Jack sauntered in and checked the name. As he'd guessed, it was Sean McGillin. He was curious why Laurie and Janice seemed so engrossed in what sounded to him like a routine case. Generally, he wasn't one to stereotype women, but he thought it odd that they had both displayed what he thought was rather unprofessional emotion. He flipped open the folder and shuffled through it until he found Janice's report. He read it quickly. Nothing jumped out. Other than the victim being only twenty-eight, the circumstances weren't particularly noteworthy. It might have been sad and a tragedy for the victim's family and friends, but it wasn't sad for mankind or the city or even the borough, for that matter. There were a lot of individual tragedies in a metropolis the size of New York.
Jack quickly closed the folder and beat it out of the office as if he'd been engaged in something surreptitious and was fearful about being caught. All at once, he was less inclined to see if Laurie wanted to reconsider her decision to move back to her own apartment for fear of having to deal with too much emotion. Thinking about family tragedies was not a pastime he wanted to indulge in. He'd had too much personal experience.
Down on the first level, Jack retrieved his biking paraphernalia as well as the bike itself. He waved to the evening security man, Mike Laster, as he carried his bicycle out onto the receiving dock and then down onto the pavement. The rain had stopped, and it was significantly colder than it had been when he'd arrived that morning. He was thankful for his gloves as he climbed on the bike and pedaled across 30th Street to First Avenue.
In contrast to his morning ride, Jack enjoyed the afternoon slalom among the cars, taxicabs, and buses as he streaked northward, racing the traffic in daredevil fashion. Eventually, he cut over to Madison Avenue, using the brief crosstown traverse as a time to allow his circulation to relieve his aching quadriceps. Heading north again, he regained his speed. At the rare times he had to stop for traffic lights, he briefly questioned between breaths why he was enjoying challenging the traffic when he hadn't that morning. Sensing it had something to do with things he didn't want to think about, he gave up trying to understand and just savored the experience.
At the Grand Army Plaza, with the Plaza Hotel on one side and the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on the other, Jack entered Central Park. This was always his favorite part of his commute. With the temperature continuing to plummet, it was now cold enough for his breath to form a cloud of vapor with each exhale. Overhead, the sky had darkened into a deep purple, except to his left, in the direction of the setting sun. There it was still a rich but rapidly fading scarlet that formed a striking, blood-red backdrop for the sawtoothed spires of the buildings lining Central Park West.
The street lamps had come on in the park, and Jack rode between spheres of light and their intersecting penumbras. There were more joggers than there had been in the morning, and Jack kept his speed down. Above 80th Street, the number of joggers began to fall precipitously. By then, night had taken full command of the sky. To make things worse, it seemed to Jack that the distance between the street lamps had grown. As dark as it was, he occasionally had to slow down to walking speed between illuminated areas, since he could not see the ground and had to proceed on faith that there were no obstacles in his path.
When he passed 90th Street, it got even darker, particularly in the hilly section where he had felt such exhilaration that morning. In contrast, now he felt the stirrings of foreboding. The leafless trees crowded the pathway. He could no longer see the buildings along Central Park West, and except for an occasional distant beep of a taxi horn, he could have been biking out in some vast, isolated forest. When he did approach a street lamp, it made the intervening, leafless branches appear like giant spider webs.
Exiting the park at 106th Street, Jack felt relief. As he hit the button for the traffic light, he had to laugh at his imagination and wonder what had stimulated it. Although he had not been riding in the park at night for months, he'd done it a considerable number of times over the years. He could not remember it having affected him in such a fashion. Even he recognized the absurdity of his having had no fear earlier in traffic, where it was truly dangerous, while getting the heebie-jeebies riding through the deserted park. He felt like an impressionable ten-year-old walking through a cemetery on Halloween.
Once the light had changed, Jack crossed Central Park West and rode along 106th Street. As he came abreast of the neighborhood playground, he stopped. Without taking his toes from his toe clips, he grasped the high chain-link fence and looked out onto the basketball court. It was illuminated by a series of mercury vapor lamps that he had paid for. In fact, Jack had paid to have the entire playground rehabbed. Originally, Jack had only offered to redo the basketball court, thinking the neighborhood would be overjoyed. To his surprise, he was forced by an ad hoc neighborhood committee into considering doing the whole park, including toddler area, if he was to be granted the privilege of upgrading the basketball section. It took Jack just overnight to decide to do the whole schmear. After all, what else was he going to do with his cash? That had been six years ago, and Jack had more than gotten his money's worth.
"You coming out and run, doc?" one of the players called out.
There were only five men, all African-American, casually warming up at the distant basket. In deference to the cold, they were all dressed in multiple layers of trendy hip-hop gear. One of them had stopped when he'd caught sight of Jack. From his voice, Jack knew it was Warren, a man with whom Jack had become close over the years. Warren was a powerfully built, gifted athlete as well as the de facto leader of the local gang. He and Jack had come to share a great mutual respect. In fact, Jack even gave Warren credit for having saved his life.
"That's my intention," Jack yelled back. "Anybody else coming out, or is it going to be three-on-three?"
"We got rained out last night, so the whole gang's going to show up. So get your kicks and get that white ass of yours out here on the double. Otherwise, you'll be standing around holding your dick. Catch my drift?"
Jack flashed back a thumbs-up. He'd caught the drift all right. There would be a lot more than ten guys, meaning the first ten would get to play while the others would be forced to jockey to get into subsequent games. It was a complicated system that had taken Jack a couple of years to comprehend. By most people's standards, it wasn't democratic or fair. Winners was taken by the eleventh guy to show up, who then chose the other four he wanted on his team. At that point, the order people arrived didn't matter. In fact, sometimes one of the members of the losing team would get selected because he was a particularly good player. Back when Jack had just moved to the neighborhood, it had taken him months to get into his first game, and that was because he finally realized he had to get out there early.
Motivated by not wanting to stand around on the sidelines in the cold, Jack quickly pedaled across the street, snatched up his bike on his shoulder, and ran up the steps leading to his building's front door. Skirting some large, green trash bags, Jack pushed open the inner door. Just inside were two derelicts sharing a bottle of cheap wine. They got out of the way as Jack charged up the stairs. He was careful because of the debris that sprinkled the steps.
Jack lived in the rear unit on the fourth floor. He had to put his bike down while he struggled with his keys.
Without even bothering to close his apartment door, Jack stashed his bike against the wall in the living room, then kicked off his shoes and stripped off his jacket, tie, and shirt, and tossed them over the back of his sofa. Clad only in his boxer shorts, he ducked into the bathroom to get his basketball gear, which normally hung over the shower curtain.