Wife of the Day

By Daphne Uviller

Detective Zephyr Zuckerman is back! In this tale of real estate and sordid romance, Zephyr and her posse of native New Yorkers tangle with the city, marriage, and their thirties. As Zephyr contends with something less than newlywed bliss, her parents threaten to sell the family homestead on West 12th Street and her boss dangles the prospect of deportation to the Midwest. A beach read for the intelligentsia, Wife of the Day is a comic mystery and a portrait of today’s Greenwich Village that investigates how much where we are is a part of who we are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brownstone Books
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781619849280

Book preview

Author

Chapter 1

Ipeered through the window of a buffed red sedan and pretended to be discerning.

She runs great, the salesman told me eagerly, bending down so that we were nearly cheek to cheek. He was my height, with a windburned face and a villainously pointy chin. His Mormon missionary-esque name tag read Gavin. Gavin had not left my side since I set foot on the blustery used car lot. Wanna take her for a spin?

No, no, I told him, straightening up. Not yet.

Not ever. I was probably the first person ever to browse a car lot who was not in possession of a driver’s license. Actually, I was probably the first person over the age of sixteen in the entire state of Iowa not in possession of a driver’s license.

What about those over there? I pointed to a line of shiny, practical-looking cars in a far corner of the lot.

He waved them away dismissively, not bothering to respond.

Maybe if I knew a little more about you? He dropped his voice in what I imagined he imagined was a seductive fashion. What you’re looking for?

I was mildly repulsed, but in my experience it always helped move a case along when a subject hit on me. And in fairness to Gavin, Id pocketed my brand-spanking-new wedding ring in the hopes that someone would prey on a young—ish—single woman who was car shopping. Plus, I was legitimately as dumb as they come when it came to purchasing a used car. Or pretending to purchase one. I wrinkled my nose, hoping to look adorably confused.

You need a tissue? Gavin pulled a fraying, aged wad from his jacket pocket. I shook my head quickly.

Well, I told him, I want something safe and cheap. It’s the first time I’ve ever bought a car. I would tell him I’d just moved out of my parents’ home, spread my wings, and was ready to start my grown-up life.

Just got divorced? he asked sympathetically and not a little bit eagerly.

So much for young or youngish. As I so often did, I put my pride aside.

Yep, I choked out. Only three months into my real marriage to Gregory Samson, I was more uncomfortable telling this lie than most I told in the line of duty. I was having enough trouble feeling married without already pretending to be divorced. What about those cars? I nodded toward the sedans gleaming in flat winter sunlight. It was too cold to uncross my arms and point.

You don’t want those, Gavin told me.

Oh, really? How come?

We were strolling past a line of cars that had numbers splashed across their windshields (I didn’t know whether those were prices or mileages and I wasn’t about to ask; I didn’t want to overdo the innocent dupe bit), but now Gavin stopped and faced me. Probably a bit of choreography perfected at salesman school.

Zephyr, he said soothingly, and I questioned my decision not to use an alias on this investigation; somehow, my distance from New York had made it feel unnecessary. I think I know your story. He locked gazes with me. Tell me if I’m wrong,

Oh, gallant Gavin, you’d better be wrong, or I’m out of a job.

You were born and raised west of here, probably Story County.

I nodded, feigning happy surprise. I knew I was somewhere near Cedar Rapids because my plane ticket and the pilot had told me so, but I wasn’t sure where in the state of Iowa that was and so west of here meant very little.

Farm girl. Farm family. Fifth generation. No, maybe even sixth. Your folks raise soy, mostly, and times are tough. They’d consider selling off some land, but the prices are dropping. How am I doing so far? Gavin winked at me.

Amazing, Gavin, just amazing. My excitement was genuine. After seven years of growing more and more skilled as a detective working for New York City’s Special Investigations Commission (SIC), I had embarked on a losing streak at the exact moment my new boss arrived on the scene. As soon as the unreadable, pointy-eared Michael Start took over from Pippa Flatland, I began getting made on every assignment, and each time it was earlier and earlier in the sting. At the Salty Cupcake bakery in Hell’s Kitchen, for example, I’d lasted ten days as an apprentice to a ganache guru before my shield fell out of my backpack and landed on the floor in front of the subject. At the Paper Cut warehouse in Hunts Point, my acting skills—as a vendor thanking the Board of Ed for buying my palettes of toner— were put to the test for just one day before the administrator who’d accepted my marked money happened to walk into Dublin House that night and saw me swilling a victory sangria with colleagues wearing SIC jackets. Most recently, there was the architecture firm that had won a bid to build a waste treatment plant next to a public housing complex. It was there that I’d set an indelible record, getting made in thirty seconds: the partner recognized me because we’d slept together ten years earlier following a Nirvana Nineties retrospective at Anthology Film Archives. (His name had sounded familiar.)

But now! I flashed Gavin a big ole milkmaid smile. Now I was back on track, though a used car lot outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was the last place I’d expected to recover my mojo. Had this case involved fried butter crossing state lines, or anything to do with cattle, I might have at least related to the subject, having had numerous personal encounters with lard and meat. But cars? To date, my only relationship with cars was as a dial-fiddling passenger. Now, suddenly, I was posing as a potential car owner, and all because of the devastation Hurricane Sandy had wreaked on my hometown a few months earlier.

During and after that perfect and perfectly nightmarish storm, thousands of cars were either destroyed completely or should have been tagged for demolition. Instead, an unknown number of damaged vehicles were purchased at auction by shady dealers in other states with lax regulations. The titles were then washed and many of the cars sold back to New Yorkers, who, of course, were now scrambling to replace their lost cars. In the case I’d been handed, at least a hundred sedans and vans had been sold back to the city itself for government use. The SIC handled any case involving city employees or contractors trying to con the city.

You won blue ribbons at the 4-H fairs for—now don’t tell me— hmm, it was either for your cornbread or for your quilting, I’m not sure which.

Very close, Gavin, very close! I bounced on my toes.

You got your associate’s degree in Fort Dodge, married your high school sweetheart, and had a baby—a beautiful baby—but it turns out you should have waited for someone better to come along. And here, he winked and put a hand on my shoulder, a move that was unthreatening because of the distance his straight arm maintained between us, but that forced us to connect nonetheless. Another tactic learned in a conference room. Am I right?

I forced myself to look into his eyes.

"You are so right, Gavin. Except the 4-H prize was for my cobbler, not my cornbread," I had the nerve to add. I was giddy with the uncertainty of where this was going, but knew it was going somewhere.

I shoulda known! Gavin snapped his fingers in jovial defeat. Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially, and I leaned in to hear him. So, Zephyr, the thing is, you’re the girl next door. You’re solid, proud Iowa stock. And I’m not gonna let the girl next door buy one of those tangerines.

Tangerines? I said, matching his tone.

"Well, we don’t like to say the L word around here."

I was betting the L word meant something different around here than it did back home on HBO.

Rhymes with... Gavin frowned. Well, hell in a hand truck, it doesn’t rhyme with anything! Never thought about that before.

I waited for him to work through his brainteaser. His slightly malicious features were not at all improved by a furrowed brow.

I confess, Gavin, I’m a little lost, I singsonged as a reminder that I was still standing there.

"Mmm, okay, imagine the word demon but with a different first letter and the e isn’t long. And think citrus."

It took me a moment. Lemon! Oh, the lemon laws? My heart picked up its pace.

He looked around a little nervously, although we were quite alone on this windswept winter morning.

Oh! I said, all but throwing my hands in the air in anticipation of a quick victory and a salvaged reputation back at the office. Are you saying those are—?

Shhh!

Citrusy? I whispered loudly.

Exactly. He grinned. Really, really tart citrus. So let’s get you test-driving this little cutie pie instead.

He started to open the driver door of a Mazda and it may as well have been the door to a cockpit. I swallowed my rising panic.

"But so many...tart fruits? I stalled. Did the manufacturer leave out some important part on a whole batch or something?" I giggled, hoping I sounded conversational and not interrogational.

Ha! That oughta be in a cartoon. Picture a whole set of cars rolling out of the plant without, like, spark plugs!

So spark plugs were an essential feature of cars. I’d add that to my slim body of automotive knowledge.

He gestured for me to get in the death machine I was not licensed to operate.

That’s not what happened? I pressed.

He squinted at the sky, his hand still on the door. "Let’s just say those engines have been known to flood. And I mean, flood’"

So who would ever want to buy them? I persisted, knowing I was close to crossing a line.

We’ve got some people back East interested, Gavin answered, impatience finally creeping into his voice. Now, get your little behind on that seat and give your new car a spin!

***

Ireturned to my hotel room that afternoon and celebrated with a package of string cheese from the lobby’s convenience kiosk and some complimentary tea. I’d managed to escape with both my cover and my life (and everyone else’s lives) intact. I told Gavin I’d left my license at home that day for purposes of self-control—You wouldn’t want me buying the first one I see, would you? I’d chirped—and called the car service to come fetch me.

And now, at last, I was soaking up the praise of my heretofore underwhelmed boss. Commissioner Start and Senior Detective Tommy O’Hara were on speakerphone in Start’s office.

Zuckerman, this is tight, really tight, Start said. And now I’m thinking, I’m thinking. I heard a frenetic tapping sound. Fingers? Pen? "Whatever little routine you’ve got, it works. They think you’re local; they’ll talk to you. Your whole hale and hearty thing is great."

The cheese churned in my gut. As glad as I was not to have blown my cover, I was unsettled by the idea of successfully passing as anything but a New Yorker for any amount of time.

So what you’re gonna do is hit up a couple more car lots in the area, just to see what comes up. Maybe nothing, but maybe fish in a barrel. And then— Start sounded like he was turning away from the phone, addressing Tommy, —we send a follow-up team to the hot spots and set up the sting. Zuckerman, for the next one, push it a little more. See if you can find out who the middle men are, the logistical details, the tow companies, the new plates, the cleanup crew, all of it.

I gazed down at the desolate EconoTravel parking lot and counted potholes. I’d already been there for four days and thought I’d be leaving in the morning.

Uh, how long are we talking?

Don’t worry about your other cases, Start said, and there was an awkward silence at his use of the plural. I was currently on exactly one case, if you could call it that, and I didn’t. I was observing a trial that tangentially concerned the city, a dull housekeeping chore all SIC detectives regularly undertook in the service of crossing t’s and inscribing hearts over i’s.

Thanks. I didn’t feel the least bit grateful. In fact, I was beginning to feel the familiar stirrings of panic. But how long are we talking? I repeated, bunching up a fistful of the ugly curtains. Gregory, my newly minted husband (ack, what, who, me, married?), an NYPD detective, had been on a six-week-long undercover drug sting that had him working most nights. We’d dated for nearly four years before the wedding, but in our three months of legal union, we’d been apart more than we’d ever been before. Our ships-in-the-night routine was making me—who was antireligion yet perversely superstitious—wonder if the CEO of the universe was sending us a sinister message.

I did not want to spend another night away from Gregory.

Zuckerman, Start said. I don’t want to get your hopes up— were we participating in the same conversation? —but you know the produce vendor case that came in during the fall, the ‘lost’ shipments supposed to be headed to PSFS?

I was silent.

Pass off Shit as Food for Students, Tommy chimed in.

You can do better than that, I retorted, but he had bought me the two seconds I’d needed to recall the acronym. Public School Food Services, yeah? I said as if impatient.

They were from Iowa! Start said. The schools’ corn and soy and I don’t know what else all come from Iowa, Zuckerman! It was the happiest I’d ever heard him, certainly during any interaction with me. "This could be big for you, Zuckerman. Big for SIC. We could finally expand our footprint, show that like the NYPD, we need to have a national presence! We’ll show that our work extends beyond New York, in the service of New York." He had obviously rehearsed the line as part of the argument he was mounting in an ongoing pissing contest between agencies. A contest in which I was about to become the urinal.

The mayor was pressuring all the city agencies to trim fat, and law enforcement units like ours had to prove our worth by increasing the number of cases we closed each year. Preferably, those cases would result in arrest and prosecution. Expanding operations to a new playing field (literally, fields: cornfields) would put more cases on Start’s docket. But an out-of-state office could also serve as a rubber room—a rubber state—a place to get rid of civil servants who weren’t being productive enough.

And here I was, not having closed a case in over a year.

I hung up the phone, promising to pose as a local for another two days. Forget the fact that I didn’t have a driver’s license and that no one in the office knew that. They’d never thought to ask and, after a less than thorough search, I’d convinced them that the occasional car service was cheaper than renting a car for an unknown amount of time. They had chosen me for the task, not one of the new recruits—the young’uns, as I thought of them—and I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to redeem myself on a case. Any case. Even one outside my comfort zone, outside the five boroughs.

I flopped onto the bed and noticed for the first time the unobtrusive art adorning the beige-gray walls. The paintings looked as if they had been done on one big canvas and then sliced up, like a sushi roll.

What did it mean that suddenly everyone from Gavin the Salesman to Start the Seeker of SIC World Domination thought I’d make a great Midwesterner? Had I lost my New Yorkness? Could you grow apart from your city, the way some people grew estranged from their spouses?

I’d always taken pride in surprising people with the fact that I was a native New Yorker. I was fresh-faced and unadorned: hale and hearty, as Start had so less-than-flatteringly put it. But now—I sat up and peered more closely at the impasto on one of the mass works of art; was that toothpaste?—I wondered about the mismatch. Maybe, rather than being a terrific surprise, I was like an infant switched at birth. Maybe somewhere out there was some soul-cycling, New York magazine columnist pulling at teats and avoiding being kicked in her size zero butt by a heifer.

No. No. I was a New Yorker first and foremost, certainly before being an American, but also before being a detective, a wife, and maybe even before being a woman. In the past, when I was sure of nothing else—when I couldn’t make love work, when I couldn’t make work work, when I was disappointing my parents or myself or, worst of all, a friend—I still knew I was a New Yorker. It was a safety net, always there to catch me and bounce me toward my next endeavor. Though I might look like a rosy-cheeked, zaftig milkmaid, I was and would always be from and of 287 West 12th Street. I wouldn’t move, not even for this job I loved.

I bounced myself off the bed, uncertain what to do with this newfound certainty. The bad art was very distracting. I examined the white blob, which was begging to be touched. It came away on my finger and smelled distinctly of mint.

Ha.

I scuttled into the bathroom, grabbed my travel Crest from the side of the sink, and returned to study the masterpiece. Uncapping the tube, I went to work leaving my own mark on the Midwest.

Chapter 2

Therese San Bernadine was one of the new hires. She was twenty- three, maintained a glossy, sixties-are-back middle-part hairstyle, and was unapologetically and never-endingly mired in self-inflicted online dating crises.

Okay, Zephyr. Last one, I swear.

I leaned past Therese to peer down the marble-walled courthouse corridor. Still no sign of the jury pool. I had hoped to use this downtime to figure out how to save my newly imperiled career, but Therese was not about to scroll solo.

Shoot.

"An ENT with three ferrets...? Or. Or, she repeated, seeing my grimace, this guy has two start-ups. She flashed me her phone. A bald, heavily inked gentleman with a meticulous goatee had posted a photo of himself asleep on his own fat chest. That shows real initiative, don’t you think? Not just a cog in the establishment’s wheel. Right, Zephyr?"

But how did his start-ups end ups? From her blank look, I gathered that in her world—a world where doctors were cogs rather than healers—no one dared speak of a failed start-up. Wait, I said, shifting on the wooden bench and detaching a knot of fluff from my tights. I thought you were looking for a place to live first, before you found a guy to date. Had no one thought to teach her the principle of real estate before romance?

"I was" she said, "but then I thought, be efficient, Therese! What if I find an apartment and then the next week I meet a guy and he’s just, you know, totally geographically inappropriate? Like, I get a place in Bushwick, but he lives in Inwood! So I figured, find a guy, then move. You know, not near enough to smother, but near enough to give the relationship a fighting chance."

Therese was stressing over Bushwick versus Inwood? I was facing exile to a place where restaurants had lounges, nobody knew from subways, and strangers made eye contact.

In that case, the doctor probably lives in a better neighborhood. Try him first.

Therese’s eyes grew wide and her hair slid back over her shoulders as she looked up at me. Zephyr. That’s pretty, you know, prejudiced!

How in the name of all that was holy did she get her hair so glossy?

It might be, but you’ll find it’s also, you know, accurate. I shrugged with more confidence than I felt. These probies at the agency threw me off kilter. They were only twelve years younger than I, but they were twelve years younger. Facebook was already over for them. They wanted my advice, which made me feel old, but they knew more than I did about certain things, which also made me feel old.

I was hot and my butt was killing me so I shrugged out of my bulky winter coat, rolled it up, and shoved it under me. Be efficient, Zephyr! The only good thing about a dreaded transfer to Iowa—which would not happen—was not having to waste endless hours loitering around the courthouse, monitoring old cases that were stumbling toward trial. I glanced at my watch for the third time in as many minutes.

A lone figure galumphed toward us, hands thrust into pockets, growing larger and larger until he loomed over us in all his doughy hound-dogness. Big News, our office’s crowning collective achievement of a nickname for Piotr Zbigniew, was a retired cop who had put in twenty-five years on the force, outlived two unfortunate but much-loved wives, and was engaged to a brave third. Big News was proof that no man need be single, no matter how droopy, spotty, or brooding he might be.

Prosecutor’s on that stuck train in the Bronx, he informed us, so nuthin’s goin’ on in Part Seventy-Two. What’s doin’ here?

Big News was in the same precarious position I was in; he’d been ordered by Commissioner Start to get his numbers up. But we were like doctors on rounds: if you’re on rounds, you can’t be in the operating room saving lives. We couldn’t be at the office digging up cases that could save our lives because we were stuck here.

Nothing yet! Therese sang, clicking, I noticed with dull satisfaction, on the ENT’s profile.

Big News and I exchanged looks. The probies weren’t responsible for closing cases. Their nascent careers were not hanging in the balance.

Not nothing, I countered, blowing a sweaty strand of hair off my face. "Therese is making a lot of progress."

Noooo, she said modestly, not glancing up from her phone.

Big News nodded, hunching ever lower with each pulse of his head, as though a mallet was at work on him.

To be fair, the case I was assigned to observe was a knockout, and if I’d still been working for the old commissioner, my friend and mentor Pippa Flatland, who hadn’t worried about getting her numbers up (and was therefore out of a job), I’d have been as happy as if I’d found a loaded MetroCard on a deli floor. Two city hospital employees, male nurses in Bellevue’s trauma department, had been siphoning morphine out of drip bags attached to unconscious patients and selling it on the street in vials. That part of the crime was demoralizing, but the sales process was admirably novel: the defendants would leave the product inside catalog dispensers, those eyesores cluttering the sidewalks courtesy of The Learning Annex and Gotham Writers Workshop. Buyers would come along, feign an interest in Donald Trump’s tushie-esque face, which was gracing the cover of the cheaply printed course listings, and walk away with a vial secreted inside the catalog. Customers tucked payment into an envelope taped to the inside of the plastic stand. A variation on leaving money for fresh eggs at an unmanned farm stand. I would have called it an honor system among thieves, except this honor system made use of the security camera on the side of a building that faced the dispensers. A kickback to the doorman of that building guaranteed access to the footage and obviated the need for money to physically trade hands.

The setup had been working brilliantly for the two nurses until the outreach director of The Learning Annex observed an unusual spike in the rate of catalog restocking. She decided to conduct her own homegrown surveillance outside the Au Bon Pain on the corner of 15th and 5th. After two hours of watching a steady stream of passersby grope around inside the stand, then carry away a rolled-up catalog, unperused, she called the cops.

I like the little balls on your tights, Big News said in his low rumble. Festive. For Christmas?

His comment yanked me out of my mental morass. First of all, Big News never made small talk. He seemed to observe a daily quota of words. Second, the festive balls he referred to was the pilling I’d been picking off my tights. They were a testament not to any celebratory inclination, but rather to my reluctance to buy high-quality tights or to refrain from picking at the ones I did buy. And third, Christmas? It was February and I was a Jewish atheist. Big News must have been really scared for his job.

Our feeble conversation was mercifully interrupted by the arrival of a ragtag mass of potential jurors, their coats, knapsacks, and newspapers hanging off them as though they were haphazardly decorated trees. They followed the court officer along the hall from the elevators.

Single file, people. Like ya supposed to on the subway but don’t. Hats off, phones off, gum out, mouths shut. Unnastand? She glared at her fifty or so charges and got no response, which seemed to suit her fine.

The officer yanked open the door and the jurors immediately clogged the entrance. I stood, stretched, and gathered up my coat. Therese hurried to stand, too. If we were lucky, we’d get seats by the aisle so I could dutifully check this case off my list and make my escape.

But then Big News elbowed me and tilted his head. There was an intense, quiet conversation going on among three people at the back of the group: a black woman of about forty in a bright pink parka and two white men. One of the men was stooped and emaciated with a shrunken face and bony torso, but with