With a final flurry of farewell kisses and admonitions, Mom got into the elevator with Elliott, her final words, “Call me if you need anything, Carolyn,” muffled by the closing door.
I’ll admit that I was flustered about this date with Nick, if you can call it a date. I put on fresh makeup, brushed my hair, decided to leave it loose, then, at the last minute, I put on a new Escada suit my mother had insisted on buying for me. Both jacket and slacks were a pale shade of green, and I knew they brought out the red tones in my brown hair.
Why bother? Because after ten years I was still embarrassed by Mack’s candid statement that it was obvious I had a crush on Nick. I’m not dolling up for him, I told myself; I’m satisfying myself that I don’t look like a gawky adolescent fainting over her idol. But when the concierge phoned from the lobby to tell me that Mr. DeMarco was here, I have to admit that for a nanosecond, I did feel like the sixteen-year-old who had been foolish enough to wear her heart on her sleeve.
Then, when I opened the door for him, what struck me immediately was that the boyish, seemingly carefree Nick I remembered was gone.
When I saw him on television, I had noticed that his jawline had tightened and that at thirty-two, he already had strands of gray in his dark hair. But face-to-face, there was more. His dark brown eyes had always had a teasing, flirtatious look, but now the expression in them was serious. Even so, his smile, when he took my hand, was the one I remembered, and he seemed genuinely pleased to see me. He gave me a social peck on the cheek but spared me the “little Carolyn, all grown up” routine.
Instead he said, “Carolyn MacKenzie, Juris Doctoris! I heard somewhere that you had passed the Bar and were clerking for a judge. I meant to call to congratulate you but never quite got around to it. I’m sorry.”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” I said matter-of-factly. “Or at least that’s what Sister Patricia told us in the fifth grade.”
“And Brother Murphy told us in the seventh grade, ‘Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.’ ”
I laughed. “They were both right,” I said. “But clearly you didn’t listen.” We grinned at each other. It was the kind of banter we used to exchange at the dinner table. I picked up my shoulder bag. “I’m all set,” I told him.
“Fine. My car is downstairs.” He glanced around. From where he was standing, he could see a corner of the dining room. “I have such good memories of coming here,” he said. “When I went home for an occasional weekend, my mother wanted to know every detail of what we ate, and I had to describe the color of the tablecloth and napkins, and what kind of flowers your mother used in the centerpiece.”
“I assure you we didn’t do that every night,” I said, as I fished my key from my bag. “Mom enjoyed fussing when you and Mack were coming home.”
“Mack didn’t mind showing off this place to his friends,” Nick commented. “But I reciprocated, you know? I took him to our place in Astoria for the best pizza and pasta in the universe.”
Was there an edge in Nick DeMarco’s voice, as though he still resented the comparison? Maybe not, but I wasn’t sure. In the elevator on the way down, he noticed that Manuel, the elevator operator, was wearing a class ring and asked about it. Manuel proudly told him that he had just graduated from John Jay College and was scheduled to start at the police academy. “I can’t wait to become a cop,” he said.
Of course I haven’t really lived at home since I started Duke Law, but even so, Manuel and I often exchanged pleasantries. He’s worked in our building for at least three years, yet in seconds Nick knew more about him than I ever did. I realized that Nick had the ability to make people open up to him immediately and that that might be why he is so successful in the restaurant business.
Nick’s black Mercedes-Benz was parked in front of the building. I was surprised to see a chauffeur jump out to hold the back door open for us. I don’t know why, but I never would have visualized Nick as having a chauffeur. This one was a big, heavyset man in his midfifties with the face of a retired prizefighter. His broad nose seemed to have lost most of the cartilage, and there was a scar along his jaw.
Nick introduced us. “Benny worked for Pop for twenty years. Then when Pop retired five years ago, I inherited him. My very good fortune. Benny, this is Carolyn MacKenzie.”
Despite his brief smile and pleasant “Nice to meet you, Ms. MacKenzie,” I had the feeling that Benny was giving me a very thorough once-over. He obviously knew where we were going, because he set off without waiting for instructions.
As we pulled away from the curb, Nick turned to me. “Carolyn, I’m assuming and hoping that you’re free for dinner.”
And I was assuming and hoping you’d want to have dinner, I thought. “That would be nice,” I told him.
“There’s a place in Nyack, just a few miles from the Tappan Zee Bridge. The food is excellent, and it’s quiet. At this point, I’m pretty anxious to stay away from the media.” He rested his head back on the leather seat.
On the way up the FDR Drive, he told me that he had been asked to stop at the District Attorney’s office again yesterday afternoon, to answer more questions about the conversation he had with Leesey Andrews the night she disappeared. “It was unfortunate that I stayed in the loft apartment that night,” he said frankly. “There’s only my word that I didn’t invite her to stop by on her way home, and I think for lack of anyone else to focus on, I’m in the spotlight.”
You’re not the only one, I thought, but decided not to share with him my certainty that, thanks to me, Detective Barrott also had his sights on Mack as a suspect. I noticed that Nick did not mention Mack’s name in the car, and I wondered about that. From the message I gave to his secretary, that I wanted to see him because I had heard from Mack again, he certainly knew we were going to talk about my brother. I wondered if perhaps he didn’t want Benny to hear that conversation. My suspicion was that Benny was gifted with very keen hearing.
The restaurant Nick had chosen, La Provence, was everything he had promised. It had been a private home and retained that atmosphere. The tables were far apart. The centerpieces on them were made up of a candle surrounded by budding flowers, and each table had different flowers. Paintings that I guessed to be of the French countryside were hung on the paneled walls. It was obvious from the warm greeting the maitre d’ extended to Nick that he was a regular customer. We followed him to a corner table with a window that looked over the Hudson. The night was clear, and the view of the Tappan Zee Bridge spanning the river was splendid.
I thought of my dream of trying to follow Mack as he crossed a bridge. Then I tuned it out.
Over a glass of wine, I told Nick about Mack’s usual Mother’s Day call and then about the note he left in the collection basket. “The fact that he wrote that I must not try to find him makes me feel that something is very wrong in his life,” I said. “I’m just afraid that Mack needs help.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Carolyn,” Nick said, quietly. “I was witness to how close he was to you and your parents. He would know that if he needed anything in a financial way, your mother would provide it on the spot. If he’s sick, I would think he’d want to be around you and your mother. I never saw Mack touch drugs, but I don’t know, maybe he had started and knew it would crush your father if he found out about it. Don’t think I haven’t tried all these years to figure out what would make him vanish.”
I guess it’s what I expected to hear, but even so, I felt as if every door I tried to open was being slammed in my face. When I didn’t respond, Nick waited me out for a minute, then said, “Carolyn, you said yourself that Mack sounded pretty chipper when he called on Mother’s Day. Why don’t you look at that message not as a plea for help, but as a firm request, or even a command? You can certainly read it that way, too. ‘Tell Carolyn she must not look for me!’ ”
He was right. I know he was. But in a much bigger sense he was wrong. Every instinct in my body told me that.
“Let it go, Carolyn,” Nick said. Now his voice was gentle. “When and if Mack decides to surface, I am going to give him one swift kick for the way he’s treated you and your mother. Now, tell me about yourself. I guess your clerkship with the judge expires soon. Isn’t that the way it works?”
“I’ll tell you about that,” I said. “But just a little more about Mack first. I went to see the Kramers Wednesday morning.”
“The Kramers? You mean the superintendents of the building where Mack and I lived?”
“Yes. And Nick, you may not believe me, but Mrs. Kramer was nervous. She kept looking over at her husband to make sure whatever she told me was all right. I swear to you, she was afraid of making some kind of mistake. What did you think of them when you lived there?”
“To be honest, it’s not what I thought of them, it’s more that I didn’t think about them. Mrs. Kramer cleaned the apartment, thanks to your mother’s generosity, and did our wash once a week. Otherwise it would probably have been a pigsty. She was a good cleaning woman but downright nosey. I know Bruce Galbraith was furious at her. He came in one day and she was reading the mail on his desk. If she was reading his, I figured she was probably reading mine, too.”
“Did you challenge her on it?”
He smiled. “No. I did something dopey. I typed a letter, signed her name to it, and stacked it with my mail so that she would find it. It read something like this: ‘Darling, it is such a pleasure for me to wash your clothes and make your bed. I feel like a young girl when I look at you. Sometime will you take me dancing? All my love, Lilly Kramer.’ ”
“You didn’t!” I exclaimed.
The boyish twinkle I remembered appeared in Nick’s eyes for a brief moment. “When I thought it over, I threw it out before she could see it. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t.”
“Do you think Mack might have had a problem with her going through his mail?”
“He didn’t say it, but I have a feeling he was upset about her, too. But he never said why, then he was gone.”
“Do you mean it was just before he disappeared?”
Nick’s expression changed. “Carolyn, surely you don’t think the Kramers had anything to do with Mack’s disappearance?”
“Nick, just talking about them to you brought up something that obviously never came up at the time of the investigation, that Bruce caught her snooping, and that Mack may have been upset with her, too. Give me your assessment of Gus Kramer.”
“Good superintendent. Nasty temper. I heard him yelling at Mrs. Kramer a couple of times.”
“Nasty temper?” I asked, raising my eyebrows, then said, “You don’t have to answer, but think about it. Suppose he and Mack had some kind of confrontation.”
The waiter then came to take our orders, and Nick never did answer my question. After that we kept the conversation to catching up on the past ten years. I told him that I was going to apply for a job in the District Attorney’s office.
“ ‘Going to apply’?” Now it was Nick who raised his eyebrows. “As Brother Murphy said, ‘Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.’ Any special reason for waiting?”
I answered vaguely about taking a little time to find an apartment. After dinner, Nick opened his BlackBerry discreetly and checked it for messages. I asked him to see if there was any update about Leesey Andrews.
“Good idea.” He pushed a button, scanned the news briefs, then turned off the BlackBerry. “ ‘Hope is fading that she’ll be found alive,’ ” he said soberly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m asked to drop in to the D.A.’s office again tomorrow.”
And I may get a call from Barrott, I thought. We finished our coffee, and Nick signaled to the waiter for a check.
It was only later, when he was dropping me at the door of Sutton Place, that he brought up the subject of Mack again. “I can read you, Carolyn. You’re going to keep trying to find Mack, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Who else are you going to talk to?”
“I have a call in to Bruce Galbraith.”
“You won’t get much help or sympathy from him,” he said wryly.
“Why not?”
“Do you remember Barbara Hanover, the girl who came with Mack and me to dinner at your house?”
And how, I thought. “Yes, I remember her,” I said, but then I couldn’t help adding, “I also remember that you had a big crush on her.”
Nick shrugged. “Ten years ago I had a crush on someone different every week. Anyhow, it wouldn’t have done me any good. If she cared about anyone, my guess is that it was Mack.”
“Mack?” Could I have been so focused on Nick that I didn’t notice?
“Couldn’t you tell? But Barbara was looking for a ticket to medical school. Her mother had a catastrophic illness that ate up all the money that had been earmarked for Barbara’s education. That is why she married Bruce Galbraith. They eloped that summer, remember?”
“That’s something else that never came out during the investigation,” I said slowly. “Was Bruce jealous of Mack?”
Nick shrugged. “You never knew what Bruce was thinking. But what’s the difference? You talked to Mack less than a week ago. You certainly don’t think Bruce sent him into hiding, do you?”
I felt like a fool. “Of course not,” I said. “I really don’t know anything about Bruce at all. He never came here with you and Mack.”
“He’s a loner. That last year at Columbia, even the nights he’d hit the clubs in the Village and SoHo with a crowd of us, he always seemed to be by himself. We called him ‘the Lone Stranger.’ ”
I searched Nick’s face, eager for more detail. “After Mack disappeared, when the investigation started, did the police question Bruce at all? The only thing I found about him in the file was his statement about the last time he saw Mack in the apartment.”
“I don’t think they did. Why would they? He and Mack never hung out together.”
“I was just reminded by an old friend that a week or so before he disappeared, Mack and some other guys from Columbia were in a club the same night as the first girl who went missing. Do you remember if Bruce was there?”
Nick looked pensive. “Yes, he was. I remember because the club had recently opened, and we decided to check it out. But it seems to me that he left early. He certainly was never the life of the party. Anyhow, it’s getting late, Carolyn. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Thank you for coming.”
He gave me a quick peck on my cheek, and opened the door to the lobby for me. There was no mention of getting together again. I walked through the lobby to the elevator, then glanced back.
Nick was already in the car, and Benny was standing on the sidewalk, holding a cell phone to his ear, his expression unreadable. For some reason there was something sinister about the way Benny smiled as he snapped the cell phone closed, got back in the car, and drove away.
23
Every Saturday morning. Howard Altman took his boss Derek Olsen out for brunch. They met at exactly ten o’clock in the Lamplighter Diner, near one of the apartment buildings Olsen owned on Amsterdam Avenue.
In the decade during which he had been working for the increasingly testy Olsen, Altman had become very close to the elderly widower, a relationship he carefully nurtured. Lately the eighty-three-year-old Olsen made no bones about the fact that he was becoming more and more disgruntled with the nephew who was his only close relative. “Do you think Steve gives a damn whether I live or die, Howie,” he asked rhetorically, as he wiped the last of the egg yolk from his plate with a piece of toast. “He should call me more often.”
“I’m sure Steve gives more than a damn, Derek,” Howard said lightly. “I certainly give a damn about you, but I still can’t persuade you not to order two fried eggs, bacon, and sausage when we get together on Saturdays.”
Olsen’s eyes softened. “You’re a good friend, Howie. It was my lucky day when you came to work for me. You’re a good-looking guy. You dress nice. You handle yourself well. I can play b
ridge with my friends and play golf and know you’re out there doing a good job for me. So what’s going on in the buildings? Everything up to snuff?”
“I would say so. We’ve got a couple of kids in 825 behind in their rent, but I stopped in to see them and reminded them that your list of favorite charities doesn’t have their names on it.”
Olsen chuckled. “I’d have put it a little more crudely. Keep an eye on them.” He tapped his cup on the saucer, signaling to the waitress that he wanted more coffee. “Anything else?”
“Something that really surprised me. Gus Kramer phoned me yesterday and gave me two weeks’ notice.”
“What?” The genial expression vanished from Derek Olsen’s face. “I don’t want him to go,” he said flatly. “He’s the best super I ever had, and Lil is like a mother hen to the students. The parents like her, too. They feel good about her. Why do they want to leave?”
“Gus said they’re ready to retire.”
“They weren’t ready last month when I dropped in over there. Howie, I’ve got to tell you something. There are times when you push to cut corners when it don’t make sense. You think you’re doing me a favor by trying to kick them out of a big apartment so that you can get good rent for it. I know all about that, but for what I pay them, letting them have more space is a bargain. Sometimes you overstep yourself. This is one of them. Make nice with them. Give them a raise, but make sure they stay! And now that we’re on the subject, when you deal with them and with the other supers, keep something in mind. You represent me, but you’re not me. Clear? Very clear?”
“Of course.” Howard Altman’s vocal cords started to form the name “Derek.” Instead he said humbly, “Very clear, Mr. Olsen.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Anything else?”
Howard had planned to tell his boss that Carolyn MacKenzie had been in the Kramers’ apartment on Wednesday asking questions about her missing brother, but he realized it would be a mistake. In his present mood, Olsen would decide that he should have been told at once, that Howie didn’t understand what was important. Besides that, over the past decade whenever Olsen talked about the MacKenzie disappearance, he went ballistic—red in the face, his voice raised sharply.
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