Zero Hour

“That would be Bloomingdale’s here in the city.”

“Right.”

“On East Fifty-ninth Street.”

“Right.”

“So Pat’s fooling around isn’t only restricted to his long and lonely business trips.”

DeSanto gave him a look.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “Patty loves his wife and family, does his best for them.”

Ruiz let that stand, instantly regretting his sarcasm. You were on the force long enough, you had to fight succumbing to a confrontational us-and-them mentality. This wasn’t a grilling, after all. DeSanto had come forward on his own.

“Your ex have a second name?” he said.

“Breyers.”

“That’s B-R-E-Y-E-R-S?”

“Like the ice cream, right.”

“Somewhere she can be contacted if necessary?”

“Don’t ask me where she is now, it was a bad split,” he said. “Far as I know she moved down south to Atlanta a couple years ago.”

Ruiz grunted, jotting the name in his pad.

“Back to Patrick and Corinna again,” he said. “You told me it didn’t start out serious between them.”

“Right.”

“That they were, in your opinion, having a casual fling.”

“At first, anyway,” DeSanto said. “Though Corinna got to be special to him.”

“Even before she got pregnant?”

DeSanto nodded.

“Before he found out Corinna was pregnant, before she took the test.”

“You mean the paternity test.”

“Yeah.” DeSanto produced a long, slow sigh. “It kind of shows of what I’ve been trying to explain about Pat. Once he found out he was the baby’s father, he went out of his way to take care of Corinna.”

“Never pressed her to get an abortion?”

DeSanto shook his head firmly.

“She wanted to keep the baby,” he said. “Besides, Pat’s a Catholic. He’s against that sort of thing.”

Doesn’t seem to have a problem making exceptions for adultery, Ruiz thought but did not say.

He took a minute to check his notes for more points that needed clarification, eager to wrap the interview and start figuring out what it all meant.

“You’ve said Corinna was living in an apartment in Yonkers when Pat met her.”

“Yeah.”

“That she was still there when she gave birth to their little girl… Andrea, is it?”

“Yeah,” DeSanto said.

“And that Corinna and her daughter stayed in that apartment for several years.”

DeSanto nodded.

“The place was rent-stabilized, so Corinna could afford it as long as she went on working,” he said. “She wasn’t out to bleed Pat dry. Supported herself the best she could, and he helped out with the rest. Money for child care, health insurance, whatever expenses he could manage. He earned good money, but sometimes I still wondered how he did it. Two families to look out for, it had to be tough for him.”

“Must’ve gotten a lot easier this past year, year-and-a-half,” Ruiz said, and looked up from his pad.

DeSanto was silent a moment.

“You’re talking about him moving Corinna and the girl into the city, I’d say it was a better setup for all of them,” he said. “Easier for Patty, I know. Working in Manhattan, he can stop by their place in Chelsea almost every day. Lunchtime, after work, whenever he has a chance. Once a week he’ll stay there until late at night. Tells Mary… that’s his wife… tells her he’s with me watching a ball game. Sometimes he sleeps over there, says the game ran late, or we had too much to drink, or the weather’s bad.”

“And you always cover for him.”

DeSanto nodded.

“I’m his best friend,” he said. “I cover.”

Ruiz kept his eyes on him.

“Buying a Chelsea condo would’ve set Pat back two, three hundred grand at a bargain rate,” he said. “A few months later he leases Corinna a Jaguar, which also has to cost him a small fortune. And then according to you, he tells her she doesn’t have to work anymore… correct?”

DeSanto nodded again.

“Yeah,” he said. “He did all that.”

Which brought Ruiz to a very critical question.

“How?” he said. “Pat win the Super Lotto? Find a buried treasure chest in Central Park?”

DeSanto hesitated, then slowly met his gaze.

“It’s like what I told you before,” he said. “The big bucks started coming in for him after Armbright bought that Pak company—”

“This would be the Kiran Group.”

“Yeah,” DeSanto said. “When Pat was moved over to its international wholesale division, things really took off for him income-wise.”

“Must’ve taken off in the neighborhood of a few hundred thousand dollars a year over what he’d been earning.”

Silence. DeSanto examined his jacket, smoothed it down over his sides.

“I don’t have a clue how Pat found the extra padding for his wallet,” he said after a while. “Pat didn’t talk about it, I didn’t ask.”

“Never wondered?”

“Didn’t ask him, is what I just told you.”

“Your closest friend.”

“That’s right,” DeSanto said. “Sometimes part of being a friend’s realizing what not to talk about.”

“But you think Pat and Corinna talked about it,” Ruiz said.

DeSanto looked at him for a full thirty seconds before he finally nodded.

“Became pretty damn sure after Pat disappeared,” he said.

“When she phoned you looking for him.”

“She calls, his wife calls, I become information central,” DeSanto said with a bleak smile. “It starts one-thirty in the morning. Mary’s worried, leaves a couple messages on my machine—”

“This is last Wednesday.”

“Pat’s usual night to spend time with Corinna, right.”

“And your night to cover for him.”

“Right,” DeSanto said. “Pat always warns me when he plans to sleep over in the city instead of just stay late.”

“So your stories jibe for Mary.”

DeSanto nodded.

“Meanwhile, Pat hasn’t come home, Mary’s worried he might’ve got into an accident because of that storm, wants to know if he’s staying over at my place. At first I don’t pick up the phone, let her talk to my answering machine. Got no idea what to tell her.”

“Since Pat didn’t tip you he’d be spending the entire night at Corinna’s place.”

“Like the two of us have it worked out going back forever,” DeSanto said.

Ruiz nodded.