The Lost Years

81

There are probably New York cops in plainclothes all over the place,” Alvirah said. “I didn’t ask for permission for us to follow Greg ourselves because I know I would have been told in no uncertain terms to stay out of it. But none of us can sit home at a time like this.”

They were in the car on West 57th Street, stopped in a no-parking zone a few yards from the busy entrance to the Fisk Building, where Greg had his office on the tenth floor. Richard, his face and lips deadly pale, his expression agonized, was in the front seat with Willy. Alvirah was perched on the edge of the backseat behind Richard.

“Honey, one of those traffic cops is going to chase us away any minute,” Willy said.

“If that happens, Richard can get out and keep an eye on that door,” Alvirah replied. “We’ll circle the block for as long as we have to. If Greg comes out and gets on the subway, Richard can follow him and stay in touch with us.”

“Honey, if he spots Richard, he won’t go to whatever hiding place he has.”

“With that hooded sweatshirt of yours covering Richard’s hair and with those dark glasses covering half of his face, unless Greg was two feet away from Richard, he wouldn’t recognize him.”

“If he gets on the subway, I’ll make damn sure he doesn’t see me,” Richard said, his voice deadly calm.

“I keep going over and over this,” Alvirah said. “If I hadn’t lost Lillian the other day, Mariah might not be missing now. I’ll never stop blaming myself because—there he is!”

Their eyes were riveted to the sight of Greg Pearson leaving the building. They watched as he walked the few steps to the corner and turned right on Broadway. Richard leapt out of the car. “He may be going into the subway,” he said.

Willy started the car but by the time they reached the corner, the traffic light was red. “Oh, God, please don’t let Richard lose him,” Alvirah moaned.

When they were finally able to make the turn, they could see Richard’s hooded figure turning onto 56th Street and heading west. “We can’t follow him there,” Willy said. “It’s a one-way street. I’ll have to turn on 55th and hope we can meet up with him.”

Alvirah’s phone rang. It was Richard. “I’m half a block behind him. He’s still walking.”

“Stay on the line,” Alvirah ordered.

Willy drove slowly, going west on 55th Street, stopping and starting to stay even with Richard’s pace.

“He’s crossing Eighth Avenue… Ninth Avenue… Tenth Avenue… He’s going into a luncheonette,” Richard told them. “Hang on.”

When Richard spoke again it was to report that Greg had come out of the luncheonette, carrying a brown paper bag. “It looks pretty heavy,” he said, a hopeful note entering his voice. “There’s a parking garage across the street. He’s going into it.”

“On that block he can only go east,” Alvirah said. “We can turn right at Eleventh Avenue and come back up 56th Street. We’ll pick you up there.”

Three minutes later they were turning onto 56th Street. Richard was crouched down between two parked cars. As they watched, an older black sedan came up the ramp from inside the garage. There was no mistaking that it was Greg at the wheel. As he turned left onto the street, Richard darted back into the car.

“He’s driving a different car!” Alvirah exclaimed.

Careful to keep several vehicles between them and the black sedan, they followed him down to lower Manhattan, then across town to the South Street area near the Williamsburg Bridge. Greg made a turn onto a shabby street with a row of boarded-up warehouses. “Be careful. Don’t get too close to him,” Richard warned Willy.

Willy stopped the car. “He can’t be going much further,” he said. “This is a dead-end street. I know this area. When I was in high school I used to work part-time stacking cartons onto trucks. There was a loading area for all of those warehouses.”

They watched as the black sedan traveled to the end of the street and then made a right turn. “He has to be going into one of those buildings,” Willy said. “But it looks as if they’re all shut down.” He waited until Greg’s car was out of sight, then followed him, stopping before they would become visible in the open area behind the buildings.

Richard got out of the car and looked around the corner to see where Greg was going. Then he raced back into the car, shouting, “Follow him, Willy. He’s opening that large garage door. Don’t let him lock us out.”

Willy stepped on the gas. The car skidded as he made the sharp turn, then closed in on the sedan and tried to follow it into the garage.

The forty-foot-wide garage door was coming down. Alvirah shrieked as it hit the roof of their car and continued to grind lower. The doors flew open and they all managed to scramble out, just before they would have been trapped inside the mangled frame.

Three feet from the ground, the garage door was finally stopped by the body of the crushed automobile. For a moment they stood in shocked silence. Then they heard the sound of feet pounding across the macadam. “Police!” someone yelled. “Stop!”

Richard was already on the ground, crawling into the warehouse through the space held open by the car.

“Stay back,” one of the detectives warned Alvirah and Willy as they rushed to follow Richard. “I’m ordering you. Stay back.”