“Dad’s gonna know something’s wrong,” Michael said, worried. “Mom, shouldn’t you go see him?”
“Mrs. Dornan, how about leaving Michael with us? We’ll stay here in case Brian tries to make his way back. We’ll have all our guys looking for him. We’ll fan out and use bullhorns to get him to contact us in case he’s wandering around in the neighborhood somewhere. I’ll get another car to take you up to the hospital and wait for you.”
“You’ll stay right here in case he comes back?”
“Absolutely.”
“Michael, will you keep your eyes peeled for Brian?”
“Sure, Mom. I’ll watch out for the Dork.”
“Don’t call him…” Then Catherine saw the look on her son’s face. He’s trying to get a rise out of me, she thought. He’s trying to convince me that Brian is fine. That he’ll be fine.
She put her arms around Michael and felt his small, gruff embrace in return.
“Hang in there, Mom,” he said.
3
Jimmy Siddons cursed silently as he walked through the oval near Avenue B in the Stuyvesant Town apartment complex. The uniform he had stripped from the prison guard gave him a respectable look but was much too dangerous to wear on the street. He’d managed to lift a filthy overcoat and knit cap from a homeless guy’s shopping cart. They helped some, but he had to find something else to wear, something decent.
He also needed a car. He needed one that wouldn’t be missed until morning, something parked for the night, the kind of car that one of these middle-class Stuyvesant Town residents would own: medium-sized, brown or black, looking like every other Honda or Toyota or Ford on the road. Nothing fancy.
So far he hadn’t seen the right one. He had watched as some old geezer got out of a Honda and said to his passenger, “Sure’s good to get home,” but he was driving one of those shiny red jobs that screamed for attention.