“Good enough, and thanks.”
Barrott went back to the squad room to find renewed energy crackling through it. Ahearn, his tie pulled loose, his face haggard and weary, was pacing the floor in his office. “We may be onto something,” he said. “Steve Hockney, the nephew of the owner of the apartment building MacKenzie was living in, has a sealed juvenile record. We got a look at it, serious stuff, but nothing violent. Dealing marijuana, burglary, and theft. His uncle was able to hire good lawyers who kept him out of a couple of years in a juvenile center. According to Lil Kramer, Hockney was holding it over her head that MacKenzie was missing his watch. That was only a day or two before Mack disappeared. We’re looking for Hockney. His band has regular gigs in the SoHo–Greenwich Village locale, and he uses a lot of costume changes, even wigs and putty to alter his appearance.”
“How about the rest of what the Kramers told you?”
“We spoke to Bruce Galbraith. He’s one cold fish. He acknowledged that he did ask Lil Kramer about his school ring, but she took it wrong. He wasn’t accusing her. He claims he just asked her if she’d seen it when she was cleaning up. She hit the roof and got all upset. Knowing her background, you can understand why she might have been hypersensitive about a question like that.”
Bob Gaylor had come in while Ahearn was speaking. “Our guys just reached Hockney’s uncle, Derek Olsen, the old man who owns the buildings. He confirmed that there was a rivalry between his assistant, Howard Altman, and his nephew Steve Hockney. He said he’s sick of both of them. He’s left messages on their phones that he’s selling all the property and that the wrecking ball is hitting the 104th Street town house tomorrow morning. We didn’t let on that we’re hunting for the nephew. We told him we were confirming the Kramers’ story.”
“What did he say about them?”
“Hardworking, good people. He’d trust them with everything he had.”
“Have we got any pictures of Hockney?” Barrott asked. “I want to compare him with a face I saw in Reeves’s office just now. I feel as though I’ve missed something.”
“There’s one of his publicity pictures with his band on my desk,” Ahearn told him. “We’ve got dozens of them with our guys on the street.”
Barrott started rifling through the untidy clutter on Ahearn’s desk, then picked up a picture he found there. “This is the one,” he said aloud.
Ahearn and Gaylor stared at him. “What are you talking about?” Ahearn demanded.
“I’m talking about this guy,” he said, pointing. “Where’s that other picture of Leesey posing for her friend, the one with Nick DeMarco in the background?”
“One of the copies of it is somewhere in that pile.”
Barrott rummaged, then, with a satisfied grunt, said, “Here it is.” He held up two photos, comparing them. An instant later, he was dialing the cell phone of Lucas Reeves.
67
As I expected, the sanitarium where Mom was staying was about as luxurious inside and out as I would have imagined any place that Elliott would choose for her would be. Thick carpets, soft lights, fine paintings on the walls. I got there around 4:30, and the receptionist had clearly been briefed that I was on my way.
“Your mother is expecting you,” she said in one of those professionally melodious voices that seemed to me to fit in with the surroundings. “Her suite is on the fourth floor, with a beautiful view of the grounds.” She got up and led me to the elevator, an ornately handsome object with an operator and a velvet seating bench inside.
My escort murmured, “Ms. Olivia’s suite, please, Mason,” and I remembered hearing that in some of these expensive psychiatric residences last names are not shared. Just as well, I thought. The other guests don’t need to know that Mrs. Charles MacKenzie Sr. is in their midst.
At the fourth floor, we got out and walked down the hall to the corner suite. After tapping on the door, my escort opened it. “Ms. Olivia,” she called, her voice slightly elevated but still finishing-school modulated.
I walked behind her into an exquisite sitting room. I have seen photos of the suites in the Plaza Athénée in Paris, and I felt as though I was walking into one of them. Then Mom appeared in the doorway from the bedroom. Without another word, the escort was gone and Mom and I looked at each other.
All the conflicting emotions, the roller coaster of emotions that I had been experiencing this last week when Mom took refuge in Elliott’s apartment, rushed through me as I looked at her. Guilt. Anger. Bitterness. Then they all washed away and the only thing I felt was love. Her beautiful eyes were filled with grief. She was looking at me uncertainly as though she didn’t know what to expect of me.
I went over to her and put my arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so terribly sorry. I guess that no matter how many times I say to myself, ‘If only I hadn’t tried to find Mack,’ I can only tell you I’d give my life to undo that but I can’t.”
Then her hands began running through my hair the way they did when I was a small child and upset about something. They were loving and comforting, and I knew that she had come to peace with what I had done.
“Carolyn, we’ll see it through,” she said. “No matter what it turns out to be. If Mack has done everything they say he has done, there is one thing I can be sure of. He is not in his right mind.”
“How much have they told you?” I asked her.
“I guess everything. Yesterday I told Dr. Abrams, my psychiatrist, that I didn’t want to be protected anymore. I can sign myself out of here anytime, but I’d rather absorb everything that I have to know while I can talk it through with him.”
This was the mother I thought I had lost, the one who kept Dad sane when Mack disappeared, the one whose first thought was for me when she knew Dad was lost on 9/11. I had been a junior in Columbia then and had by chance slept home and was still asleep when the first plane hit. Horrified, Mom had watched it by herself. Dad’s office was on the 103rd floor of the North Tower, the first one to be hit. She had tried to phone him and actually got through to him. “Liv, the fire’s underneath us,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll make it.”
The connection had gone dead, and minutes later, she saw the tower collapse. She had let me sleep until I woke up naturally, about forty-five minutes later. I’d opened my eyes to find her sitting in my room, tears streaming from her eyes. Then she’d rocked me in her arms while she told me what had happened.
This was my mother as she was until year after year, the annual Mother’s Day call from Mack tore her apart.
“Mom, if you’re comfortable here, I wish you’d stay a while longer,” I said. “You don’t want to be on Sutton Place the way it is now, and once the media got word you were back at Elliott’s apartment, they’d be gunning for you there, too.”
“I understand that, but Carolyn, what about you? I know you wouldn’t come here, but isn’t there someplace you can get away from them?”
You can run but you can’t hide, I thought. “Mom, I think it’s necessary for me to be around and visible,” I said. “Because until we have absolute proof to the contrary, I am going to believe and publicly swear that Mack is innocent.”
“That’s exactly what your father would do.” Now Mom smiled, a real smile. “Come on. Let’s sit down. I wish we could have a cocktail, but that’s not going to happen here.” She looked at me, a bit anxiously. “You know that Elliott is coming?”
“Yes. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”
“He’s been a rock.”
I admit I felt a twinge of jealousy and then felt guilty about it. Elliott was a rock. Two weeks ago, Mom had said that I was her rod and staff. My guilt faded as I remembered that Elliott might just be about to announce that he needed to separate himself from our problems. Jackie’s words played again in my mind. Appearances mean so much to people like Elliott.
But when he arrived, everything I feared turned out to be totally wrong. In fact, in his endearing, formal way, he was looking for my blessing t
o marry Mom. He sat next to her on the couch, and addressed me earnestly.
“Carolyn, I guess you know I’ve always been in love with your mother,” he said. “I always thought she was a shining star beyond my reach. But now I know that I can offer her the protection of a husband at a very difficult time in her life.”
I knew I had to warn him. “Elliott, if Mack were ever to go on trial as a serial killer, you have to be aware that the publicity will be awful. Clients of the caliber you have may not be pleased that their financial advisor is in the tabloids on a regular basis.”
Elliott looked at my mother, then back at me. With something of a twinkle in his eyes, he said, “Carolyn, word for word, that is the same speech I heard from your mother. I can promise you this: I would rather tell all my distinguished clients to jump in the lake before I give up one day of being at your mother’s side.”
We had dinner in one of the private dining rooms. It was a low-key celebration. I agreed with their plan that they would be married as soon and as quietly as possible. I drove home that evening feeling so much better about Mom, but also with the strange sensation that Mack was trying to reach me. I could almost feel his presence in the car. Why?
Again there was no sign of the media on Sutton Place. I went to bed and listened to the eleven o’clock news. A clip with part of my statement to the media was shown, and I sounded strident and defensive. By now it had leaked out, or been allowed to leak out, that Leesey had named Mack as her abductor.
I turned off the television. Love or money, I thought as I closed my eyes. That’s what Lucas Reeves said were the causes of the majority of crimes. Love or money. Or lack of love, in Mack’s case.
At three A.M., I heard the buzzing of the intercom. I got out of bed and rushed downstairs to pick it up. It was the concierge. “I’m so sorry, Ms. MacKenzie,” he said. “But someone just handed a note to the doorman and said it was a matter of life and death that you have it immediately.”
He hesitated, then said, “With all the publicity, this may be someone’s terrible idea of a joke, but—”
“Send it up,” I interrupted him.
I stood at the door and waited until Manuel came down the hall and handed me a plain white envelope. The note in it was handwritten on plain bond paper.
It read, “Carolyn I am sending this by messenger because your phone may be wiretapped. Mack just called me. He wants to see both of us. He’s waiting on the corner of 104th Street and Riverside Drive. Meet us there. Elliott.”
68
There he is,” Barrott exclaimed, “on the street in front of the Woodshed the night Leesey disappeared. If you look from the angle the security camera caught him, he could see DeMarco’s table. And there he is again, in the same frame as DeMarco, watching Leesey when she was posing for her roommate.”
Accompanied by the security guard, who had been given permission to admit them, they were in Lucas Reeves’s office. They had studied hundreds of pictures in the wall montages, until they could pinpoint the face they were seeking.
“Here’s another one that looks like him, but the hair is shorter,” Gaylor said, a note of excitement detectable in his voice.
It was half past ten. Knowing they had a long night ahead, they hurried back to the office to begin to process information on one more potential suspect.
69
Lucas Reeves did not sleep well on Wednesday night. “Love or money” was the phrase that ran through his head in a singsong way. At six A.M., as he was waking up, the question that had been eluding him popped into his head. Who would be interested in having a person who is dead seem to be alive?
Love or money.
Money, of course. It was beginning to fall into place like pieces of a puzzle. So absurdly simple if he was right. Lucas, a notoriously early riser, never minded waking up someone when he needed the answer to a question. This time, fortunately, his advisor, a prominent estate lawyer, was also an early riser.
“Can an inheritance trust be broken, or is it always sacrosanct?” Lucas asked him abruptly.
“They’re not easily broken by any means, but if there’s a good and valid reason for dipping into it, the executor will usually be amenable.”
“That’s what I thought. I won’t disturb you any further. Thank you, my friend.”
“Any time, Lucas. But not before seven next time, okay? I get up early, but my wife likes to sleep.”
70
I pulled on slacks, slipped my feet into sandals, grabbed a long raincoat to cover my pajama top, and ran for the elevator, shoving Elliott’s note into my shoulder bag as I rushed down the hall. In my hurry to get to Mack before he changed his mind about seeing me, I forgot that the garage closed at three A.M. Manuel reminded me of that when I asked for the garage level.
I did the only thing I could do—got outside, into the street, and looked frantically around to flag down a cab. There was none on Sutton Place, but when I turned up Fifty-seventh Street I saw one of those gypsy town cars coming. I must have seemed a wild sight to him as I waved both arms to catch his eye, but he did stop. I got in, and he made a U-turn to go west.
When we got to the corner of 104th and Riverside Drive, there was no one there. I paid the cabby and climbed out onto the quiet street. Then I noticed a van parked down the block, and even though the lights were off, I had a hunch that Elliott and Mack might be in it. I walked closer to get a better look and made a pretense of reaching for a key, as though I were going to the nearest apartment building. Across the street, I could see a large construction site next to a boarded-up old town house on the corner.
Then a man stepped out of the darkened doorway of the next building. For a moment I thought it was Elliott, but then I could see that he was a much younger person, someone whose face was familiar. I recognized him as being the representative of the owner of Mack’s apartment building. I had met him that first time I stopped at the Kramers’, and he had spoken to me on Monday after I left their apartment in tears.
What on earth was he doing here now, I asked myself, and where was Elliott?
“Ms. MacKenzie,” he said hurriedly. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Howard Altman.”
“I remember you. Where is Mr. Wallace?”
“He’s with some guy I found camping out in that place. Mr. Olsen owns it. Every once in a while I check on it, even though it’s closed.” He was nodding toward the boarded-up corner building. “The guy I found gave me fifty bucks to call Mr. Wallace for him, then Mr. Wallace promised me another fifty bucks if I’d write a message for you and deliver it.”
“They’re inside that building? What does the other man look like?”
“He’s about thirty, I guess. He started crying when Mr. Wallace came in. They both did.”
Mack was in there, trying to hide in that crumbling ruin. I followed Howard Altman across the street and along the construction fence to the back door of the house. He opened it and gestured me to enter, but as I looked into the darkened interior I panicked and stepped back. I knew something wasn’t right. “Ask Mr. Wallace to come out,” I told Howard.
His answer was to grab me and pull me inside the house. I was so stunned I didn’t resist. He yanked the door closed behind him, and before I could scream or fight to free myself, he shoved me down a flight of stairs. Somewhere on the way down, I cracked my head and lost consciousness. I don’t know how long it was before I opened my eyes. It was pitch dark. The air I was breathing was unbearably foul. My face felt caked with blood. My head was splitting and there was something wrong with my right leg. It was bent under me and throbbing with pain.
Then I felt something move beside me, and a whispery voice moaned, “Water, please, water.”
I tried to move but could not. I knew my leg had to be broken. I did the only thing I could think to do. I moistened a finger in my mouth, then groped in the dark until I could find the parched lips of Leesey Andrews.
71
With his ever-increasing arthritis, Derek Olsen of
ten woke up during the night, throbbing pain in his hips and knees. On Wednesday night, when his aching joints woke him up, he could not go back to sleep again. The call from the police about his nephew Steve meant, of course, that he was in some kind of trouble again. So much for the fifty thousand I was going to leave him, Olsen thought. He can go whistle for it!
The one bright spot was that in a few hours he was going to have the fun of watching the wrecking ball smash that decrepit old town house into smithereens. Every chip that flies in the air represents money I made on the deal, he thought with satisfaction. I wouldn’t put it past Doug Twining to operate the rig himself. That’s how mad he is at having to pay me so much.
The pleasurable thought comforted him to the point that sometime before dawn he fell into the deep sleep that normally lasted till eight A.M. But on Thursday morning, his phone rang at six. It was Detective Barrott wanting to know where Howard Altman was. He hadn’t returned to his apartment all night.
“Am I his babysitter?” Olsen demanded querulously. “You wake me up to ask me where he is? How do I know? I don’t socialize with him. He works for me.”
“What kind of car does Howard drive?” Barrott asked.
“When he drives me, he drives my SUV. I don’t think he has a car of his own. I don’t care.”
“Does he ever take your SUV in the evening?”
“Not that I know of. He better not. It’s a Mercedes.”
“What color is it?”
“Black. At my age do you think I want a red one?”
“Mr. Olsen, we really need to talk about Howard,” Barrott said. “What do you know about his personal life?”
“I know nothing. I want to know nothing. He’s been working for me nearly ten years. He’s done a good enough job.”
“Did you check his references when you hired him?”