It was closer to nine-thirty than nine when they got Kay Spalter’s call on Gurney’s landline. He put it on speakerphone in the den.
“Hey, Kay,” said Hardwick. “How are things in beautiful Bedford Hills?”
“Fabulous.” Her voice was rough, dry, impatient. “You there, Dave?”
“I’m here.”
“You said you were going to have more questions for me?”
He wondered if her abruptness was a way of feeling in control or just a symptom of prison tension. “I’ve got half a dozen of them.”
“Go ahead.”
“Last time we spoke, you mentioned a mob guy, Donny Angel, as someone we should look at for Carl’s murder. The problem is, the hit on Carl seems too complicated for that.”
“What do you mean?” She sounded curious rather than challenging.
“Angel knew him, knew a lot about him. He could have put together an easier hit than a sniper shot at a cemetery service five hundred yards away. So let’s assume for a minute that Angel wasn’t the bad guy. If you had to come up with a second choice, who would it be?”
“Jonah.” She said it without emotion and without hesitation.
“The motive being control of the family company?”
“Control would allow him to mortgage enough properties to expand the Cyberspace Cathedral into the biggest religious rip-off project in the world.”
“How much do you know about this goal of his?”
“Nothing. I’m guessing. My point is, Jonah’s a much bigger sleazeball than anyone realizes, and company control means big money for him. Big. I do know he asked Carl about mortgaging some buildings and Carl told him to go fuck himself.”
“Nice brotherly relationship. Any other candidates for killer?”
“Maybe a hundred other people whose toes Carl stomped on.”
“When I asked you the other day why you stayed with him, you gave me sort of a joke answer. At least, I think it was a joke. I need to know the real reason.”
“Truth is, I don’t know the real reason. I used to search for that mystery glue that attached me to him, but I could never identify it. So maybe I really am a cheap gold digger.”
“Are you sorry he’s dead?”
“Maybe a little.”
“What was your day-to-day relationship like?”
“Generous, patronizing, and controlling on his part.”
“And on yours?”
“Loving, admiring, and submissive. Except when he went too far.”
“And then?”
“Then all hell would break loose.”
“Did you ever threaten him?”
“Yes.”
“In front of witnesses?”
“Yes.”
“Give me an example.”
“There were quite a few.”
“Give me the worst.”
“On our tenth wedding anniversary, Carl invited a few other couples to have dinner with us. He drank too much and got on his favorite drunk theme: ‘You can take the girl out of Brooklyn, but you can’t take Brooklyn out of the girl.’ And that night it escalated into some grandiose bullshit about how he was going to run for president after he became governor of New York, and how I was going to be his link to the common man. He said he was going to be like Juan Peron in Argentina, and I would be his Evita. My job would be to make all the blue-collar workers love him. He added a few sexual suggestions as to how I might go about that. And then he said this really stupid thing. He said I could buy a thousand pairs of shoes, just like Evita.”
“For some reason, that was too much. Why was it too much? No idea. But it was too much. Too stupid.”
“And?”
“And I screamed at him that the lady with the thousand pairs of shoes wasn’t Evita Peron, it was Imelda Marcos.”
“That’s it?”
“Not completely. I also said if he ever talked about me like that again, I’d cut off his dick and shove it up his ass.”
Hardwick, who hadn’t uttered a syllable since his question about beautiful Bedford Hills, broke out into a braying laugh, which she ignored.
Gurney switched direction. “How much do you know about silencers for guns?”
“I know that cops call them suppressors, not silencers.”
“What else?”
“They’re illegal in this state. They’re more effective with subsonic ammunition. Cheap ones are okay—expensive ones are a lot better.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I asked at the firing range where I took lessons.”
“Why?”
“Same reason I was there to begin with.”
“Because you thought you might have to shoot someone to protect Carl?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever buy or borrow a silencer?”
“No. They got Carl before I got around to it.”
“ ‘They’ being the mob?”
“Yes. I heard what you said about the sniper route being an odd way for them to go about it. But I still think it was them. More likely them than Jonah.”
He didn’t see any advantage in debating the point. He decided to go down another path. “Apart from Angel, were there any other mob figures he was close to?”
For the first time in their exchange, she hesitated.
After a few seconds Gurney thought they’d been disconnected. “Kay?”
“There was someone he used to talk about, someone who was part of a poker group he played with.”
Gurney noted an uneasiness in her voice. “Did he mention a name?”
“No. He just mentioned what the guy did for a living.”
“Which was?”
“He arranged murders. Sort of like a broker, a go-between. If you wanted someone killed, you’d go to him and he’d get someone to do it.”
“You sound upset talking about him.”
“It bothered me that Carl wanted to play in a high-stakes game with someone who did that for a living. I said to him one day, ‘You really want to play poker against a guy who sets up mob hits? A guy who doesn’t think twice about having someone murdered? Isn’t that a little nuts?’ He told me that I didn’t understand. He said gambling was all about the risk and the rush. And the risk and the rush were a lot bigger when you were sitting across the table from Death.” She paused. “Look, I don’t have much more time. Are we done?”
“Just one more thing. How come there was such a long delay between Mary Spalter’s death and her burial?”
“What delay?”
“She was buried on a Friday. But it appears that she must have died a week before that—or at least before the previous Sunday.”
“What are you talking about? She died on a Wednesday and was buried two days later.”
“Two days? Only two? You’re sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure. Look up the obituary. What’s this all about?”
“I’ll let you know when I find out myself.” Gurney glanced over at Hardwick. “Jack, you have anything you need to cover with Kay while we have her on the phone?”
Hardwick shook his head, then spoke with exaggerated heartiness. “Kay, we’ll be in touch with you again soon, okay? And don’t worry. We’re on the right track for the outcome we all want. Everything we’re discovering here is a plus for our side.”
He sounded a hell of a lot surer than he looked.