The Zero Hour (38 page)

“Well,” said Vigiani, “he sure as hell isn’t going to do it without his fuse thing. And he still hasn’t shown up to claim it, or has he?”

“Not yet, as far as I know,” Sarah replied. “He may still. Not likely, I admit.”

“Sarah,” Pappas said, “what else does this fellow need to build a bomb?”

“An explosive, obviously.… Why, what are you getting at?”

“Well, terrorists love plastic explosives, Semtex and C-4 and the like, right? Which is very difficult to get on the open market. So he’s either shipping it in somehow—”

“Yes,” Sarah interrupted. “Or getting it here.” She saw where he was going. “Yes, that could be a way.”

“What, steal it?” Vigiani asked.

“Possibly, yes,” Sarah said.

“So we put out a threat advisory?”

“Too public,” Sarah said.

“Real sanitized,” Vigiani said.

“Still throws up too many questions. We’ll ask ATF to inform us of any thefts of C-4, dynamite, or other explosives, please report immediately, blah blah blah. And give our twenty-four-hour number. Without revealing why we’re so interested. Concentrate especially on military bases.”

Vigiani shrugged. “Worth a try, I suppose.” She looked up as Ranahan and Roth entered the room. “Hey, any luck?”

The expression on the two men’s faces told the assembled that it wasn’t good news.

“What happened?” Sarah asked.

“It’s Ullman,” Roth said, ashen-faced.

“What do you—what about Ullman?” Sarah said, although she now knew.

“Dead,” Ranahan said thickly.

“Oh, my
God
,” exploded Vigiani.

Ranahan continued: “He followed a guy for a couple of blocks, then vanished without a trace in an alley behind a restaurant. When we stopped hearing his voice, we sent out some guys to track him down.”

“I found him,” Roth said. “Dumpster behind the restaurant. Under a pile of, I don’t know, food shit.” He sank into a chair. There was a stunned silence.

“Baumann?” asked Pappas.

“His MO, anyway,” Roth said. “Same as the Pollsmoor killings. Done with bare hands, except for a blunt object used to smash in the eyeball.”

“Russell must have been on to him,” Vigiani said in a hoarse whisper.

“Maybe,” Sarah said. “But Baumann’s obviously on to
us
.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

The doorbell chimed, and Sarah buzzed Brian Lamoreaux in. He was wearing a nubby brown jacket over a striped band-collar shirt and looked terrific. He smelled very faintly of bay rum cologne. He was wearing an Armani-type pair of glasses with a tortoiseshell inlay that made him look almost sexy.

“New glasses,” she said by way of greeting.

“They’re old, actually,” Brian said. “I’m glad you could come with me tonight.”

“I can’t work all the time,” she said, although in truth she wished she were back at MINOTAUR headquarters. Still, if she continued working the way she had been, she feared she’d go out of her mind.

From behind his back he drew a small bouquet of lilies, some of which were already wilted. “How nice,” she said. “Thank you. But let me warn you again, if my beeper goes off while the music’s playing, I’ll have to leave you in the lurch.”

“Understood. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

Softly playing in the background was the E-flat adagio movement of the Haydn G minor piano trio, which was not helping much to calm Sarah down. This was their second time going out, and for some reason she was still nervous. She’d turned him down at the hospital, but accepted when he called later in the day to check on Jared. The next night they’d met for a drink at a Cuban café on Columbus Avenue, and she’d decided maybe there was something there.

Jared approached shyly. Behind him hovered his babysitter, a Marymount Manhattan College student named Brea, who said hi and didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands.

“So, Brian,” Jared said, “do you build buildings?”

“No, I just write about them,” Brian admitted.

“Oh,” he said, disappointed. “You like baseball?”

“The truth is, I don’t follow baseball. I don’t know anything about it. But funny you should mention baseball.” He produced a small plastic-wrapped card and handed it to Jared. “Look what I found in the rubbish.”

Jared looked at the object, and his eyes widened. “No way!” he exulted. “You didn’t find this in the trash! Oh, my God, it’s a Satchel Paige!”

“Isn’t that nice of Brian!” Sarah said.

“It’s
awesome
,” Jared said. “It’s a 1953 Topps!” He turned to Sarah and explained: “There’s hardly any Satchel Paiges around—they didn’t make Negro League cards.”

Sarah said, “I hope it didn’t cost too much.”

“You know, Satchel Paige didn’t even know how old he was,” Jared said. “There aren’t any official stats on him. He’d, like, pitch three games a day, day after day, and then he’d go down to South America and pitch down there.… This is so
excellent
.”

The phone rang. Sarah felt an adrenaline jolt and turned to answer it, but Jared got to it first.

“Oh, hi,” he said without enthusiasm, and Sarah instantly knew who was calling. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he went on in a sullen monotone. “Everything’s fine. Mom, it’s Dad.”

“Can you tell him I’ll call him tomorrow from work?”

“Mommy’s going out on a date,” Jared said into the phone. As Jared hung up the phone, Sarah caught his eye and gave him a look. He stared back at her brazenly, as if to say,
I know what I’m doing.

*   *   *

“Now
this
is an apartment building,” Sarah said as they strolled past the Dakota, at Central Park West and Seventy-second Street. She was distraught and frightened by Ullman’s death, barely able to think about anything other than her work now, and yet trying to mask it with a blithe air. “You know anything about this one?”

“The Dakota? Sure do,” Brian said. “Well, it was really the first great luxury apartment house. Built in the 1880s by a guy named Edward Clark, the president of the Singer sewing machine company. People called it Clark’s Folly, because it was ridiculously far from the center of town.”

“Hmm.”

“In fact, I believe it was named the Dakota for the Dakota Territory, because it was so far away.”

“Who was the architect?” she asked without interest. What am I doing? she asked herself. Trying to keep the conversation going so I don’t have to think about the nightmares?

“Henry J. Hardenbergh,” he said. “One of the great architects of the time. And … I seem to recall something about how Clark bought the adjoining land and had a couple dozen row houses built on it. Then he put this immense power plant in the basement of the Dakota to supply electricity not just for the Dakota, but for all the neighboring row houses.
That’s
some serious urban planning.”

“Isn’t this where John Lennon was killed?”

“That’s right.… Sarah, no offense, but I have a feeling you’re not terribly interested in an architectural tour right now. Something wrong?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Is it Jared?”

“Oh, no, Jared’s doing fine.”

“That was your ex who called, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how the hell he tracked me down, but he’s a resourceful guy. And it’s not like I’m in the Federal Witness Protection Program or anything. I just … mostly, I guess I wish he’d leave us alone.”

“He isn’t the jealous type, is he?”

“Oh, he is. He’s also the violent type.”

Brian stepped to the curb to hail a cab. “Great,” he said. “I could barely handle prepubescent thugs. I doubt I could stand up to a jealous cop.”

*   *   *

There was a break after the A Minor Quartet. Brian whispered, “Boy, that slow movement isn’t easy to listen to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think it’s the most difficult passage in all Beethoven. Someone once compared this piece to a man who’s trying to see how slowly he can ride a bicycle without falling.”

Sarah laughed gently. The longer she watched him, particularly when he was animated by enthusiasm for whatever he was talking about, the more appealing she found him. The difference between him and Peter was so enormous it wasn’t even funny. How could the same woman be attracted to such entirely different men? In the park the other day, she had pitied him, felt a sort of contempt for him, bumbling and ineffectual as he was. Yet he had been wonderful, attentive, caring, when he took them to the emergency room.

After the
Grosse Fuge
, the concert ended with the C-sharp minor Quartet, which Sarah considered one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. “Amazing, isn’t it?” Brian said, taking her hand. “The adagio is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”

Sarah squeezed his hand and nodded.

They took a cab to his apartment, just off Sutton Place. She had promised herself she wouldn’t end up at his place or in a hotel room, but she felt comfortable with him, and Brea, the babysitter from Marymount Manhattan College, had said she didn’t mind if it was a late night.

His apartment was small but elegantly furnished, with a lot of books, mostly on architecture, and beautiful, comfortable furniture. She went into his kitchen and made a phone call to check on the babysitter, then returned and sank into a wonderfully overstuffed couch while he got some brandy.

“I like it,” she said, indicating the whole apartment.

“Oh, it’s not mine,” he said. “I think I mentioned this colleague of mine from Edmonton—he and his wife are here on sabbatical, but they’re spending the summer in residence at Taliesen, the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Wisconsin. They’re only too happy to have me take over the rent for a few weeks.”

“Well, you’ve seen the way I furnished my apartment,” Sarah said. “Milk crates and moving boxes, right? It must be nice to be living in a place so finished.”

He poured out two snifters of brandy and handed one to her. “Look, Sarah, we hardly know each other, so this may be way too aggressive, but let me just say this.” He sat down on the couch beside her, at what seemed the perfect remove, neither menacingly close nor exaggeratedly far away. “I pick up vibes that you don’t want to talk about whatever it is you do, whether you really work for the FBI or not. If that’s the way you want it, that’s fine. But I don’t want you to think I’m not interested, okay?”

Sarah couldn’t help smiling appreciatively. “Okay.”

“So let’s talk about the weather or something.”

“Well,” she said, “do you mind if I ask you something personal?”

“Me? I’m an open book.”

“Your limp. You’ve had it for a while, right? Did you get hit by a car or something?”

“A couple of weeks after my wife’s death, I got really high and drove into a telephone pole. Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital, and a couple of policemen came to visit me, and they told me that they hadn’t found any skidmarks at the accident scene.”

“Meaning what?”

“I didn’t try to stop. I just drove into the telephone pole at sixty miles an hour.”

“Trying to kill yourself.”

“I don’t remember it, but yeah, that’s what they were saying.”

“You loved her.”

“Yes, I did. She was a wonderful, wonderful person.” He hesitated a moment, a catch in his throat. “But that was a different part of my life, and this is no time to talk about all that, all right?”

“All right.”

He got up to put some music on. For a few minutes he rummaged through a large collection of CDs.

She watched him as he stood. He had a wonderful, lithe body, broad shoulders, a narrow waist. It was not the body of a man who sat around, an academic or an architect; he obviously worked out.

“This is a wonderful Armagnac,” Sarah said.

“Thanks. I thought you’d like it.”

“I love Armagnac.”

“Good. So do I. Do you like jazz vocals?”

“Of course. What have you got?”

“Let me surprise you.”

He returned to the sofa and sat closer, watching her as the music came on, simple but highly syncopated jazz piano.

“Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald!” Sarah said. “One of the all-time great albums.”

“You’ve got good taste in music,” Brian said, and leaned over and kissed her lips. He held her face in both hands as if admiring an objet d’art. Sarah closed her eyes and parted her lips and tasted his tongue.

Oh, God, Sarah thought, let me just be right here, in the moment.

She put her hands on his back, against his shoulder blades, then ran them down to the firm, shirt-covered flesh of his lower back. She slipped her fingertips underneath his belt and rested them there, enjoying the warmth, the velvety feel of the swell of his buttocks.

His tongue moved slowly into her mouth, exploring the inside of her mouth, and he held her face even tighter.

“Sarah,” he groaned.

Be in the moment, she chanted to herself. In the moment.

She felt her thoughts at last beginning to lift momentarily away from the inordinate tensions of her daily work, the deaths, the fear and uncertainty. She felt almost light-headed, and she was grateful.

His hands slid smoothly down her neck, over her shoulders, then came around to cup her breasts from the sides, gently. She felt enveloped by the warmth, felt aroused.

I can’t believe this is happening, she thought. Can’t believe this is happening. I don’t know the man, don’t know anything about him, don’t—

He unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse, nuzzled warmly against her bare skin, then licked and kissed his way to her nipples.

“Mmmph,” she groaned.

A new song began: “How Long Has This Been Going On?” Ella’s voice, though past its peak, was husky yet agile. She belted out the lyrics, stumbled over one line, sang,
One more once and that makes tw—thrice!

She slipped her fingers underneath the band of his jockey shorts, felt the silky smoothness of his skin. At the same time, he reached around to finish unbuttoning her blouse, then unfasten her bra, and she felt her nipples grow hard. He undid her skirt and let it fall to the floor, then unbuckled his belt and let his pants drop. She saw his erection tenting the white cotton of his undershorts, and she slowly slid them down.