Have You Seen Me?

by Kate White

  As I’m trying to grab the waiter’s attention, a man moves from the rear of the diner and sidles up to the booth I’m sitting in.

  “Ms. Linden?” he asks quietly. I catch the heavy scent of a leathery aftershave.

  “Yes?” I’ve never set eyes on him before.

  “Kurt Mulroney,” he says, thrusting out a hand. He’s at least fifteen pounds heavier than he appears in the photos on the agency website, and his hair’s been shaved off rather than trimmed short.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

  “No problem. Why don’t we move to my booth?” He kicks his chin up toward the back of the room. “We’ll have more privacy there.”

  “Sure,” I say, grabbing my jacket and following him to the back booth, where we sit across from each other.

  “Let’s get you something to drink first,” he tells me. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, thanks.” He catches the waitress’s eye and with a couple of hand signals conveys that I’ll have what he’s having. I take him in for a minute. He’s clean-shaven—no beard or mustache—and he’s got a thin, white hockey-stick-shaped scar slicing through one eyebrow. His black blazer is nicely tailored but snug, as if purchased before the weight gain.

  “Ms. Linden, why don’t you start by telling me a bit more about your situation,” Mulroney says.

  I flesh out what I’ve already shared, not bothering with the fact that my dissociative state might have been triggered by a fight with my spouse and/or long-dormant stress from discovering the body of a child and then misleading the police and my parents. Which, granted, is a helluva lot to skip but not essential for him to hear.

  He listens intently, a thick index finger placed sideways across his lips. Though it may be for show, I can see what looks like concern in his watery blue-green eyes.

  “That’s got to be incredibly upsetting,” he says when I finish. “Do you mind my asking if you’re continuing to receive medical help?”

  “Yes, I’m all set on that front. But there’s no guarantee my memory will come back, and that’s why I need help figuring out where I went—and what I did. And if something might have happened to me.”

  “I can understand that. And I know we can be of assistance.”

  “You’ve had other cases like this, you said?”

  “To be perfectly frank, we’ve never worked with this exact situation, but similar ones. You’ve probably read stories about elderly people with dementia wandering away from their homes—or autistic kids doing the same. They can’t either remember or describe where they went, but the families want to know, even once their loved ones have returned safely.”

  “But why would it matter once they’re back?”

  “With autistic kids, parents want to make certain no one lured them away and abused them. In the case of one of the elderly ladies we investigated, it was actually the nursing home that hired us. I’m sure the liability aspect worried them.”

  “Can you tell me a little more about your process?”

  “Sure.” He takes a swig of his coffee and sets the mug down with a thunk. “It really comes down to a combo of shoe-leather investigation and modern technology. We’ll seek to gain access to as much security camera footage as possible and use that to track the person’s whereabouts during the period in question. A lot of people don’t realize this, but if you live in New York, you’re almost constantly being videotaped.”

  “I know many companies have security cameras, but aren’t there still plenty of streets in New York without them?”

  “We don’t have the kind of coverage London does, but it’s really expanded in recent years, with cameras on both commercial and residential buildings.”

  So there were eyes on me when I was missing, and a digital record of my whereabouts. The thought is creepy but at the same time reassuring—because it might be easier than I anticipated to find the truth.

  “But how do you get access to the footage?”

  “Security guards tend to be very respectful of my experience as a cop, and my partner’s as a Navy SEAL.” He raps his knuckles lightly on the table a couple of times. “And we don’t only rely on video, of course. We talk to people. Ask questions.”

  Instinctively I flick my hand up, palm forward. “My doorman may know something about the day I left—which direction I was headed in, for instance—but I wouldn’t want you speaking to him. I don’t want most people in my life clued in about what’s going on.”

  “Fine. And I’ll probably start at the end point anyway. This place Greenbacks you mentioned. What kind of building is it in?”

  Hearing the company name reminds me of my meeting with Damien later today, and my heart does a nervous skip.

  “A smallish one, but they have a manned security desk.”

  “Excellent.”

  “But how would it help to see footage of me showing up in the lobby?”

  Mulroney cocks his head. “It’s not about you in the lobby. It’s about what direction you entered the building from. Once we’ve figured it out—and I say ‘we’ because if you retain me, my partner might end up assisting in part of the investigation—we head in that direction and we secure more footage, continuing to retrace your steps. It’s like following a thread that leads backwards.”

  Following a thread. As I’ve thought of reconstructing those two days, it’s seemed more like trying to Krazy Glue the shards of a broken vase together, but I like the thread image. I decide right then to hire Mulroney.

  “What’s the fee for this type of investigation?” I ask. “I want to be mindful of costs.”

  “I understand that,” Mulroney says. “What we generally charge is seventy an hour, but I would cap the job for now at two thousand dollars, and when we reach that point, we’ll reevaluate. I’ll keep you constantly abreast of the progress, and if after the first day I have any reason to suspect we’re going to hit a dead end, I’ll let you know.”

  “And I’d receive the remainder of my retainer back if we decide to halt the investigation for some reason?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, I’m on board.”

  We cover a few more details. Mulroney’s going to email me a contract later today, and he explains he’ll need a couple of photos of me, which I promise to shoot over to him. Then he slides a slim notebook from his inside jacket pocket along with a Bic pen and asks what I was wearing when I resurfaced on Thursday, my exact home address as well as the Greenbacks office address, and for any details that might be even slightly relevant. I fill him in on the fact that my purse is missing as well as my phone, and I also describe the charge at Eastside Eats.

  “Okay, a piece of the thread to follow. That’s the only charge?”

  “Right. I’ve been wondering whether I might have been mugged and the person grabbed the purse along with my phone. But wouldn’t a mugger have tried to use the card again after buying lunch? Or one of the other cards?”

  “He might have been looking mainly for cash. You carry much on you?”

  “I think I had a few hundred dollars on me at the start of the week. I like to use cash when I can’t write something off for business.”

  He shrugs. “If a junkie grabbed your purse, it would have been plenty for a few fixes. This place Eastside Eats. You ever been there before?”

  “No, but I checked online and it’s the type of place I might stop in.”

  “Anything of note on your calendar for last week? Places you might have gone—or people you might have seen?”

  “I had an appointment at one o’clock on Wednesday with a Dr. Elaine Erling—at her New York City office, not the Larchmont one—but I didn’t keep it. There’s a chance that at some point over those two days I showed up at WorkSpace on West Fifty-Fifth Street, where I rent a small office. I hadn’t planned to go in those days—my intention was to work from home—but who knows?”

  He stuffs the notebook back into his pocket and reaches across the table to shake my hand.

  “We’
re going to figure this out for you, Ms. Linden,” he says. “And we can start immediately.”

  “Thank you.” His words have triggered a rush of relief, though there’s still fear pulsing lightly beneath it. “What can I do to assist in this?”

  “For the moment, the most important thing is to be available so I can check in with you regularly and ask you questions as they come up.”

  “You can count on it.”

  Mulroney raises a finger for the check, and the waiter nods with a smile.

  “You do a lot of meetings here?” I ask.

  “A fair amount. I also like to stop by at the end of the day and think through my cases.”

  I offer to pay for my own coffee, but Mulroney insists it’s on him.

  “Oh, wait,” I exclaim as he lays down a few bills. “I almost forgot.”

  I fish through my purse and extract the gallon-size Ziploc bag I’ve stuffed with the bloodied tissues. Mulroney’s right eyebrow, the one with the scar, shoots up.

  “These were in my coat pocket, though I don’t have any memory of putting them there.”

  He cups the bag in one hand and peers at the contents intently.

  “Did you have any cuts or bruises last week?”

  “No, but I’ve gotten nosebleeds in the past. Can we do a DNA test to find out whether the blood is mine or not?”

  “DNA’s going to take a few weeks. Plus, you’ll need to buy one of those home paternity tests. Actually, I think we should start instead by checking the blood type on the tissues, which can be done quickly and might tell us all we need to know. What type are you?”

  “O negative.”

  “That’s rare. If the blood on these turns out to be O negative, it’s probably safe to assume it’s yours. If it’s not, we’ll decide from there how much more testing we want. Why don’t you give them to me, and I’ll drop them off at the lab we use.”

  I feel a tiny swell of reluctance about handing over the whole bag but decide I’m going to have to put my trust in this guy. He was a cop. That’s no guarantee he’s ethical but at least he’s experienced. Mulroney accepts the bag and tucks it into the soft black leather briefcase resting next to him.

  As we’re sliding out of the booth a few minutes later, another man approaches us.

  “Jay, hey,” Mulroney says. “Ms. Linden, I asked my partner, Jay Williams, to stop by to say hello. Since he’ll be involved, too, I thought you should meet him.”

  He appears to be slightly younger than Mulroney, maybe in his midforties, African American, and handsome. Unlike his partner, he bears an exact resemblance to his online photo.

  “A pleasure,” Williams says, firmly shaking my hand. “Did you two have a good meeting?”

  “We did,” Mulroney says, lowering his voice as we move toward the front of the diner. “I’m going to make Ms. Linden’s case a top priority.”

  Out on the sidewalk, Mulroney briefly recaps the conversation for his partner. I realize the meeting has gone longer than I planned, so I say good-bye and step off the curb and hail a cab. Less than ten minutes later I’m sinking into the backseat of a cab hurtling toward the studio on Ninth Avenue and Forty-Fifth Street. This all seems so crazy—hiring a couple of gumshoes—and yet I feel bolstered by my decision.

  Once I arrive at the studio, I take the elevator to the ninth floor and proceed to the small suite rented by the production company that does my program. The guy manning the desk in the reception area nods hello and announces, “They’re all inside, Ally.”

  I pray he doesn’t mean Sasha, too. I’d been hoping to beat her here and have a few minutes to chat alone with Casey about the final segment of the show. But as I step into the outer part of the studio, I spot Sasha in the sound booth, shuffling a stack of papers. Casey and Rex, the engineer, are busy at their computers, but they both glance up when I enter. Sasha either doesn’t notice me or pretends not to.

  “Morning,” Rex and Casey say nearly in unison.

  “How’s everyone doing?” I ask, watching for their reaction. I’ve been wondering if I might have contacted either one of them—perhaps in some lunatic way—when I was MIA.

  “All good,” Rex says and swivels his dark eyes back to the screen. In the year and a half I’ve been doing the podcast, I’ve probably heard the guy say a couple hundred words.

  Casey, however, smiles and affords me her full attention, setting down a green juice concoction in a plastic cup the size of a rocket ship.

  “Got anything for me?” she asks, eyeing my tote bag. I’ve worked with Casey for two years now and she’s not only fun and considerate, but a pro in every respect.

  “No, I’m going to stick to the plan I sent you last night. Our guest is on her way?”

  “Yeah, but she texted to say she’s running ten minutes late. So much for taking your own advice, right? In her books she warns people to never be late for a meeting.”

  “Ha. For the powerful, rules are meant to be broken.”

  Both she and Rex seem totally normal, making me think that neither has witnessed any bizarre behavior on my part. And yet everything in the room seems slightly out of frame to me. I feel like if I reached out to touch Casey or Rex, my hand would miss by an inch or two.

  Is it simply because I’m still a little wobbly from last week? Or is this out-of-frame sensation an alert about my mental state, one I should be heeding? Were there warning signs before the first dissociative state that I didn’t know how to interpret? Please, I silently beg, don’t let this be happening again. Maybe Hugh was right when he urged me to postpone the recording a week.

  I’m also a little jittery, I realize, about my meeting with Damien. It’s only a few hours away.

  I inhale slowly, hold, then release. I can do this, I tell myself.

  “Want me to grab you a coffee?” Casey asks, as if sensing my unease.

  “Actually, I’ll get it,” I say, dumping my jacket and bag on the saggy couch. “But walk me to the elevator, will you, Casey?”

  Outside in the hall, I thank her again for allowing Sasha to take over the last spot of the show.

  “Not a problem,” she says. She rakes a hand across the crown of her long, strawberry-blond hair. “I know it’s all about keeping the sponsor happy.”

  In the café on the ground floor of the building, I order chamomile tea at the counter and carry it to a small table, where I sip it slowly and take a few more deep breaths. I feel more present suddenly. Maybe the disconnected sensation was simply jitters from the extra cup of coffee I drank at the diner.

  By the time I’m back upstairs, my guest, the former Wall Streeter/book author Jamie Parkin, is in the outer part of the studio, chatting with Casey and Sasha. I discover she’s fairly aloof in person, not what I was expecting based on the engaging shot on her book cover. Damn, I think. I’ll need to charm her, make her seem more accessible, but I’m hardly at the top of my game today.

  This, however, isn’t Parkin’s first rodeo, and she turns out to be a polished interview subject, with plenty of hard-won wisdom to share. She offers a few excellent strategies for not only negotiating one’s salary but also for scoring promotions, perks, and opportunities at work.

  For the next segment—“Your Money Q and A”—Casey joins me in the sound booth, and I respond to queries readers have submitted online, which she reads to me from her laptop. I’ve previewed them, of course, and scribbled notes in advance, and I’m pleased with how my answers come out. Sasha, I notice, is studying a sheet of paper in the outer part of the studio and briskly rubbing her hands, as if in anticipation of her upcoming role.

  And now it’s time for the final segment, “Let’s Chat Dollars and Sense,” which is meant to be a light, casual close to the show. As Casey departs, Sasha strides into the sound booth, takes the seat across the desk from me, and adjusts her headset. I catch Casey rolling her eyes at Rex.

  “You all set?” I ask Sasha.

  “Absolutely.”

  We’re given the signal to start, a
nd after introducing Sasha as my intern, I tee up the segment by saying that as essential as it is to learn how to negotiate your salary—as today’s guest so wisely counseled us—it’s equally important to be smart from the get-go about managing the money you make. I ask Sasha to tell us about some of the mistakes she sees her friends making and what she wishes she could tell them.

  Unfortunately, this is Sasha’s first rodeo and it shows. Her comments are stilted, and she also fails to tamp down her natural arrogance.

  “How are your friends doing on the IRA front?” I ask. “Particularly the freelancers. Have they started to save for retirement yet?”

  “Not all of them. It takes such a big chunk out of their earnings at a time when there are other important costs.”

  “What do they consider more important than an IRA?”

  “A good professional wardrobe. Networking dinners. Vacations.”

  “I hate to hear that. Because the sooner you start feeding an IRA, the better.”

  I notice Sasha twitch in her seat, as if she’s gearing up to make a particularly salient point.

  “Actually, I have a different point of view on that,” she says.

  Her comment catches me off guard. When I mentioned the importance of IRAs on Friday, she didn’t utter a word in disagreement.

  “I’d love to hear it,” I say.

  “Having the right clothes, meeting the right people, taking trips that energize you can actually be excellent investments. They help you grow your career and earn promotions, which in the long run can provide more benefits than investing in an IRA in your twenties.”

  There’s a hint of smugness in her tone. I almost laugh out loud. Is she hoping to throw me off my game? Casey shoots me a WTF expression through the glass.

  “That’s an interesting point, Sasha,” I say. “As with everything else, it all comes down to the math, figuring the rate of return. It is important to look the part, network, and take vacations. But historically, investing in the stock market has paid off far better than investing in something like Louboutin shoes.”

  We wrap up a minute later, and after Sasha has hurried off to “an appointment I can’t be late for,” Casey shakes her head in annoyance.