Chapter One

I seldom stay up to watch the late news unless there is something going on that I am super-curious about – or sometimes if I come home right at eleven from a movie or dinner or whatever. It’s because when I feel sleepy, I go to bed. If I try to go to bed when I’m not sleepy, I’ll toss and turn for what seems like hours.

That night, though, I walked into my apartment a few minutes before eleven from a movie. My mind was racing in all kinds of directions about the film, which took place in northern Italy during the summertime. Like a gauzy dream of sunshine and wonderful food to look at, kinda, but it was a coming-of-age movie full of teenage angst and dirty talk. I knew I would have to calm down if I wanted to go to sleep, so I turned on the television, which had news on almost all the channels, and poured myself a martini-glass of vodka, which I keep in the freezer instead of on the liquor cabinet, because vodka is only drinkable if it’s chilled.

The first story on the news was a breaking item about two kids disappearing. I live in New York and although homicides and most major crimes are at a near all-time low, it’s not unusual for the late news to feature a shooting or somebody getting hit by a speeding car or whatever. But this was no ordinary crime story. Apparently, two kids whose wealthy father died recently were missing – never came home from school – and the cops had no clues to go on. Plus, the two boys were both from the Coniston family, social-register and inherited money all the way, but usually with a low profile in the papers or gossip columns.

The Coniston home on upper 5th Avenue was one of the last gigantic nineteenth-century townhomes left on the avenue that was still a family residence. Most of the townhomes that lined the avenue one hundred years earlier had been torn down to make room for high-rise buildings, and the few that survived were mostly museums, like The Frick Collection, the Cooper Hewitt (Andrew Carnegie’s home) and the Ukrainian Institute of America (Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion at 79th Street).

Eddie Coniston, the father of the boys who disappeared, died several months before the kids disappeared, but his passing wasn’t really a news story because there was no foul play. Coniston had been the head of a family conglomerate that had interests in real estate, construction, property management and a bunch of other things as well. It was private and totally owned by the family. There had never been any financial filings that would give the media an idea of the size of the Coniston empire. The news coverage of his death said there was no information on why he died or from what (he was in his late forties), but speculation was a coronary or respiratory failure. Eddie had been a football player in college, but, over the years, had gotten grossly fat. He had to be helped in and out of cars. He was a big contributor to charities, but stopped going to events. In fact, he stopped appearing in public at all a couple of years back.

He left all his estate to his elder son, also named Edward, who was twelve. Eddie’s brother Ricky Coniston was appointed CEO of all the Coniston companies. Now young Ed Coniston and his younger brother, Richie, had gone missing. To make things more confusing, Ricky Coniston had a son named Edward, called Ned, as well, and so did the third brother, George, who had died some years back. George’s Edward was called Ted.

I signed onto the computer in my office, actually a guest bedroom, but serving two or three purposes, and sent a quick email to my friend, Mike di Saronno, a bigwig detective in the NYPD, asking him if he saw the coverage. I am Hugo Miller, a civilian criminalist for the NYPD – basically a pro bono consultant, and more or less deputized back-up for the department’s investigative arm. I copied my friends, Ruth Jensen and Gabriele Cortese, who have helped me help the NYPD. Mike knew Ruth and Gabriele well from having worked with them over the years. In addition, Ruth is a well-known socialite and philanthropist. Gabriele is the co-owner of one of the chicest restaurants in SoHo, Ora di Pranzo. It’s one of those places where people make reservations months in advance of special occasions – and even then, they have a hard time getting a table. Think of a hit Broadway musical that is sold out until two years from now. Ora di Pranzo is kinda like that. Me, I am semi-retired from a sports PR company I founded in the 1980s, and I still own a big chunk of it. Fortunately, it has done well, so I have been able to sock away some savings, and am ahead of my expenses, sometimes way ahead. My work for the NYPD is a freebie, no pay, although sometimes my expenses are reimbursed.

I live in Long Island City, which is the part of Queens that is directly opposite the United Nations across the East River. From my subway station at Vernon-Jackson, it is one stop to Grand Central Station, about a four-minute ride. Gabriele lives in Brooklyn Heights, one of the swankiest places in New York City. Ruth has a big apartment on Park Avenue at the corner of 61st Street, her home with her husband, Murray, who died about three years back.

After finishing my vodka, I knew I would be able to go to sleep, and as I drifted off, I tried to go over anything I might already know about the Conistons, which, if it was sugar, would not have been enough for a single spoonful to stir into a cup of coffee. I made a note on the notepad next to the bed to look into the Coniston family first thing in the morning.

It was late summer, but the sun was still coming up early and going down late. There was a pervasive humidity that seldom lifted in the hot weather. For icing on that cake, about three out of five days, we’d have a thunderstorm in the afternoon, so there would be steam rising off the streets, as if it wasn’t already hot enough to feel like you might melt like ice cream that had been dropped on the sidewalk.

Although I hate the heat and humidity, I can’t sleep without a sheet on top of me. So, I turned on the air conditioning in my bedroom. The white noise of the AC unit blanks out a lot of what might be going on outside, including the sounds of rain and traffic. Even so, when the sun came up at about five thirty, I woke up just like it was an alarm clock.

I’ve been having a bit of a tremor in my hands sometimes. My doctor says it’s nothing to worry about, called a ‘familial tremor’. Almost everybody on my father’s side of the family has it. It’s not a degenerative condition – it can get worse if I don’t take care of myself, but it’s not possible for it to get worse enough to ruin my health or kill me, like multiple sclerosis or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ‘Lou Gehrig’s Disease’. Caffeine seems to bring it on unless I’m eating a meal while I consume the caffeine. So, I was struggling to eliminate my cuppa joe first thing in the morning.

My pattern is that I usually have a beverage in the morning – always had been coffee, but now it was usually orange juice with or without any vodka in it. The advantage of a jigger of vodka for me is that it stops the tremor before it starts. Any alcohol does that.

I did without the vodka that morning, and dived into the seemingly limitless world of the Internet, to see what I could find out about the Coniston family. Just as I was getting started, Mike called me.

“Hey, Hugo,” he said. “Yeah, I did see the coverage of the Coniston kids last night. More than that, I’ve been assigned to the investigative team. I hope you’ll have time to help us out.”

Music to my ears. “Already on it, boss,” I said. “Trying to get up to date on the family. I guess they go way back to before the Revolution. I was just going to check on Amazon to see if there is a family biography by chance. Are you interested in where the family name comes from?”

“Sure, why not?”

“It’s probably from northern England. There is a town called Coniston in the Lake District in northwest England. There is also a Coniston Lake and a land formation called The Old Man of Coniston, which is a pointed hill with barren sides like moors.”

I hiked up it, years earlier. It had some geological significance that I couldn’t recall, but I remember the town, very picturesque, as most of the Lake District is. Coniston was called Coningeston in the Middle Ages, a name derived from the Old Norse word for king, combined with the Anglo-Saxon suffix -ton, indicating a village. A lot of history in that area. England then was a little like California or Korea now, with the north quite different in most ways from the south.

“I’m guessing the family has been in America for a long time, probably since the early 1800s, so it probably doesn’t matter,” I said. “There was a great migration out of much of Scotland and the northwest of England in the late eighteenth century, and I suspect that may have been when the Coniston family arrived.”

“I bet Ruth knows somebody in the family.”

“That occurred to me, but I didn’t want to call her so early.”

There was a pause as I visualized Mike looking at his watch. “Oh,” he said, “it is early. Sorry. Do you want to talk later instead?”

“No, I’m okay. So, what happened to the kids? The news didn’t have any details last night. I haven’t turned on the tube this morning yet.”

He explained the boys, who were students at The Trinity School on West 91st Street, left school at their regular time, and never showed up at home. The NYPD was trying to search out any video that might have caught the boys as they walked to the bus stop, or as they walked across Central Park, where their home was only a couple of blocks north of ‘uptown’ East 91st Street. So far, not much help.

“Any ransom demand?”

“Negative. No calls, no letter, no email. Their mother, Lizzie Coniston, was distraught, of course. She had recently lost her husband, and now her children disappeared. Ed and Richie were the only boys, but there were two girls. There are two guys around the clock with Mrs Coniston, one from the FBI and one from here. No decision that I know of about whether to pay any ransom that’s demanded, but we think the family will do almost anything to get those two boys home safe.”

I told Mike I would call him back after I had a chance to check in with Ruth and Gabriele. He agreed, and suggested when I talked to them, it might be good for the four of us to caucus before long.

“As you might guess,” he said, “the mayor is all over this like white on rice. So, I have no idea what will happen an hour from now. If we can do it, let’s try to get Halal food from the food truck downstairs and meet at my office.”

I went back to my computer and turned on the television to CNN, although I doubted there would be much coverage of a crime story in New York on a global news service like CNN.

The phone rang. It was Ruth.

Ruth and I have known each other for decades. We were introduced by a financial analyst with a penchant for matchmaking back in the early 1990s, after my second divorce and after Ruth’s breakup with a longtime boyfriend who finally decided he was not going to divorce his wife. I never remarried, but Ruth met and married Murray Jensen, and was now widowed after ten years of marital bliss.

I told her I had a bet with Mike that she knew somebody from the Coniston family.

“He bet against me?”

“Negative. I bet against you.”

“Well, now you owe me a drink, because I don’t know one of them, I know several of them. One is even a member of the Opera League,” she said, mentioning a social club she and Murray belonged to at the Metropolitan Opera.

“You gotta tell me all about everybody, and Mike suggested that you and Gabriele and I go over to his office and we can grab some lunch from the Halal truck that parks outside the precinct.”

She said that was good, and I told her I would text her a time to meet. I also suggested that if she felt like doing some background work on the family, it would be appreciated.

“I’m doing what I can online, but I suspect you will have better places to look. Why would anybody take their kids?”

“Money, my dear. Money.”

I texted Gabriele about my conversation with Mike, and asked if he could meet me at a restaurant called Thalia so we could walk over to the precinct together.

OK when

11:30

CU