Mary Clark - Where Are You Now?

“I saw someone about his size, then when I heard he had dropped the note, I was sure, but then I wasn’t sure, and I guess I’m sure now, but-”

“Why did you suddenly decide to move to Pennsylvania?” Gaylor interrupted.

“Because Mr. Olsen’s nephew, Steve Hockney, overheard Mack asking me about the watch, and now Steve is holding that over my head,” she screamed. “Because he wants us to complain about Howie to his uncle and get him fired and…and…I can’t…take…it…anymore. I just want to die. I want to die…”

Lil Kramer leaned forward and covered her face with her hands. Her thin shoulders shook as she sobbed. Gus knelt beside her and put his arms around her. “It’s all right, Lil,” he said, “it’s all right. We’re going home now.”

He looked up, first at Ahearn, and then at Gaylor. “This is what I think of you two,” he said, and spat on the carpet.

T he other phone call after I finished speaking with Nick was to Jackie Reynolds, my psychologist friend, who had been trying to reach me and whom I’d put off calling. Of course Jackie had been reading the newspapers, but we hadn’t talked much since our dinner when all of this began. Remembering my suspicion that the phone might be tapped, I gave very general answers to her questions.

I knew she caught on. “Carolyn, I’ve had a couple of cancellations,” she said. “Have you any plans for lunch?”

“No.”

“Then why don’t you come up here, and we’ll send out for sandwiches and coffee?”

That sounded good to me. Jackie’s office adjoins the apartment where she lives on East Seventy-fourth Street and Second Avenue. As I hung up, I realized how much I wanted her guidance about my planned visit to Mom. Which reminded me that I had not yet spoken to Elliott.

I dialed his office, and was put straight through to him. “Carolyn, I didn’t know what to think when I couldn’t reach you.”

I heard the reproach in his voice and apologized. I knew I owed him that. I explained that I had gone to Martha’s Vineyard and the reason for it. Then, keenly aware of the probable wiretap, I said that it was a wasted visit, and that I was going to drive up later this afternoon to see Mom. “If she refuses to see me, at least I tried. I’ll get there between four and five,” I told him.

“I think that might be good timing,” he said slowly. “I hope to get up there around five myself. I want to talk to you and Olivia together.”

With that, we left it. What did he want to talk to the two of us about? I wondered. Surely in Mom’s fragile state, he wouldn’t withdraw his support from her now. Please, God, not that! She needed him. I thought about the night only a few weeks ago, after Mack left the note and at dinner she announced she had decided to let him live his own life. I thought of the way she and Elliott had looked at each other, and how he had planned to join her in Greece. I thought about the way their shoulders were touching when they walked down the street after we left Le Cirque. Elliott could make Mom happy. Mom is sixty-two. She has every chance of living another twenty or thirty good years-unless, of course, I’ve ruined it for her by blundering into the Detective Squad room and meeting Barrott.

I changed into a jacket and slacks and, as I did last night in Martha’s Vineyard, tried to mask the dark circles under my eyes with foundation and added color to my overall washed-out appearance with mascara and lipstick.

I drove out of the garage, this time in my own car, and-surprise! surprise!-for the present, the media vans were gone. I guess they figured they had about as much out of me as they were going to get for the day.

When I got to Seventy-fourth Street, I left the car in Jackie’s garage and went upstairs. When she came to the door, we hugged each other. “Nothing like lots of stress as a daily diet,” she commented. “I haven’t seen you in two weeks, and I bet you’ve lost at least five or six pounds.”

“At least,” I agreed as I followed her into her office. It’s a medium-sized, comfortable room with a couple of upholstered armchairs facing her desk. I remembered she collects nineteenth-century English prints of dogs and horses, and admired aloud some really wonderful examples framed on the wall. I imagined new patients remarking on them before revealing the problem that had driven them to seek Jackie’s help.

We agreed on ham and Swiss cheese on rye with lettuce and mustard and black coffee. She phoned in the order, then we settled down to talk. I told her about my meeting with Barbara, holding back only the fact that she had given birth to Mack’s son. Instead, feeling dishonest, I gave Barbara’s version, that she had had an abortion.

“It’s a viable reason for Mack to escape,” she agreed. “But just suppose he had gone to your father and/or your mother. What would either or both of them have done, do you think?”

“Supported them in their decision to marry and have the baby. Put Mack through law school.”

“Put Barbara through medical school?”

“I don’t know.”

“Knowing your father as I did, he certainly wouldn’t have put up with Mack taking a crack at acting.”

“Now that is a certainty, I agree.” Then I told Jackie how worried I was that Elliott might reconsider wanting to marry Mom while the present suspicion of Mack existed, or if he ever was arrested and put on trial.

“I’d worry, too,” Jackie agreed frankly. “Appearances mean so much to people like Elliott. I know someone like that. He’s about Elliott’s age, a widower, one of the nicest people you’d ever want to know, but a snob. I joke with him that he’d be caught dead before he’d date anyone who wasn’t a socialite, no matter how accomplished and beautiful she was.”

“What did he say when you told him that?” I asked Jackie.

“He laughed, but he didn’t deny it.”

The desk called to say that the delivery was on the way. We settled down to lunch, and Jackie started to remind me that I was planning to apply for a job in the District Attorney’s office. Then I knew she could have bitten her tongue. Can you just imagine the District Attorney of Manhattan hiring the sister of an accused murderer?

A ll afternoon, either alone or in pairs, the members of the Detective Squad visited Lucas Reeves’s office and studied the photos he had prepared for their inspection. Sometimes they lingered over one or several pictures. They studied the enhanced shot of Mack MacKenzie as he might look today. Some of them held it up to compare with a headshot on the wall, but in the end they all left shrugging their shoulders in disappointment and defeat.

Roy Barrott was one of the last to arrive, at quarter of five. He had gone home and crashed for three hours. Now, freshly shaved and alert, he went painstakingly through the hundreds of stills while Lucas Reeves waited patiently in his office.

Finally, at seven fifteen, as Lucas came in to check on him, he gave up. “They’re all starting to look familiar,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I feel as if I’m missing something over there.” He pointed his hand to the far wall.

Lucas Reeves frowned. “Oddly, Carolyn MacKenzie paused at that area as well. I had the feeling that something interested her, but she must have dismissed the possibility. Otherwise I am sure she would have said something.”

Barrott stood in front of it again. “It’s not going to happen, at least not tonight.”

Reeves reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “I have written down my cell phone number for you. If anything occurs to you and you want to come back here at any hour, call me and I will instruct the security guard to let you in immediately.”