A week ago, Brian had secretly gotten the dealer's number from Marvin's phone to give to his dad in case Marvin didn't make it home. An hour before, he had called Big Flicka and told him that he had found Marvin's gun in the room just before his parents were about to rearrange the furniture. He said that he was panicked and didn't know what to do with it, said that he had called Marvin and couldn't get in contact with him, and could Flicka come get it?

And here he was, Brian thought as the huge drug dealer halted in front of him, practically as big as the monument above.

Be careful what you wish for.

Chapter 63.

"So you got it?" Flicka said, scanning the park.

"Yep. Here it is," Brian said quickly, reaching into his bag.

"Easy now. You watch that s.h.i.t," Flicka said, tilting his head as he reached into his own pocket.

"It's okay. I unloaded it," he said as he handed over the racked semiauto and its magazine.

"Tell me why you giving this to me again," Flicka said, immediately tucking the items into the pockets of his enormous goose down jacket.

"My nanny was about to clean the room. I didn't know what to do, so I thought I could give it to you since you and Marvin work together or whatever."

Flicka eyed him, his glance icier than the wind off the Hudson.

"Marvin tell you that?" he said. "We workin' together?"

"No, I just figured."

"How you got my number, then?"

Oh, s.h.i.t, Brian thought. He hadn't antic.i.p.ated that question. What should he say?

"I found it in one of Marvin's notebooks," he finally pulled out of thin air.

"You a real nanny boy, huh? Couldn't just leave it in your book bag? You think it gonna bite you? Gonna explode? Guns don't kill people, boy. How stupid can you be?"

"I didn't know what to do, man. I thought this would help you out. I'm sorry to bother you. I was just trying to help. Honestly."

"Yeah, you better be sorry. And Marvin's gonna be real sorry, I guarantee you, after I get through teaching him about how to properly stash my precious belongings."

Big Flicka suddenly leaned in close to where Brian sat on the wall. Brian held his breath. He was one big, big dude.

"Now, you listen up because I'm only gonna tell you once, you nosy little nanny boy," Flicka said in his ear. "Don't you be concernin' yourself anymore about me and Marvin. Do I need to ill.u.s.trate how bad that would turn out for you, for your family?"

"No. I got it. Honestly," Brian said. "Please. I'm sorry."

Flicka tsked as he slowly backed off. Then he laughed and smiled. Like intimidating people was the funniest joke in the world. He actually had a really nice smile. He could sell things on TV.

"I believe you are," he finally said, and Brian let out his breath as Flicka headed for the stairs.

Brian watched as Flicka made it to the top of the stairs, and he immediately got up off the wall and started booking north along one of the park paths.

Just as he saw the kiosk around the bend in the path up ahead, he looked at his phone to see that Marvin was calling him.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Brian?" Marvin said. "Is it true you met with Flicka? What the h.e.l.l?"

"I'm ending this, dude," Brian said as he ran.

"What do you mean?"

"You can't do it, so I am. That's what friends are for, right? I'll call you back."

Brian dropped his cell into his pocket as he arrived at the battered pay phone. He lifted the receiver and heard a dial tone. It had to be one of the last working pay phones in all of Manhattan. Maybe the world.

He quickly dialed.

"Nine one one. What's your emergency?" asked a female operator.

"I just saw a guy with a gun in his hand in Riverside Park. A tall black guy in a black goose down jacket. He's getting into a Mercedes on Riverside Drive. Plate number 347-WRT. He's near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Hurry."

"Do you want to leave your name?" the operator wanted to know.

Brian thought about the dealer again, the sheer horrendous size of him.

"Not in any way, shape, or frickin' form, ma'am," Brian Bennett said before he hung up the phone with a sharp clang and continued running.

Chapter 64.

At seven that night, I was in the company Impala with Seamus, scanning the empty, dark streets around my building, looking for Brian.

I was starting to get nervous. Actually, if you wanted to get truly technical, I was on the brink of a ma.s.sive panic attack.

The tires squealed as we came off 89th onto Amsterdam Avenue with some speed. We zipped past a Thai restaurant, a pizza parlor, a dive bar.

"Wait-maybe he went into that bar back there, Seamus," I said. "Do you think we should stop?"

"No, I don't," Seamus said calmly. "He's sixteen. He's just walking around. It's going to be fine. We'll find him, Michael. Soon."

"Why do kids do this, Father?" I said. "Drive their parents so sick with worry?"

"I remember when you were young," Seamus said. "Your parents beamed as you shined your shoes and whistled as you made your way back and forth from choir to altar boy practice. You never worried anyone to death with all your wild hooligan carryings-on."

"It was a different time back then," I said in my defense. "Everything wasn't so nuts."

"Right you are," Seamus said. "In the seventies and eighties, this city was a moral paradise. If you recall, Michael, it's only natural for a boy to gravitate toward shenanigans. Why, it was only yesterday your father and I were out looking for you! When ya went to-what was it called?-Laser something in Central Park, and blind my eyes if we weren't in his squad car then as well!"

"Laser Zeppelin," I said, laughing. "At the Hayden Planetarium. Give me a break, Seamus. That was...educational!"

I remembered it vaguely. It was a laser light show across the dome of a huge dark room where the immortal Zep was blasted at an unbelievable volume. Teens would tailgate, sipping tequila and beer in the park outside every Friday night, and my friends and I would go join the festivities, trying to get girls' phone numbers. As I strolled down memory lane, I suddenly remembered my own father, murder in his eyes, by a park bench when I came back from upchucking in the bushes.

"Not fair, Seamus," I said as I continued cruising down Amsterdam, my head on a swivel. "How dare you bring up, at a time like this, the fact that I, too, was sixteen once."

We did another circuit around the apartment and onto Riverside Drive, and I spotted blue and red spinning lights somewhere in the high eighties. As I zoomed up, I could see that cops had cuffed a big figure in a goose down jacket and were putting him up over the hood of a Mercedes. Thank G.o.d it wasn't Brian, I thought, driving past.

Then, a minute later, there he was. On the corner of 96th, waiting to cross at the light.

"Hey, Dad. Hey, Seamus," he said casually as I screeched up in front of him.

"Get your b.u.t.t in this car now!"

I twisted around toward the back as he sat, and I looked deep into his eyes.

"One chance. What are you on?" I said.

He gaped at me.

"Nothing, Dad, I swear. I went out for a walk. My phone died. I must have lost track of time. Jeez."

"Better your phone than you, you idiot," I said. "You're up to something. Your brother is sick with whatever it is. What the h.e.l.l is going on in my house? I want answers."

"It was nothing. I went to the library, and I met my friend. We just started walking and talking."

"Which friend?"

"Rob from the football team. He came down to the city from Westchester, and we were just chilling. He just hopped in a cab the second you showed up."

I squinted at him.

"Brian, people lie to me all day. I need to get it at home, too?"

"I swear, Dad. Please. Call him if you don't believe me."

"And listen to what? What you told him to say? No, thanks."

"Leave it for now," Seamus whispered, leaning over toward me. "Remember the lasers, Michael."

I rolled my eyes as I ripped the tranny into drive and hit the gas.

Seamus was right. And not for the first time.

Chapter 65.

President Buckland heard the trill of the Sikorsky VH-60N White Hawk's rotor lower in pitch as the two Secret Service agents on the midnight shift softly closed the Rose Garden doors behind him.

As he cleaned his shoes on the mat and walked down the warm carpeted corridor, he thought about the Secret Service and the two young full-dress marines who had just popped the double doors of Marine One for him. Thought about all the Americans out there in the cold and dark, around the world, manning their posts.

In the beginning, it had been difficult to accept all the fuss and ceremony of the job, but then he realized it wasn't about him. The fact that spit-shined marines would greet him with a salute at three o'clock in the cold morning was just a small symbol of the extraordinary lengths they would go to to protect their country. The dedication and full commitment of America's first responders never failed to humble and inspire him.

He made a right at the end of the corridor and found the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. His chief of staff had texted during his late meeting at Langley that Buckland's presence was requested in the White House kitchen.

Which could mean only one thing.

Some trick his wife was pulling, of course. Forty-three years of age, and she still loved tricks and pranks. Even here in the White House. Upstairs in their personal quarters, she would hide on him from time to time, like an overgrown three-year-old.

As he approached the kitchen, he looked around for Danny, the workaholic head chef. Even at 3:00 a.m., he probably wasn't too far away, waiting for the president and his wife's little "moment" to be over so he could have his kitchen back.

The kitchen was dark but for one pendant light shining down on his wife, who was sitting at one of the stainless steel prep counters, smiling and beautiful in her robe and slippers.

He watched as she quickly slipped her rosary beads back into her pocket. She had always been a woman of faith, but ever since he'd gotten the big job, she'd become even more so. He prayed from time to time, but it was a constant with her.

He sat beside her and kicked off his shoes.

"And what the heck is this, now?" Buckland said to his wife. "It's the middle of the night!"

"Don't tell me you forgot," she said.

"Forgot what?"

"Our anniversary."

"That's in June!" Buckland said, throwing up his hands.

"Not that one," she said. "The other one, silly." She pushed over the covered silver tray beside her.

He took off the cover and his mouth fell open as he saw the two Klondike bars on the tray.

"Oh. That one," he said, laughing.

He remembered it like it was yesterday. He had prepared a special dinner for the two of them-loin lamb chops and garlic mashed potatoes-on a plastic table on the balcony of his crummy first apartment, near his first post in Tucson. The balcony overlooked the parking lot of a Goodwill store, but it had looked like the Champs-elysees seen from the window of the nicest hotel in Paris when she sat down across from him, done up in the little black dress she'd worn for the occasion.

Dessert, which they had only gotten around to the morning after, had been two Klondike bars melted to mush on the kitchen counter.

Buckland smiled. How long ago had that been? He suddenly thought about all of it, the summers and Christmases and dozens of birthdays, first together and then with their kids. All that fun and joy. The fullness of the life they had had because they had somehow found each other.