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
E very 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 bridge 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.
“That kid takes off in May,” he would rant. “The apartments were all rented for the next September. Half of them were canceled. The last place MacKenzie was seen was in my building, so his parents thought there might have been some nut hanging out in the stairwell…”
Howard realized that his boss was studying him intently.
“Howie, you look like you have more on your mind. Do you?”
“Nothing at all, Mr. Olsen,” Howard said firmly.
“Good. You been reading about that missing girl? What’s her name, Leesey Andrews?”
“Yes, I have. It’s very sad. I was watching the news before I left this morning. I don’t think they expect to find her alive.”
“These young women should stay out of these clubs. In my day, they sat home with their mothers.”
Howard reached for the check as the waitress placed it beside Olsen. It was a ritual they went through every week. Ninety percent of the time Olsen let him pick it up. When he was annoyed, he did not.
Olsen grabbed the check. “I don’t want the Kramers to leave, Howie, understand? Remember last year you stepped on the toes of the super on Ninety-eighth Street? His replacement stinks. If the Kramers leave, maybe you should look for another job. I hear my nephew is out of work again. He’s not stupid, in fact, he’s pretty damned smart. Maybe if he had your cushy apartment and salary, he’d pay a little more attention to me.”
“I hear you, Mr. Olsen.” Howard Altman was furious at his employer, but much more so at himself. He had played it all wrong. The Kramers had been as nervous as cats on a hot tin roof when Carolyn MacKenzie showed up the other day. Why? He should have been smart enough to find out what was upsetting them. He made a silent vow to get what it was out of them before it was too late. I want my job, he thought. I need it.
Neither the Kramers nor Carolyn MacKenzie were going to cause him to lose it!
24
H ope is fading that Leesey Andrews will be found alive,” Dr. David Andrews read as the latest news report scrolled across the bottom of the television screen. He was sitting on the leather couch in the den of his son’s Park Avenue apartment. Unable to sleep, he had gone in there sometime in the predawn hours. He knew he must have dozed off at some point, because shortly after he heard Gregg leave to make his rounds at the hospital, he became aware that a blanket was tucked around him neatly.
Now, three hours later, he was still there, alternately dozing and watching television. I should get showered and dressed, he thought, but he was too weary to move. The clock on the mantelpiece showed that it was quarter of ten. I’m still in pajamas, he thought-that’s ridiculous. He looked up at the television screen. What had he just seen on it? I must have read it because the setting is on mute, he realized.
He groped for the remote control, which he remembered placing on the cushion so that he could adjust the volume in an instant if something came on about Leesey.
It’s Sunday, he thought. It’s been more than five days now. What do I feel right at this minute? Nothing. Not fear, nor grief, nor that murderous anger at whoever has taken her. Right now, at this minute, I just feel numb.
It won’t last.
Hope is fading, he thought. Is that what I just read in the news tape on the screen? Or did I make it up? Why does that sound familiar?
A mental image of his mother, playing the piano at family parties and everyone joining in the singing, burst into his mind. They loved the old vaudeville songs, he thought. One of them began with the words, “Darling I am growing old.”
Leesey won’t ever grow old. He closed his eyes against the tidal wave of pain. The emotional numbness was
