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to
Cat. For a while, anyway.
    Having helped
him with his penmanship, Cat could easily recognize his handwriting. His
thoughts had been too fast for his hand back then, and were, clearly, still too
fast now.
    Hamilton
Park, north of Delancey, midnight.
    All in a familiar
manic scrawl.
    Cat knew for
certain now that her kid brother was living here. She knew, too, that he was the
unknown male being shot at this morning on Delancey. Shot at by a professional.
Her gut tightened once more.
    She tore off
the page, pocketed it, then thought about it and grabbed and pocketed the entire
notepad as well. The indentation left by her brother could have easily gone
down a number of sheets. And so, too, the scribbles she’d made.
    It would be
better if no one knew, or even suspected, that she had been here.
    Nearing the
door, she smelled the strangely familiar perfume again. She paused to try to
identify it. It took a moment for her to realize that it was Chloé, or
something very close to it.
    The perfume
their mother had worn.

    Cat waited till
she had driven out of the West Village and was heading up Eighth Avenue before reaching
for her cell phone and calling Fiermonte.
    “I’m bringing
you something,” she said when he answered. She was reminded suddenly of her
girlish need to please her father, how that had been both the defining and driving
force of her childhood. It was the reason for everything, from why she had run
track in high school (which her father had done when he was at school) to why
she had entered the FBI.
    “We’d better
not meet at my office,” Fiermonte said.
    The flatness of
his voice sent a tiny wave of disappointment through her. What, really, had she
been expecting?
    “There’s a diner
on the corner of Fifth and Twenty-Third,” he continued. “Give me a half hour.”
    “I’ll be
there.”
    “Listen, Cat, I
just talked to Morris. He got a look at the surveillance video.”
    “That was
fast.”
    “It’s a
preschool. They open early.”
    “Does it show anything?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What?”
    “It’s not
good.”
    “What do you
mean?”
    “I’ll tell you
when I see you.”
    As he had done
earlier, Fiermonte was leaving her hanging, though she understood the reason
why: cell phones could too easily be eavesdropped upon. Not that there was
reason to suspect that anyone would be listening to them on purpose, but there
was no point in risking it.
    She had to
remind herself that no matter what the security camera had captured, Jeremy had obviously survived it, was alive when he dropped
his motorcycle outside the Delancey and then took off on foot.
    Suddenly the
idea of her kid brother being dead filled her with a deep, draining dread, just
as it should. There was no hint of relief at all now. Her recent visit to her
father’s apartment had been the reason for this change, there was no doubt
about that. The memories of their shared childhood, the photograph of their long-deceased
mother, not to mention the smell of something similar to her perfume — how
could these not have rekindled familial feelings and instincts that had been
lost long ago?
    How could she
not care now about the boy she had tried, so unsuccessfully, to mother once?
    Cat was
expecting the call to end there, but it didn’t. What Fiermonte said next caught
her off guard, more so even than his foolish confession in that downtown bar a
week ago.
    “You don’t by
any chance know where Johnny is these days?” he said. There was something in
his voice now. Urgency, Cat thought. Whatever the preschool camera had recorded,
it was clearly a game changer.
    “No. I know
he’s back in the country, but I have no idea where he’s living or what he’s
doing. Why?”
    “I think we need to find him. I think we’re going to need his help on this.”
    “Jesus, Donnie.”
This was all she could think to say.
    “Is there any chance
at all that Jeremy might have gone to Johnny recently? Or maybe went to him
this morning, after he got into