The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  When she went to validate her ticket, the lady behind the glass looked at it, looked at her ID, at her signature, punched the number of the ticket into her computer, and raised her gaze at Lily. She studied Lily. “We’ve been waiting for you for three months.” It wasn’t like she was curious, it was just beyond her. Some people.

  The cashout amount on the $18 million ticket was $11.34 million. After federal and state taxes, the amount was $7.3 million. From $18 million to $7.3 million in a matter of five seconds. The wind was taken out of Lily. Even the unflappable Spencer seemed surprised by the reduction. Shrugging finally, he said, “You might as well get the whole thing in singles. It’s barely anything. Laundry money.”

  Lily was told she would get a check in three weeks at a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. She didn’t know what to tell them. “Can I get some of my money now?”

  “This isn’t a bank, Miss Quinn. You do not withdraw from your account,” said the dull-eyed woman in the cash cage.

  Lily didn’t know where she was going to be in three weeks but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to gallivant about luxury hotels. She asked if New York State could just mail her the check.

  “We have a press conference. Anything over a million dollars, we have a press conference at the Waldorf. It’s policy. That’s just what we do.”

  Spencer asked Lily to go sit and wait for him in the chair and talked quietly to the cashier woman.

  When Lily struggled back to the window, the lady had a look in her eyes that said, well, well, this is how it all shakes out—given with one hand, taken away with the other. She became satisfied and pleasant. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll make an exception, we’ll send the check by mail. Do you have a beneficiary? You have to put that on your claim form, a beneficiary name. You know, a husband, a child, a brother, a sister?”

  “What’s your Social Security number, Spencer? I’d like you to sign as my witness. Go ahead. Sign. Right over here.” As they were walking out of a malodorous, unclean, badly lit lottery office, he gave her his arm. Gratefully she took it.

  “Can I spend it all before Monday?” Lily said to him.

  “I’m sure you can spend it all before Monday. What do you want to buy?”

  “Another sixty years,” answered Lily feeling a pang of regret for her wasted summer.

  19

  Fibers of Suspicion

  After he dropped Lily off at home, Spencer sat in the car for fifteen minutes looking at his hands, and then went back to the precinct to pick up Harkman, who was grumpy about being called in to work on a Saturday, but it made no impression on Spencer, who was even grumpier. They drove out to Port Jefferson to have a more formal talk with Andrew Quinn, who turned out to be the grumpiest of all. Spencer felt there were some things the honorable congressman just didn’t have a chance to divulge during yesterday’s informal interview which had had to be cut short because of Lily. He was going to give him that chance now, to come clear.

  “Come on, guys! On a Saturday? My whole family’s home.”

  “I’m sorry, congressman,” said Spencer. “Procedure. We’ll keep it short.”

  “Fine, but I’m not talking to you without my lawyer present,” said Andrew. And Miera, who came to the hall to stand beside him, said, “He’s definitely not talking to you without his lawyer present.”

  Harkman shrugged at Spencer, who shrugged too and unhooked a pair of handcuffs from his belt. “Fine, if that’s how you want it. In that case, I will have to arrest you and take you in for formal questioning at our precinct. You have a right to an attorney. You have the right to remain silent, for everything you say can, and will, be held against you.”

  Andrew raised his hands. “Stop. Stop,” he said. “I will waive my right to a lawyer, if we can just settle this amicably right here.”

  “Andrew! You cannot talk to them without your lawyer.”

  “Be quiet, Miera! Go back to the family. Be calm. This way, gentlemen.”

  “No, Andrew.”

  “I said be quiet, Miera.”

  In his office, Andrew sat calmly behind his desk while Spencer stood across from him. Spencer was too keyed up to sit.

  Harkman stepped in before Spencer began. “Congressman, you can say what you want now, and you’re obviously saying it, but I know and you know what you said to me in that phone call. I asked you if you knew her and you said you didn’t.”

  “No, I said, I didn’t recall, and I was obviously answering another question.”

  “I asked if you knew her!”

  “I didn’t hear you properly! And don’t raise your voice to me, I won’t stand for it.”

  “Congressman, were you having an affair with Amy McFadden? Did you hear that question?” said Harkman.

  “Yes, I heard, and no I wasn’t.”

  “You did not in any way have a relationship with Amy that was outside of her friendship with your sister?”

  “As I told Detective O’Malley, she may have come into my office here in Port Jeff. I don’t know, I don’t remember. She may have. Do you consider that outside the friendship with my sister?”

  “What about your offices in D.C.?”

  “No, she was never there.”

  “That you’re sure about? That you recall?”

  “She didn’t live in D.C., gentlemen. Obviously it’s easier for me to imagine—even though I have no recollection of it—that she could have come here.”

  “When did you meet her?” Harkman asked.

  “I met her through Lily.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t recall.”

  Spencer was watching him very carefully. “There seem to be a lot of things you can’t recall.”

  “About this girl, yes. I have a photographic memory about things that are important. I’m sorry she’s missing, I wish you well in your investigation. I want to help as much as I can, but I wasn’t friendly with her, and more to the point, I don’t know where she is.”

  “Would you be willing to take a lie detector on this?”

  “On what? Knowing her? Of course.”

  “Not on knowing her. On having an improper relationship with her. On not knowing where she is at the moment.”

  “Yes, we did not have an improper relationship.”

  “Would you be willing to take a polygraph?”

  “I am absolutely, one hundred percent willing, but I will have to consult with my lawyer on that one. I myself don’t see a problem with it.”

  Spencer waited to speak, kept quiet, formulated his thoughts. To take the plunge or no?

  Andrew tapped tensely on his desk with his fingers. “Listen, will that be all? Because I’ve got a houseful—”

  “Congressman, you’ve been in the girls’ apartment.”

  “As I told you.”

  “Yes, you told me. But what you didn’t tell me,” said Spencer, “is that you spent most of your time inside Amy’s room. That’s where we found the hairs that match yours.”

  Andrew stopped drumming, glancing from one detective to the other. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally said. “I don’t know how that could be.”

  “No? Me neither.”

  Harkman glanced at Spencer, who looked only at Andrew.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Andrew, and his voice was slightly shaking. “These intimidation tactics won’t work on me, detective, and I’m going straight to your superiors to tell them how you are treating an innocent man.”

  Spencer glanced at Harkman.

  “Congressman, I don’t know what you’re getting so rattled about. I’m asking you to explain how not only your hairs but your fingerprints could have been found all over Amy’s room.”

  Andrew sat. “I don’t know how. I didn’t go into Amy’s room.”

  “Were they perhaps all over Amy?”

  Harkman sat.

  Spencer stood.

  Finally Andre
w, his hands unclasped, slumped back on the chair, and rubbed his face, as if he wanted to rub his eyes away. His demeanor faltered. “Look,” he said. “I’m not under arrest, I’m not under suspicion.. I don’t want to do anything to impede your investigation so I’m divulging information to you willingly.” He gathered himself for a long time before he spoke again.

  “It is true…I have to admit…Amy and I once had a relationship that was not…entirely proper.” He clenched and unclenched his fists as Spencer, holding his breath, waited. “But it’s been over and done with a long time ago. We ended it and I haven’t seen her in months.”

  Now Spencer sat down. Spencer and Harkman just stared at each other. The office was heavily quiet.

  “Congressman,” Spencer said slowly, “you were involved with a girl who has vanished.”

  “The two are not connected.”

  “Congressman! Let me repeat—you have just told us you had an affair with a girl who has vanished.”

  “I heard you! I know! But one is one thing, the other is the other. The affair, as you call it, ended. I haven’t seen her in months.”

  “Well, that’s appropriate because she’s been missing for months. When did it end?”

  “When did it end?”

  “Why are you repeating my questions?”

  “I can’t recall when.”

  “Did it end two weeks ago? In July? In June? Are we playing twenty questions? When did it end?” Spencer hated raising his voice as if he were speaking to a misbehaving child.

  “Detective, you’re hounding me.”

  “You don’t know what hounding is. Wait until the newspapers get a hold of this. Now when did it end?”

  Andrew rubbed his face. “Perhaps March. I can’t quite recall.”

  “Why did it end?”

  “Why? What can I tell you, it ran its course. These things do sometimes, they run their course.”

  “It ended in March?”

  “I think so. Sometime in the spring.”

  “So possibly April, possibly May? Perhaps it ended then? On the day she went missing?”

  “This conversation is ludicrous.”

  “Do you know where Amy is, Congressman?”

  “I told you, I do not.”

  “Would you be willing to take a lie detector on that?”

  “I already told you, I have no problem with it, but I will have to consult with my lawyer.”

  “You’ll be consulting with him from jail when you get your one phone call,” snapped Harkman. “Answer the detective’s question. When did it end?”

  “I told you.”

  “No, you told us you don’t remember when. But you are sure, absolutely positive, it wasn’t in May. Not sure when, but pretty sure it wasn’t when she disappeared. Interesting,” said Spencer. “Don’t you think?”

  “It was in April, all right?” said Andrew loudly. “Around the middle of April. When I did my taxes, we weren’t together any more.”

  Spencer, Harkman, Andrew, all remained silent. Everything they said could and was held against them.

  “When did it begin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Spencer was amazed at how much Andrew Quinn said he did not know.

  “You don’t know? Did you see her only once in her apartment? Did you meet every week? Were you seeing each other for a month, three weeks, forty-seven days?”

  “No, a few months.”

  “Before or after the reelection?”

  “Around there, I think.”

  “Where would you meet—at the apartment?”

  “Of course not!”

  “You’re indignant?” asked Spencer, widening his eyes. “Did I offend your sensibilities, congressman? Pardon me.”

  “I came to that apartment rarely and only for Lily, never for Amy.” Andrew lowered his eyes. “This is just devastating. For my wife, for my sister, for my children.”

  “Indeed.” And his sister could not endure this news at the moment. The fire of his compassion for Lily froze any compassion Spencer might have felt for her brother. “You didn’t answer my question. You have a knack for doing that. Where would you two get together?”

  “I don’t know. Wherever.”

  “On the street? In the alleys? Did she come to Washington to see you?”

  “Sometimes yes.”

  “Did she stay overnight?”

  “Sometimes yes.”

  Spencer nodded slowly. “So this is why she was leaving all her identification behind at home. You’re the one she was trying to protect.”

  “I know she did that, but I never asked her to do it, that was all Amy, not me. What can I tell you, she was a very cautious girl. She didn’t want to hurt Lily, I think. We both didn’t.”

  “What about hurting your wife, your children?”

  Andrew raised his hand. “Can you just spare me the moralizing. I have no stomach for it.”

  “Why did you end it? Your wife find out about you?”

  “No.”

  “So why?”

  “I told you. It just ended. It was time.” But Andrew did not look at Spencer when he said it. Did not, or could not. Spencer never took his eyes off him. “It wasn’t working.”

  “Your clandestine superficial affair with a girl young enough to be your daughter wasn’t working?”

  “That’s right.”

  But that was spat out, that did not come out offhand.

  Spencer’s brain was swirling into focus. “Did you break it off with her when you realized you were going to be running for the Senate seat, and you were concerned about the chances of a successful outcome of your campaign if the details of your affair became known?”

  “Oh, can you stop calling it an affair already!”

  That took Spencer by surprise. “What would you call it?” he asked, frowning.

  “It’s over! It’s done. It’s finished. I don’t know why you keep belaboring this point.”

  “Produce for me Amy, and I will stop belaboring this point. Until such time, this will remain a criminal investigation and the point will continue to be belabored.” Spencer didn’t know much about how politics worked, but he was pretty certain that if Andrew Quinn decided to press on with his senatorial campaign, his margin of victory wouldn’t even be 52 after a bitter recount.

  Andrew was instructed not to leave the country, not to talk to the press, not to hinder a government investigation, and was informed that all of his phone and bank records would be subpoenaed. As they were walking out, they saw Miera ushering the pre-teenage daughters into another room past two other glowering women—perhaps Andrew’s sisters. They looked a little like Lily, yet nothing like her. One was tall and prickly, the other smaller and maternal. Everyone looked so grim, eyeing Spencer with dour disapproval.

  As they got to the front door to leave, Andrew hit the wall with his fist. “I just got it. There was no hair in Amy’s room. No hair, no fingerprints?”

  Spencer didn’t reply.

  “Bastards.” Andrew slammed the door behind them.

  Spencer shrugged, but the tension of his muscles made it seem more like a shudder.

  “Nice one, O’Malley,” said Harkman, as they walked to the car. “Forensics better come back with some fucking Quinn hair in her room, or you’re going to be sweeping the sidewalks for New York next week.”

  “Harkman,” Spencer said when they were on the LIE headed back to the city. “So what do you think of him?”

  “I can’t tell. The affair alone is unpleasant business. Young girl, sister’s roommate, I mean, a bit slimy, if you ask me. I don’t know about anything else. What do you think?”

  “Hmm.” Spencer pretended to be lost in the road. “What I think is that the Titanic is at the bottom of the sea.”

  20

  Just Another Saturday Night for Lily

  After Lily had slept away the afternoon, she took a cab to see her grandmother. The cabdriver got out and helped her up Grandma’s stoop. How she was going to c
limb her five flights of stairs upon returning home, Lily could not and did not want to think about.

  On Saturday nights Grandma held her crooked poker game. Obviously no one cared that it was rigged, because five ladies had been getting together for twenty-five years to play. Four other widows came each Saturday determined to outcheat each other. No one could bluff well, no one had a poker face, but they took the phone off the hook, and played for hours, and drank wine, and ate to bursting, and even smoked cigars. One of them had fallen on the way out, having had too much wine, and the ladies all left an empty chair for their convalescing friend, but continued to play and drink as if death and old age weren’t right outside on Grandma’s stoop.

  So when Lily came to the cabal, she was asked—required—to take the place of Zani from Albania, who had been out the last six weeks. The ladies suspected Zani might not come back, since she was eighty-eight and her hip was not healing. The first thing Grandma said upon Lily’s arrival was, “Dear God, Lily, you look like death warmed over. Come here, eat something, will you? Dana, look at her, this is what kids today do to themselves to look attractive to the opposite sex.”

  Dana said, “They don’t understand men like a bit of flesh.” They were talking as if Lily were not in the kitchen. Lily sat and pretended to play, to cheat, even to drink. She tried to have some food, some stinky French cheese, some imported crackers, some pâté. But the smell of food at her mouth made her retch and she stopped trying. No one noticed.

  After she lost her twenty bucks in the first hour, she sat and watched them deal and cheat each other out of their twenty bucks.

  “Lil, you’re glum, what’s wrong with you?” asked Grandma. “Look at the size of you. Are you anorexic?”

  “Leave her alone, Claudia. She’s fine,” said Hannah from Bulgaria, always Lily’s defender. “She’s a young girl living in New York. This is what they look like.” She turned to Lily. “But you did used to have such nice round hips, Liliput. What’s been happening?”