The Viper

“More creepy is his excitement watching this happen.” Valdez paused, the tiniest tremor in his expression. “Apart from that, he appears normal, just an ordinary man, unremarkable in every way.” Valdez paused again. “Except when he eats. He gnaws on his food like a rat.”

It took Gurney a while to assimilate all this.

“Is he as wary of you as you are of him?”

“He is wary of everyone. No one can get near him who he has not invited. As for me, he regards me as a piece of his property that he is determined to regain control of. Everything you have said about his attacks on Ziko proves this. I believe you because I know this man. I can feel in my heart that he would frame Ziko for murder, then set up his faked suicide—all to destroy Ziko in my eyes, to destroy my belief that a new life is possible, to make me come back to him. It is the strongest desire in him—to be in control of everything and everyone.”

“It may also be his weak point,” said Gurney. “It could be our way in.”

“Getting in is difficult. Getting close to him is more difficult. Getting close with a weapon is impossible. There are guards. There are metal detectors. There are the snakes. So many snakes. It is not an ordinary house.”

“So, it would seem that we need to get an invitation.”

“Easy for me. Not so easy for you.”

Gurney got up from his armchair and began pacing around the room, in the hope that the movement might give rise to ideas that wouldn’t have occurred to him sitting in one spot.

After circling the room several times, Gurney stopped in a far corner, then turned to Valdez. “Suppose you wanted to kill me . . . and make my body disappear. Is that something he’d be willing to help you with?”

Valdez looked up from the fire.

“Possibly. But it’s hard to deceive him. Many people have died trying. He enjoys killing people who have lied to him.”

“It sounds like disabling his defenses will be like defusing a bomb.”

“A bomb with many triggers.”

“So,” said Gurney, beginning again his slow pacing around the room, “we have to construct a lie that he’d be eager to believe.”

AN HOUR LATER, they had agreed on the details of that lie, on a dark favor Valdez would ask for, and on a final risky stratagem that would neutralize the man toward whom Valdez appeared to bear an implacable hatred.

He stood in front of the fireplace, a few feet from Gurney, his phone in his hand.

“I must prepare you for something you may find disturbing. In this phone call, I will be the person I once was, the person he wants me to be again. You understand?”

“I think so.”

“You will naturally hear only my part of the conversation, but I will try to say enough so that it will make sense to you.” With a tiny tic at the corner of his eye—the only hint of anxiety Gurney could see—Valdez entered a number and waited.

“Yes,” he said a few seconds later. “It’s Ivan.”

Interesting, thought Gurney, wondering exactly when the young man had dropped the “v” and turned the Russian name into a British one.

“That’s right,” said Valdez into the phone. “I need to talk to him.”

He waited. At least two minutes passed before he spoke again.

“Yes, it’s me. I’ve got a situation here. An ex-cop, David Gurney, has been poking around the Slade-Lerman case. He’s come to see me a few times. His story at first was that he thought Slade was innocent and was trying to exonerate him. He asked me for some money for expenses. Okay, I thought, I’ll give him a couple of grand, see what he can find out. He comes back a week or two later, says he needs five grand. I’m thinking this is bullshit. But I’m curious where he’s going with this, so I give him the five, let him think I’m easy. Week later he comes to me again, says there may be a problem. Says he’s finding out things that could incriminate me for the murder of Lerman. He says that would also finger me for framing Slade, which is fucking insane. Makes me think my life would be simpler if I never met Ziko Slade. No matter. Water under the fucking bridge. Anyway, after Slade hangs himself, Gurney comes to me and says he found out I’ll be picking up nine mil from Slade’s estate, and that’s going to point the finger at me for sure, but he can make that go away, and all he needs is a hundred grand. But I can see in his fucking eyes that the hundred grand would just be the first bite.”

Valdez was silent for nearly a minute, the phone pressed to his ear, his dark eyes gleaming in the firelight.

When he spoke again, it was with a harsh dismissiveness. “No, no, no, it’s not all about the money. Listen to me. I don’t care about chasing money, I don’t care about spending money, I don’t care about how much money I have. But someone tries to pick my pocket, I’ll cut his fucking hand off. Fucker thinks he can sucker me out of a hundred grand with some shit about protecting me from a frame job? That’s one fucking serious mistake.”

He was silent for maybe half a minute, listening intently to the voice on the phone, before responding in a less excited but no less menacing tone.