about Amy?”
“Something about Amy.” Lily nodded, rubbing her eyes. He pushed a glass of water toward her. She drank from it, came to a little. “Her father lives down in Islamorada, I think. Or Cape Canaveral?”
“St. Augustine perhaps?”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Yes, that’s where he lives. St. Augustine.”
“Okay then. Maybe she went to visit him.”
O’Malley was quiet. “That’s what you called to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“You must think I just started this job. You’re going to have to do better than that. He was the first one we called. He hadn’t heard from her. But besides, Miss Quinn, you’re missing the point about Amy. She told her mother she would be coming home. She didn’t. She told her family she would be graduating. She didn’t. Hasn’t called, hasn’t shown up, and no one’s heard from her, not even her father in Islamorada.”
Lily struggled up. “Would you excuse me? My break is over, I think.”
“Break?” said O’Malley. “I think your shift is over.”
“Ha.” She left to wash her face. He was still sitting in her booth when she returned.
“Detective, I really must …”
But he wasn’t moving. “Just two more minutes of your time. There were a few things I forgot to mention yesterday; after all, we had so much to cover. During our search of Amy’s room, we discovered her house keys and her wallet on her dresser, leading us to suspect that she didn’t go far.”
“As I told you, that’s probably true.”
“Was she generally in the habit of leaving the apartment without her wallet or keys?”
“I guess,” said Lily. “I’m not trying to be evasive,” she added, seeing his face. She smiled wanly, but O’Malley didn’t smile, in fact, studied her extra carefully, as if she were a word on the page whose meaning he was trying to decipher. “She used to go running and didn’t like to weigh herself down. She usually took what little money she had with her. Crumpled up into a ball, or change stuffed into her pants pocket.”
“Where did she go running?”
“Central Park. The reservoir.”
“Far to go for a run all the way from the East Village.”
“Far, but worth it.”
He made a note on his pad. “What about other times? When she would disappear overnight? Did she also leave her wallet and her keys then? Running for days at a time, was she?”
“She was very fit,” Lily said, a feeble attempt at a joke. During those days too, Amy would leave her wallet. Why did Lily strongly not want to tell the detective that? “You know I didn’t always notice. I tried not to go into her room when she was gone unless I needed something. So I don’t know if she always left her wallet. I’m sure sometimes she took it.”
“Where’s her driver’s license, by the way?”
“I don’t think she had one,” Lily said hesitantly.
“Really?” With obvious surprise and a glance at her hesitation.
Lily averted her gaze, trying to think of the thing that turned her face away from him. Some vague confusion, some vague inconsistency regarding the license, but she couldn’t quite place it, hence the averted gaze. “Amy didn’t know how to drive. We live in New York. I don’t know how to drive either.”
“Interesting,” said the detective, stroking his chin. “Fascinating.” He stood to go. “Well, you’ll forgive me for not sharing in your relaxed and easygoing attitude about your best friend’s whereabouts, but I’m finding it odd, to say the least, that she’s been gone for three weeks, with her cash card, her Visa card, her Student ID, her MetroCard, and her door keys all serenely on her dresser. And she doesn’t know how to drive. So where did she go? When we searched your room, we found your MetroCard there. But we didn’t find your keys or your wallet or your ATM card. You went to Hawaii and took them with you. That seemed normal to us.”
Their eyes locked for a moment. Detective O’Malley with clear eyes that didn’t miss a thing said, “So where’s your bed?”
“Boyfriend took it.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, well.”
Presently he slapped the table, sitting back down. “Damn! I just figured it out. I just understood why you are so cavalier about Amy.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course. You are not concerned for her, because she has been disappearing with constant regularity. She would leave her life on the dresser, vanish, and then come back, as if she’d just been for a long run. You thought nothing of it then, and you’re thinking nothing of it now.”
“Incorrect detecting, detective. I am thinking something of it now. She’s never been away for three weeks.”
“She would leave her wallet and ID and keys on her dresser, when she went out, and you never asked why?”
Lily didn’t know why she didn’t ask. “I figured when Amy was ready she’d tell me.”
There was a long pause. “Still waiting, are you, Miss Quinn?”
Lily hastily excused herself and went to finish her shift. Everybody at work had noticed that a suited-up detective flashing his badge had come looking for Lily. They asked her, they teased, they prodded, she equivocated, they pursued and pursued. Rick, the manager, watched her carefully and then called her over. “Are you in trouble of some kind?”
“No, no.”
“It’s not drugs, is it? Because …”
“It’s not drugs.”
“He’s a cuuutie,” said Judi, another waitress, pixie and not yet twenty. “Is he single?”
“I don’t know, and he’s twice your age!”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
Spencer came home that night and sat at his round dining table. He lived in a small apartment close to work and in a perfect location—on 11th and Broadway. From his microcosm of a kitchen and adjoining dining area windows, he saw a dozen traffic lights on Broadway, all the way down south past Astor Place. The wet, red lights burst in Technicolor in the gray rain; the grayer the rain, the brighter the reds and greens. From
