

“What are you getting at?”

“How do you know that the man you spoke to is Jay Jykynstyl? Because he said so?”

“No. Exactly the opposite.”

“He said he
wasn’t
Jay Jykynstyl?”

“He said his name was Jay. Just Jay.”

“So how …?”

“I kept asking him, told him it would be very difficult to do business with him without knowing his full name, that it was ridiculous for me not to know who I was dealing with when so much money would be involved.”

“And he said … what?”

“He said Javits. His name was Jay Javits.”

“Like Jacob Javits? The guy who used to be a senator?”

“Right, but he said it sort of odd like, like the name just occurred to him and he felt he had to say something because I was making a big issue out of it. Dave, tell me why the fuck we’re talking about this. I want to know right now what happened today.”

“What happened is … it became plain that this whole deal is bullshit. I believe I was drugged and that lunch was some kind of setup that had nothing to do with my artwork.”

“That’s insane.”

“Getting back to the man’s identity—he told you his name was Jay Javits and you concluded from that that his name was Jay Jykynstyl?”

“Not like that, no. Don’t be silly. During the course of our conversation, we were talking about how pretty the lake was, and he mentioned he could see it from his room, so I asked him where he was staying, and he told me at a very beautiful inn, like he didn’t
want me to know the name. So later I called the Huntington, the most exclusive inn on the lake, and I asked if they had a Jay Javits registered there. At first the guy sounded confused, and then he asked me if maybe I had the name wrong. And I said sure, I’m getting older and my hearing is bad and sometimes I get names wrong. I tried to sound pathetic.”

“And you think you succeeded?”

“I must have. He said, ‘Could the person you want be named Jykynstyl?’ ”

“I asked him to spell the name, and he did, and I thought to myself,
‘Holy fucking Christ, is it really possible?’
So I asked him to describe this Jykynstyl guest, and he did, and it was obviously the same guy who had come to the gallery. So, you see, he didn’t want me to know who he was, but I found out.”

Gurney was silent. He thought a far more likely possibility was that Sonya had been smoothly manipulated into believing that the man was Jykynstyl—in a way that would leave her with no doubts about her conclusion. The subtlety and expertise of the con job was almost more disturbing than the con itself.

“You still there, David?”

“I need to make some more calls, and then I’ll get back to you.”

“You still haven’t told me what happened.”

“I have no idea what happened—other than the fact that I was lied to, drugged, driven around the city in a blackout, and threatened. Why and by whom I have no idea. I’m doing my best to find out. And I will find out.” The optimism in those last five words bore little relationship to the anger, fear, and confusion he felt. He promised again to get back to her.

His next call was to Madeleine. He made it without thinking about what he was going to say or checking the time. It wasn’t until she picked up with a sleepy sound in her voice that he glanced at the dashboard clock and saw that it was 10:04
P.M
.

“I was wondering when you’d finally call,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Pretty much. Sorry I didn’t call sooner. Things were a little nuts this afternoon.”

“What do you mean, ‘pretty much’?”

“Huh? Oh, I mean I’m okay, just in the middle of a little mystery.”

“How little?”

“Hard to say. But it seems that the Jykynstyl thing is some kind of con. I’ve been sort of running around tonight trying to get a handle on it.”

“What happened?” She was totally alert now, speaking in the perfectly calm voice that both masked and exposed her concern.

He was aware that he had a choice. He could relate everything he knew and feared, regardless of the effect on her. Or he could present a less complete, less disturbing version. In what he would later see as a self-deluding bit of fancy dancing, he chose the latter
as a first step
and told himself he would present the whole story as soon as he understood it better himself.

“I started feeling funny at lunch, and later, in the car, I was having trouble remembering the conversation we’d had.” He told himself that this was true, albeit somewhat minimized.

“Sounds like you were drunk.” Her voice was more questioning than assertive.

“Maybe. But … I’m not sure.”

“You think you were drugged?”

“It’s one of the possibilities I’ve been considering. Even though it doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, I’ve been checking the place out, and all I know for sure is that there’s something wrong about the whole situation—and the hundred-thousand-dollar offer is almost certainly baloney. But what I actually called to say is that I’m just leaving Manhattan and I should be home in about two and a half hours. I’m really sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

“Don’t race.”

“See you soon. Love you.”

He nearly missed the last exit from the Harlem River Drive to the GW Bridge. With a quick glance to his right, he swerved into the exit lane and onto the ramp, triggering the blare of an indignant car horn.

It was too late to call Kline. But if Hardwick was indeed back on the case, he might know something about the Karnala inquiry and Kline’s phone-message reference to the Skard family. With a little
luck, Hardwick would be awake, would answer the phone, and be willing to talk.

All three turned out to be true.

“What’s up, Sherlock? You couldn’t wait till morning to congratulate me on my reinstatement?”

“Congratulations.”

“Apparently you got everybody believing that Mapleshade grads are dropping like flies and everybody in the world has to be interviewed—which has created this huge manpower crunch that forced Rodriguez to bring me back into it. Almost made his head explode.”

“I’m glad you’re back. I have a couple of questions.”

“About the pooch?”

“Pooch?”

“The one that dug up Kiki.”

“The hell are you talking about, Jack?”

“Marian Eliot’s curious Airedale. You haven’t heard?”

“Tell me.”

“She was out working in her rose garden with Melpomene tied to a tree.”

“Who?”

“The Airedale’s name is Melpomene. Very sophisticated bitch. Somehow Melpomene manages to untie her rope. She wanders over behind the Muller house, starts rooting around in back of the woodshed. By the time Old Lady Eliot gets over there to retrieve her, Melpomene’s got a pretty good hole going. Something catches Old Lady Eliot’s eye. Guess what?”

“Jack, for Christ’s sake, just tell me.”

“She thought it was one of her gardening gloves.”

“For Christ’s sake, Jack …”

“Think about it. What might look like a glove?”

“Jack …”

“It was a decomposed hand.”

“And this hand was attached to Kiki Muller, the woman who supposedly ran off with Hector Flores?”

“The very same.”

Gurney was silent for a good five seconds.

“You got the wheels turning, Sherlock? Deducing, inducing, whatever the hell you do?”

“How did Kiki’s husband react to this?”

“Crazy Carl? Trainman under the tree? No reaction at all. I think his shrink has him so zapped on Xanax he’s beyond reaction. Fucking zombie. Or he’s putting on a hell of an act.”

“Is there any cause or approximate date of death?”

“She only got dug up this morning. But she’d definitely been in the ground awhile. Maybe a few months, which would put it back to the time of Hector’s disappearance.”

“What about the cause?”

“The ME hasn’t put it in writing yet, but based on my observation of the body I’d be willing to take a guess.”

Hardwick paused. Gurney clenched his teeth. He knew what was coming.

“I’d say her death might be related to the fact that her head was chopped off.”

A
rriving home well after midnight, Gurney got so little sleep that night that it hardly felt like sleep at all.

The next morning over coffee with Madeleine, he attributed his restlessness to his suspicions regarding “Jykynstyl” and to the growing intensity of the Perry case. Without saying so, he also attributed it to the metabolites of whatever chemical he’d been dosed with.

“You should have gone to the hospital.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Maybe you should go back to bed.”

“Too much going on. Besides, I’m too wound up to sleep.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Work.”

“You know it’s Sunday, right?”

“Right.” But he’d forgotten that it was. His confusion was scaring him. He had to do something to focus his mind on something concrete, a path to clarity, one foot after another.

“Maybe you should call Dichter’s office, ask if he can fit you in today.”

He shook his head. Dichter was their family doctor. Dr. Dichter. The silliness of it almost always made him smile, but not today.

“You said you might have been drugged. Are you taking that seriously enough? What kind of drug are you talking about?”

He wasn’t going to raise the specter of Rohypnol. Its sexual associations would trigger an explosion of questions and concerns he
didn’t feel capable of discussing. “I’m not sure. I’m guessing it was something with blackout effects similar to alcohol.”

She gave him that assessing look of hers that made him feel naked.

“Whatever it was,” he said, “it’s wearing off.” He knew he was sounding too casual, or at least too eager to move to another subject.

“Maybe there’s something you should be taking to counteract it.”

He shook his head. “I’m sure my body’s natural detoxing process will take care of it. What I need in the meantime is something to focus on.” That thought led him directly back to the Perry case, which led him to the call he’d made to Hardwick the previous evening, which led him to the sudden realization that their discussion of Melpomene and Kiki Muller’s decomposing hand had caused him to forget why he’d called Hardwick in the first place.

A moment later he was back on the phone to him.

“Skard?” rasped Hardwick unhappily. “Yeah, that name came up in connection with Karnala Fashion. By the way, it’s Sunday fucking morning. How urgent is this?”

Nothing with Hardwick was easy. But if you played the game, you could make it less difficult. One way to play was to escalate the vulgarity.

“How about a shotgun-to-your-balls level of urgency?”

For a couple of seconds, Hardwick was quiet, as if considering the number of points to award for artfulness of expression. “Karnala Fashion turns out to be a complicated outfit, hard to pin down. It’s owned by another corporation, which is owned by another corporation, which is owned by another corporation in the Cayman Islands. Very hard to say what business they’re actually in. But there seems to be a Sardinian connection, and the Sardinian connection seems to be connected to the Skard family. The Skards are reputed to be very bad people.”

“
Reputed
to be?”

“I don’t mean to suggest there’s any doubt about it. There’s just no legal proof of it. According to our friends at Interpol, no member of the Skard family has ever been convicted of anything. Potential witnesses always change their minds. Or they disappear.”

“The Skards own Karnala Fashion?”

“Probably. Everything about them is
probably
this,
probably
that. They don’t put much on paper.”

“So what the hell is Karnala Fashion all about?”

“Nobody knows. We can’t find a single fabric supplier or clothing retailer who’s ever done business with them. They run ads for incredibly expensive women’s clothes, but we can’t find evidence that they actually sell them.”