Zero Hour

“That’s the attitude,” he said. “All you can do’s control what you can, and let the rest work itself out.”

The U-Haul man nodded, glanced up from the completed rental form, and smiled back at him.

“Everything looks good, buddy,” he said. “Give me a minute to process this, and I’ll bring you the keys to the van.”

* * *

“I don’t think we should try to do too much,” Noriko Cousins said. “The simpler we keep things, the better they’re going to work out for us.”

She looked across her desk at Tom Ricci and Derek Glenn, thinking Ricci certainly did not look like he had the slightest intention of making things complicated. If his silence was to be taken as evidence, he’d shown little or no interest in a single word she’d uttered about the Case of the Vanishing Husband — which, practically speaking, had now expanded to include hubby’s vanished playmate, both for Sword and the New York and Nassau County police departments, since it seemed reasonable to assume that finding out what happened to her would be a big step toward solving the mystery of his status, be it fair or foul.

Noriko had been hoping that she was on the money about Ricci’s apparent indifference, which might, just might, translate into a sign that he’d stay well out of her way, and possibly be westward bound before too long, adios, hombre. The read she’d gotten on Glenn, by comparison, hadn’t left her as encouraged that he’d be easy to shake off. There had been too many probing questions and attentive comments from him during this afternoon’s let’s-get-introduced-andup-to-snuff session. Also way too much direct eye contact, though Noriko had been around the block often enough to tell some of that was because he happened to find her attractive, and had maybe picked up on a mutuality — using a term she’d recently found in her New York Times crossword puzzle dictionary — that she had been struggling to nip in the bud. In both principle and practice, Noriko was opposed to mixing business with pleasure. Very often.

Now Glenn looked at her from where he stood leaning against a file cabinet, his broad arms folded over his chest, wearing a gray wool sportcoat, light blue turtleneck, and gray pleated trousers.

“When you say ‘simple,’ I’m guessing you really mean separate,” he said. “Or am I wrong about that?”

Noriko looked at him a moment and flashed a smile that he returned at once and in full, beaming it across her office, the nice, even whiteness of his teeth an appealing contrast to the equally nice and even brownness of his skin.

“You’re absolutely right,” she said, and wondered what the hell kind of bud-nipping she meant to accomplish by swapping smiley faces with Glenn. “Whatever attention I’ve been paying to Armbright Industries, and the Kiran Group in particular, is fairly routine corporate intel. Sullivan is a woman asking for help, and the boss wanting to give it as a personal favor. I see no reason to wrap them together.”

“Except when you consider he’s a top salesman for a division that’s maybe exporting restricted technology to foreign countries, something that would involve the kind of shady people who can do worlds of bad.”

Noriko shrugged her shoulders.

“You won’t get an argument from me,” she said. “All I want is to make sure we don’t get our paths twisted when they really should be kept clean and distinct from each other. Separate. Minus conjecture, that’s how they are so far. And that’s how we should work them unless they naturally connect.”

Glenn stood with a thoughtful expression on his face. In a chair he’d pulled up into the opposite corner of the office, Ricci maintained the virtually unbroken silence he’d brought on arrival, his hands meshed on his lap, his left foot balanced over his right knee.

“You talk to any of the cops that are looking for Sullivan yet?” Glenn said after a minute.

Noriko shook her head.

“The detective in charge is named Ruiz,” she said. “I don’t know him, but I have an open line to Bill Harrison, which means I can be put on to him easily enough.”

Glenn raised his eyebrows.

“The Bill Harrison?” he said. “As in the ex — police commissioner?”

“Right.”

“Impressive,” Glenn said. “I read that bio he wrote after the terrorist hit. Lost his wife when it went down, almost his daughter, too, and still managed to carry this town on his shoulders while the Washington politicos were hiding out in silos somewhere under the Great North American Prairie.”

Noriko nodded.

“Bill’s a good guy and a friend,” she said.

“What white people call a positive role model for us black people,” he said.

Noriko looked at Glenn, catching his droll tone, noticing the smile that had reappeared on his face.

“A friend,” she repeated with a shrug.

His smile grew larger and brighter.

Noriko willed herself to look away from it and cleared her throat.

“So,” Glenn said. “I figure we should start by spending some time with Ruiz.”

“That’s what I had in mind.”

“We play straight with him far as Sullivan’s concerned, tell him how the whole thing came to our attention, see if he wants to share and share alike.”

“Right,” Noriko said. “My guess is he’ll be more than helpful.”

“After Harrison gives him a ring.”

“Right,” Noriko said again. “I just want to make sure that any inklings we have about Kiran are kept out of the conversation.”

“Separate and distinct.”

Noriko nodded.

“It’s almost five o’clock, a little late in the day to start making arrangements,” she said. “I’ll get on the phone first thing in the morning. Shoot for a meeting with Ruiz as soon as possible.”

At the opposite corner of the room, Ricci leaned forward in his chair and planted both feet on the floor.

“Your crew been keeping up an onsite surveillance of Kiran?” he said, lensing her with his pale blue eyes. “I mean, at its main headquarters in the Catskill mountains.”

Noriko looked at him, her lips pressed together. The sudden end to his silence had surprised her, as had the change of subject that came with it.

“There was an intelligence summary in the files I e-mailed to SanJo,” she said. “We do what’s legal. And viable.”

“And I’m asking if that includes staking a continuous post there at night,” Ricci said.

Noriko sat without breaking eye contact with him.

“My practice has been to use frequent spotters,” she said, then.

“But nothing steady.”

“No,” Noriko said. And paused. “Look, you’re curious about the unusual amount of activity at Kiran after regular business hours. We’ve been, too. And not just since yesterday, or last week. But the fact that the company’s president and head of research suffers from XP, a condition that makes him critically allergic to sunlight, might be all there is to it.”

“Might,” Ricci said. “Or might not.”

There was another silence. Noriko shifted behind her desk.

“What happened to our staying focused on Sullivan?” she said “To not letting ourselves get sidetracked? Or weren’t we as clear about that as I thought?”

Ricci shrugged.

“I just asked some questions,” he said. “Didn’t tell you to push anybody or anything to the side.”

Glenn looked over at him from against the file cabinet, cleared his throat.

“Maybe we’ve talked enough for now,” he said. “I figure you and me could use a chance to settle into our hotel rooms, rest up for tomorrow.”

Ricci sat there for a moment, his gaze moving from Glenn to Noriko and back to Glenn.

“I’d rather walk around a while first,” he said, shrugging again. “Catch you later.”

And then he stood up, turned toward the door, and went out.

Noriko watched the door shut behind him, turned to Glenn.