The Viper

“Good. Pick a spot, pick a time.”

Gurney thought about it, hesitated, then made his choice. “This afternoon, two o’clock, in front of the Harbane town hall.”

“I look forward to seeing you, Mr. Gurney. At two o’clock.”

The man’s voice was as placid as the purring of a cat.

28

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR GURNEY TO START FEELING UNCOMFORTABLE about the meeting in Harbane. It wasn’t the physical situation that made him uneasy. The town hall was next to the police station, cops would be coming and going all day, he’d be armed himself, and he’d faced hundreds of situations riskier than this down in the city. It was the silky confidence of the voice on the phone.

He decided to call Jack Hardwick.

The man answered the way he often did. “The fuck you want now?”

“Any chance you might be free this afternoon?”

“I’m on standby.”

“Standby?”

“I provide occasional security for a major asshole. He may call today.”

“This major asshole needs armed protection?”

“Wants it more than he needs it. He’s got a conspiracy theory website—a shitload of lunatic nonsense. But he wants people to think his life is in danger because of all the truth he’s exposing. Like the fact that the big California tech companies are run by a secret society of satanic dwarfs. He likes having a visible bodyguard at his public appearances. He thinks creating the impression that he might be shot makes him newsworthy. He plans to run for Congress. Probably win by a landslide. Big appetite out there for bullshit. So, why do you want to know if I’m free?”

“I’m meeting someone in Harbane at two o’clock in front of the town hall—a guy who claims to have inside information on the Lerman murder. The Lerman ‘hit’ is what he called it.”

“You know anything about this guy?”

“Nothing.”

“You have a concern about his intentions?”

“I have a concern about his lack of concern. Sounded too relaxed.”

Hardwick cleared his throat in his disgusting style. “I should get a call by noon to let me know if he needs me. If not, I’ll head for Harbane. By the way, I checked out that guy you asked me about.”

“Bruno Lanka?”

“Owns a specialty-foods market in a seedy suburb of Albany. No rap sheet. You want me to go see him, ask a few questions?”

“Not at the moment. Hope to see you this afternoon.”

Gurney’s gaze returned to the snow that was falling in slow motion on the high pasture, but he hardly saw it. His mind was on Harbane. A bleak place. The buildings along the main street, more than a century old, exhibited the decrepitude of age without the charm of antiquity. Among the shabby storefronts on that street there was, inexplicably, an excellent Vietnamese restaurant that he and Madeleine had visited three times in the past year.

Thinking about their first meal there, he remembered they chose that restaurant because it was near a town where they were attending a chamber music concert. All he recalled of the concert itself were the dramatic gyrations of the young Asian cellist—an image that suddenly reminded him to bring Madeleine her cello. It would be most efficient to go first to Harbane and then to the clinic. Doing it that way would also give him more time with the case files before setting out.

With everything squared away, he returned to the transcript of Scott Derlick’s interview with Lerman’s old boss at the Beer Monster.

He was still on the first page of the six-page document when a Bing! announced the arrival of an email from Kyra Barstow. He put down the transcript and clicked on the email.

There was no covering note, just two attachments. The first was a copy of Lenny Lerman’s Visa statement for the previous November. He glanced through it. Other than the transactions at the gas station and the auto supply store that Barstow mentioned, he saw nothing of interest.

The second attachment was a printout of Lerman’s phone calls for the months of October and November. He counted twelve outgoing and ten incoming calls. Barstow had put a check mark next to six of the incoming calls, all from the same number. At the bottom of the printout she had written, “That number was assigned to an anonymous prepaid phone that was used exclusively for the six calls to Lerman. The first call occurred on October 23 and the final call occurred on November 23, the day of Lerman’s death.”

The fact that someone acquired an anonymous phone for the sole purpose of communicating with Lerman—and solely during the weeks when he was developing his blackmail scheme—suggested that he and the caller might have been partners in the affair.

Gurney sorted through the case files on his desk until he found the photocopy of Lerman’s brief diary—his handwritten record of key moments in that five-week period. Checking the dates of the diary entries against the dates of Lerman’s communications with the owner of the anonymous phone, he noted several correlations.