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.
I looked up and saw a couple walking down Christopher toward me on the other side of the street, a small child between them. They were all wearing hats and gloves in the cold, an Asian woman and a Caucasian man, and the child was laughing, swinging by their arms. I blinked and looked harder, then, instinct kicking in, slumped lower in my seat. It was Midori. And the child was Koichiro.
My heart started hammering. I glanced out again, conflicted, wanting to watch, wanting to hide, wanting to get out of the car, afraid to, resentful that I couldn’t, ashamed of my hesitation. And who was the white guy, walking with Midori, holding my son’s hand?
I sat there, slumped and cowering and impotent, and watched as they passed me on the other side of the street, then as they stood talking in front of Midori’s apartment. After a minute, the man leaned in and kissed her. It wasn’t a long kiss, but there was an intimacy to it, a familiarity, that enraged me. The man leaned over and said something to Koichiro, smiling. Koichiro laughed, and the man turned and walked away. Midori and Koichiro watched him for a moment, then went into the building.
The rage drained suddenly out of me, replaced by a hard, cold clarity. The man was on foot. I could leave the car here, get out right now and follow him. I was already wearing a hat and sunglasses, so no one would remember my face. And gloves, so there wouldn’t be prints. I didn’t need any time, or any special control over the environment because nothing had to look natural. I didn’t want it to look natural, I wanted it to look like what it would be, like some faceless anonymous someone came up behind him and broke his neck and was walking away unnoticed before the body even hit the pavement.
Midori would know, of course. But what could she do? She had no way of finding me. How could she punish me? Keep me from Koichiro, maybe? Tell him I was dead? Go ahead, tell him that, if you haven’t already. I’ll show you what dead really is.
I watched him in the side-view, walking down Christopher. Maybe he was taking the subway. Follow him down the stairs, then close around the corner, no one in front of us, bam, drop him and keep moving, up another set of stairs to the street again. Back to the car and gone like a ghost five minutes after.