Mr. Freedman gave his doted son Gabe a ticket to meet in the baseball stadium as an eleventh birthday present, but the knave never arrived. The model pupil was atypically distracted, and sold the ticket with profit to a scalper, joined a dubious gang and got into unprecedented trouble raiding a shop where the owner got badly hurt. After Martin Fitzgerald's brilliant work sifting tips from the mostly useless public to help work out Gabe wasn't abducted or running away but going somewhere, actually in search of his biological father, having found out he's adopted, Martin is finally taken along on field mission. Gabe took off to Texas to his 'dad', but the real one, which his parents didn't even know, died years ago, so it's probably a pedophile trap.