I'll Walk Alone (9 page)

21

W
ith intense satisfaction, Bartley Longe sauntered down the corridor to his office at 400 Park Avenue with the morning newspapers under his arm. Fifty-two years old, with silver threads in his light brown hair, ice blue eyes, and an imperious manner, he was the kind of man who could intimidate a headwaiter or a subordinate with a single chilling glance. On the flip side of his personality, he was a charming and welcome guest among his many clients, both the current celebrities and the quietly wealthy.

His staff always nervously anticipated his 9:30
A.M.
arrival. What kind of mood would Bartley be in? A furtive peek at him answered that question. If his expression was pleasant and he graced them with a hearty “Good morning,” they relaxed at least for the present. If he was frowning and tight-lipped, they knew something had displeased him and that somebody was in for a nasty dressing-down.

By now, every one of the eight full-time employees had read or heard the stunning news that Zan Moreland, who had once worked for Bartley, was a person of interest in the disappearance of her own son. They all remembered the day she had burst into the office after her parents died in that accident and screamed at Bartley: “I hadn’t seen my mother and father in nearly two years and now I’ll never see them again. You made it impossible for me to leave because you said I was too valuable on this project or that project. You’re a nasty, self centered bully. You’re more than that. You’re a stinking devil. And if you don’t believe it, ask any of these people who work for you. I’m going to open my own firm and you know what, Bartley? I’m going to rub your nose in my success.”

She had broken into racking sobs and Elaine Ryan, Bartley’s longtime secretary, had put an arm around her and taken her home.

Now Bartley opened the door of his office, the smirk on his face a clear signal to both Elaine and the receptionist, Phyllis Garrigan, that all was well for his employees, at least for the present. “I guess unless you’re deaf, dumb, and blind, you know about Zan More-land?” Bartley asked the women.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” Elaine Ryan said flatly. Sixty-two years old, her dark brown hair stylishly shaped, her hazel eyes the best feature in her narrow face, she was the single employee in the office with enough courage to occasionally challenge Bartley. As she often told her husband, the only thing that kept her working for Bartley was the good pay and the fact that at any time she could afford to walk out if he got too nasty. Her husband, a retired state trooper, was now head of security at a discount department store. Anytime Elaine came home fuming at something Bartley had said or done, he silenced her with one word, “Quit.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe, Elaine. The proof is in the photos. You don’t think that magazine would have bought them if there was any doubt about what they show, do you?” The smirk was leaving Bartley’s face. “It is clear now that Zan picked up her own little boy and walked out of the park with him. It’s up to the police to find out what she did with him after that. But if you want my theory, I’ll give it to you.”

Bartley Longe pointed his finger at Elaine for emphasis. “When she worked here, how often did you hear Zan whine that she wished she had grown up in one home in the suburbs instead of moving from place to place because of her father’s job?” he demanded. “My theory is that all the sympathy she got after her parents’ death was over and she needed a new tragedy in her life.”

“That’s absolutely crazy,” Elaine said, heatedly. “Zan may have mentioned that she would have preferred not to have moved around all the time, but she said it in a general way when we were talking about our backgrounds. It certainly doesn’t mean she said it all the time to gain sympathy. And she was crazy about Matthew. What you’re insinuating is disgusting, Mr. Longe.”

Elaine realized that Bartley Longe’s cheeks were becoming flushed. Thou shall not contradict the boss, she thought. But how could he possibly suggest that Zan might have kidnapped Matthew to get sympathy?

“I forget how partial you were to my former assistant,” Bartley Longe snapped. “But I will bet you that, as we speak, Zan Moreland is hunting for a lawyer, and I can assure you that she’s going to need a good one.”

22

K
evin Wilson admitted to himself that it was almost impossible to concentrate on the drawings on his desk. He was looking at the landscaper’s sketches for the plantings in the lobby of 701 Carlton Place, as the new apartment complex would be called.

The name had been agreed upon only after a heated discussion with the directors of Jarrell International, the multibillion-dollar company that was financing the building. Several members of the board of directors had suggestions of names they thought would be more appropriate. Most of them were in the romantic or would-be historical vein, Windsor Arms, Camelot Towers, Le Versailles, Stonehenge, even New Amsterdam Court.

Kevin had listened with increasing impatience. Finally it had been his turn. “What is considered to be the most exclusive address in New York?” he had asked.

Seven of the eight board members named the same address on Park Avenue.

“Exactly,” Kevin had told them. “My point is that we’ve got a very expensive building to fill. As we speak, there are many very expensive residential buildings in Manhattan under construction. I don’t have to remind you that this is a tough economy, or that it’s our job to make our pitch to potential buyers a very special one. Our location is spectacular. Our views of the Hudson River and of the city are spectacular. But I want us to be able to tell our prospective buyers that when the name 701 Carlton Place is mentioned, everyone hearing that address will know that the person giving it is lucky enough to be living in a privileged location.”

I guess I carried the day, he thought as he turned his chair from the table to the desk, shaking his head. Dear God, if Pop were around what would he think if he heard that spiel? His grandfather had been the superintendent of the building next door to where he and his parents had lived. The name, Lancelot Towers, had been carved in stone over the six-story walk-up with its dreary railroad flats, creaking dumbwaiters, and ancient plumbing, on Webster Avenue in the Bronx.

Pop would have thought I was crazy, Kevin acknowledged, and so would Dad, if he were still alive. Mom is used to my salesmanship pitch by now. After Dad died, when I finally got her to move to East Fifty-seventh Street, she said I could sell a dead horse to a mounted policeman. Now she loves Manhattan. I swear she falls asleep at night humming “New York, New York.”

All these random thoughts are going nowhere, he acknowledged silently, as he leaned back in his chair. From down the hall he could hear the relentless sound of hammering and the shrill, ear-piercing whine of machines beginning to polish the marble floors.

To Kevin, the din of construction was more beautiful than hearing a symphony in Lincoln Center. From the time I was a kid, I told Dad I’d rather go to a construction site than to the zoo, he thought. Even then, I knew I wanted to design buildings.

The landscaper’s sketches weren’t right, he decided. He’ll have to start all over, or I’ll get someone else. I don’t want the entrance to look like a conservatory, Kevin thought. This guy just doesn’t get it.

The model apartments. Last night he had studied both Longe’s and Moreland’s submissions for hours. They were both mighty im pressive. He could understand why Bartley Longe was considered one of the foremost interior designers in the country. If he got the job, the apartments would be spectacular.

But Zan Moreland’s sketches were marvelously attractive, too. He could see how she had studied under Longe, but then broken off from his ideas to pursue her own. There was more warmth, more of a sense of this-is-my-home in the deft way she put small touches in her layouts. And she was 30 percent cheaper in her prices.

He admitted to himself that he had not been able to get her out of his mind. She was a beautiful woman, there was no doubt about that. Slender, even a shade too thin, those enormous hazel eyes dominating her face … Odd that she was so shy, almost to the point of diffidence, until she got into explaining her vision for the model apartments. Then it was as if a light turned on and her face and voice became animated.

When she left yesterday, I watched her walk out to the curb and hail a cab, Kevin thought. It had gotten so windy that I wondered if that suit she was wearing was warm enough for her, even though it had a fur collar. I had the feeling that a strong gust of wind would have knocked her to the ground.

There was a tap on the door of his office. Before he could respond, his secretary, Louise Kirk, was in the office and walking to his desk. “Let me guess. It’s exactly nine o’clock,” he said.

Louise, a forty-five-year-old pear-shaped dynamo, with a head of fluffy blond hair, was the wife of one of the construction chiefs. “Of course it is,” she replied briskly.

Kevin was sorry he had given Louise that opening. Now he hoped she wouldn’t repeat her oft-told comparison of herself to Eleanor Roosevelt. As Louise, a history buff, explained it, Eleanor was always exactly on time, “Even to the moment when she descended the stairs in the White House to arrive precisely when the ceremony at FDR’s casket in the East Room was about to begin.”

But today Louise clearly had other things on her mind. “Did you have a chance to read the papers?” she asked.

“No. The breakfast meeting started at seven o’clock,” Kevin reminded her.

“Well, then take a look at this.” Gleeful at being able to be the bearer of startling news, Louise laid the morning papers, the
New York Post
and the
Daily News,
on his desk. Both of them had a picture of Zan Moreland on the front page. Their headlines were similar, and sensational. Both alleged that Zan Moreland had kidnapped her own child.

Kevin stared at the photos in disbelief of what he was seeing. “Did you know her child was missing?” he asked Louise.

“No, I didn’t connect her name with it,” Louise said. “Don’t forget, I was in the main office yesterday. Of course, I knew the child’s name, Matthew Carpenter. The papers were full of the story when he disappeared, but as I remember they always referred to the mother as Alexandra. I didn’t put two and two together. What are you going to do about it, Kevin? She’s bound to be arrested. Should I return her sketches to her office?”

“I would say that we have no choice,” Kevin said quietly, then added, “The funny thing is I’d just about decided to give her the job.”

23

O
n Wednesday morning, after celebrating the seven-o’clock Mass, Fr. Aiden watched CNN news as he sipped a cup of coffee in the kitchen of the Friary. Deeply disturbed, he shook his head as the breaking news unfolded that Alexandra Moreland had kidnapped her own child. He watched as the camera showed the same young woman who had come into the Reconciliation Room Monday leave the Four Seasons Restaurant last night. She tried to hide her face when she was rushing into a cab past the reporters and photographers, but there was no mistaking her.

Then he saw the photos that seemed to be the unmistakable proof that she had abducted little Matthew.

“I am involved in an ongoing crime and I am unable to prevent a murder that is about to be committed,” she had said.

Was the ongoing crime the fact that Alexandra Moreland had taken her own son and lied to the authorities about his disappearance?

Fr. Aiden watched as the news anchorman spoke to June Langren, a nearby diner in the Four Seasons, about the shocking outburst by Ted Carpenter. “I honestly thought he was going to attack her,” Langren said, breathlessly. “My boyfriend jumped up to restrain him if necessary.”

In the fifty years he had been hearing confessions, Fr. Aiden thought he had heard virtually the full range of iniquities that the human spirit is capable of committing. Many years ago he had listened to the wrenching sobs of a young woman, little more than a girl herself, who had given birth to a child, and in fear of her parents had left it to die in a garbage bag in the Dumpster.

The saving mercy was that the child had not died, that a passerby had heard the cries of the wailing infant and saved it, he reflected.

This was different.

“A murder is about to be committed.”

She did not say, “I am going to commit a murder,” Fr. Aiden thought. She spoke of herself as an accomplice. Maybe now that those pictures have proven that she stole the child, whoever she is involved with will be frightened off. I can only pray that that will be the case.

Later that morning after he had reviewed the security tapes with Alvirah and she had gone home, Fr. Aiden opened his calendar. He had several dinner appointments in the next week with generous sponsors of the friars’ ongoing food and clothing charity who had become close personal friends. He wanted to verify the time he was meeting the Andersons this evening.

His memory was accurate: 6:30, at the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South. Right down the street from Alvirah and Willy, he thought. That’s perfect. I just realized I left my scarf in their apartment last night. I guess Alvirah didn’t notice it or she would have mentioned it when she was here. After dinner, I’ll give them a call and if they’re home, I’ll run over and get it. His sister, Veronica, had knitted that scarf for him, and if she noticed that he wasn’t wearing it on a cold day, he’d be in big trouble.

As he was leaving the Friary after lunch, Neil was coming out of the chapel, a dustcloth and can of furniture polish in his hands. “Father, did you see that the woman, I mean the one your friend recognized on our security tape, is the one who stole her own kid?”

“Yes, I did,” Fr. Aiden said abruptly, making it very clear to Neil that he did not wish to hear anything more about it.

Neil had been about to make the comment that when he had seen the tape it had jostled something in his mind. He’d been walking home to his apartment on Eighth Avenue Monday night around the time that Moreland woman had been caught on the security tape, but just as he got to the corner, a young woman who was walking ahead of him had darted out in traffic and hailed a cab. She damn near got hit by a car, he thought. I got a good look at her.

That was why he had gone back and run the security tape again, stopping it where Alvirah Meehan had recognized her friend. You’d swear the woman getting in the cab was the one who’s on the tape, he thought. But unless she can change clothes in the middle of the street, it can’t be the same person.

Neil shrugged. That was what he’d been about to tell Fr. Aiden, but it was clear Fr. Aiden didn’t want to hear it. None of my business anyhow, Neil decided. In his forty-one years, thanks to his drinking problem, Neil had run the gamut of jobs. The one he’d liked best was being a cop, but that had only lasted a few years. No matter how much you pleaded that you’d go on the wagon, getting drunk three times when you were on duty meant getting tossed out on your ear.

I had the makings of a good cop, Neil thought reflectively, as he headed for the utility closet. All the guys joked about me that I could see a mug shot once and pick the guy out of Times Square a year later. Wish I’d lasted in the department. Maybe by now I’d be the police commissioner!

But he hadn’t gone to AA then. Instead, after drifting from job to job, he’d ended up on the streets, begging for handouts and sleeping in shelters. Three years ago when he’d come here for food, one of the friars had sent him to the Inn at Graymoor where they had a rehab program for men like him, and there he’d finally kicked the booze.

Now, he liked working here. He liked staying sober. He liked the friends he’d made at the AA meetings. The friars called him their majordomo, a fancy way of saying handyman, but still, it had a certain dignity.

If Fr. Aiden did not want to talk about the Moreland woman, that’s the way it is, Neil decided. Mum’s the word. He probably wouldn’t care anyhow that I saw someone who looked just like her.

Why should he?