I could only hope that Waterman wouldn’t turn around and see me. Even though I thought he held the secret to my missing year, I didn’t know if he was a friend or an enemy. I was afraid if I confronted him on the street, he would run away-or attack me or turn me in. I just didn’t know. I wanted to follow him for a while and see if I could find out more about him before I approached. I wanted to choose the time and place we met.

It was late November, almost Thanksgiving. The stores were decked with Christmas decorations. There were elaborate displays in some of the windows. I hurried past a Victorian scene with miniature electronic skaters moving over a frozen lake, past a depiction of “The Night Before Christmas” with Santa’s sleigh landing on a rooftop. My eyes strayed over the animated figurines. For the first time, I dared to think that maybe I could be home for the holidays, back with my mother and father, back with my girlfriend Beth for our first Christmas together… or anyway, the first Christmas together that I could actually remember.

I guess my mind sort of drifted as I was thinking about that, daydreaming about it. Because all at once, I came back to the present, I looked ahead of me-and Waterman was gone.

I stopped dead. Desperately, I looked left and right. I was on a street of brownstones, quaint four-story apartment buildings pressed together in a long row, each with a stone stairway leading up to the front door. I scanned the stairways to see if Waterman was going up one of them. I scanned the doors to see if Waterman was going inside. He was nowhere.

I started walking again, started walking faster, nearly running-rushing to get to the last place I’d seen him. I reached the spot on the sidewalk where he’d vanished.

That’s when I saw the alley.

It was a passage of concrete between two brick walls. It ended in a windowless wall of stone. The passage was too narrow for a car. There was nothing in it but a pair of trash cans.