opening his first restaurant and how well it did. He hinted that these last five years, he’d moved too fast. “I think I read Donald Trump’s success story once too often,” he admitted. “I got the idea that skating on thin ice was fun. I’ve banked an awful lot on the Woodshed. It’s the right spot at the right time. But if the State Liquor Authority wants to shut it down, they’ll find a way. And if that happens, I’m in big trouble.”
We talked cautiously about Barbara Hanover. “I remember thinking how beautiful she was,” I told him.
“She is and was, but Carolyn, there’s something else about Barbara, a kind of calculated ‘What’s best for Barbara?’ agenda. It’s hard to explain. But after we all graduated and I went for my MBA, Mack was gone, and as for Bruce, I didn’t care if I ever saw him again.”
We both had a cappuccino, then Nick drove me back to Sutton Place. There was just one television van halfway down the block. He rushed me into the building and to the elevator. As the operator held the door open, Nick said, “Carolyn, I didn’t do it and neither did Mack. Hang on to that thought.”
He skipped the social kiss and was gone. I went upstairs. The message light was blinking. It was Detective Barrott. “Ms. MacKenzie. At eighty forty P.M. tonight, you received another call from Leesey Andrews’s cell phone. Your brother didn’t leave a message.”
50
L ucas Reeves had not taken the weekend off. He had spent it in his office, working with his technicians. Charles MacKenzie Sr. had hired him nearly ten years ago to find his missing son, and the fact that he had never been able to uncover even the slightest hint of what happened to Mack had given Reeves a sense of failure that was never far from his consciousness.
Now he considered it even more urgent that he find the answer, not only to learn what had happened to Mack, but to find the real killer and perhaps save Leesey Andrews’s life.
On Monday morning, Lucas was back in his office on Park Avenue South at eight o’clock. His three permanent investigators had been told to get in early. By eight thirty they were seated around his desk. “I have a hunch, and some of my hunches have worked in the past,” he began, “so I’m going to act on it. I am going to assume that Mack is innocent of these crimes, and I am going to assume that someone who knew him at least reasonably well is responsible. By that, I mean knew him well enough to hear about the Mother’s Day calls, and to have his family’s unlisted phone number.”
Reeves looked from one investigator to the other. “We are going to start by concentrating on the people around Mack. By that I mean his two roommates, Nick DeMarco and Bruce Galbraith. We are going to dig up everything we can learn about the superintendent couple, Lil and Gus Kramer. From there we will concentrate on Mack’s other friends from Columbia who were with him in the nightclub the evening that first girl disappeared. Over the weekend, our techs have gathered all the newspaper accounts and media clips that were headlines when each of those other three girls vanished. We have enhanced the faces of everyone caught in those pictures, whether he or she was identifiable or not. Study those faces. Memorize them.”
Lucas had come in so early that he had made his own coffee. He took a sip, grimaced, and continued. “The media is camped outside Sutton Place. One of you must be in the vicinity at all times. Have your cell phone out, and be using it as a camera. Somebody also has to be on the street when the Woodshed opens tonight, taking pictures not only of guests entering and leaving, but of people hanging around in the streets. There are a couple of other clubs opening in SoHo this week. Be there with the paparazzi.”
“Lucas, that’s impossible,” Jack Rodgers, his most senior aide, protested. “The three of us can’t cover all that ground.”
“No one asked you to,” Reeves snapped, his normally deep voice several octaves higher. “Get out the list of the guys we use when we need extra help. We must have thirty retired cops available.”
Rodgers nodded. “Okay.”
Reeves lowered his voice. “My hunch is that the perpetrator loves attention. He may want to be on-site when there’s a media rush. The faces that show in every picture you snap will be enhanced in our lab. I don’t care how many there are, and I assume there will be hundreds. Maybe, just maybe, one of them will be a match for someone who was around during the media frenzy that followed those other disappearances. I repeat, for the present we are going to assume that Mack MacKenzie is innocent.”
He looked at Rodgers. “Why don’t you say it, Jack?”
“All right, Lucas, I’ll say it. If you’re right, we may find a picture of a guy who shows up all over the place. He may be fat, he may be thin, he may be bald, he may have a ponytail. He’ll be someone his own mother wouldn’t recognize, and he’ll be Charles MacKenzie Jr.”
51
D etective Bob Gaylor began searching for Zach Winters on Sunday after the squad meeting. He was not at the Mott Street shelter that was his off-and-on home. He had not been seen on the streets since early Saturday morning, when he had been hanging around the Woodshed, and then had gone to Gregg Andrews’s apartment. He had been interrogated on Saturday afternoon, then presumably had gone back to his usual haunts. But he had not gone back to the shelter.
“Zach usually shows up at least every other day” Joan Coleman, an attractive thirty-year-old volunteer kitchen worker on Mott Street, confided to Gaylor. “Of course, it depends on the weather. He loves the club area in SoHo. He brags that he gets better handouts there.”
“Did he ever talk about being near the Woodshed the night Leesey Andrews disappeared?”
“Not to me. But he’s got a couple of what he calls his ‘real good buddies.’ Let me talk to them.” She brightened at the idea of doing detective work.
“I’ll go with you,” Gaylor volunteered.
She shook her head. “Not if you want to get any information, you won’t. I don’t usually come in for dinner, but I’m subbing for a friend tonight. Give me your phone number. I’ll call you.”
Bob Gaylor had to be content with that. He spent the better part of the day wandering through SoHo and Greenwich Village to no avail.
Zach Winters might have disappeared from the face of the earth.
52
T rue to his word, Derek Olsen arrived at Elliott Wallace’s office promptly at ten A.M. His gait stiff, his suit cleaned and pressed, but shiny with age, his remaining tufts of white hair plastered down on his skull, there was a certain buoyancy about him. Elliott Wallace observed him and correctly interpreted that Olsen, if he followed his plan to liquidate all his holdings, was looking forward to telling his nephew Steve, his buildings manager, Howie, and anyone else he could think of, to go jump in a lake.
A cordial smile on his face, Wallace urged Olsen to take a chair. “I know you won’t refuse a cup of tea, Derek.”
“Last time, it tasted like dishwater. Tell your secretary I want four lumps of sugar and heavy cream, Elliott.”
“Of course.”
Olsen barely waited for Elliott to instruct his secretary before he said with a satisfied smile, “You and your advice. Remember you said I should get rid of those three broken-down town houses that have been closed for years?”
Elliott Wallace knew what was coming. “Derek, you’ve been paying taxes and insurance on those dumps for years. Of course real estate has gone up, but if you wish I will show you that if you had sold them and bought the
