The lady with the wallet stood waiting for the light to turn. The WALK sign flashed on, and he followed his quarry across the street. When she reached the other side she turned left and walked quickly down the now sloping sidewalk. As he followed her, Brian took a quick look at the street sign. When they visited last summer, his mother had made a game of teaching him about street signs in New York. “Gran lives on Eighty-seventh Street,” she had said. “We’re on Fiftieth. How many blocks away is her apartment?” This sign said Fourteenth Street. He had to remember that, he told himself, as he fell in step behind the woman with his mom’s wallet.
He felt snowflakes on his face. It was getting windy, and the cold stung his cheeks. He wished a cop would come along so he could ask for help, but he didn’t see one anywhere. He knew what he was going to do anyway-he would follow the lady to where she lived. He still had the dollar his mother had given him for the man who was playing the violin. He would get change and call his grandmother, and she’d send a cop who would get his mom’s wallet back.
It’s a good plan, he thought to himself. In fact, he was sure of it. He had to get the wallet, and the medal that was inside. He thought of how after Mom had said that the medal wouldn’t do any good, Gran had put it in her hand and said, Please give it to Tom and have faith.
The look on his grandmother’s face had been so calm and so sure that Brian knew she was right. Once he got the medal back and they gave it to his dad, he would get well. Brian knew it.
The woman with the ponytail started to walk faster. He chased after her as she crossed one street and went to the end of another block. Then she turned right.
The street they were on now wasn’t bright with decorated store windows like the one they had just left. Some places were boarded up and there was a lot of writing on the buildings and some of the streetlights were broken. A guy with a beard was sitting on the curb, clutching a bottle. He stretched out his hand to Brian as he passed him.