[106] “What color hair?” the officer asked.
[107] Michael answered, “Like mine. Kind of reddish. His eyes are blue. He’s got freckles and one of his front teeth is missing. He has the same kind of pants I’m wearing, and his jacket is like mine ’cept it’s blue and mine is green. He’s skinny.”
[108] The policeman looked approvingly at Michael. “You’re a real help, son. Now, ma’am, you say your wallet is missing? Do you think you might have dropped it, or did anyone brush against you? I mean, could it have been a pickpocket?”
[109] “I don’t know,” Catherine said. “I don’t care about the wallet. But when I gave the boys money for the violinist, I probably didn’t push it down far enough in my purse. It was quite bulky and might have just fallen out.”
[110] “Your son wouldn’t have picked it up and decided to go shopping?”
[111] “No, no, no,” Catherine said with a flash of anger, shaking her head emphatically. “Please don’t waste time even considering that.”
[112] “Where do you live, ma’am? What I mean is, do you want to call anyone?” The policeman looked at the rings on Catherine’s left hand. “Your husband?”
[113] “My husband is in Sloan-Kettering hospital. He’s very ill. He’ll be wondering where we are. In fact, we should be with him soon. He’s expecting us.” Catherine put her hand on the door of the squad car. “I can’t just sit here. I’ve got to look for Brian.”
[114] “Mrs. Dornan, I’m going to get Brian’s description out right now. In three minutes every cop in Manhattan is going to be on the lookout for him. You know, he may have just wandered away and gotten confused. It happens. Do you come downtown often?”
[115] “We used to live in New York, but we live in Nebraska now,” Michael told him. “We visit my grandmother every summer. She lives on Eighty-seventh Street. We came back last week because my dad has leukemia and he needed an operation. He went to medical school with the doctor who operated on him.”
[116] Manuel Ortiz had been a policeman only a year, but already he had come in contact with grief and despair many times. He saw both in the eyes of this young woman. She had a husband who was very sick, now a missing kid. It was obvious to him that she could easily go into shock.
[117] “Dad’s gonna know something’s wrong,” Michael said, worried. “Mom, shouldn’t you go see him?”
[118] “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.”
[119] “You’ll stay right here in case he comes back?”
“Absolutely.”
[120] “Michael, will you keep your eyes peeled for Brian?”
[121] “Sure, Mom. I’ll watch out for the Dork.”
[122] “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.
[123] She put her arms around Michael and felt his small, gruff embrace in return.
[124] “Hang in there, Mom,” he said.
[125] 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.