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You stand on the Central Park side of the street and watch the door.
The Downing apartment is on Fifth Avenue and 80th Street. It offers breathtaking views of Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and even the former Payne Whitney residence on 79th Street, which now serves as the Cultural Services Center for the French Embassy.
You wear a black baseball cap. You are “disguised,” though again it isn’t an elaborate one. It’s just enough.
You have your eye on the front door, so you don’t miss Myron’s exit.
This part isn’t exactly rocket science.
The Downing apartment is on the eastern side of Central Park. The Dakota, where Myron often resided with his friend Win, is on the west side of Central Park. This means, of course, that Myron will most likely cut through the park for his walk home.
There is a chance he might take a taxi or Uber, but that seems unlikely.
You were counting on this.
It is getting dark. You see him come out. He says something to the doorman, and then you see him move to the corner and wait for the traffic light. You move through the park’s entrance before the light changes. There is no need to follow him.
You know what route he will take.
You’ve weighed the options. Should you kill him someplace more remote on this route, or is it better to shoot him in a crowded area? Logic would tell you that it would be better to find a more secluded place, though this is Central Park, one of the most popular parks in the world, and secluded spots are something of a rarity. You and he are soon “mid-park,” if you will, far from park exits and accessible escape routes. There is also the other issue of catching Myron off guard. When you walk through Central Park’s quieter spots—when you feel most alone here—that is when you are most wary. That’s just natural survivalist thinking. It isn’t that the park isn’t safe. It is just that when you hit the darker and less inhabited spots, you naturally look around more.
Your answer?
Whatever route Myron takes through the park—via Belvedere Castle or past the Bethesda Fountain or perhaps south down past Conservatory Water and the Alice in Wonderland sculpture—he will undoubtedly exit out on the west side at 72nd Street near Strawberry Fields. You know this. That is where Win lives. The Strawberry Fields area, a memorial to John Lennon, is popular and happening and always has a busker singing Lennon tunes and a lively crowd.
So it will be ideal.
You decide to hurry to the thicket tunnel opening off the path. Your plan is simple. Myron will walk right past where you are lurking. You will fire several bullets. That will cause panic. There will be screams and pandemonium. The crowd of tourists and dog walkers will scatter. You will scatter with them. You will exit out on Central Park West, just a few yards away. Across the street is the subway entrance for the B and C trains.
You’ll be gone before anyone can do anything about it.
You have the gun. You have the plan.
You pick up your pace, find your spot, and wait.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Myron crossed Fifth Avenue and entered Central Park just south of the Met. The walk, he knew from experience, would take fifteen minutes. He headed around the back, past Cleopatra’s Needle, an obelisk commissioned by Pharaoh Thutmose II nearly 3,500 years ago. Years later, Cleopatra supposedly used the obelisk in building a Roman temple dedicated to her main squeeze Julius Caesar, ergo the nickname Cleopatra’s Needle. It has been in Central Park since 1881.
Myron knew all this—and distracted himself with thoughts about it—because Win was a history buff and loved this park. He hurried on. The fairy-tale Belvedere Castle rose over the Ramble, a seemingly magnificent hybrid of Romanesque and Gothic, though in reality the building was merely a “folly,” oft defined as a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose. This one had an observatory, a visitor center, and a weather tower, but the idea of a folly—something created to look like something more impressive—kept weighing on Myron.
He thought about the phone Emily had found. He thought that maybe, in its own way, it was a folly too.
He took out his own phone and called his mother. She answered on the first ring.
“I’m glad you called now,” Mom said to him.
“Everything okay?”
“Oh yes, fine. But your father and I just took our edibles, and you know what that means.”
Myron closed his eyes. “Yeah, no.”
“We haven’t taken one in a week.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They’ll hit soon, and then your father will start chasing me around the apartment.”
