“Jimmy, leave him here. Please.” Cally thrust Brian behind her.

Jimmy Siddons’s mouth twisted in anger. He grabbed Cally’s arm and yanked her toward him, roughly twisting her arm behind her.

She screamed as she lost her grip on Brian and slipped to the floor.

With eyes that denied any history of affection between them, Jimmy stood over his sister, again holding the gun to her head. “If you don’t do what I tell you, you’ll get more of that… and worse. They won’t take me alive. Not you, not nobody else is gonna send me to the death chamber. Besides, I got a girlfriend waiting for me. So just keep your mouth shut. I’ll even make a deal. You don’t say nothing, and I’ll let the kid live. But if the cops try to close in on me, he gets a bullet in the head. It’s as simple as that. Got it straight?”

He stuck the gun back inside his jacket, then reached down and roughly pulled Brian to his feet. “You and I are gonna get to be real pals, sonny,” he said. “Real pals.” He grinned. “Merry Christmas, Cally.”

6

The unmarked van parked across the street from Cally’s apartment building was the lookout post for the detectives watching Cally’s building for any sign of Jimmy Siddons. They had observed Cally come home at just a little after her usual time.

Jack Shore, the detective who had visited Cally in the morning, pulled off his earphones, swore silently, and turned to his partner. “What do you think, Mort? No, wait a minute. I’ll tell you what I think. It’s a trick. He’s trying to buy time to get as far away from New York as possible while we take up the collection at St. Pat’s looking for him.”

Mort Levy, twenty years younger than Shore and less cynical, rubbed his chin, always a sign that he was deep in thought. “If it is a trick, I don’t think the sister is a willing accomplice. You don’t need a meter to hear the stress level in her voice.”

“Listen, Mort, you were at Bill Grasso’s funeral. Thirty years old, with four little kids, and shot between the eyes by that bum Siddons. If Cally Hunter had come clean with us and told us that she’d given that rat brother of hers money and the keys to her car, Grasso would have known what he was up against when he stopped him for running a light.”

“I still believe that Cally had bought Jimmy’s story about trying to get away because he’d been in a gang fight and the other gang was after him. I don’t think she knew that he’d wounded a clerk in a liquor store. Up till then he hadn’t been in really serious trouble.”

“You mean he’d gotten away with it till then,” Shore snapped. “Too bad that judge couldn’t put Cally away as an accessory to murder instead of just for aiding a fugitive. She got off after serving fifteen months. Bill Grasso’s widow is trimming the tree without him tonight.”

His face reddened with anger. “I’ll call in. Just in case that louse meant what he said, we’ve got to cover the cathedral. You know how many people go to midnight Mass there tonight? Take a guess.”

Cally sat on the worn velour sofa, her hands clasped around her knees, her head bent, her eyes closed. Her entire body was trembling. She was beyond tears, beyond fatigue. Dear God, dear God, why did all this happen?

What should she do?

If anything happened to Brian, she would be responsible. She had picked up his mother’s wallet, and that’s why he’d followed her. If the child was right, his dad was very ill. She thought of the attractive young woman in the rose-colored coat and how she had been sure everything in her life was perfect.

Would Jimmy let the boy go when he got to wherever was his destination? How could he? she reasoned. Wherever that was, they’d start searching for Jimmy in that area. And if he does let him go, Brian will tell how he followed me because I took the wallet, she reminded herself.

But Jimmy had said he would shoot the child if the cops closed in on him. And he meant it, she was certain of that. So if I tell the cops, Brian doesn’t have a chance, she thought.

If I don’t say anything now and Jimmy does let him go, then I can honestly say that I didn’t tell because he threatened to kill the kid if the cops got near him, and I knew he meant it. And I know he does mean it, Cally thought. That’s the worst part.

Brian’s face loomed in Cally’s mind. The reddish brown hair that fell forward on his forehead, the large, intelligent blue eyes, the spatter of freckles on his cheeks and nose. When Jimmy dragged him in, her first impression was that he wasn’t more than five; from the way he spoke, though, she was sure he was older. He was so scared when Jimmy made him go with him out the window and onto the fire escape. He had looked back at her, his eyes pleading.

The phone rang. It was Aika, the wonderful black woman who minded Gigi along with her own grandchildren each afternoon after the day-care center closed.

“Just checking to see if you’re home, Cally,” Aika said, her voice rich and comforting. “Did you find the doll man?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Too bad. You need more time to shop?”

“No, I’ll come right over now and get Gigi.”

“No, that’s okay. She already ate dinner with my gang. I need milk for breakfast, so I’ve got to go out anyway. I’ll drop her off in half an hour or so.”

“Thanks, Aika,” Cally put down the receiver, aware that she still had her coat on and that the apartment was dark except for the entryway light. She took off the coat, went into the bedroom, and opened the closet door. She gasped when she saw that when he took Frank’s suede jacket and brown slacks, Jimmy had left other clothes crumpled on the floor, a jacket and pants, and a filthy overcoat.

She bent down and picked up the jacket. Detective Shore had told her that Jimmy had shot a guard and stripped him of his uniform. Obviously, this was the uniform-and there were bullet holes in the jacket.

Frantically, Cally wrapped the jacket and pants inside the overcoat. Suppose the cops came in with a search warrant! They’d never believe her, that Jimmy broke into her place. They’d be sure she gave him clothes. She’d go back to prison. And she’d lose Gigi for good! What should she do?

She looked around the closet, wildly searching for a solution. The storage box on the overhead shelf. In it she kept whatever summer clothes she and Gigi had. She yanked the box down, opened it, pulled out the contents, and threw them on the shelf. She folded the uniform and coat into the box, closed it, ran to the bed, and fished under it for the Christmas wrappings she had stored there.

With frantic fingers she wrapped candy-cane paper around the box and tied it with a ribbon. Then she carried it into the living room and put it under the tree. She had just completed the task when she heard the downstairs buzzer. Smoothing back her hair, and forcing a welcoming smile for Gigi, she went to answer it.

It was Detective Shore and the other detective who had been with him this morning who came up the stairs. “Playing games again, Cally?” Shore asked. “I hope not.”