Chapter 210

Elias walks straight toward the car with his shoulders squared. David Reid and Marcus stand waiting for him. He stops a few feet away and nods at both of them.

“Mr. Reid,” he says, stopping a few feet short of the car. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“No,” David says. “I imagine not.”

David stares at him for a long moment without speaking. The silence stretches until he finally says, “It’s high time we talked properly.”

Marcus is standing on the other side of the car, and he opens the rear door without speaking. Elias looks at it and then at David, and understands clearly that this is not a request, and gets in.

David settles in beside him. Marcus gets behind the wheel, and the car begins to move.

Nobody speaks for the first several minutes. The lower east side goes past the windows, the streets Elias knows, and then streets he knows less well, and then roads he does not recognize at all as they move further from the neighborhood and into open space