Zero Hour

“On first glance… it’s quite a specimen,” he said, and moistened his lips with his tongue. “Unbelievably convincing. I’d need to give it a proper look to be sure, study its characteristics thoroughly…”

“No obstacle,” Lathrop said. “You’ve got a setup at home. All kinds of precision instruments, right?”

Avram nodded.

“Go ahead and take that stone, or any other one from the case,” Lathrop said. “Pick it out at random. I’ve got some things to keep me busy over the next few days, and that should give you time to run your tests. Be as thorough as you want before making your decision.”

Avram looked at him.

“An authenticated cabochon of this size could be worth three-quarters of a million dollars,” he said. “What you propose, we’d call it lending on memo at the Exchange. A slip is written up, a record of the stone passing hands…”

“And you’re curious why I don’t worry about you maybe having evil inclinations, disappearing with that little beauty.”

Another slow nod from Avram.

Lathrop met his gaze, held it steadily.

“Avram, you’re a family man.”

“The dazzle of wealth has tempted family men to run off before. Leave everything behind and choose lives of freedom and luxury.”

Lathrop nodded. Then he reached out, put his hand over Avram’s open fingers, and pressed them shut around the stone in his palm.

“Between us,” he said, “you ever feel that temptation creeping up, remember I know where your wife and children sleep at night.”

* * *

Cold, she thought, it was so cold. And dark outside.

It hit her the instant she left her apartment condominium, smacked her hard in the face, this spiteful winter gloom. Still shy of five-thirty P.M., and you’d think it was the middle of the night — exactly what could push her to feel more depressed and heartsick than was already the case. But she had to maintain some semblance of normalcy for the sake of her daughter. The poor kid needed to keep socializing with other children. Needed some distraction from the automatic routine of school, homework, and hanging around the cheerless atmosphere of their apartment until bedtime. Waiting for her father, watching her mother wait. The two of them just hoping to hear from him, wishing Pat would call as he so often would late in the day… or better, so much better, imagining he’d surprise them and come walking right in the front door.

A beanie-style cap pulled down over her forehead, a wool scarf wrapped around her mouth, the collar of her ski jacket zipped high to her chin, she turned up the street from the building’s entrance courtyard, glad it was only a short walk to the indoor playspace where she’d left her daughter a little over an hour before. At five hundred dollars per year, an unlimited admission pass to GoKids almost could be considered a bargain. Compared to the cost of standard daycare, it was a bargain nowadays, but who was she kidding? It had been a long time since money had been a concern for her, Pat wouldn’t have balked if the annual tab had come to five times that amount.

In his way, he was a good family man. And in their own screwy way they’d made things work as parents.

She hurried along the sidewalk, bowing her head to keep the wind out of her eyes. There’d been nothing like these supervised after-school centers when she was young, she thought, especially in the working-class area where she grew up. Nowhere outside her bedroom to play with her girlfriends in the depths of winter, unless it was at one of their family’s apartments, in one of their rooms… and after a while they’d all just felt confined, restless, and bored with the very same toys that had seemed as if they would be never-ending fun while still gift-wrapped under the sparkling lights and ornaments of a Christmas tree. Children didn’t lose their need or desire to be physically active when the fall came and leaves started dropping from the trees, but in New York, or anywhere close to the city, they barely had opportunities to exercise outdoors until spring came around. To stretch themselves. True, her daughter had skating, and sledding if there was snow on the ground, but first you had to get her ready, and then bring her over to a park or ice rink, these being scattered far and wide across the area. The travel and preparation involved made it a project that was strictly for weekends, when they could turn it into a full-day affair. And under the circumstances, in her current state of mind… just getting herself together and in gear sometimes seemed impossible.

It was a blessing, GoKids. An absolute blessing. With slides of every type, a sandbox, climbing ladders, jungle gyms, and hideout tunnels, it amounted to a modern playground with a roof over it, and had made all the difference in the world to her daughter, giving her something bright she could look forward to every day, a level of companionship and attention that was otherwise absent from her life right now… and that her own mother recognized she couldn’t provide.

Even trying her best to cope, aware she couldn’t put her responsibilities on hold no matter what else was going on around her, she’d been unable to manufacture a smile for her little girl these past several days. Not while she constantly felt like tearing her hair out of her head by the damned roots in her worry, or medicating herself into a stupor to quiet the scared and — God forgive her—furious voice in her head that told her Pat had gone too far this time around, gotten too many big ideas for his own good, taken the sort of chances that she’d repeatedly warned had been bound to lead toward serious trouble… trouble that could swallow up everyone and everything around him.

But she didn’t want to think about it right now. What was the use? It would do her a lot more good to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

She walked on into the wind with her head low, hoping she didn’t crash right into somebody while rushing blindly toward the intersection. Luckily there weren’t many people around at the moment. In another half an hour it would be six o’clock and the street would fill with commuters returning from work, but this was the lull when most nine-to-fivers were still in transit, jammed together in crowded trains and buses.

She could almost envy them, ridiculous as that sounded. Their average routines, their common complaints… right now she would have traded for them in a minute.

It was so cold out here, so dark and cold.

Her daughter’s playspace was about five blocks downtown, and she would need to cross the street heading toward it, walk south on the next avenue. But the parked cars along the curb were crammed so close together — bumper to bumper, almost — that it seemed impossible to find an opening between them, another of this city’s ongoing shortages being available spots. She figured it would be better to wait till she reached the intersection than catch her coat or slacks trying to squeeze between fenders.

Those cars aside, her block rarely got too congested. Residential, lined with trees, it was a lot quieter than most, and could almost make you forget what a busy part of town this was in general. She supposed the corner park over on the other side of the block, Peter’s Field, also helped cut down on foot traffic. In fact, she herself wasn’t eager to walk past it. There were usually strong gusts kicking up all around its fences, probably something to do with how the wind sort of pooled and swirled around the park, really just a little open space with some benches where the old men and women liked to sit around feeding the pigeons, and athletic courts the basketball and tennis players claimed as their own in the summertime.

She would hate to cross the street there, but couldn’t avoid it, and admittedly felt like a spoiled, selfish bitch even letting a minor inconvenience of that sort enter her thoughts. These days, she had heavier concerns pressing down on her shoulders, and might have given anything in the world to see them lifted. Having an indoor center for her daughter so close to home… she knew she really ought to be thankful for that and leave it alone.

Still hunched forward against the wind, she was unaware of the guy who stepped from the front passenger side of the parked car on her left until he called her name, and even then almost crashed into his door as it swung open over the sidewalk. Startled, not recognizing his voice, she came to an abrupt halt and looked up at him, barely avoiding the door.

His face, what she was able to see of it in the dark, was unfamiliar to her.

“Nice to see you,” he said, smiling, repeating her name as he sidled around the door, quickly moving right up in front of her.