Where Are You Now? (11 page)

He stood up. Forget it, he told himself impatiently. Just forget about it. The quote that often ran through his head whenever he happened to think about Mack jumped into his mind again. He knew the quote wasn't completely accurate, but it worked for him: “But
that
was in another land, and besides the king is dead.”

He went back to the phone, picked it up, and dialed. When his wife answered, he knew his face lit up at the sound of her voice. “Hi, Barb,” he said. “How are you, sweetheart? And how are the kids?”

A
fter his luncheon with Aaron Klein, Elliott Wallace went back to his office and found himself thinking about Charles MacKenzie Sr. and the friendship they had forged in Vietnam. Charley had been in the army's ROTC and was a second lieutenant when they met. Elliott had told Charley that he was born in England of American parents and had spent most of his childhood in London. He had moved back to New York with his mother when he was nineteen. He had then enlisted in the army, and four years later he had earned his own commission and was side by side with Charley in some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

We liked each other from day one, Elliott thought. Charley was the most competitive person I've ever met and probably the most ambitious. He was planning to go to law school the minute he was discharged. He swore that he was going to be a very successful lawyer and a millionaire. He was actually pleased that he had grown up in a family that didn't have two nickels to rub together. He used to kid me about my background. “And what was the
butler's name, Ell?” he would ask me. “Was it Bertie, or Chauncey, or Jeeves?”

As he leaned back in his leather chair, Elliott smiled at the memory. I told Charley that the butler was William, and he was gone by the time I was thirteen. I told him that my father, God rest him, was the most cultivated human being and the worst businessman in the history of the civilized world. That was why my mother finally threw in the towel and brought me home from England.

Charley didn't believe me back then, but I swore to him that in my own way I was just as ambitious as he was. He wanted to become wealthy because he'd never known that world. I was one of the haves who became a have-not and wanted it all back. While Charley was in law school, I went to college and then got my MBA.

We both succeeded financially, but our personal lives were so different. Charley met Olivia, and they had a wonderful marriage. God, how like an outsider I felt when I saw the way they looked at each other! They had twenty-three good years, until Mack disappeared, and after that they didn't have a day that wasn't filled with worry about him. And then 9/11, and Charley was gone. My marriage to Norma was never fair to her. What was it Princess Diana told an interviewer—that there were three people in her marriage to the Prince of Wales? Yes, that's the way it was with Norma and me, only less glamorous.

Grimacing at the memory, Elliott picked up his pen and began to doodle on a pad. Norma didn't know it, of course, but the way I felt about Olivia was always between us. And now that my marriage is a distant memory, after
all these years, maybe Olivia and I can plan a future together. She recognizes that she can't live her life around Mack anymore, and I can see that her feeling about me has changed. In her eyes, I've become more than Charley's best friend and the trusted family advisor. I could tell that when I kissed her good night. I could tell when she confided that Carolyn needs to be free to stop worrying about her, and most of all I can tell because she's planning to sell the Sutton Place apartment.

Elliott got up, walked over to the section of the mahogany bookcase that housed a refrigerator, and opened the door. As he reached for a bottle of water, he wondered if it was too soon to suggest to Olivia that a penthouse on Fifth Avenue, down the block from the Metropolitan Museum, might be a wonderful place to live.

My
penthouse, he thought with a smile. Even twenty-five years ago, when I bought it after Norma and I were divorced, I dreamed I was buying it for Olivia.

The telephone rang, then the crisp British voice of his personal secretary sounded on the intercom. “Mrs. MacKenzie is calling, sir.”

Elliott rushed back to his desk and picked up the receiver.

“Elliott, it's Liv. June Crabtree was coming for dinner and at the last minute she can't make it. I know Carolyn is meeting her friend Jackie. By any chance would you like to take a lady to dinner?”

“I would be delighted. How about having a drink at my place around seven and then going over to Le Cirque?”

“Perfect. See you then.”

When he replaced the receiver, Elliott realized there was a slight bead of perspiration on his forehead. I've never wanted anything more in my life, he thought. Nothing must spoil it for us, and I'm so afraid something might. Then he relaxed and laughed aloud as he thought of what his father's reaction would be to that kind of negative thinking.

As dear cousin Franklin said, he thought, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

L
ate Wednesday afternoon and long into the night, grim-faced NYU students, scattered throughout Greenwich Village and SoHo, were taping posters on storefronts and telephone poles and trees in the hope that someone might recognize Lisa “Leesey” Andrews and provide information that would lead to her recovery.

The photo that her roommate had taken only a few days earlier of a smiling Leesey, the statistics of her height and weight, the address of the Woodshed, the time she left it, her home address where she was presumed to have been heading, and the fifty thousand dollars reward offered by her father and Nicholas DeMarco were all included on the poster.

“More information than we usually give, but we're pulling out all the stops,” Captain Larry Ahearn told Leesey's brother at nine o'clock Wednesday night. “But, Gregg, I'm going to be fair with you. Truth is, if Leesey was abducted, every hour that passes lessens our chances of finding her alive and safe.”

“I know that.” Gregg Andrews had gone down to
headquarters after giving his father a strong sedative and making him go to bed in the guest room of his apartment. “Larry, I feel so damn helpless. What can I do?” He slumped in his chair.

Captain Ahearn leaned across his desk toward Gregg, his expression sober. “You can be a crutch for your father and take care of your patients in the hospital. Leave the rest of it to us, Gregg.”

Gregg did his best to look reassured. “I'll try.” He got up slowly, as if every move was an effort. He reached for the door of Ahearn's office, then turned back. “Larry, you said, ‘
if
Leesey was abducted.' Please don't waste your time thinking that she would deliberately put us through this agony.”

Gregg opened the door and came face-to-face with Roy Barrott, who was about to knock on the door of his boss's office. Barrott had heard Andrews's statement and realized it echoed what Carolyn MacKenzie had said about her brother in this same office two days earlier. Pushing aside that comparison, he greeted Andrews, then stepped into Ahearn's office.

“The tapes are finished,” he said briefly. “Want to look at them now, Larry?”

“Yes, I do,” Ahearn said, looking at Gregg's retreating figure. “Do you think there's any benefit in having her brother look at them with us?”

Barrott turned swiftly to follow Ahearn's line of sight. “Maybe there is. I'll grab him before he gets to the elevator.”

Barrott caught Gregg as he was punching the elevator button and asked if he'd accompany them down the hall to
the tech room. Barrott explained, “Dr. Andrews, the tapes taken Monday night by the security cameras at the Woodshed have been enhanced, frame by frame, to try to pick out anyone who seemed particularly close to Leesey on the dance floor or who was among the last to leave the club.”

Without speaking, Gregg nodded, then followed Barrott and Ahearn into the tech room and took a chair. As the tape ran, Barrott, who had already studied it twice, briefed him and Captain Ahearn on the contents.

“Except for the friends she was sitting with all night, nothing we have seems to show anything significant. The friends all agree that Leesey was with them except for the fifteen minutes she was with DeMarco at his table or when she was on the dance floor. After the rest of her group left at two
A.M.
, the only time she sat at a table was when the band started to pack up. The place had thinned out by then, so we have a couple of pretty clear shots of her until she exited alone.”

“Can you go back to that shot of her at the table?” Gregg asked. Watching his sister on tape sent a wave of sadness through him.

“Sure.” Barrott rewound the tape in the VCR. “Do you see anything that we've missed, Doctor?” he asked, trying to keep his voice noncommittal.

“Leesey's expression. When she was dancing, she was smiling. Look at her now. She looks so pensive, so sad.” He paused. “Our mother died two years ago, and Leesey's had a hard time struggling with that grief.”

“Gregg, do you think that her state of mind would cause her to have a temporary amnesia or anxiety attack
that would make her run away?” Ahearn's question was penetrating and demanded a straight answer. “Is that a possibility?”

Gregg Andrews raised his hands and pressed his temples as though trying to stimulate his thought processes. “I don't know,” he said finally. “I just don't know.” He hesitated, then continued, “But if I had to stake my life, and Leesey's life, on it, I would say it didn't happen that way.”

Barrott fast-forwarded the VCR. “All right. In that last hour, whenever the camera scans her, she never has a glass in her hand, which backs up what the waiter and bartender told us, that she only had a couple of glasses of wine all night and wasn't drunk when she left.” He turned off the VCR. “Nothing,” he said in disgust.

Gregg Andrews got up. His voice strained, he said, “I'll go home now. I have surgery in the morning and I need to catch some sleep.”

Barrott waited till he was out of earshot, then stood and stretched. “I wouldn't mind catching some sleep myself, but I'm going to the Woodshed.”

“Do you think DeMarco will show up there tonight?” Ahearn asked.

“My guess is that he will. He knows our guys are going to be swarming all over the place. And he's smart enough to know that it will be a big night for him. Plenty of customers will want to get in, out of curiosity, and of course the minor-league so-called celebrities will flock to the place knowing the media will be around. Trust me. The maggots will gather.”

“Of course they will.” Ahearn stood up. “I don't know if
you've checked since you got back, but the track we have on Leesey's cell phone shows whoever has it has been moving around in Manhattan all day. DeMarco only got back from South Carolina late this morning, so if he did it, he has someone in New York working with him.”

“It would be nice to think that girl went off the deep end, and she's the one who's running around Manhattan,” Barrott commented, as he reached for his jacket. “But I don't think that's the way it's going to turn out. I think whoever grabbed her has already dumped her somewhere and is smart enough to know that when the cell phone is on, we can target that area and start searching there.”

“And smart enough to know that by moving her cell phone around, it leaves open the door that she's alive.” Ahearn looked thoughtful. “We've checked out DeMarco so thoroughly that we know when he lost his baby teeth. Nothing in his background suggests he'd try something like this.”

“Did our guys find anything in the files of the other three girls who disappeared?”

“Nothing that we haven't investigated into the ground. We're checking out the credit card receipts from Monday night to see if we can match any patrons of the Woodshed to the names we have of the people who were in the bars in those cases.”