The Girl in Times Square by Paullina Simons Read Free Book Online Page A

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.

3
An Hour at the 9th Precinct
    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, andboth, 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