The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  Whittaker brought him into his office, Spencer thought to chew him out over Harkman, but Whittaker said, “I don’t give a shit about your schoolgirl fights, work it out between you and leave me out of it, and no, you can’t be partnered with McGill, but O’Malley, lay off the congressman.”

  And suddenly the fight went right back into Spencer.

  “Did you just say lay off a capital case, chief?”

  “No, just lay off Quinn, O’Malley.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s got nothing to do with it, that’s why.” Whittaker was a good Irish cop, thirty years on the force, his no-shit-from-anybody character much improved in Spencer’s mind by the fact that he liked Spencer. “He was banging her, not killing her. Do you see the difference?”

  “He was banging her and now she’s missing!”

  “Oh, come on! He’s not a politician if he doesn’t have an affair. That’s how you recognize them, their pants are around their ankles. What are you going to do—prosecute each and every one?”

  “Yes, if their lovers end up missing four months on my watch.”

  “Look, O’Malley, I’ll be straight with you—the congressman has powerful friends in the city of New York, and they’ve been leaning on me to either provide proof or lay off.”

  “He refused a polygraph!”

  “O’Malley, what about you upstairs this morning? If that ball-buster Liz Monroe asked you to take a polygraph, would you?”

  “Chief,” Spencer said evenly, “I’d refuse just to piss her off.”

  “Exactly. People have all kinds of reasons for refusing polygraphs. Stay out of their heads. Their refusal is inadmissible as evidence, inadmissible period. Let it go.” He pointed upstairs. “And watch out for the cohone buster. She’s got a pair of her own and they’re made of steel. Sergeant Vicario, remember him? The Jesse Ventura of the NYPD? The woman made him cry. Cry, I tell you.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” Spencer would make sure Liz Monroe did not make him cry.

  So perhaps Harkman, that son of a bitch, was telling the truth. It was entirely possible that the congressman hired a dick to dig up old, new, any kind of dirt on Spencer. Perhaps they thought it would make Spencer back down; but they didn’t understand him, didn’t know he was perversely invigorated by Internal Affairs, and so zealously at five-thirty on a Friday morning, Spencer was at the soup kitchen.

  He spoke to a man named Clive, a short heavy man in a suit with a bristly attitude. Spencer didn’t know soup kitchen administrators dressed so well. He was wearing a pair of busted up jeans he’d deemed appropriate to the occasion.

  Clive told Spencer that indeed Amy McFadden had been showing up every Friday like clockwork for years, “until she wasn’t showin’ up no more.”

  Spencer explained that Amy wasn’t showing up anywhere, she had been reported missing by her mother a couple of months ago and Clive’s help would be appreciated in tracing Amy’s movements in May. “So, Clive, do you recall if Amy was here on Friday, May 14?”

  But Clive could not say. “Look, mornings swim together for me…”

  Spencer pressed his palms together to keep his voice from lifting. “It is extremely important we find out if Amy came that day.”

  “Well, I have no idea!”

  “Not good enough, Clive.”

  “All I got, I’m afraid.”

  “Clive, Clive. Would you like to come back to the police station with me? Anything that will help you remember the last time you saw her.”

  Clive was silent. “Wait. I remember the last time I saw her. She said she just finished her exams, and that she was graduating…” Clive’s eyes focused. “She said she was graduating in exactly two weeks. So when was that?”

  “Her graduation was on May 28.”

  “Bingo.”

  Spencer stepped back.

  Clive said, “I never did see her again after that.”

  Spencer looked around the soup kitchen. It was a dark room full of cafeteria tables and folding chairs. Every available seat was filled with men in rags who were eating something that must have once been eggs. “She talk to anyone here?”

  “Well, sure, she talked to everybody. She was a friendly gal. Everyone liked her.”

  “Anybody in particular?”

  Clive looked around the basement as if he were searching for someone.

  “Hmm. He’s not here, though.”

  Spencer perked up. “One guy she talked to in particular?”

  “Yes. He hung around her. Wouldn’t sit down. Disturbed her serving.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not here, I tell you. He stopped coming some months back.”

  Spencer’s shaved hair spiraled up.

  “Clive, when?”

  “I don’t know. Hundreds of men a day, everyday. I don’t keep track of them all in my head.”

  “Try.”

  “OK, let me think. I been here five years, started before Amy started. This guy used to come way back then, I remember. I paid no attention to him, but I did pay a little to Amy, because you know, I liked lookin’ at her. Then he didn’t come here anymore, not for a few years—suddenly bam! he was back again, loitering around Amy. I’d guess he had been a guest in a mental institution. Or jail. He reappeared sometime in the spring. Then when she stopped coming, I’m pretty sure he stopped coming, too.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Know nothing about him.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Homeless. He wore rags on his body, skicaps to cover his head, cardboard on his feet. He smelled.”

  Spencer looked across the breakfast tables. All the men in front of him fit that description.

  “Young, though,” Clive added helpfully.

  “How young?”

  “I don’t know. In his twenties? Thirties, maybe? He didn’t shuffle, he had a bit of something in his step. A bit of youth. He didn’t walk like an addict. Come to think of it, he didn’t walk like someone who was mentally ill. You recognize them after a while by the way they shuffle, the way they tilt their heads.”

  “And?”

  “He was eerie. There was something wrong with him.”

  “What?”

  “How should I know? Something not quite right. He had freaky eyes, like he’d pop you if you said a wrong word to him. He was repulsive, too. Never took a shower, even when offered. We have showers here for the men. But he never took one, never shaved, never washed the dirt off his face. He was, I’d say, grimier than the others. He may have had tattoos on his face, I can’t remember now. It could’ve just been filth…”

  “Tall, short?”

  “Average. Shorter than you. You might want to try the Bowery Mission. Perhaps he started going there after Amy stopped coming here.”

  “Why? Does the Bowery offer better eggs?”

  “I really don’t know. Maybe because Amy stopped coming. He seemed pretty attached to her. He never ever spoke to nobody but her. Ever. Which is unusual—most of the people here have some connection to the others. Not him. Just to Amy.”

  “Anything else you can think of?”

  Clive thought about it. “She used to give him stuff,” he said at last. “I don’t know what, but she had shopping bags full of things. Something extra from her to him. I once asked her, and she said donations. But the bags were from nice stores, Guess, maybe? The Gap. What did she give him, clothes? God knows what he did with them. Maybe bartered the stuff for H.”

  Spencer gave Clive his card and told him if the man ever appeared again, to call him any time of day or night. Feeling hopeless, he walked over to the first table of diners in their uniforms of rags to find out how many of them remembered Amy and if any of them remembered her mysterious—freaky-eyed—admirer.

  “Detective O’Malley!”

  It was Clive, animated, pleased with himself.

  “Milo!”

  “Milo?”

  “That’s what I heard
her call him once. I don’t think it’s his real name.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Milo! was one word and a ray of light in an otherwise dark—and sober—Friday.

  Lily was in her bed, pillows up when Spencer came to see her early Friday afternoon. She was in the middle of her third and last seven-day treatment, all the visitors now had to wear masks and were not allowed to touch her. Spencer didn’t know by the looks of her how she would finish this out, much less rear up for thirteen weeks of consolidation chemo. She looked as skeletal and gray as one could look and still remain upright. She didn’t smile at him; she eyed him warily, though not as warily as her grandmother, who, also in a mask, got up from her chair and said, “I thought I had made myself clear. You’re not welcome here.”

  DiAngelo came in after Spencer. “Claudia, come with me,” he said. “You know the rules—only one at a time in here.”

  “Yes—me. She doesn’t want to see him.”

  Lily and Spencer stared at each other.

  “Wait, Grandma,” said Lily, looking accusingly at Spencer, who had to avert his own gaze. “Give us a minute.”

  Extremely unhappily, Claudia left the room with DiAngelo, who said quietly to Spencer, “Ten minutes, okay? She can’t take much more.”

  They were left alone, and at first they didn’t speak. Then Lily said, “Here on police business again, Detective O’Malley?”

  What could he say? He stood silently, wearing a mouth mask, wishing for a moment he were wearing an eye mask instead so he wouldn’t have to see her disintegration. Summoning what he could of inspiration, of energy, of optimism, Spencer took a deep breath under the hospital cotton and stepped up to the plate. “Both, personal and business.”

  Lily stared into her blanket.

  “How are you? Are you eating?” Two and a half courses of chemo and she was fading into the whites of her bed.

  She shrugged. “Eating is overrated. If everyone could be fed through a hole in the chest, who wouldn’t do it? New York would go out of business, though. Eighty percent of its economy is restaurants.”

  “Yes, but think how the medical-supplies business would boom.”

  “Hmm. I wish I could get a vanilla shake through this Hickman. Marcie says vanilla shakes are too thick. She says she can bring me a thin vanilla shake. Marcie, I tell her, that’s not a vanilla shake, that’s milk.”

  Under the mask Spencer smiled, while his eyes took in Lily’s sunken brows, her pale mouth, the translucent whiteness of her cheeks. “I brought you some Krispy Kremes. Do you want me to bring you a vanilla shake next time I come?”

  “Nah. I’d only toss it. Don’t waste your money.” Lily leaned back on her pillows, while Spencer sat six feet away from her in the chair. “Thanks for the donuts. My grandmother loves them.” She paused. “So what do you want?”

  “Nothing,” he said hastily. “I stopped by your building to pick up your mail.”

  “You did?” Lily frowned. “But you don’t have a key to my mailbox.”

  “Well, I know. I’m not saying I did, but I might’ve used my badge to convince the super the contents of your mailbox were a matter of grave police business.”

  Why did that make her smile? “You’re not above that sort of thing then, using your badge to your advantage?”

  “Not at all,” Spencer said, taking out a rectangular envelope. “But I thought you might want to see this.” It was a letter from New York State.

  Lily actually laughed, though soundlessly. “It came! Did you open it?”

  “Of course not. It’s a federal offense to open other people’s mail.”

  Her eyes twinkled at him a little bit. “Oh, but not to go through their mailboxes? Could you open it now?”

  Spencer opened it, handed it to her. Lily seemed happy to hold it, to look at it, to read aloud the amount. “$7,348,200! Look at these numbers, Spencer.”

  “I see them clearly, even from here. But I can’t count that high.”

  After sitting a while and chatting idly, Lily put the check on her lap and cleared her throat. “Spencer, I hate to ask. I don’t know if you can help me…”

  “If I can, I will. What do you need?”

  “I can’t leave here, Dr. D says, until I hire a 24/7 nurse for my apartment. He won’t let me leave. Can you believe him? He says neither my grandmother nor my sister will do. He seems wary of Anne, I can’t quite figure it out, but he keeps saying that she is not up to the job, and about Grandma he says that I’ll end up taking care of her instead of the other way around. Naturally Grandma has stopped speaking to him.”

  “If she keeps that up, soon there won’t be anyone left.”

  “Anne left her job, though, you see, so she could help me and in return I could pay her mortgage. How can I tell her no?”

  Spencer breathed through the mask. “DiAngelo is right—you need a professional, not a sister. I’ll be glad to inform her of this.”

  “If you speak one word to her she’ll get an injunction against you.”

  “Yes, and I’m the one who’ll have to enforce that injunction. Oh, fine, I’ll have DiAngelo tell her that as per his strict instructions you already hired a professional.”

  “You don’t think she’ll know I’m lying since I can’t even stand up on my own?”

  Spencer was thinking about what she wanted from him, what she needed from him. “Do you need me to help you find someone?”

  “Yes,” Lily said quietly. “God, yes, please.”

  “Why don’t you just ask me? If there’s something you need, don’t make me guess, just ask me. If I can, I’ll take care of it. My father had a nurse for a while when he was sick. Heart attack, he’s fine now. It cost him seven-fifty a week, but it was money well spent. I’ll call the agencies. I’ll get you someone.”

  “Thank you. Please could you put in a request for a tall, dark, Hawaiian, good-looking, easy-going solitary man who answers to the name of Keanu. Nursing experience a plus but not a must.”

  Spencer laughed. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Lily looked grateful and relieved. “When I get out, I’ll take you to lunch, somewhere nice. If you want.”

  “That’ll be some lunch, Lily, for seven million bucks.”

  She held the check in her hands. “Mary can come, too. I don’t want to exclude her. We can go for Sunday brunch at the Palm Court, and dress up like we belong on the Upper East Side.”

  “What a good memory you have. Can’t remember my beeper number, but remember fine the name of my girlfriend.”

  Lily twinged.

  “Look,” said Spencer, “DiAngelo is coming to throw me out any minute, and believe me, I know you’re not up to this, but I have to ask…”

  Her gaze cooled dramatically. “Quid pro quo, huh, detective?”

  Spencer went on. “Why didn’t you tell me after you came back from Hawaii that Amy worked at a homeless shelter? I mean you don’t think it would have been helpful to know if she was in her regular life that Friday morning?”

  “It slipped my mind. I wasn’t thinking. I still don’t see the big deal.” Lily paused. “Did she go that Friday morning?”

  “She did.”

  “Did she leave the soup kitchen?”

  “Well,” said Spencer, “she’s not still there.”

  “No, of course not.” Lily was pensive.

  Both Spencer and Lily watched each other, warily, sickly, thinking, formulating, trying to put into words what they couldn’t articulate, couldn’t figure out.

  Lily was not in any shape to be made upset, and so Spencer didn’t tell her that in the bottom of one of the couture bags, folded neatly at the bottom of Amy’s closet, he found a small receipt—though from the rest of the bags the receipts had been thoroughly removed. A receipt for a Ferragamo belt, bought on one Friday afternoon last March, for a hundred-and-ninety-five dollars, paid for in cash. Two hundred dollars for a belt, paid for in cash. Did Lily really think Amy had been jogging all those hours?


  Bags from Prada, from Louis Vuitton, from Versace. Small bags from Tiffany’s. And where was that jewelry or crystal? It certainly wasn’t in Amy’s room. Where were the belts, the purses? All the things Spencer suspected Andrew Quinn of buying for her?

  If Andrew Quinn, a man making a government salary, with a wife and family to support, was so generous with Amy McFadden, did that sound like he was mired in a shallow fling? And yet the only things Amy had kept were the empty shopping bags.

  “Why did Amy go to the soup kitchen?” Spencer asked.

  Lily was thoughtful before she replied. “I think once she might have been hungry herself.”

  “Have you ever heard the name Milo?”

  “Who?”

  Spencer told her about Milo.

  Lily said nothing because there was nothing to say.

  “Could Milo be one of the people Amy had gone traveling with, one of the other people who went missing?”

  Her mouth agape, Lily said meatlessly, “Could be. So what?”

  “Maybe this Milo knows where she is. Wouldn’t you like to help me find him if he can help clear your brother?”

  She mutely and dumbly nodded.

  DiAngelo burst through the door. “That’s it, detective,” he said. “Wrap it up.”

  Standing from his chair, Spencer wished he could touch Lily’s hand before he left. She looked as if she desperately needed it.

  Marcie and DiAngelo had been taking blood from her every two days to see how she was responding to the chemo. She could see the results of her blood counts by the looks on their poker faces. They didn’t have to tell her anything, but she asked anyway, and they hemmed and hawed, and they brought in another nurse, who gave Lily a transfusion of red and white (and blue, ta-dah!), of plasma, of platelets. Her Hickman became infected; they gave her antibiotics, and forbid visitors for two days until the infection went away, and DiAngelo didn’t think she was strong enough for a continuous drip of cytarabine, so they waited, a day, another day. But her body wasn’t recovering, so they went ahead and gave her the drug anyway and counted her blood, the platelets were at 48, 45, 42 when they should have been inching up to a 100.