Paullina Simons - The Girl in Times Square

And Lily Quinn prided herself all her life on being exactly the kind of girl who’d never won a single thing. Her karma had been being not just an un-winner, but the anti-winner. In fact, she could be sure that if she picked it, it would never win. She couldn’t win so much as a pack of cigarettes on a free tour of the Philip Morris tobacco factory in North Carolina. She couldn’t win a no-homework weekend when there were only ten entrants and the professor picked three names. She didn’t win the short or the long straw. She didn’t get to lose and clean the toilet, or come up to the headmaster and ask for more gruel, any more than she got to win a prize at a baby shower contest. She played a game at her sister’s shower called, “How well do you know your sister?”—and came in third!

49—for the year her mother and grandmother came to America.

45—for the year of the end of the war that changed the world.

39—for its beginning.

24—for her age. Last year Lily played 23.

18—Because it was her favorite number.

1—because it was the loneliest number.

She bought herself a lottery ticket every single week for six years, playing the numbers that meant something to her not because she had hope, but because she wanted to reaffirm the order of her quiet universe. Because she truly believed that the Force that let her numbers never be pulled out of a hat at Saturday night’s drawing was the same Force that did not place the titanium rod at her two feet of life.

Unable to draw or read or focus, Lily concentrated all her efforts on getting a tan. In a secluded part of a small semi-circle of the local beach near Wailea, Lily took off her bikini halter and sunbathed topless, getting a very thorough tan indeed. After almost three weeks her breasts looked positively Brazilian and even her nipples got dark brown.

In the first week of June, Lily was sitting outside on the patio, home from the beach, thinking about what to do for the rest of her day—for the day was so loooong—when the phone rang. The phone never rang! Lily was so excited, she nearly knocked over a chair getting to it.

“Hello?” she said in an eager-lover voice.

“Lilianne Quinn?” said an unfamiliar man’s baritone on the other end.

“Yes?” she said, much more subdued, in a voice unfamiliar to herself.

“This is Detective O’Malley of the NYPD. I’m calling about your roommate, Amy McFadden.”

Excitement was instantly supplanted by something else—worry. “Yes? What’s happened?” From his tone, Lily thought Amy might have been in a car accident.

“Have you heard from her?”

“No.” She paused. “I’m here in Hawaii.”

“Well, I know,” said the detective. “I’m calling you there, aren’t I?”

That was true. “What’s happened?”

“She seems to have disappeared.”

“Oh.” Lily immediately calmed down. “Hmm. Have you checked with her mother?”

“Her mother is the one who reported her missing, which is why I’m calling you . According to Jan McFadden, Amy hasn’t called home in three weeks. Their repeated attempts to reach her at the apartment have failed. Do you recall the last time you saw her?”

“I don’t know,” Lily said, deflecting. “I’d have to think about it.”

There was silence on the other end. “Are you thinking about it now?”

“Detective, I don’t know. I’ve been here three weeks. I guess I saw her right before I left.”

“When was that?”

“I … I can’t remember now.” Dates had been singed out of her head by the Tropic of Cancer sun. “Can I think about it and call you back?”

“Yes—but quickly.”

“Or …” Something occurred to Lily. “Do you think I should come back? Is this something you need to speak to me about in person?”

“I’m not sure. Is it?”

“Yes, yes, I think I should come back. I’ll be able to give you much more detail.”

“Well, I appreciate that, Miss Quinn. This seems quite serious.”

Lily didn’t think so, but then this detective didn’t know Amy.

“You need me to come back right away? The sooner the better?”

“Well—”

“Of course. This is an emergency. I’ll be glad to be of any help. I’ll fly back tonight. Is that soon enough?”

“Yes, I think that will be fine. I apologize for having you leave Hawaii. You don’t really—”

“No, no, I do. It’s really no problem. I want to help. Where do I go?”

“Come to the 9th Precinct on 5th Street between First and Second Avenues. Ask for me.”

“Who are you again?”

“Lieutenant-detective O’Malley. Spencer Patrick O’Malley.”

Lily called United Airlines to find out about the next available flight: it was in four hours. It took her forty-five minutes to pack, then she called a cab.

She carried her suitcase out with difficulty. Her mother was on the patio, smoking, drinking cranberry juice.

“I have to go back to New York. Something … something’s happened,” she said, and didn’t want to give voice to anything more. “That was the police on the phone.”

“Police? What’s happened? What did you do?”

“Nothing, but … no one can find Amy. The police want to talk to me.”

“They can’t talk to you on the phone?”

“No. I guess it’s serious.” Lily said it, but didn’t believe it for a second.

She wasn’t worried about Amy. She thought Amy’s disappearance was a beautiful karmic ruse to get her out of Maui.

She threw herself into the cab with relieved haste. When the plane was in the air heading back home she found herself exhaling for the first time in three weeks. She was sure Amy would have turned up by the time she got home.

Amy hadn’t turned up by the time Lily got home, but their apartment looked as if the police expected to find Amy in Lily’s closet. A copy of the warrant was plastered to the wall in the hallway. Nothing obvious had been disturbed in Lily’s room—though she had the feeling that all her things had been looked at, even touched—but Amy’s room had been turned upside down.

Without even unpacking, still in her traveling clothes—a white spaghetti-strap tank top, a small cropped cream cardigan, and a denim mini-skirt, Lily dropped her suitcase and left for the precinct. She gave her name and waited ten minutes before a heavy, out-of-breath man came downstairs. “Detective O’Malley?” she said, sticking out her hand.

“No, no, my partner always sends me. He thinks I need the exercise,” the man puffed.

His hand was wet and clammy and unpleasant. She pulled hers away. “How thoughtful of your partner,” said Lily, warily eying him, a little bit relieved that this detective wasn’t the lead detective. He had a sour, greasy look about him, his thin, long, scraggly hair needed washing, or at best combing; he was very tall, but was ungainly about his limbs, listing slightly to the right, his head bobbing slightly to the left. His paunch was so large that the white dress shirt he was wearing couldn’t contain it, and both, the shirt and the belly, were spilling over the top of the pants, onto the belt and downwards. Lily almost felt like telling him to tuck himself in. He didn’t look jovial and jolly though; he was not a happy fat man.

“Detective Harkman,” said the panting man, then motioning her to follow him. As he walked by her, she smelled what she knew unmistakably to be uric acid. Detective Harkman had gout—his body couldn’t metabolize the nitrogenous wastes properly, hence the sour smell emanating from him. Her paternal grandfather had had it at the end of his life. Involuntarily she held her breath as she followed him three flights up (“What, no elevators?” she quipped. “It’s either elevators or our salaries,” he unquipped back.) and was out of breath herself when they entered a high-ceilinged plain open room with a dozen wooden cluttered desks, behind one of which sat a man, who was not heavy or out of breath.