Though I was dog-tired from our all-day surveillance, I couldn’t pass up the chance to spend some time with the kids. I’d been working too much lately on the joint task force. Way too much, if you considered how little there was to show for it.
And the fund-raiser really couldn’t have been for a better cause. Catholic schools were truly hurting due to low enrollment, closing all over New York as they were all over the country. The thought of Holy Name actually closing was too depressing to even think about. Everybody at the school and the parish was like family to us.
Speaking of the saints, I busted Mary Catherine, beside me, staring at me as I put down my clipboard and lifted my not-so-hot cocoa. I smiled at her warily as Katy died out and the All-American Rejects started up.
“What?” I said as she continued to stare without saying anything.
“Nothing,” she finally said, with a small grin. “It’s just nice to see you like this.”
“See me like how?” I said. “Dry and on solid ground instead of out there, sitting on the ice with a wet, red, sore frozen butt?”
“No, that actually might be cute,” she said with a wink. “I meant happy, relaxed, and, as a bonus, actually here.”
“I’m here, all right. Mike Bennett in the frostbitten flesh,” I said, blowing on my hands. “Too bad we can’t say the same for Brian and Marvin. Where are those two? It can’t take that long to get here from Fordham. They should be here by now.”
I saw Mary Catherine wince with worry as I said this. I knew she was already quite attached to our new houseguest and considered him to be family. Besides, she was no dummy. Like me, she knew full well there was something up with Marvin. Something that for all intents and purposes seemed to be heading from bad to worse.
“How do these damn kids become such experts at worrying parents to death, anyhow?” I said as I took out my phone to text Brian yet again. “The second they outgrow the playpen, it’s over.”
Chapter 50
Brian Bennett took a quick peek at his vibrating phone as he stood at the greasy window inside a Chinese take-out dump called New Dragon Palace on Westchester Avenue in some misbegotten, run-down section of the Bronx.
He looked up from his dad’s latest freak-out of a text and put his eyes back on the car underneath the elevated track across the street.
It was a Mercedes, a two-door glossy silver E320 ghettoed out with big silver rims and dark tinted windows. He’d been doing nothing but stare at it for the last ten minutes.
It was because of Marvin.
Marvin was now in the car doing who knew what with that old psycho gangbanger dude who seemed to be stalking him.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening, Brian thought. What was supposed to be happening was Brian and Marvin attending the Holy Name skate-athon with everybody at the rink in Harlem.
But after school, Marvin said he had something to do and would meet him later. Brian knew what that meant, so, on an impulse, he decided to follow him.
It was quite the odyssey. The B train at Fordham Road to Yankee Stadium. The 4 train from there to 125th, where Marvin got a third train, an uptown 6 that had taken them back into the Bronx here, to a place called St. Lawrence Avenue.
He didn’t know what St. Lawrence was the patron saint of, but his street was one of the sketchiest blocks Brian had ever set foot on. Coming from the stairs of the subway, he’d passed an auto glass store that looked like it had been torched beside a bodega with a bulletproof glass sidewalk kiosk. The only light on the dilapidated block seemed to be from the bloodred neon PETEY’S DISCOUNT LIQUORS, in front of which the Merc was parked.
It didn’t make sense, Brian thought, shaking his head. Marvin was the coolest dude. Enthusiastic and humble and nice to everybody—parents, even freshmen. A solid B student, with his athletics he was a shoo-in for a good college scholarship.
He even talked about his future plans all the time. He said he knew he probably wasn’t good enough for the pros, and that he was going to major in management. He had an uncle who owned a bunch of tire stores down south, and he wanted to do something like that: manage a franchise or something and work with colleagues and customers.
At sixteen, he was by far the most mature of all their friends, Brian knew.
And yet in spite of all that, he was here in Fort Apache, the Bronx, doing some…sinister drug deal or something.
It just didn’t make sense.
Chapter 51
What would Dad do? Brian wondered as he continued to stare at the car.
That was easy. He’d probably walk on over across the street, tap on the tinted window, and demand to know what the hell was happening.
But Dad was a cop, wasn’t he? He had a gun and a badge and twenty years’ experience in crazy, dangerous, drug-infested places like this.
What did he have? Brian thought. A book bag and a friendly smile?