Chapter 15

That afternoon passed in a flurry, and both men were feeling more accomplished than they had the previous night. For one, the task of finding the preschool where the gang member’s young son schooled was easy. All they had to do was ask a naive teacher nicely if there was a Dave Hardy in the school. She answered with a smile that she would check the register, and indeed, Dave was a pupil at the school, currently in detention for bad behavior.

It was easy for them, but then the easiness of it all made it scary for Smith. He was a man who thought very far ahead, and each event that happened in his life was somehow an opportunity to think a little further, to examine the pros and cons of it all, and to understand why it happened the way it did. It didn’t matter if the experience was up close or if he was merely viewing from a distance; each happening that occurred remotely around him was a chance to analyze and make something out of it.

This had been said to be his flaw in h