Small Town

For this he’d gotten up early, put on a suit and tie and, for the first time in longer than he could recall, included a shoulder holster in which his service revolver, a .38-caliber five-shot Smith & Wesson, had long reposed. The cops all carried more powerful guns, 45 and 9-mm autos, a necessary response to the heavier weaponry that the bad guys had. He’d signed the order allowing the change but had never upgraded himself, because what did the commissioner really need with a gun in the first place? So why not stick with the one he was used to?

He’d felt silly donning the holster, sufficiently so that he took it off and returned it to the drawer where he kept it. He locked the drawer, put the key in another drawer, put his jacket back on, and was out the door before he changed his mind once again and went back for the gun after all. He hadn’t been able to shake the odd feeling that he was going to need it.

While he was at it, he grabbed his cell phone. He never bothered to carry it, never got calls on it because he’d never given out the number. But it would be handy if he needed to make a call. It saved you the trouble of finding a pay phone that worked.

It made more sense than the gun, anyway. Weighed a lot less, and he was more likely to use it.

He had a Kevlar vest, too, and had made a big thing about that, as part of a campaign to get cops to wear them all the time, not only when they expected to be shot at. Because how often did a cop expect to be the target of hostile gunfire? If you actually expected it, you’d stay home and call in sick. But it was a funny thing, the bullets were just as deadly whether or not you saw them coming, so he insisted his cops wear their vests while on duty. Not all of them did, of course, but he made a point of setting a good example, at least if there was likely to be an opportunity to display it to the news cameras.

It actually occurred to him to wear the vest today, but it was summer, for God’s sake, and you could sweat to death inside the damn thing, and it weighed a ton, too. And he was just going to talk to people, and so he did not expect to get shot at. And if by some incredible fluke, if by some crazy quirk of fate, if his wild-ass wholly irrational hunch paid off and the Carpenter was somewhere in all of this, well, there was no reason to believe that William Boyce Harbinger had ever owned a gun, or had one in his possession, or even knew for sure which end the bullet came out of. A Kevlar vest wouldn’t do you any good if somebody came at you with a hammer and a chisel, and only slowed you down if you were trying to outrun a Molotov cocktail.

So it was home in his closet, and that was fine, because he felt silly enough carrying the gun.

She came back with two names written on a slip of paper, and was reaching to pour him another cup of coffee. He stopped her, took the slip from her. The top name had an asterisk next to it, and she explained that was the man who’d taken her statement for the missing persons report. The other man was the one she’d talked to the first time, just in case he needed to talk with him as well.

And he’d let her know as soon as he found out something? He told her she could count on it.

Shevlin’s Apartment building was on the north side of Eighty-sixth Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam. That put it in the Twenty-fourth Precinct, Eighty-sixth Street being the dividing line, but Helen Mazarin had not gone to the Two-Four station house, three-quarters of a mile away on West One Hundredth. Instead she’d reasonably enough walked four blocks to the Two-Oh on West Eighty-second, and Buckram did the same.

The desk sergeant, Bert Herdig, had a big round red face and not much hair, and what he had left was cropped close to his skull. He recognized Buckram right away, called him Commissioner before he could introduce himself, said it was an honor to have him there, and what could he do for him? Did some fool of a patrol officer hang a ticket on the commissioner’s windshield? If so just hand it over, and it would go no further.

“A woman came in a few days ago, filled out a missing persons report,” he said. “Her name’s Mazarin, and the missing man’s Peter Shevlin.”

“Of Eighty-sixth Street,” Herdig said, and stroked his chin. “Don’t tell me something’s happened to the poor man.”

“Well, that’s the question. He hasn’t turned up yet.”

“He might not, if he’s playing golf in the Poconos.”

“Is that where you think he went?”

“It’s where I’d go,” Herdig said, “if I had the time and the money. Could I ask the nature of your interest, Commissioner?”

“A favor for a friend.”

“Ah, right,” Herdig said. “Everybody has friends and sooner or later they all want favors. Mrs. Mazarin’s the friend?”

He shook his head. “The friend of a friend.”

“Ah. You’ve met the lady?”

“Just this morning.”

“She’d come in once before I saw her,” Herdig said. “Did she mention that?”

“She did.”