All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 178

178

An hour later he crossed the street and did not look back as he headed up Sixth Avenue, lost among strangers as he breathed sugared almonds that reminded him he had not eaten all day. He moved with ease, his muscles loosened with each step as he passed the sleeping carousel in Bryant Park, the pulsing heart of Midtown West and bright theaters.

At ten he found his way to a reservation in Barbetta and took a seat alone and ate garganelli in tomato and basil sauce. He drank red wine and

tipped heavily.

“How was it?” the waiter asked.

“Almost perfect,” Patch said.

He walked all night, alone and adrift, though certain he trod in her footsteps.

The sun rose over Manhattan, and Patch strolled in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge as trucks lined up before the fish market. He thought of Skip and his crew, that fateful night when he journeyed into Boston and the universe conspired.

He joined the hustle at the Union Square Greenmarket, and beneath peaked tents he watched people shop fresh fruit and farmstead cheeses, artisan bread and heritage meats. He fell in with a thousand commuters flooding from subways before vanishing into silver buildings clad with green glass. He saw tourists, families, heard talk of Battery Park and boats.

The Twin Towers, so prominent he stopped for a long time and committed the skyline to memory.

When the hour was decent enough, he stepped into the Plaza and found a quiet corner.

Sammy was the first down, fresh enough because he had not yet been to bed.

Together they sat at a white-clothed table and Sammy told him they sold everything in the first hour. By the second, new buyers sought the old and offered them twice what they had paid. Sammy had not seen anything like it

in two decades of dour sales.

“You’ll send the money to—”

“I know, kid. I know.”

It was not a sum that would raise eyebrows in the art world, but it was a sum that would give the families of the missing girls a little freedom to search, to mourn, or maybe just to take some time for themselves.

At eleven Charlotte carried a newspaper into the fabled champagne bar, where Sammy nursed a Bloody Mary beside Mrs. Meyer, who nursed one of her own.

Charlotte spread the paper across the table, then turned to the Arts section, where they saw the full-page spread, the photograph, the headline.

A PIRATE TAKES MANHATTAN Charlotte turned away because she could not check her smile.

Her father had made it into The New York Times.

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