Mary Clark - Where Are You Now?

“Good enough, and thanks.”

Barrott went back to the squad room to find renewed energy crackling through it. Ahearn, his tie pulled loose, his face haggard and weary, was pacing the floor in his office. “We may be onto something,” he said. “Steve Hockney, the nephew of the owner of the apartment building MacKenzie was living in, has a sealed juvenile record. We got a look at it, serious stuff, but nothing violent. Dealing marijuana, burglary, and theft. His uncle was able to hire good lawyers who kept him out of a couple of years in a juvenile center. According to Lil Kramer, Hockney was holding it over her head that MacKenzie was missing his watch. That was only a day or two before Mack disappeared. We’re looking for Hockney. His band has regular gigs in the SoHo-Greenwich Village locale, and he uses a lot of costume changes, even wigs and putty to alter his appearance.”

“How about the rest of what the Kramers told you?”

“We spoke to Bruce Galbraith. He’s one cold fish. He acknowledged that he did ask Lil Kramer about his school ring, but she took it wrong. He wasn’t accusing her. He claims he just asked her if she’d seen it when she was cleaning up. She hit the roof and got all upset. Knowing her background, you can understand why she might have been hypersensitive about a question like that.”

Bob Gaylor had come in while Ahearn was speaking. “Our guys just reached Hockney’s uncle, Derek Olsen, the old man who owns the buildings. He confirmed that there was a rivalry between his assistant, Howard Altman, and his nephew Steve Hockney. He said he’s sick of both of them. He’s left messages on their phones that he’s selling all the property and that the wrecking ball is hitting the 104th Street town house tomorrow morning. We didn’t let on that we’re hunting for the nephew. We told him we were confirming the Kramers’ story.”

“What did he say about them?”

“Hardworking, good people. He’d trust them with everything he had.”

“Have we got any pictures of Hockney?” Barrott asked. “I want to compare him with a face I saw in Reeves’s office just now. I feel as though I’ve missed something.”

“There’s one of his publicity pictures with his band on my desk,” Ahearn told him. “We’ve got dozens of them with our guys on the street.”

Barrott started rifling through the untidy clutter on Ahearn’s desk, then picked up a picture he found there. “This is the one,” he said aloud.

Ahearn and Gaylor stared at him. “What are you talking about?” Ahearn demanded.

“I’m talking about this guy,” he said, pointing. “Where’s that other picture of Leesey posing for her friend, the one with Nick DeMarco in the background?”

“One of the copies of it is somewhere in that pile.”

Barrott rummaged, then, with a satisfied grunt, said, “Here it is.” He held up two photos, comparing them. An instant later, he was dialing the cell phone of Lucas Reeves.

A s I expected, the sanitarium where Mom was staying was about as luxurious inside and out as I would have imagined any place that Elliott would choose for her would be. Thick carpets, soft lights, fine paintings on the walls. I got there around 4:30, and the receptionist had clearly been briefed that I was on my way.

“Your mother is expecting you,” she said in one of those professionally melodious voices that seemed to me to fit in with the surroundings. “Her suite is on the fourth floor, with a beautiful view of the grounds.” She got up and led me to the elevator, an ornately handsome object with an operator and a velvet seating bench inside.

My escort murmured, “Ms. Olivia’s suite, please, Mason,” and I remembered hearing that in some of these expensive psychiatric residences last names are not shared. Just as well, I thought. The other guests don’t need to know that Mrs. Charles MacKenzie Sr. is in their midst.

At the fourth floor, we got out and walked down the hall to the corner suite. After tapping on the door, my escort opened it. “Ms. Olivia,” she called, her voice slightly elevated but still finishing-school modulated.

I walked behind her into an exquisite sitting room. I have seen photos of the suites in the Plaza Athénée in Paris, and I felt as though I was walking into one of them. Then Mom appeared in the doorway from the bedroom. Without another word, the escort was gone and Mom and I looked at each other.

All the conflicting emotions, the roller coaster of emotions that I had been experiencing this last week when Mom took refuge in Elliott’s apartment rushed through me as I looked at her. Guilt. Anger. Bitterness. Then they all washed away and the only thing I felt was love. Her beautiful eyes were filled with grief. She was looking at me uncertainly as though she didn’t know what to expect of me.

I went over to her and put my arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so terribly sorry. I guess that no matter how many times I say to myself, ‘If only I hadn’t tried to find Mack,’ I can only tell you I’d give my life to undo that but I can’t.”

Then her hands began running through my hair the way they did when I was a small child and upset about something. They were loving and comforting, and I knew that she had come to peace with what I had done.

“Carolyn, we’ll see it through,” she said. “No matter what it turns out to be. If Mack has done everything they say he has done, there is one thing I can be sure of. He is not in his right mind.”

“How much have they told you?” I asked her.

“I guess everything. Yesterday I told Dr. Abrams, my psychiatrist, that I didn’t want to be protected anymore. I can sign myself out of here anytime, but I’d rather absorb everything that I have to know while I can talk it through with him.”

This was the mother I thought I had lost, the one who kept Dad sane when Mack disappeared, the one whose first thought was for me when she knew Dad was lost on 9/11. I had been a junior in Columbia then and had by chance slept home and was still asleep when the first plane hit. Horrified, Mom had watched it by herself. Dad’s office was on the 103rd floor of the North Tower, the first one to be hit. She had tried to phone him and actually got through to him. “Liv, the fire’s underneath us,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll make it.”

The connection had gone dead, and minutes later, she saw the tower collapse. She had let me sleep until I woke up naturally, about forty-five minutes later. I’d opened my eyes to find her sitting in my room, tears streaming from her eyes. Then she’d rocked me in her arms while she told me what had happened.

This was my mother as she was until year after year, the annual Mother’s Day call from Mack tore her apart.

“Mom, if you’re comfortable here, I wish you’d stay a while longer,” I said. “You don’t want to be on Sutton Place the way it is now, and once the media got word you were back at Elliott’s apartment, they’d be gunning for you there, too.”

“I understand that, but Carolyn, what about you? I know you wouldn’t come here, but isn’t there someplace you can get away from them?”

You can run but you can’t hide, I thought. “Mom, I think it’s necessary for me to be around and visible,” I said. “Because until we have absolute proof to the contrary, I am going to believe and publicly swear that Mack is innocent.”

“That’s exactly what your father would do.” Now Mom smiled, a real smile. “Come on. Let’s sit down. I wish we could have a cocktail, but that’s not going to happen here.” She looked at me, a bit anxiously. “You know that Elliott is coming?”

“Yes. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

“He’s been a rock.”