“Right,” he said. “I'm somebody else. I'm already gone.”
1970/ Constantine had been specific—no interruptions, not for any reason. Not when he was with Bob Nupp. Nupp, obese in a red-striped shirt, was the trickiest of the county inspectors. You had to tickle Nupp; you had to make talk. You had to woo him like a girl, flatter him, and then slip him the money the way a schoolboy might drop his hand onto a girl's breast, with suave and showy indifference. It was a performance, and if you lost momentum at a crucial point you could lose Nupp completely. Constantine had seen it happen. Nupp lived in a sluggish agony of mixed feelings, and if the meeting got interrupted he was capable of heaving his burdened frame up out of his chair, going off empty-handed, and showing up the next morning, sharp-eyed and wheezing, to look over the work and start issuing citations.
So when Sandy opened the office door and put her nervous head into the room Constantine thought to himself, That's it, she's finished. He couldn't fire her now, not in front of Nupp. For now he frowned and said sharply, “Sandy, I told you. No interruptions. Did I tell you that?”
“Mr. Stassos, I'm sorry. I know. I just, well. It's the police. They said it was important.”
Constantine sucked in a breath that tasted of pine-scented air freshener and Nupp's sweat. The police. Was it Susan, who now lived outside the sphere of his protection? Was it Billy, racing with those friends of his? The world was all danger. Having children gave you a lifelong acquaintance with fear.
“Thanks, Sandy,” he said. He hesitated over the phone on his desk, glancing at Nupp. If it was bad news, he didn't want to hear it in front of this fat imbecile. Nupp had lips thick and mottled as sausages. He wore his big-collared shirts with the top three buttons open, showing the hirsute sag of his breasts as if they were rare and beautiful.
'I've got to be going, anyway,” he said. “Ill show myself out.”
Constantine nodded. “See you tomorrow morning, Bob,” he said, and with a clarity for which he would later despise himself he regretted the fact that this telephone call was going to cost him a fortune in cited violations. He would definitely fire Sandy.
He waited until Nupp had negotiated his way out of the chair and through the door. He punched the button on his phone.
“Constantine Stassos,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Stassos?” The voice, male, was flat and measured. It might have been the voice of the telephone itself.
“Yeah. Stassos. What's up?”
“Mr. Stassos, this is officer Dan Fitzgerald. We need you to come to the Nassau County sheriffs office. As soon as possible. It's located on Old Country Road in Mineola, are you familiar with that location?”
“What is it, officer? Is one of my kids—?” He stopped. He couldn't bear to give this voice so much power over his future. Before the voice had a chance to speak again he added, “I want to talk to the man in charge there. Get me the sergeant.”
“Mr. Stassos, if you'll come down to the sheriff's office—”
“Just tell me, you son of a bitch. Tell me. Is my daughter all right?”
There was a pause, filled with the soft crackle of the phone lines. Constantine could hear the ghost of another conversation. He heard the words “whole days,” faintly, in a woman's voice.
“I don't believe she's your daughter, sir,” the voice said hesitantly. Constantine thought that for some reason they were calling him about another man's daughter, an unknown girl. Susan, he thought, in a silent prayer.
“Sir,” the voice continued, “the woman we're holding is your wife.”
He and Mary drove back from the sheriff's office in a silence that would not break. Constantine took her to the downtown street where her car was parked, and she got out of his car and into her own without a word, without a gesture of recognition. She was blank, uninhabited. Her makeup had blurred, giving her a slightly melted aspect, baleful and furious.
Constantine followed her home, keeping close behind the sloped rear end of her Dodge Dart. Not the first time, the police had said. They wouldn't arrest a respectable woman, a member of the community, if she'd just once slipped a few inexpensive items into her purse. No, Mary had been watched over a period of months. Security didn't like to make trouble.