The Zero Hour

“I also figured we could help each other out on this.”

Captain Herlihy turned back toward Sarah as if he’d forgotten something. His brow was furrowed. “I thought the feds didn’t do murder, except on Indian reservations or whatever the hell.” A little, sardonic smile, then: “Thought you guys just went after cops.”

“Valerie was my informant,” Sarah said curtly.

“She screwed cops?”

“OC,” she said, meaning Organized Crime, and didn’t elaborate.

As Herlihy walked off he said, “Don’t let her touch anything or fuck anything up, got it?”

“Do my best,” Peter told his boss. As he led her toward the body, he remarked sotto voce, “Captain Francis X. Herlihy. Grade Double-A asshole.”

“A gentleman and a scholar.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a favor to me he’s letting you in here. Says a friend of his on the job shook down a gay bar in the South End last year and you guys jammed him up or something.”

Sarah shrugged. “I wouldn’t know anything about it. I don’t do police corruption.”

“Lot of the guys aren’t so happy you’re here.”

She shrugged again. “Why so crowded?”

“I don’t know, bad timing or something. First time in five years I’ve seen everyone respond at once. Everyone’s here but the Globe. Place is a fucking three-ring circus.”

Peter Cronin was in his mid-thirties, blond, with a cleft chin. He was good-looking, almost pretty, and was not unaware of his effect on women. Even during their short-lived, tumultuous marriage, he’d had several “extracurricular activities,” as he blithely put it. No doubt there was a woman right now sharing his apartment who was wondering whether some bimbo-no, some other bimbo-would be attaching herself to Peter like a limpet this evening.

As he pushed through the crowd with one hand, murmuring his hail-fellow-well-met greetings to his fellow cops, he asked: “How’s my little buddy?”

“Jared’s probably watching Beavis and Butt-head even as we speak,” she replied. “Either that or Masterpiece Theatre, I’m not sure which. You’re not the primary on this, are you?”

“Teddy is. I’m assisting.”

“How was she killed?”

“Gunshot. This is not a pretty sight, I should warn you.”

Sarah shrugged, as though she’d visited thousands of murders, though in fact, as Peter knew, she’d seen no more than a dozen, and they always sent a wave of revulsion washing over her.

She had never been to Valerie’s apartment before-they’d always met at bars and restaurants. This studio apartment, with its improvised kitchenette off to one side, had once been an upstairs parlor in some nineteenth-century industrial magnate’s town house. Once this room had been done up in opulent high-Brahmin style. Now the walls and ceilings were covered with mirrors, a high-tech bordello. The furnishings were cheap, black-painted. A worn mustard-yellow bean-bag chair, a relic of the seventies. An old tape deck and a towering set of speakers whose cloth was fraying. Valerie’s home looked the way it was supposed to look, like the lair of a hooker.

“Here you go,” Peter announced. “The body snatchers have come and gone. The ME on call is Rena Goldman. She looks like a resident, but she’s a real doc.”

“Where is she?”

“Over there, talking to your pal Herlihy.”

Valerie Santoro lay on her back, sprawled on her enormous bed. The black coverlet was encrusted with her dried blood. One hand was splayed back coyly as if beckoning one and all into her bed. Her hair was shoulder-length and dyed ash-blond; her lips bore traces of lipstick. Sarah felt her stomach lurch, looked quickly away. “Yeah,” she said, “that’s her. Okay?”

CHAPTER FOUR

In the small parking lot adjacent to a petrol station, the Prince of Darkness located the rented four-wheel-drive vehicle, a Toyota Double Cab with four seats, a canvas cover over the back, and a long-distance fuel tank. A tent was strapped on to the roof rack, and in the back were a gas stove and lamp, a change of clothes, and a pair of sunglasses. A sticker on the back identified the car’s owner as Imperial Car Rental of Cape Town. If anyone happened to stop him for any reason, he’d just be another poor fool on a camping tour of the desert.

He felt the hood. It was warm, which told him the car had not been here long. This was good.

Looking quickly around the lot, he assured himself that no one could see what he was doing. Then he knelt to the ground beside the Toyota’s door and felt underneath the frame until he came upon a smooth, newly soldered patch. Baumann pushed at it until the ignition key slid out from beneath the soldering.

A few blocks away he parked the car next to an international telephone box and removed a handful of one-rand coins from the glove box. He dialed a long series of numbers, fed the coins into the slot, and in twenty seconds had an international connection.

A man’s voice answered: “Greenstone Limited.”

“Customer service, please,” Baumann said.

“One moment, please.”

There was a pause, a few clicks, then a male voice said: “Customer service.”

“Do you ship by air?” Baumann asked.