The Viper

“That’s how we explained the framing plot to the jury. But they didn’t buy it—for the simple reason that they found my client less appealing than Peskin. You win some, you lose some. Rarely for the right reasons. Fact of the criminal justice system. Fact of life, too. Have to go now, Gurney. Never keep a paying client waiting.”

Gurney sat back in the chair, gazing at the dead coals of yesterday’s fire. He was pondering what, for him, was the heart of the story—the deal Jimmy Peskin made with the desperate gem courier. Essentially, I’ll stage the robbery for you, if you give the police this phony account of what happened.

So, the courier got the money he wanted for his son—at the price of perjured testimony, an unjust murder conviction, and a dead parking lot attendant.

I’ll do what you want me to do, if you say what I want you to say.

He wondered if that basic quid pro quo could be the template underlying everything that had happened. Exactly what had been done and what had been said in return were yet to be determined, but the structure felt right.

The more he thought about it, the surer he became that there’d been some sort of deal at the root of the affair. A deal that led to six deaths: Lenny and Sonny Lerman, Ziko Slade, Bruno Lanka, Dominick Vesco, and Charlene Vesco. A tremor passed through him at the thought that Jack Hardwick might become the seventh.

The idea of losing Hardwick permanently led to another bleak issue weighing on his mind, his separation from Madeleine.

His departure felt less like a temper tantrum than the inevitable result of a fatal flaw in their marriage. But it was only a feeling. Rational thought on that subject was out of reach at that moment. He told himself there would be time enough to arrive at a clearer vision. If clarity was something he really wanted.

At the moment, he’d rather think about the beheading of Lenny Lerman or the bloody death of Charlene Vesco or just about anything other than the apparent collapse of his marriage.

67

AFTER GETTING A PAD FROM HIS SUITCASE UPSTAIRS AND a third cup of coffee from the kitchen, he took a seat at the dining room table and began making a list—partly of facts, partly of guesswork—to see if a new hypothesis might emerge.

It bothered him that he was turning again to the bogus satisfaction of list-making—a symptom of his isolation and a poor substitute for exposing his thoughts to an intelligent skeptic. But it was all he had. He put his notes in the present tense to make them feel more alive.

Lenny Lerman has a problem with his son that he believes money will fix.

He discovers he has a terminal illness.

An acquaintance tells him about a dark secret in Ziko Slade’s past.

With nothing to lose, he sees this as an opportunity for an extortion windfall.

He (like the courier in Thorne’s story) approaches a potential partner.

The potential partner agrees to help him, with a condition.

Lenny, like the courier, must make certain statements damaging to a third party.

When the extortion plan comes to a head, something goes wrong, and Lenny is killed.

Lenny’s head and fingers are removed.

Bruno Lanka brings the mutilated body to the attention of the police.

Slade is arrested, tried, and convicted, based on physical evidence and Lenny’s diary.

The list created more questions than answers.

Might the partner Lenny approached be the shadowy gangster at the edge of the Lerman family? What quid pro quo might that person have demanded in return for his help? Might it have involved Lenny claiming in his diary to have made certain threatening phone calls that he didn’t actually make? But if no extortion calls were made—or, to take it a step further, if no extortion plan existed at all—what did Lenny need a partner for?

The notion that the diary might be misleading struck Gurney as an intriguing premise for a new concept of the case. As a private record of Lerman’s thoughts and actions, including candid descriptions of his criminal intentions, its credibility had never been seriously challenged. Only the authenticity of his handwriting had been attested to. But if certain entries were lies—