I parked in another lot three blocks north of Houston and walked south back down Bowery, the watch cap pulled low, the shades in place. Thick traffic rolled by in both directions, and I heard engines and tires on pavement, the sounds somehow amplified, compressed by the dull background roar of the wider city. Down the street, someone laid on a horn, and three horns answered, like some bizarre mating call. A truck was backing up to a loading bay on 1st Street, beeping loudly and incessantly enough to warn all Manhattan. Two men stood behind it, gesturing to guide it in.

I slowed when I reached the lot. An attendant manned a booth at the front. Behind him were eight rows of cars, parked grill to tail, each about five deep. And there was Accinelli’s Mercedes, second from the front of one of the rows.

The cars were clustered tightly to use as much of the small lot as possible. When you came for your vehicle, they’d have to move others to access it. Meaning they would ask when you were returning, so they could put short-timers up front and latecomers farther back, and thereby minimize the need to shift vehicles every time a customer arrived for his car. Wherever Accinelli was, he wasn’t planning on staying long.

I circled the block on foot, considering. There was no way I could act here. Too many people, too much light, too little control over the environment. I supposed it would have been too much to ask for Accinelli to be parked in some deserted spot in the Meadowlands.

Still, it might be useful to see which direction he came from when he returned to his car. I would have a good view of the parking lot from up to a block north on Bowery and from up to a block south, and from as far away as a block west on Prince. I checked my watch and began slowly walking a T pattern along the two streets. I figured I could keep it up for an hour before someone might find the behavior suspicious. This was New York, after all. If I’d been near a high-value terror target, the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle or the New York Stock Exchange, for example, I wouldn’t have risked loitering. But on a cold Sunday afternoon just north of Little Italy, I didn’t expect any problems.

As it happened, I didn’t have to wait long. Twenty minutes after I’d started the T pattern, as I was heading west on Prince, Accinelli made a left from Mott, just a block away and walking briskly toward me on the other side of the street. He was still in the black-and-gray polypropylene golf attire. I kept my face away from him and turned left onto Elizabeth before we reached each other. Then, when he’d passed my position, I turned around and headed north on Elizabeth, back to the BMW. There was no particular hurry now; I could track him remotely from the iPhone.

I did. I stayed behind him, hoping for a crazy, random opportunity, a toilet break at a highway rest stop, something like that, but he didn’t stop or turn off, he just headed straight home. As we proceeded, I fell farther and farther behind, and I realized he was speeding. I didn’t want to risk going more than nine miles an hour over the limit, and I estimated Accinelli was doing something like eighty-five, maybe better. Either the speeding was habitual for him, or he was in a hurry.

I tracked him to Sands Point, but didn’t follow him all the way to his house. There was no benefit to doing so. I already knew it wasn’t a good place to get to him, although if I had to choose between his office and his home, I marginally preferred the latter. With the GPS tracker in place, though, I had a feeling I’d find an opening somewhere else. It was just a question of when.

21

I HEADED BACK toward New York, thinking. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky. Stay in the city? I knew it better than Long Island, but I wanted to be close to Accinelli so I could react quickly if an opportunity presented itself.

I stopped at a gas station and found a hotel called the Andrew in the phone booth Yellow Pages. It was in Great Neck-about five miles equidistant from Accinelli’s home and office. That would work. I called the hotel and confirmed they had a room, but didn’t make a reservation. The room would probably still be available later, and I’m always more comfortable denying a potential datapoint to the opposition.

I decided to drive back into New York. I could check the bulletin boards anonymously there, and I doubted Accinelli would be going out again today. I monitored the transmitter just in case, but his car stayed put on Hilldale Lane.

Part of my mind wanted to go to Dox, but I wouldn’t let it. There was nothing I could do for him that I wasn’t doing already, and imagining his circumstances was just going to wear me down. I needed to stay sharp, keep doing what I was doing, and get the job done.

Delilah. My thoughts wanted to drift to her, too. I found myself remembering the Bel-Air, remembering it with regret, and with longing. I shook my head, irritated at my weakness. Let it go, I said to myself. Forget her. Focus.

I rubbed my eyes. I was just tired, that was all. A good night’s sleep and I’d be okay again. First the bulletin boards and then fuck it, I was done for the day.

I entered the city through the Queens Midtown Tunnel. I didn’t have any particular destination; pretty much any couple of Internet cafés would do. I went south on Park Avenue, then drifted down Broadway. It was only when I was heading west on Ninth, toward Greenwich Village, that I realized where I was going. To Midori, and Koichiro.

Oh come on, I thought. What are you doing? Don’t you have enough to deal with right now?

Yeah, but I was so close. I’d been aware of it the moment I stepped into the frigid New Jersey air outside Newark airport. And it wasn’t like I was going to ring her bell or anything. I would just…park, for a few minutes. Near her apartment on Christopher Street. I wouldn’t even get out of the car. I would just sit, and think, and feel what it felt like to be near my son. That wasn’t so much, was it? People did stranger things. They went to grave sites, and knelt in front of tombstones, and ornamented the earth above the bones with flowers, and why, if not to establish some frail communion with the shifting shadows of memory? This would be like that. Just a little while. To feel him nearby. To decant and briefly savor the vanished moment when I held that small child in my arms.

I saw an open space just east of Waverly and decided it was an omen. I parked the car and angled the side mirror so I had a view of her apartment, a seventeen-story prewar building a block away. It was cold the last time I had been here, the way it was now. I remembered everything from that last time. I remembered every word.

When he’s old enough, I’ll tell him you’re dead. That’s what I was planning to do anyway, after tonight. And you are. You really are.

And was he old enough, now? Had she already told him the father who now sat not a hundred yards away died before he was born, and so for the son had never even existed?

I sighed. It was Koichiro I wanted to think of, not Midori. I thought of a line I’d once read somewhere: You forget the things you want to remember and remember the things you want to forget.

What the hell was I doing, anyway. It was going to be dark soon. I was tired, and I wanted to be up at dawn in case Accinelli was an early riser. I should go.

But I lingered a few minutes more, watching the building, watching the windows I knew were hers, wishing I could undo the past and make a different present. Just a few tweaks, a few different decisions, and maybe I would be walking up to the doorman now, announcing myself, a present under my arm, knowing my son and his mother were expecting me and eager for my arrival.

I glanced at the iPhone screen. Accinelli’s car hadn’t moved. All right, it was time for me to go. Check the bulletin boards, a quick bite, then sleep.