Zero Hour

Gordian couldn’t have begun to guess why this train of thought abruptly made him remember that he owed Lenny Reisenberg a phone call, but something in it did, and he paused as he was about to lift another rock from the pile to dial Lenny’s office on his cellular.

“Boss!” Lenny said when the receptionist transferred the call. “I was hoping you’d buzz me. Wasn’t sure if I should give things a little while longer—”

“I figured, Len,” Gordian said. “And I apologize for not getting back to you sooner.”

“Busy soaking up the joys of retirement?”

“So to speak,” Gordian said. “I have to admit, though, there are moments when I feel out of my element. Like I’m playing hooky from school, I suppose.”

“ ‘Cutting class,’ Boss,” Lenny said. “Or ‘skipping school.’You say ‘playing hooky’ to my kids, they won’t have any idea what you mean.” He paused. “Hell, I don’t know where the term comes from.”

“I think the reference is to fishing,” Gordian said. “You’d hide a string and a hook in your book bag and then sneak on over to the lake to see what you could catch.”

Lenny ahhed.

“Wouldn’t have guessed,” he said. “The only lake we had in Brooklyn was this cesspool in Prospect Park. And the only thing I ever caught there was a foot fungus that lasted for a year.”

Gordian smiled.

“Lenny, I have some news for you,” he said. “I’ve gotten our security people to move on the Sullivan matter. They’re either already in high gear, or will be very soon.”

Lenny was silent a moment

“Boss, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” he said.

“Forget it, Lenny.”

“Really—”

Gordian glanced up the hillside at Ashley, who saw him looking and waved. He raised his hand over his head, waved back.

“Len, please, it isn’t that big a deal,” he said. “Not when I consider all the favors you’ve done for me over the years.”

“If you insist, Boss,” Lenny said. “I still don’t know what to say.”

“Then save your words for that woman who asked for our help, Mary Sullivan,” Gordian said. “Make sure she knows we’ll do our best to find out what’s happened to her husband.”

Lenny was silent another moment before he answered.

“I will, Boss,” he said. “And I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed it doesn’t turn out to be anything too bad.”

* * *

Detective First Class Ismael Ruiz, Tenth Precinct, had decided to postpone asking DeSanto the last little question on his mind right now until after he’d reviewed what the guy already told him, making sure he’d gotten everything down right.

Ruiz sat at his desk in the squad room, glancing over his notepad, tapping it with the sharp end of his pencil.

“Okay,” he said. “If I understand it, you’ve been Patrick Sullivan’s beard while he’s been conducting an extramarital relationship—”

“Hold on,” DeSanto said from the chair opposite the detective. “You didn’t hear me use that word.”

Ruiz looked at him as if to ask what word.

“Beard,” DeSanto said. “I never mentioned I was his beard.”

Ruiz frowned, thinking it was going to be one of those afternoons. A thin, dark-skinned thirty-five-year-old whose height was generously recorded at 5’ 7” on his driver’s license, he was often mistaken for someone in his early twenties when people met him for the first time, including the scumbag hoods he busted, the cranky New Yorkers he was sworn to protect from them, and even other cops of junior rank. While his wife insisted he ought to be happy about his youthful appearance, pointing out there were people who would pay anything to shave a decade of wear and tear off their looks — and did in droves every single day with skin peelings, botox injections, and plastic surgery — it wasn’t something he especially liked, since, his high rank aside, it sometimes stood as an obstacle to him getting his props on the job without having to make a muscle.

“Sorry,” Ruiz said now. Whatever DeSanto’s beef with his common slang, it wouldn’t be courteous or productive to offend him. “Beard, it’s a figure of speech. For somebody who lays cover for somebody else that’s having an affair—”

“A homosexual affair,” DeSanto said. “Which Pat and I absolutely aren’t. Homosexual, you understand.”

“I do, yes.”

“Because when you use the word you did… well I guess it comes from when gay men used to wear beards so people would think they were macho, though nowadays that doesn’t tell you anything.” He paused. “There’s a veep at the bank where I work — got a bush like an ape on his face — who just told me he’s marrying his boyfriend. Which, you know, doesn’t bother me. These times we live in, I think about what can happen to people, I say let them be happy any way they can, long as they don’t hurt anybody.”

Ruiz offered no comment. He’d actually believed the term beard had originated with lesbians who dated or married men to hide their true sexual preferences. But he didn’t want to get off on some bullshit tangent about his choice of words. Not when there were two fresh missing persons cases Anthony DeSanto had likely tied together with the information he’d volunteered here.

“To verify, the bank where you work… this is the Dunne S and L near Union Square?” he said, steering things back on course.

“Yes. A couple blocks from my apartment.”

“And you’re a loan officer there?”

“A commercial loan manager,” DeSanto said, and straightened his shoulders. He was a blunt-featured, seriously overweight man who was nonetheless very well-groomed, his thick brown hair worn in a neat layer cut, his navy-blue business suit tailored flatteringly to cover up the full extent of his bulk.

Ruiz waited a second before saying anything else. DeSanto’s body language told him he’d better get the professional handle right next time. Whatever the hell distinction there was between loan officer and manager, it seemed important to the guy, who was apparently a stickler for proper terminologies.

“Talking about Patrick Sullivan and Corinna Banks,” he said. “Your knowledge is that they’ve been carrying on an affair for some time…. That accurate?”

“Yeah,” DeSanto said. He shrugged. “It didn’t start out serious. Pat loves his wife, I can tell you. But he’s in sales, travels around to different cities, even different countries sometimes.”

“This is with Armbright Industries.”

DeSanto nodded.

“Selling fancy techware.”

DeSanto nodded again.

“The traveling bit can be hard… a man spends weeks away from home in strange places, it’s natural to get lonely,” he said. “Pat will be out of town somewhere, hit a bar, buy some woman a few drinks, share a good time with her, end of story.”

Ruiz remained silent, thinking he could be apart from his wife for a thousand days and nights — no, make that a thousand times ten—and never consider sharing that kind of good time with another woman.

“And that’s how he met Ms. Banks?” he asked after a moment, studying his notes and realizing he hadn’t yet gotten that information from DeSanto. “While he was on the road?”

“No.” DeSanto hesitated, smoothed his suit jacket. “The truth is somebody I was dating introduced them.”

“A girlfriend.”

“My ex-girlfriend,” DeSanto said. “Joyce happened to know Corinna, worked with her at a cosmetic counter in Bloomie’s.”