Zero Hour

“Donna, you mean.”

“Oh, I could’ve sworn… do you have more than—?”

“Just our one. Her full name is Donna Anne, so that might be why you made the mistake.”

“Oh.”

“But it’d be just like Pat to brag in advance,” she said. “Donna’s a midyear entrant at Reed and only started classes there last week.”

Lenny tried to hide his embarrassment. Besides fouling up her name, he’d had the distinct impression Sullivan’s daughter was in elementary school. And maybe seven or eight at the oldest.

“Well, Pat did say that he was happy with how she was doing,” he said. “With some other things, too. His job… I think there were some new accounts that had him excited.” Lenny paused. “I remember us talking hockey… guess I don’t need to tell you Pat’s an Islanders fanatic.”

“No,” Mrs. Sullivan said. Again with that pale, cheerless smile. “You don’t.”

Lenny was quiet a moment, searching his memory.

“There was a game at the Coliseum that night,” he said. “Your husband told me he was going to stay in the city to watch it at one of those sports bars. The jumbo screen, you know.” He paused. “Your house is on Long Island… somewhere way out at the end of Nassau County, isn’t it?”

She gave an affirmative nod.

“Glen Cove. But it’s a corporate condo. We sold our old home last summer, bought some land in Amity Harbor, contracted on a bigger place. The builders fell behind schedule, so Pat’s employers arranged for us to stay in their apartment complex until it’s finished.”

Lenny nearly sighed with relief over getting things halfway right this time, though he didn’t recall Sullivan having told him anything about the move.

“Pat’s mentioned that he uses the railroad to commute,” he said. “When he said he wasn’t heading straight home, I kidded him about being more of a team booster than I’d realized. Because of the weather, I mean. All week long the city’s in a panic over the blizzard that’s supposed to be heading our way, and then the forecast changes in a snap, and we’re hearing it won’t be cold enough for even an inch of snow on the ground. But it was still pretty miserable out, and I could see how there might be icing on the tracks that could make his trip to the Island a stalled mess, and told Pat he might be better off getting his hockey fix on the living-room television set.” Lenny shrugged. “I remember he said that he couldn’t. That there’s a standing appointment with his friend…”

“Tony DeSanto,” Mary Sullivan said with another nod. “They’ve been like brothers since they were kids, and going out to watch the games together’s a regular thing with them. Every Wednesday without fail, year round. The two of them are real sports fanatics. In the winter it’s hockey. The Isles versus the Rangers, you’d think their lives depend on who wins. Then it’s springtime and the Mets over at Shea. After that, football season. The Giants. Without fail.” Her ample bosom rose and fell as she struggled to contain her emotions. “Tony lives down near Union Square. Every now and then… if there’s a storm like we had the other night, or the games run late, you know… Pat stays over at his apartment…”

Mrs. Sullivan let the sentence trail, her eyes filling with moisture, reaching into her bag for a Kleenex before Lenny could awkwardly hold out the box on his desk.

“Can I get you a glass of water… something else to drink…?”

“No, no, thank you… ”

“You’re sure? Hot coffee, maybe? It isn’t a problem… ”

She shook her head slowly.

“Really, it’s all right.”

There was a brief silence. Lenny’s hands found a stray paper clip on his blotter and began fidgeting with it.

“The police talked about your husband’s friend when they showed up,” he said. “They didn’t say much… had no reason, I suppose. But, well, I’d wondered why he wasn’t a little concerned when Pat didn’t meet him.”

“I did, too, at first,” Mrs. Sullivan said. “I’d tried reaching Pat on his cell phone around five-thirty, six o’clock that afternoon. So I could fix him some dinner if he canceled his plans. Like you said, it was coming down something awful outside. But he keeps the phone off half the time once he’s out of the office… or I should say purposely forgets to put it on so his night-owl boss can’t drag him back there.” She dried her eyes with a tissue. “I called Tony’s apartment next. Nobody answered, and to me that meant they went ahead with their plans. I never even thought to leave a message.”

“Do you know where Tony turned out to be?”

“Waiting for Pat to show up at one of their haunts.” She shook her head again, wiped at a blotch of mascara above her left cheek. “Of course he never did. Tony says he figured my husband just went home, maybe rushed to catch the train because he was afraid of delays. And that he’d hear from him later.”

More silence. A question flirted with Lenny’s curiosity, but then tailed away as she motioned toward the picture frame on his desk.

“Is this your family, Mr. Reisenberg?” she said.

Lenny nodded. He’d taken reels of photos during their vacation out west last summer. Three days in the Badlands of South Dakota, then on to tour the Black Hills, Deadwood, Custer State Park, and finally Rushmore, which formed the backdrop for the shot that had drawn Mary Sullivan’s eye.

“My wife’s Janice,” he said, and indicated the slender brunette waving at his camera from an observation deck in the loom of Abe Lincoln’s chin. “The kids are Max — he’s the tall one on the left — then Jake and Sarah.” He paused. “And you can call me Lenny, by the way.”

“Lenny, you’ll probably understand what I’m about to tell you,” she said. “Pat’s a wonderful husband. I don’t make a habit of checking up on him. It’s like Pat always says… twenty years under the same roof, raising our daughter together, we’d better be able to trust each other. With the amount of traveling he does because of his sales job, there’d be no sense trying to watch his every step, anyway.” She shrugged, took a trembling breath. “My point is that he’s a grown man. I’m not the sort to harp if he stays out late with his friend once in a while. Usually I’m fast asleep when he comes in from watching his games. That night, though, in that storm, with the terrible wind, it was different. I couldn’t shut my eyes. And it bothered me when Pat wasn’t back by midnight. Or one in the morning. Around two o’clock, I called Tony’s apartment again. That time he picked up his phone, told me he’d walked in an hour before, and we compared notes. The minute I found out Pat hadn’t gotten in touch with either of us, I knew something was wrong… ”

A sob took hold of her, then another, and she began weeping openly. Lenny studied the paper clip in his hand, waiting as she gradually regained her composure.

“Mrs. Sullivan…”

“You can call me Mary.”

He looked at her. Saw that faint, sorrowful smile on lips wet with her spilled tears.

“Mary,” he said. “Your husband and I… we’ve been doing business a while now. Far’s our relationship goes, I feel I know him pretty well.” Lenny paused, slid the paper clip under one finger, over another. “I’ve asked myself if there’s anything he might’ve told me the other day, anything I noticed that seemed different than usual. The truth is, there wasn’t—”

“Please help me find out what’s happened to him,” she said all at once.

Her red-rimmed eyes meeting his own, clinging to his own.

Lenny remained quiet for a moment. His face showed surprise and confusion, and on the outside that was a somewhat authentic reaction. The problem being that it was another matter below the surface. In many respects, he didn’t consider himself quick on the uptake. Show him a thousand times where to lay down silverware in a standard table setting, or what food went in the refrigerator’s crisper drawer, he wouldn’t remember. Explain whether you were supposed to turn a screw clockwise or counterclockwise to loosen it, it would never sink into his brain. Figuring out how ordinary things worked defied him. But ordinary people were another story. He got their signals without too much difficulty. It would only take a single gesture to give him a full read on someone’s personality, a few words to deliver the message he or she was trying to put across to him.

Right now he knew just where Mary Sullivan was going, and suddenly felt too quick for his own good.

“I don’t understand,” he lied. “That is, how could I…”

She shook her head.