The problem, though, at least over the past couple of days, was that all it seemed to do was remind Tony of how very wrong things were. The interest he and Pat had in the games was a huge part of their friendship — was intertwined with it, you could say. Every so often they’d sandwich an alternate topic of conversation between heated debates over stats, wins, and losses, almost as if to prove they could, like a couple of hardcore alcoholics trying to convince themselves they were really just social drinkers. Of course, those departures from their subject of choice were hardly what Tony considered sweeping in scope, and tended to swing between venting about their jobs and observations about female acquaintances past and present… juicy commentaries and footnotes often laid out in terms that might not be considered clear signs of male maturity to someone in a position to overhear them. It wasn’t that they made a deliberate attempt stay away from the serious shit, and there were enough exceptions to the rule. Tony felt closer to Pat than he’d ever been to his own brother, knew he could share virtually any secret with him, open up to him when something important needed to be confided… and he’d always figured Pat felt the same. Twenty-five goddamned years, they’d been friends. A quarter century. Over that time they had trusted each other with all kinds of things, protected each other a load of different ways, but hadn’t needed to waste too many words in the process. You take a couple of guys from Brooklyn who’ve hung out since they were teenagers, put them together at a sports bar to watch a ballgame and drink a few cold ones, they aren’t all of a sudden going to turn into weepy members of the studio audience on the Dr. Phil show. That, Tony thought, was not what they’d have foremost in mind when they got together after work needing to shake off a million different varieties of stress… but it also didn’t qualify them as two slobbering, jockstrap-sniffing morons.
And yet Pat had been gone a while now. Over a week. Too long, and under circumstances much too suspicious for Tony to box up his concerns for even a minute. He’d known what Pat had going on the side, of course. Wouldn’t have been shocked to learn he’d been treating himself to a little something extra on top of it every now and then… can’t eat the same pie every day, he always said. Tony had been originally hoping he’d decided to have his fill of la vida loca, celebrate some of the big new sales commissions he’d been netting these last few months with a weekend fling to the Caribbean or somewhere. God knew he’d had enough practice running cover stories to the wife.
Still, though. A week. A week and counting. It was way, way too long for Tony to explain away.
Tony didn’t like it, not a bit.
There was missing, and there was missing. And after what Tony had heard the other night — making him frustrated enough to leave those answering-machine messages, and then get into that nasty argument only to have the phone slammed down in his ear — after all that, it wasn’t doing him one iota of good to read about yesterday’s Madison Square Garden face-off between the Islanders and Rangers. To the contrary, it only got his mind veering off into dark places he wanted to avoid.
And so Tony had quit on the sports pages and started flipping through the daily rags front to back. He hadn’t been aware of looking for a particular type of news article, hadn’t consciously realized that he had been skimming over the world, national, and business reports, and totally bypassing the editorial columns and entertainment dish to peruse the city sections, paying closest attention to pieces about local crimes and accidents… his eye drawn toward any shred of information, any apparent clue, that could somehow help him figure out what could have happened to Pat.
Seated at his desk now, his hot cider steaming in front of him, Tony went through the automatic motions of peeking at the general news in today’s Post and then once again found himself turning to the NYPD DAILY BLOTTER section. He skimmed quickly down the latest batch of dreary, depressing items scratched together by police, hospital, and morgue beat reporters every night. Listed under separate borough headers, and summarized in bulleted paragraphs, they seemed pretty typicaclass="underline" A trannie prostitute discovered bound and beaten to death on a Bryant Park bench. A boiler explosion in the South Bronx that had killed a couple of senior citizens and hospitalized three firefighters with acute smoke inhalation. Gang-related tensions that had erupted into shootings and stabbings in a midtown nightclub. Some Harlem kid who’d gotten nabbed while breaking into a Mercedes-Benz SUV that turned out to be owned by a hoton-the-charts rap artist and packed to the roof with crack cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, plus a small arsenal of illegal firearms for good measure….
Then Tony’s eyes landed on the final piece in the column and widened with agitated dismay. He gasped in a sharp, sudden breath, almost choking as some of the half-chewed food his mouth went down his windpipe.
The single-paragraph bulletin read: Police are asking for help locating Corinna Banks, a 31-year-old, 120-pound woman with blond hair who was last seen at 3:30 P.M. Monday dropping off her daughter, Andrea, age 4, at an indoor playspace known as GoKids on Fifth Avenue and E. 22nd Street. Ms. Banks is said to have been wearing a black beret, a dark wool scarf, a yellow ski coat with black trim, and leather knee boots. It is thought she returned to her apartment at 333 E. 19th Street (between First and Second avenues) after leaving the playspace. Anyone with information of her whereabouts is asked to call the NYPD TIPS hotline provided at the bottom of this column, or contact Detective Ismael Ruiz, 10th Precinct, at (212) 555-4682. You will not have to reveal your identity.
Tony grabbed the napkin spread open on his desk, hacking up chunks of blueberry muffin.
“Jesus Christ,” he said shakily to himself. “Oh my fucking God.”
He was still trying to catch his breath as he reached for the telephone.
A yarmulke on his head, dressed in a black suit and overcoat, and carrying a hardshell black leather briefcase, Delano Malisse felt like a gross fraud as he stepped into the DDC building minutes behind Hoffman. It was not posing as one of Jewish faith that gave him, the experienced undercover investigator, a sense that he was a blatant masquerader, but rather being disguised as a person of any religious persuasion. He had seen too much human baseness to believe in a guiding hand on high, an almighty being in whose image the species had been molded… unless, perhaps, God was an ogre who enjoyed peeking down at the world between his spread, hairy toes and having himself a good belly laugh at all its warts and vulgar messes. By and large, the human species uglied things up with degenerate behavior, which wasn’t to say it lacked qualities Malisse thought worth preservation. Man had proven capable of making tasty food, building durable and attractive structures, drawing some pretty pictures, spinning an occasional clever tale, and stringing musical notes together in a pleasant fashion — although at least three of the four were faded, irreclaimable skills in this day and age.
Malisse, however, had other pressing concerns right now.
He strode up to where Jeffreys sat on the guard platform, hoping his fellow dramatic player had rehearsed their little scene.