The Girl in Times Square

New York was quite different from changing tires for women on the Long Island Expressway and administering the DUI test fifteen times on a Saturday night. Spencer was first assigned as a detective third grade to the Special Investigations Division of the Detective Bureau. He was one of four local squad detectives working on the Joint Robbery Apprehension Team. He was moved across—at his own request—to Missing Persons after the MP senior detective was at the wrong place at the wrong time and was fatally shot by a perp fleeing the scene of a robbery at an all-night deli on Avenue C and 4th. Spencer thought he might be ready for missing persons again. He was made senior to the dead man’s partner, Chris Harkman, who’d been in Missing Persons for twelve years, remaining at third grade, because as Harkman said, “It’s such a low-pressure job.” He had had three heart surgeries, gout, arthritis, and was set to man the missing persons desk just two more years, long enough to retire at forty-eight with nearly full pay and full benefits.

But Spencer wasn’t ready to retire. He didn’t mind coasting and, like Harkman, would have coasted also, but it just so happened that he, by accident or fate, or by virtue of his own nitpicky character and peculiar memory, found a boy who had been missing since 1984, living years later in a crack den off Twelfth Avenue and 43rd Street. The kid was picked up by the narcs, but when Spencer saw his name on the books—which he checked daily and religiously—he recognized it. Mario Gonzalez. Spencer obsessively checked the photos and the names of every person detained by the NYPD exactly because of a case like Mario Gonzalez. Turned out the boy—who had been twelve when he had disappeared—did not want to be found by his inconsolable parents, but that wasn’t the point, for in his department Spencer was a hero. He was promoted to lieutenant first grade—and put in charge of the entire MP division—while Harkman, by virtue of being partnered with him, got a second grade promotion and a raise. That the boy killed himself a few weeks after being found didn’t dampen anyone’s joy at a, finding an MP that long gone, and b, finding an MP alive.

After that, results were expected of Spencer in a department that was notoriously low on results. It wasn’t like other departments in special investigations where the detectives were constantly getting patted on their backs for jobs well done, collars made, perps caught—in credit card and con games, larceny and extortion, airline fraud, arson and art theft—and especially homicide. If only Spencer cared a whit about the other divisions he might have been a captain already.

But Spencer’s heart, for reasons unfathomable to him, remained with finding people that had been long missing. No, not even that. Looking for people that had been long missing.

Since Gonzalez, he had found six or seven more hopeless cases and become somewhat of a mythological maverick at the department—a favorite of his chief, Colin Whittaker, and a homeboy of the homicide division next door with whom he was loosely associated. “Give it to O’Malley,” the saying around the station went. “He’ll find anything.” He became tight with a couple of guys in homicide, one particularly, Gabe McGill, whom Spencer liked so much he wished he could be partnered with him, except Spencer didn’t want homicide, and Gabe didn’t want MP.

The apartment was dark. He hadn’t turned any lights on, and that was just the way he liked it in the first few minutes after he got home from work. Work was frenetic and boisterous, and the apartment was blissfully mute; work had glaring fluorescent light contrast, and the apartment was soothingly dark. Only the changing traffic lights from Broadway flickered through the open windows. Spencer poured himself a J&B—blended with 116 different malts and 12 grains—and kept it in front of him as he palmed the glass with both hands, turning it around and around like a clock, counting the seconds, the minutes of time passing, looking at the drink, smelling it. He threw off his shoes. He took off his shirt and tie. He used the bathroom, he came back to the table. The drink was still there. Spencer was still there. He sat in the dark, facing the open windows and palmed the drink again.

He had interviewed the panicked mother, the people this Amy McFadden girl waitressed with at the Copa Cobana, her clique of friends, all confounded but eager to help. He searched the apartment, he checked her bank records, her credit card accounts, the Department of Motor Vehicles.

And then he met Lily.

The girl seemed so self-possessed, so unconcerned—and so tanned. No histrionics, no whining from this girl; he liked that. Unlike the other one, Rachel Ortiz. She was an emoter. But Lily had herself and the matter in hand. Unlike the mother, Lily was not unduly anxious. She should talk to Amy’s mother, calm her down. Perhaps Lily was right. Perhaps her missing roommate would just show up.

Lily was smooth and chocolate bronzed and young, her little spaghetti strap tank top, her short, short denim skirt. Fleetingly he imagined her lying on the white sand in Maui, all moist and hot from the sun, eyes closed, on her back, browning, burning, topless.

Spencer needed to pour the drink back into the bottle. He never drank on the days he worked, because Spencer knew that his mind played tricks on him when it told him he could do it, could have just one, when it intellectualized and rationalized the glass in his hands. He imagined bringing the whisky to his mouth and downing it in three deep swallows. No dainty swilling, smelling, sipping of the blended malt for him in a quaint dram.

If life had taught Spencer Patrick O’Malley anything it was that the missing never just showed up, and there was no such thing as having just one.

6 (#ulink_2e325b97-98bd-548a-9562-8db1d7c3ae96)

Conversations with Mothers (#ulink_2e325b97-98bd-548a-9562-8db1d7c3ae96)

“Detective O’Malley …” Lily wished she could ask him to stop, tell him to stop coming to the diner. He’d been to see her five times in ten days. “People are starting to talk,” was all she said.

“Really? What are they saying?”

Lily shook her head. “What can I do for you today? Can I get you a cup of coffee? A donut?”

“Very stereotypical of you, Miss Quinn. No, thank you to both. I am not a donut person. Have you spoken to Amy’s mother?”

“No, not yet.”

“You should call her. She would like to hear from you. I think it will be good for her to hear from you. She’s always just this side of hysteria. She calls me four times a day. And I’ve got no leads besides you.”

“I’m not a lead,” said Lily, taken aback, but then saw he was half-joking. “Detective,” she said, almost pleadingly. “I’ll call her, and I’m going to tell her what I’ve told you. I think she’s worried for nothing. I think Amy just left for a while and will soon turn up safely and everything will be all right. My hunch is that Amy went with whoever she was seeing on vacation.”

“Oh, so a minute ago you didn’t think she was seeing anyone at all, and now you think she’s eloped?”

Lily squeezed her hands together. She could not do this anymore, she had to go back to work, she had other customers!

During her silence, Spencer said, “And do you think Amy would leave on vacation for four weeks without telling anyone and miss her graduation, to which she invited her whole family? Is she that unthinking, that inconsiderate? Wouldn’t she realize her parents would be worried sick about her?”

“Not unthinking, not inconsiderate, just in love, detective. You know? We forgive people who are in love for their short-term inconsideration. It’s such bad form to deny them.”

“So a minute ago, no boyfriend whatsoever and now so wildly in love, you’re defending her on grounds of temporary insanity? Please, pick a side of the fence, Miss Quinn, and keep to it.” He tipped his proverbial hat as he left.

Judi came over and whispered, “Ooooooh,” from behind.

“Just stop it,” said Lily.

Why wasn’t she able to call Amy’s mother? Why couldn’t she make that call? On the surface it seemed so easy, as easy as talking to the detective. Easier—she knew her, she liked her. Hi, Mrs. McFadden, how are you, and the other children … ugh, right there. The other children? Yes, Mrs. McFadden, I know it’s terrible about Amy. She’s gone and no one knows where she is, but the other children that you still have, how are they? Are they safe? That was the whole problem. Imagining the conversation filled Lily with such itching discomfort that she just couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone.

She called her grandmother instead.

“Have you been reading the papers?” said Claudia. “An Amtrak train struck a log truck at a crossing this morning, derailing all ten cars and injuring ten people. Two people were seriously hurt.”

“Grandma …”

“A microphone stand impaled a pregnant mother, who fell in her own house while getting her two boys ready for school. She fell from the second floor to the first and was impaled through the chest on her microphone stand. She was a musician.”

“Grandma, please!”

“Think about those boys. It’s terrible seeing your own mother get hurt in such a freak accident.”

“Yes. Yes, it must be. Well, thanks for talking. I gotta run.”

Andrew hadn’t called Lily since she got back. She had called him at home last week, but Miera said he was in Washington. “Lily, his schedule is posted online. Clearly says, Washington. Call him there.”

She called him there, but he was still in session. And he didn’t return her call. Typical of him. He would get so busy, sometimes she didn’t hear from him for weeks. She called Andrew’s apartment to speak to her father, but there was no answer. She walked around her bare room, looked at her watercolors, her photographs, her words, pictures of herself as a child, held by her sister Amanda, hugged by her brother—their youngest, Lilianne, good girl, dark girl, smart girl, walking early, smiling early, clever, funny, holding up a picture of a perfect lotus flower she drew when she was three, laughing at her mother, who took the photo. Suddenly Lily stopped walking, her gaze darkened, her eyes blinked, blinked again, closed.

Spencer who saw everything. Could he have looked at her walls and missed the lottery ticket? It was small and tucked in, part of a collage, covered by a photo on one side, and old American Ballet Company tickets on the other, but could he have seen? She came closer to the ticket. Oh, so what if he did? He didn’t know by heart the drawing from that day, April 18, 1999.

When the phone rang, she absent-mindedly picked it up.

“Lil?” It was her mother! That caught Lily unawares. Had she been caught awares, she never would have picked up the phone. The modern conveniences of caller ID—call screening. Maybe if she cashed in her lottery ticket, she could afford the six extra bucks for caller ID-while-call-waiting; that would be most useful. Ha! This she was thinking while trying to decipher the tone of her mother’s voice which seemed rather chipper for a woman who had found herself recently and unexpectedly without a husband.

Suddenly her father picked up the other extension. “Lil?”

“Papi?”

“Yes, why so shocked? I do live here, you know.” And he laughed.

Her mother said, “I barely spoke five seconds to my own child. Could I have her first, and then you’ll have her when I’m done?”

“Mom, let me speak to Papi quick now.”

As soon as Allison slammed down the phone, George said, “Yes, honey?” in his most casual, most unconcerned, most I’m-in-Hawaii-and-I’m-so-happy voice.

“I don’t understand. I thought you were staying with Andrew?”

“Oh, I was in D.C. on a little business. That’s all. Not a big deal.”

“So you’re … back?”