Mack warned me away from Nick, and after that, the few times he came to dinner I made it a point to be out with my friends.”
“Mack warned you away?” Reeves raised an eyebrow.
“Big-brother stuff. I guess I was wearing my heart on my sleeve and Mack said that all the girls fell for Nick. Other than that, I would say that when I saw him last, I had the feeling that Nick seemed like someone with a lot on his mind.”
“Did you talk with him about the other roommate in that apartment, Bruce Galbraith?”
“Yes. Nick is out of touch with him. Frankly, I don’t think he liked Bruce very much. He even called him ‘the Lone Stranger.’ I told you I left a message asking to meet with Bruce, but so far he hasn’t responded.”
“Call him again. I doubt that with all the media attention your brother is getting, Bruce Galbraith would ignore your request to see him. In the meantime, I’ll get started immediately on updating our files on the others. Because of the reference to Mother’s Day, the police were already trying to tie Mack to the disappearance of Leesey Andrews, and by extension to the disappearance of all those young women. Now that call to your home from Leesey’s cell phone will make them certain of his guilt. Every clue leads conveniently back to Mack. I am beginning to wonder if everything that has happened began that night in The Scene, weeks before Mack disappeared.”
I pounced on that. “Mr. Reeves, are you saying that someone else may be deliberately trying to tie Mack to the disappearance of those four women?”
“I think it’s possible. As you yourself said, there was a feature article some years ago that made public the fact that your brother only calls on Mother’s Day. Who knows if someone did not tuck that piece of information in his mind and is now using it to deflect suspicion from himself? There are all kinds of identity theft. Following the known pattern of someone who has vanished and chooses not to defend himself may be one of them. Leesey’s abductor has her cell phone. He may also have your unlisted number.”
It was a possibility that made sense. When I left Reeves’s office, I felt that this time I had come to the right person, somebody who would search for the truth without the preconceived notion that Mack had become a killer.
38
A ccompanied by his lawyer, Paul Murphy, Nick DeMarco returned to the Detective Squad section of the District Attorney’s office on Thursday afternoon. This time, the atmosphere in Captain Ahearn’s office was openly hostile. There were no handshakes, no brief expression of thanks that he had promptly responded to the phone call requesting his presence as soon as possible.
But Nick had other problems on his mind. Early Tuesday morning, after a frantic call from his mother that his father was being rushed to the hospital with chest pains, Nick had flown to Florida. By the time he got there, the tests had so far been negative, but his father had been kept in the hospital to guard against the possibility that he was building up to a heart attack. When Nick entered the hospital room, his mother had rushed into his arms and hugged him fiercely. “Oh, Nick, I thought we had lost him,” she cried.
His father, an older image of himself, propped up on pillows, his face pale, an oxygen tube in his nostrils and an IV drip in his hand, was clearly unhappy. “Nick, I hate hospitals,” was his greeting, “but maybe it isn’t such a bad thing this happened after all. In the ambulance, I was thinking about things I wish I’d said to you, only your mother wouldn’t let me say them. Now you’re going to hear them. I’m sixty-eight years old. I’ve been working since I was fourteen. For the first time in my life, I feel useless, and I don’t like it.”
“Dad, I bought a restaurant for you to run,” Nick protested. “You’re the one who decided to retire.”
“Sure, you bought a restaurant here, but you should have known it wasn’t right for me. I was a round peg in a square hole in that place. It made me sick to see you bleeding money with your fancy overhead and pricey food. I’ve seen these places come and go. Do yourself a favor and sell that one, or else put some staples on the menu that people can count on when they don’t want fois gras and caviar.”
“Dominick, don’t excite yourself,” his mother pleaded.
“I have to excite myself. I’ve got to get this off my chest before I do have a heart attack. Bachelor of the Month! It was disgusting to watch how pleased you were. You’d think you got the Congressional Medal of Honor. While I’m still around to tell you, cut it out.”
“Dad, I hear you. And believe it or not, I’m listening this time. Tell me, what do you want? What can I do to make you happy?”
“I don’t want to play golf and I don’t want to sit in a pricey condominium where I might get beaned by a golf ball because we’re next to the sixteenth hole.”
“Dad, all that’s easy to take care of. What else?”
Nick had not yet gotten over the look of scorn in his father’s eyes. “You’re thirty-two years old. Get real. Be the son we were so proud of. Stop running around with the women you meet in clubs. In fact, get out of the club business! You’ll get in trouble. Find yourself a nice girl. Your mother and I are pushing seventy. We were married fifteen years before God sent us a son. Don’t make us wait fifteen years from now to have a grandchild.”
All this was going through Nick’s mind as he and his attorney settled themselves in hard, uncomfortable chairs in front of Captain Ahearn’s desk. Detectives Barrott and Gaylor were seated on either side of the captain.
It’s a firing squad, Nick thought. A glance at his attorney showed him that Murphy was having the same reaction.
“Mr. DeMarco,” Ahearn began, “you didn’t tell us you have a Mercedes 550 sedan which you only use when you are being driven by your chauffeur.”
Nick frowned. “Wait a minute. If I’m right you asked about cars I drove. I never drive the sedan. It’s either the convertible or the SUV when I’m on my own.”
“You didn’t mention your chauffeur, either.”
“I wouldn’t have thought there was a reason to mention him.”
“We don’t agree, Mr. DeMarco,” Ahearn told him. “Particularly since your chauffeur, Benny Seppini, has an extensive criminal record.”
Without looking at him, Nick knew what Paul Murphy was thinking. Why didn’t my client tell me that?
“Benny is fifty-eight years old,” Nick told Ahearn. “As a kid, he had no home life and became involved in a street gang while he was in his teens. When he was seventeen, he got sentenced as an adult to prison for burglary and served five years. When he got out, he started working for my father. That was thirty-five years ago. When my father retired five years ago, he began working for me. He is a decent, good man.”
“Didn’t his ex-wife get a restraining order on him ten years ago?” Ahearn snapped.
“Benny’s first wife died young. His second was trying to get him to sign over their condo to her. That was a phony, trumped-up charge and she dropped it the minute she got the condo.”
“Uh-huh. Mr. DeMarco, do you do much walking around Greenwich Village in the daytime?”
“Of course I don’t. I’m a businessman.”
“Did you ever see Leesey Andrews before Monday night a week ago?”
“To the best of my knowledge, absolutely not.”
“Let me show you a picture we have of you, Mr. DeMarco.” Ahearn nodded to Barrott, who shoved copies of the enhanced photographs Leesey’s roommate had taken of her across the desk to Nick and Murphy.
“Recognize the fellow in the background of the second one, Mr. DeMarco?” Barrott asked.
“Of course that’s me in the background,” Nick snapped. “I remember that day. I was meeting a real estate agent for lunch. I’m interested in buying property in the area near where the old railroad tracks are being developed. Once that development starts, the surrounding property will go sky-high. I saw all the paparazzi in action and looked over to see what was going on. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were there.”
“Where were you having lunch?”
“At Casa Florenza, right around the corner from where the picture was taken.”
“Then you claim you didn’t see Leesey Andrews being photographed by her friend?”
“I not only claim, I didn’t see her,” Nick replied heatedly.
“Do you have the bill for that luncheon?” Gaylor asked in a tone that suggested he would be surprised to see one.
