The Zero Hour (3 page)

She pulled the hood’s collar tight, adjusted it, pulled the zipper down at the back, and fastened the zipper’s tag end to the collar with a loud click.

The man was now overwhelmed with delicious fear. An icy, sickening terror lodged itself in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to vomit, but was afraid to do so, for it would suffocate him.

He felt his breath catch somewhere deep in his throat, just above the lungs. He gulped, gasped for air, forgetting for an instant that in this hood the only way he could breathe was through his nose, and he panicked.

He whimpered, trying to scream, but unable to.

“You’ve been bad,” he heard her admonish him. “I like looking at you, but you’ve been a bad boy.”

Control your breathing!
he told himself.
Regular, rhythmic! Through the nose—breathe!
But the panic was too powerful; it overwhelmed his feeble efforts to take control of his body. He gulped for air, but his mouth tasted only the rubber, now warm and damp. Rivulets of perspiration ran down his face in the darkness, and trickled, hot and salty, into his gasping mouth. Even when he somehow managed to compel himself to breathe through his nose, snorting in stingy, leather-smelling nosefuls of air, he knew he remained on the very precipice of losing control entirely.

Yet at the same time—such a peculiar, wonderful blend of the deepest terror and the most extraordinary tingling arousal!—he could feel his penis throb with excitement, as if it were about to explode.

And then—and then!—he felt the sting of her leather riding crop on the backs of his thighs, teasing and painful. And—my God!—even a sting on the head of his very penis!

“I’m going to keep you on my leash,” he heard from very far away. “You certainly haven’t behaved properly, not at all.”

He whimpered again, then moaned, and he realized he was gyrating his pelvis to some imagined rhythm, waving his butt at her, a coy offering.

“I’m going to flog the skin from your back,” she said, and he knew she meant what she was saying, and he could barely contain himself.

The woman could see that he was on the verge of climax. And she hadn’t even yet applied the device that was sold in medical supply houses as the Wartenberg Neurological Stimulator. From her black bag she withdrew a medical instrument that resembled a pinwheel at the end of a scalpel handle. Radiating out from the small-diameter pinwheel were dozens of sharp pins. She ran the instrument lightly across his legs and up to his chest.

His moans now came in waves, plaintively; he sounded to her very much like a woman nearing orgasm.

With her left hand she lightly grasped his testicles and caressed them; with the other hand, she ran the pinwheel over the backs of his legs, the backs of his knees. She moved her left hand up to the shaft of his penis and began slowly to pump, knowing it would not take much time at all. He was already throbbing, rocking back and forth, moaning. Now she ran the pinwheel up the crack of his ass, up the center of his spine, all the while masturbating him vigorously, and even before the pinwheel reached the sensitive skin at the back of the neck, he started to come, spasming and bucking, moaning, moaning.

“Now,” she said, as he collapsed onto the bed, “I’m going to your wallet to take what I deserve.” So blissed out was he that he didn’t even hear what she said, but it made no difference; he had utterly ceded control.

The blond woman got to her feet and briskly walked over to the desk where he had left his briefcase. She popped it open—he hadn’t locked it, rarely did—removed the glinting gold disk, and dropped it into her black leather toy bag, where it disappeared among the whips and crops and restraints.

She looked over at the bed and saw that he had not moved: he was still slumped over the side of the bed, still breathing hard and deep, the sweat pouring off his chest and his back in glistening streams, darkening the pale-green bedspread beneath him. The dark, damp border around him reminded the woman of the snow angels she and her sisters used to make years ago by lying prone in the new-fallen New Hampshire snow and waving their hands and feet. Then another, very different association: the even, wet border around the man also looked a little like the crude white paint tracings you sometimes see around dead bodies at crime scenes.

Quickly, she bent over and retrieved his wallet from the seat pocket of his pants, withdrew four fifty-dollar bills, and slipped them into her portfolio.

She returned to her spent client and caressed him. A submissive must always be brought back to earth slowly and gently. “Turn around and kneel in front of me,” she ordered with quiet authority. He did so, and she unlocked his handcuffs. Then she unzipped the leather hood, tugging at it with great effort until it began to slide off.

His silver hair stood up in crazed, sweaty clumps, and his face was deep crimson. He blinked slowly, his pupils adjusting to the light, his eyes coming slowly into focus.

She patted his hair flat. “What a good boy you’ve been,” she said. “Have you had a good time?”

His only reply was a faint, weak smile.

“Now I’ve got to run. Call me next time you’re in town.” She ran her fingers lovingly across his cheek, over his lips. “What a good boy you’ve been.”

*   *   *

Down the block from the Four Seasons, a gleaming black van was parked. The blond woman tapped on the mirrored, opaque passenger’s side window, which was then lowered a few inches.

She removed the golden disk from her leather bag and placed it in the outstretched palm.

She hadn’t even seen anyone’s face.

CHAPTER THREE

The flashing turret lights atop the cruisers pulsed blue and white along most of the block of Marlborough Street. Five patrol cars were double-parked on the narrow street, roiling the rush-hour traffic all the way to Massachusetts Avenue and infuriating the already short-tempered Boston drivers.

A dozen or so residents of this normally staid Back Bay neighborhood (although “neighborhood” wasn’t an accurate description of these connected rows of nineteenth-century town houses whose inhabitants did everything they could to avoid one another) leaned out of their bay windows and gawked like children at a schoolyard fistfight. Very un–Back Bay.

But the presence of all these police cruisers, unusual in this proper stretch of Marlborough Street, promised that something fairly exciting might actually be going on here. Sarah Cahill double-parked her aged Honda Civic and walked toward the building, in front of which stood a beefy young uniformed patrolman holding a clipboard. She was wearing jeans, running shoes, and a Wesleyan sweatshirt—hardly professional attire, but after all, she had been in the middle of making dinner for herself and her eight-year-old son, Jared. Spaghetti sauce: her hands reeked of garlic, which was too bad, because she’d be shaking a lot of hands. Well, she thought, screw ’em if they don’t like garlic.

The responding officer, the guy with the clipboard, couldn’t have been out of his twenties. He was crew-cut and pudgy and awkward and was joking with another cop, who was laughing uproariously and had traces of doughnut sugar on his face.

Sobering momentarily, the crew-cut officer said, “You live here, ma’am?”

“I’m Sarah Cahill,” she replied impatiently. “Special Agent Cahill, FBI.” She flashed her badge.

The patrolman hesitated. “Sorry, ma’am. You’re not on my admit list here.”

“Check with Officer Cronin,” she said.

“Oh,
you’re
—” He gave a crooked smile, and his eyes seemed to light up. He looked her up and down with unconcealed interest. “Right. He did mention you’d be here.”

She signed her name and returned the clipboard to him. She smiled back and pushed ahead through the front door, her smile disappearing at once. From behind she could hear a whispered comment, then loud laughter. The crew-cut cop remarked loudly in his foghorn voice: “I always thought Cronin was an asshole.” More laughter.

Sarah got into the elevator and punched the button for the third floor, overcome by irritation. What the hell was that supposed to mean—a jibe at Peter Cronin for having had the bad taste to marry an FBI agent? Or for having had the bad taste to
divorce
her? Which hindbrain instincts were these two chuckleheads responding to, raunchy sexuality or hatred of the feds?

She shook her head. The elevator, a musty, old-fashioned Otis with an accordion gate inside that shut automatically, provoked a moment of claustrophobia. The grimy mirror inside reflected her image duskily. She quickly took out her new M.A.C. coral lipstick (a shade called Inca) and reapplied it, then, with her fingers, combed her glossy auburn hair.

She was thirty-six, with a sharp nose, wavy shoulder-length hair, and large, luminescent, cocoa-brown eyes, her best feature. She was not, however, looking her best at this moment. She looked a wreck, in fact; she wished she’d taken the time to change into a suit, or any outfit, for that matter, that would garner some respect from the hostile audience she was about to face. The Bureau, finicky about the way its agents dressed, would not look kindly on her attire. Well, screw the Bureau too.

The elevator door opened, and she took a deep breath.

The door to 3C was open. In front of it stood a uniformed officer she didn’t know. She identified herself and was admitted to the apartment, which was crawling with homicide detectives, photographers, patrolmen, medical examiners, an assistant district attorney, and all the other usual guests at a murder scene. Crime scenes are supposed to be orderly and methodical, but, for all the police department’s lists and rules and procedures, they’re inevitably chaotic and frenzied.

Sarah elbowed her way through the jostling crowd (someone was smoking, though that was strictly verboten) and was halted by someone she didn’t recognize, a homicide detective from the look of him. He stood before her, blocking her entry, an immense monolith. Fifties, a hard drinker, balding; tall, muscular, spiteful.

“Hey!” he boomed. “Who the hell are you?” Before she could reply, the detective went on: “Anyone who’s not on the list I’m going to issue a fucking summons, you understand? Plus, I’m going to start asking you all for reports.”

She sighed, contained her exasperation. She produced her leather-encased FBI badge, and was about to speak when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Sarah.”

Peter Cronin, her ex-husband, told the other detective: “Sarah Cahill, from the FBI’s Boston office. Sarah, this is my new boss, Captain Francis Herlihy. Frank, you okayed this, remember?”

“Right,” Herlihy conceded sullenly. He looked at her for a moment as if she’d said something rude, then pivoted toward a gaggle of non-uniformed men. “Corrigan! Welch! I need some evidence bags. I want that Hennessey’s bottle and the drinking glasses in the sink.”

“Hello,” Sarah said.

“Hello,” Peter said. They exchanged polite, frosty smiles.

“Look, we can’t seem to turn up any of the deceased’s friends or relatives, so I’m going to have to ask you to identify the body.”

“I was wondering why you invited me here.” Peter never did her a favor, either personal or professional, unless there was something in it for him.

“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.