Zero Hour

The changeover from mixed to solid precip had finally worked its way over the river to Manhattan, and Lathrop felt hard pellets of ice rattle his open umbrella as he glanced up at the NO STANDING sign from the pavement. Violators, it warned, would be towed and fined on schooldays, accounting for the absence of any other parked vehicles on that side of the block.

When the tow trucks made their first passes for illegally parked cars around seven o’ clock in the morning, their drivers would be quick to spot an expensive British sedan they could never afford on their workaday salaries, assume it belonged to some privileged Upper East Side scofflaw, and then put on the boots and cart it across town into impound — spite and envy being two of the sweetest motivators Lathrop had found in life’s big cookie jar. The Jag would sit there in the city yard indefinitely among hundreds of other tows until someone noticed it was missing and went through whatever bureaucratic hoops had to be jumped to find and redeem it. Lathrop suspected that wouldn’t happen for several days, perhaps longer, and overnight was really all the hang time he needed.

Still, he wasn’t about to relax. There were moves he wanted to make, and though exactly what they would be depended on circumstances he didn’t yet know — and the opportunities he could create within them — it was never too soon to get started.

The attache in his free hand, Lathrop raised his collar, bent his head low behind his umbrella, and strode off down the empty street in the driving wind and hail.

TWO

NEW YORK CITY / HUDSON VALLEY

“My husband’s been missing for almost a week,” she said.

Lenny Reisenberg looked at the woman seated across his desk, thinking this wasn’t exactly fast-breaking news to him. He’d known about it since the Nassau County Police detectives arrived only a few days earlier for what they had called an informal chat.

“They tell me you could be the last person who saw him,” she said. “That you’re the last person he’s supposed to have met…”

Lenny had also learned that, courtesy of the detectives. His business lunch with Patrick Sullivan on the afternoon he vanished had been Sullivan’s final appointment… or at least the final appointment reminder Sullivan had entered into his office computer’s scheduler program for that particular day. And the two of them had, in fact, connected for a late-afternoon huddle at a down-home Southern restaurant over near the Flatiron Building a few blocks downtown, their shared fondness for sweet-potato fries and corn bread, house specialties, having made it a favorite spot for getting together.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I wonder… I was hoping you could tell me how Pat seemed when you met,” Mrs. Sullivan went on. “If he acted like anything was wrong. Or gave you an idea where he was heading afterwards. Anything you might have noticed.” She cleared her throat. “I need to find out what in the world’s happened to him… ”

The detectives had been here for the same essential reason, Lenny reflected. But their interest was dryly professional, their questions delivered in courteous matter-of-fact tones. And he guessed that was understandable; they’d seen enough cases of married men going off on prolonged toots. Lenny had gotten the sense they’d believed this case would eventually resolve itself with hubby showing up at his front door, tussled and unshaven, his front shirttail caught in his fly, the business card he’d been handed with a wink at the Mustang Ranch tossed out of his back pocket somewhere en route from Nevada.

Patrick Sullivan’s wife obviously felt otherwise. She had come to him in anguish and desperation. This was her husband she was talking about, not a case she’d been assigned by a disinterested squad lieutenant.

Her husband was missing.

Almost a full week now.

Lenny wished he could tell her something useful.

He kept looking at Mary Sullivan in the quiet of his office, his morning coffee untouched in front of him. She would not have been mistaken for any of his sophisticated female colleagues here on the top floor of UpLink International’s regional shipping headquarters. They knew executive vogue down to the buttons and buckles. But she might have looked right at home behind a reception desk, or at a work cubicle on one of the lower floors where he’d gotten his first break with the company, and maybe his last chance at making something of himself, two decades ago. He’d been some piece of work then. A Regent’s scholarship winner who’d managed to get booted out of college in his first semester. An aimless young man without self-confidence or any immediate plans beyond making his next month’s rent… and barely looking that far ahead.

A product of Brooklyn to his marrow, Lenny saw the old and familiar in Mrs. Sullivan’s choice of clothes, just as he heard it clearly in her speech. In her late forties or early fifties, she had reddish-blond hair that was a little too sprayed and swept around to look stylish, features a little too blunt to be pretty, and a figure a little too thick around the waist, hips, and thighs to be what most men considered well-proportioned. Everything about her appearance ran true to form. Too much of this, too much of that. Her makeup applied on the heavy side. Her perfume hanging, rather than lingering in that subtle way the most expensive fragrances did. She had professionally manicured fingernails, but they were longer and more brightly polished than women on the Manhattan side of the bridge would envision in their worst nightmares. Her emerald turtleneck sweater and matching scarf were likewise bolder than they should have been, and Lenny thought it kind of a shame. Meant to accent eyes infused with pure Irish green DNA, they accomplished the opposite of what was intended, distracting from her best natural feature through overkill. While the clothes would have designer names attached to them, they were middle of the line, bought at one of those off-price strip-mall outlets. TJ Maxx rather than Bloomingdale’s.

Lenny recalled noticing her low-heeled pumps when his admin had showed her through the door. The uppers were decent leather, but their soles would be rubber, probably synthetic. And significantly, they weren’t boots. Manhattan women wore boots on winter days. It was a fashion grown out of practicality. They could usually walk where they were going, and did, and boots kept their feet warm and dry out on the street. Women from the outer boroughs had to ride the distance standing on packed subway cars.

What neighborhood did she come up in? Bensonhurst, or maybe Bay Ridge. One of those blocks of rowhouses along Seventh or Eighth Avenue, Lenny bet. It wouldn’t have been far from his own exhausted cradle of origin. The evidence was right there on the surface. Lenny imagined working-class parents, a drab railroad apartment with the heavy scent of Glade in the air, and framed prints of the Madonna covering exposed plaster on the walls. Her tiny bedroom shared with a half dozen brothers and sisters in bunk beds. Five days a week, she would have stepped down off a cracked marble stoop and walked toward the bus stop in her Catholic school uniform, a white blouse and pleated plaid skirt.

Lenny got the sense of Mary Sullivan, felt almost as if he’d looked into her sad green eyes before. It made knowing he could only disappoint her that much harder.

“I’ve been thinking about my lunch with Pat, and nothing odd stands out,” he said now. “I usually get business out of the way first, then make with the small talk. Sort of the opposite of most people…”

“You want to relax,” Mary Sullivan said softly. “Enjoy your food,”

Lenny gave a nod.

“Otherwise I might as well stay in the office and toss down a peanut butter sandwich,” he said.

She sat there in silence, waiting.

“I don’t know how familiar you are with the technical side of Pat’s work, but his company supplies the best optical tubing and wafer on the market,” Lenny said. “UpLink uses a whole lot of it.”

“For fiberoptics? Is that right?”

“Anything to do with lasers,” Lenny said. “Fiberoptics included, right.”

Mrs. Sullivan gave him a strained smile.

“Don’t ask me any more than that,” she said. “An Einstein I’ll never be, but I try to learn as I go along.”

“Beats most people,” Lenny said. “Anyway, your husband’s company has a shipload coming to us from overseas… Pakistan, for what it’s worth… and we needed to iron out some particulars having to do with the delivery clearing customs. I think we were already into the kibbitzing when our plates hit the table. Covered sports, kids, our usual subjects… Pat told me your daughter Andrea’s been having a great school year—”