Neri, as the most inexperienced, was suffering the most. He’d been so keyed up with excitement, and now that he had had to wait he felt let down, depressed. Although his role was going to be the easiest in that he was going to do the hit, he’d never actually killed anyone before. He had his right hand in his jacket pocket holding his military-issue Beretta M9 semiautomatic pistol with the thumb safety on. He’d fired the gun hundreds of times in practice and considered himself a good shot. But shooting a man in the head at point-blank range was a very different proposition from hitting static targets at twenty-five, fifty, or one hundred feet. Yet he knew he had to do it to rise within the crew. Like Prek and Genti, he had his wool balaclava in his lap, ready to pull it over his head and swing into action.

An NYPD cruiser drove by, and all three reflexively crouched down. Prek watched it disappear in his side mirror. Then another NYPD cruiser went past, and Prek tensed up further. He watched that one disappear as well.

“You see that?” he said.

“Of course,” Genti said. “It’s Friday night. I wouldn’t give it much thought.”

“I don’t like to see cops in the area when we’re doing a job. Where the hell is this bitch?”

“It’s getting harder and harder to see these kids’ faces until they’re right on top of us,” Genti said.

A group of three students in lab coats walked past the van, followed by a couple of people walking alone. One of them caught Genti’s attention, and he leaned forward and picked up his balaclava. A minute later he slumped back in his seat. It was yet another false alarm.

Pia had been walking back and forth along the side of the subway stairs, waiting for a call from George, trying to figure out where he could be. They had definitely planned on getting together when she got back from the OCME. More than once, she had resolved to quit waiting for George and walk back to the dorm by herself, at least until she looked down 168th Street and saw that it was darker and more deserted than it had been fifteen minutes earlier. Pia had been about to call George for the third time when she’d been frightened by a hand on her shoulder. Spinning around, she had had to restrain herself from lashing out at her attacker. But it wasn’t an attacker. It was Will McKinley, who’d come up from the subway and caught sight of her pacing back and forth. After initial small talk and mutual sympathies about Rothman’s and Yamamoto’s passing, Pia had latched onto him for company back to the dorm. As an enticement, as if she needed it, she had offered to share her umbrella.