“You’re just trying to impress me with how old you are.”

“Just with how good my memory is.”

“There’s something else, Arnold.”

Our lunches arrived at that moment and we were both impressed at how beautiful they looked. I am not only a very ordinary cook, I am the least artistic one I’ve ever met. My attempts at arranging food to look like the dishes I see on television have been thoroughly without success. But here was a deep dish of swirling pasta interlaced with colorful vegetables and a fragrant sauce that made my mouth water.

“Well, I knew lawyers were good for something,” Arnold said, digging in. “They always know the best new restaurants.”

“So do cops.”

“Cops are always thinking of their stomachs.”

I laughed, but it was true. “Is that prejudice?”

“Pure truth based on years of observation. You were saying there was something else.” Arnold never forgets where he is in a conversation, what the last witness mumbled in his testimony, what a member of the group said under his breath that he wishes everyone would forget.

“Talking to this man about his missing wife, I remembered something about my own childhood. My father used to take me to the parade.”

He looked at me, waiting for me to continue.

“I think I know where we watched it from because I remember seeing a small Statue of Liberty on top of a building.”

“There is one up there, you’re right.”

“Jack says it’s on Sixty-fourth.”

“I’m sure he knows his geography a lot better than I know mine.”

“My father met a woman there while we watched the parade.”

“I run into people I know all the time in New York, Chrissie. Harriet sees people in stores and on the streets; I see them in courtrooms and restaurants, and if I went to parades, I’d probably see them there, too.”

“It wasn’t like that. And it wasn’t just once. They met there. They were looking for each other.”

“And it’s thrown you into a tizzy.”

“I’m afraid it has.”

“Did he have a sister?”

“Yes, my aunt Meg. That’s the only one.”

“And you want to find a woman you met a couple of times fifteen or twenty years ago?”

“More like twenty-five.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“I’ve started to wonder—”

“Don’t wonder, Chrissie,” he said firmly. “Your mother told you he died. He died. Your mother was an honorable woman.”

“She spent her whole life protecting me.”

He reached over and patted my hand. “And you met me in spite of it and you married a good cop.”

I smiled and nodded, feeling teary. Arnold is the father who replaced my natural father. I met him while I was investigating a forty-year-old murder shortly after I left St. Stephen’s. He gave me work so that I could join his medical plan, and I’ve stayed with the work since my marriage because I love it and I love him. I enjoy the trip into the city, the occasional visits to one court or another in downtown Manhattan, the opportunity to be part of a world different from the one I live and teach in.

“I want to try, Arnold,” I said. “Just see if I can find something.”

“And this other thing, the woman who disappeared, she’s your excuse.”

“Sort of.” I twisted some pasta on my fork and speared a nice piece of red pepper. How hard could it be to make something like this? I wondered, enjoying the tastes. Probably harder than boiling spaghetti. “It’s intriguing, Arnold, a woman turning a corner and never seen again. He said when he finally went to look for her, a couple of minutes later, he saw a single balloon floating up to the sky.”

“Very romantic, doesn’t mean a thing. Some kid who wouldn’t hang on tight let go a balloon and suddenly we have high drama.”

“You’re incorrigible, Arnold.”

“Join the crowd. It’s how I’m listed in the directory of the ABA.”

“This is a great lunch.”

“And you’re great company. I expect you want to take a little ride up the west side to Sixty-fourth Street as long as you’re in the city.”

“I have work to do.”

“It can wait till tomorrow.”

“So can Sixty-fourth Street.”

“Just keep me posted. These are two hopeless efforts. I give you a fifty-fifty shot at finding some answers.”

“As usual, I think you overrate my abilities.”

—

I was able to finish the work for Arnold before three and I took the Broadway subway up to Sixty-sixth Street, the Lincoln Center area. I came up to street level on a triangular island with traffic going off in more directions than I could count. I was at the point where Broadway veered east on its southerly route, crossing Columbus Avenue, which ran parallel to it for miles uptown. Broadway is a strange street, going from northwest Manhattan to the southeast, intersecting with one avenue after another so that eventually it runs east of Fifth Avenue when it starts out west of Eighth Avenue. All these intersections leave chaos in their wake, triangles, rerouted traffic, complicated lights, and irrational traffic patterns.

I made my way down to Sixty-fourth and looked at the rooftops of the old, five-story buildings that still lined part of the street. There she was, a green Statue of Liberty a couple of stories high poised on a roof. My heart was beating as though I’d made a discovery when all I’d done was reach a place on a street I walked along the south side of Sixty-fourth toward Central Park West, passing Liberty Storage, the building on the north side that sported the statue. The block was mostly residential, partly high-rise, partly smaller old buildings. As Jack had remembered, the Ethical Culture Society occupied the corner and stretched south along Central Park West.

I crossed Sixty-fourth and turned north. The number of people who lived on Sixty-fourth and the block of Central Park West from there to Sixty-fifth had to be enormous, had to be in the thousands. But I was sure the street was significant. If we got off the subway at Sixty-sixth, the most natural thing to do would have been to walk directly east to Central Park West. But we hadn’t. The woman must have had a connection to Sixty-fourth Street.

Across Central Park West was the western edge of Central Park, a green anomaly in the center of concrete Manhattan. I kept walking north. At Sixty-sixth a road pierced the park, and through the trees I could see the Tavern on the Green. I speeded up my pace and continued north.

Seventy-fourth Street, where Natalie Gordon had disappeared, was as bland and unavailing of secrets as every other corner I had passed on my way. There was nothing exceptional, nothing different, nothing even interesting, about the corner. I looked at the facade of the large, magnificent building facing the park. A doorman in uniform came out with a well-dressed woman and hailed a taxi for her. She was wearing fur and high heels and she sat inside the cab for only a second before it pulled from the curb. Otherwise, there was nothing, a few walkers, not surprising on a day as cold as this, a small amount of traffic, a single dog with its well-trained master ready to scoop at first need.

I turned down Seventy-fourth and walked the block to Columbus Avenue. Up here, Broadway was two blocks and one triangle west of Central Park West. The street was lined with town houses with plenty of doorways that a woman could be dragged into. I looked at each of them as I passed. At Columbus I continued on to Amsterdam, then turned left to find the subway at Seventy-second where Broadway and Amsterdam converged. I got an express, made a change at Times Square, and shuttled over to Grand Central Station. I caught the last train home before the rush hour.

—

I told Jack about my father and the woman when he got home.

“That’s what’s been bothering you,” he said. We were sitting at the kitchen table, he eating some warmed-up stew left over from a meal I had cooked over the weekend.