The October List Read online

  Looking out, Daniel reported, "Still on the radio, but he's glancing at the windows here. He suspects. Definitely."

  Gabriela returned to the desk on which the nameplate read E. Rodriguez. She took a blank letter-sized envelope and into it stuffed a dozen pieces of paper from her purse--receipts, discount cards, a few bills. She shoved the envelope into the Coach and left a corner protruding.

  "Insurance policy," she said. "Just in case. Now let's get out of here."

  With Daniel carrying the champagne, they left the office and she closed the door. The sound of the elevator on the move filled the hallway. She looked around and nodded to the stairs. They climbed to the third floor, where they found a slim Latino man pushing a mop. "Rafael!"

  "Gabriela! I heard about Mr. Prescott. It's not true, you think?"

  "I'm sure it isn't. It has to be a big mistake."

  "I'm praying for him. My wife too."

  "Thank you, Rafael. This is Daniel."

  The men shook hands and then Gabriela asked, "Could you do me a big favor, please?"

  "Sure. What do you need?"

  She took the bag containing the champagne and handed it to Rafael. "I have to talk to lawyers now and get records together. I was supposed to take this to a friend of mine today, but I can't make it. It's real important to him. Can you please drop this off at his building in the Village?"

  "Sure, sure, I do that."

  "He's at Seven Eighty Greenwich Street. It's near Bethune. His name's Frank Walsh." She jotted the address and name. He pocketed the slip of paper.

  "Okay."

  "You're a lifesaver, Rafael."

  She fished in her purse and handed him four twenties.

  "Oh, you don't have to do that." He shook his head.

  "No, no, I'm insisting."

  "Well, gracias." He reluctantly pocketed the cash.

  "Nada. If he's not there just leave the package with the doorman."

  Gabriela and Daniel headed to the stairwell again. She caught his eye, in which she detected a gaze of wry humor. "Frank's only sort of a boyfriend. Really."

  "Hey," he offered, "how can I be jealous of somebody you're calling 'the complication'? If you'd said 'stud' or 'lover boy,' well, that'd be a different story."

  She flung her arms around him and kissed his neck. They fled down the stairs, exiting into the alley behind the building.

  CHAPTER 14

  2:50 P.M., SATURDAY

  25 MINUTES EARLIER

  TURTLE BAY, THAT PORTION OF east Manhattan near the United Nations, was once one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. In the late 1800s the area was littered with unregulated businesses--tanneries, slaughterhouses, breweries, power plants and coal yards--where the rate of injuries and death among workers was horrific. Dark, overcrowded tenements were squalid and stank and were nearly as disease-ridden and dangerous as the blue-ribbon winner of depraved decay in the New York City of that era: Five Points, near where City Hall is now.

  Gabriela knew this because the Professor's favorite topic was New York history. He knew the city the way some men know their favorite baseball team's stats.

  The name "Turtle Bay," he had told Gabriela years ago, as they sat in his cozy den one night, derived from the fact that the East River shoreline nearby was a small harbor, protecting cargo and passenger ships from the whims of the waterway, which was treacherous even on calm days and deadly in storms. Turtles would bask on the mud banks, in the reeds and on rocks, while herons and gulls dined on fish and fish remains in the narrow ledge of shallows before the river dropped steeply to its grim bottom.

  He'd told her, "The place was a dumping ground for bodies back then, the river was--true now but less so. After a bad rain, skulls and bones'd be uncovered. Kids'd play with the remains."

  The river may still have been a watery grave for the occasional Mafia hit victim but, my, how 125 years changed things. The area was now elegant and subdued, and the harbor gone completely--straightened by the FDR Expressway.

  Gabriela was standing next to Daniel Reardon in the residential heart of the Turtle Bay neighborhood, having snuck away from the shadows--in all senses of the word--of the Upper West Side, where they'd been the recipients of such bad news.

  They peered down the quiet side street--and easily spotted an unmarked police car parked in front of a small office building that Gabriela pointed out as the home of Prescott Investments.

  "You were right," she whispered. "They're watching the place. Looking for Charles. For me."

  The car with the cop inside was facing away from them but still they stepped back around the corner, onto Second Avenue, where they couldn't be seen. They were blinded by deceptive sunlight, which didn't do much to cut the chill.

  "How many companies in your building?" Daniel asked.

  "A dozen or so. Small ones generally. We're small too." Just then Gabriela stiffened, looking up the street. Her eyes grew bright. "Elena."

  Daniel followed her gaze.

  The slim Latina, about thirty years of age, in jeans and a Fordham University windbreaker, strode toward them. Her hair was pulled back and it seemed damp, perhaps from a shower interrupted by Gabriela's call.

  "Oh, Elena!" Gabriela hugged her.

  "Isn't this awful? I'm sick. I'm just sick!" Her eyes were red, as if she'd only recently stopped crying.

  Gabriela introduced Daniel as a "friend."

  Looking the handsome man up and down, Elena Rodriguez shook his hand and winked to Gabriela, woman-to-woman, meaning, Well, he's a keeper. "We work together, Gabriela and me."

  "I know. I heard."

  She puffed air from her cheeks. "I guess I mean worked together. Not anymore." To Gabriela, "Have you heard anything else?"

  "No, just what the police told me this morning."

  Elena's pretty face darkened. "Did you talk to the same ones? Kepler and some Indian man. I didn't like them at all. Kepler, especially."

  "Yep."

  Elena looked wistful and nodded in the direction of the office building. In a soft voice: "I walked this way to work hundreds of times and I've always been so happy. Now..." She shrugged. Then the woman sighed and asked, "So what can I do? I'll do anything to help."

  "Daniel and I are going to try to find something in the office that'll prove Charles's innocent."

  "Find the asshole who's setting him up."

  Gabriela hesitated and then said, "Exactly."

  Daniel glanced her way, undoubtedly thinking how guilty she felt for lying to her co-worker and friend.

  "And we need your help."

  "Sure."

  "I have to tell you, Elena, it's kind of... extreme."

  "Hey, girl, did I say 'anything'?"

  "All right. I need you to get hit by a car."

  "What?"

  "I don't really mean get hit. Just start to cross the street and pretend to get hit. When a cab or car goes by, slap it on the door or the side and fall down on the sidewalk. The cop guarding the building'll come to help you. When he does, Daniel and I'll slip inside and search the office. Just don't give him your real ID. Make something up--you left your purse at home. So you don't get in trouble after they find out the office got broken into."

  Daniel Reardon stared at Gabriela for a moment then gave a shallow laugh. "You come up with pretty good plans," he said.

  "I was one hell of an office manager," Gabriela replied.

  "When I said 'anything,' " the pretty woman muttered, "I kind of meant stay up all night reading through files. But if you want me knocked on my ass, girl, you got yourself an accident. Hey, I get to scream?"

  "As loud as you want."

  CHAPTER 13

  12:30 P.M., SATURDAY

  2 HOURS, 20 MINUTES EARLIER

  UHN, UHN, UHN..."

  "Jesus," Detective Brad Kepler muttered. "That's awful." He was angry. And cold too, stiff, sore. They were on the roof of the building across from Gabriela's co-op apartment on the Upper West Side. Both men had earbuds in, one each. They wer
e sharing.

  "Uhn," Surani said.

  Kepler gave a harsh laugh. "That supposed to be funny?"

  Surani didn't get it.

  "The noise you just made."

  "The... what noise?"

  "The 'uhn.' You grunted. It's the same as that." Grimacing, Kepler tapped his earbud. Then he stared back at the open but curtained window of Gabriela's living room.

  "What noise?" Surani repeated. "I grunted?"

  "You grunted. You said, 'uhn.' "

  "Oh. And? What're you upset about?" Surani asked, sounding pissed off that he'd been accused of something.

  Kepler didn't care; in this day's pissed-off World Series, he was winning. "So we just told her that her boss's booked on out of town, she's lost all her savings, she's outta work and what's she doing?"

  Uhn, uhn, uhn...

  "Fucking him. It's wrong. Just plain wrong."

  "He's pretty handsome. Give him that. Looks just like that actor."

  "No, he fucking doesn't."

  "But you know exactly the actor I mean, right? So therefore he does. And I think he's good looking."

  Kepler believed his partner said this to torture him a bit more.

  Surani shrugged. "It's not my business what she does in there. Yours either. It's our business to watch her. That's it. Nothing more than that."

  Gabriela and her boyfriend had surprised them by not remaining on the streets, but heading to her apartment. The detectives--prepared to follow her--had scrambled to set up the surveillance on a nearby building, sitting or kneeling on the cold, pebble-covered roof. Kepler and Surani started the recorder and trained the microphone at its target and waited.

  Soon they'd heard voices. This was hot-shit electronics and they could make out a fair amount of conversation.

  The discussion inside had initially been mostly about Prescott and the company and how Gabriela still had trouble believing the terrible things those "assholes" had said, meaning of course Kepler and Surani. They had also caught a comment that she was shocked and angry about "what had happened."

  All the dialogue got recorded. Nothing was helpful.

  As for visuals, there hadn't been much to see at first--shadows, wafting curtains, reflections off shiny surfaces. Then, about twenty minutes ago, the cops had registered some soft whispers and Kepler blinked as he gazed through the window with the binoculars. He gripped Surani's shoulder, whispering, "Jesus Christ."

  They both gaped at the sight of Gabriela taking off her sweater. In her bra and tight stretch pants, she walked to the window and pulled the curtain shut.

  Je-sus...

  Silence for a time, then the sounds of lust had floated through the airwaves.

  And it was still going strong.

  "Uhn, uhn, uhn," punctuated by an occasional, "Yeah, there. Don't stop!"

  And the ever popular: "Fuck me!"

  "My knees hurt. Why do they have stones on the roof?"

  "Drainage maybe."

  "Oh, the rain doesn't go through the pebbles?"

  Surani said, "You are in way too much of a bad mood. Oh, look at your pants."

  "What? Oh, Christ." What seemed to be tar stains speckled his knees.

  Kepler heard Gabriela being ordered to "Get up on all fours. That's how you want it, right?"

  She replied breathlessly that, yes, that was exactly how she wanted it.

  And the Uhn, uhn, uhn started up again.

  Surani laughed, which made Kepler all the angrier.

  Then there came an extended uhn. Which meant, Kepler guessed, that the party was over with.

  "Post-coital bliss," whispered Surani. "About time. I'm ready to get the hell off the roof. It's freezing up here." He rose from his squat.

  Kepler said, "When she leaves, you better be ready for it. We stick on her like glue."

  "I'm ready," Surani said. "Do I look like I'm not ready? And 'stick on her like glue'? Could you pick a worse cliche?"

  Kepler ignored him.

  But the pursuit didn't happen just then. From inside Gabriela's apartment, whispers arose. And the game began again.

  Uhn, uhn, uhn...

  "Fuck," Surani muttered, sitting down once more.

  Kepler stared. His partner rarely swore. The Charles Prescott Op was bringing out the worst in everybody.

  CHAPTER 12

  NOON, SATURDAY

  30 MINUTES EARLIER

  GABRIELA PRESSED A TISSUE to her eyes as she and Daniel were back on the sidewalk, heading for Central Park, silent and digesting the stark news they'd received in the lobby of her building. They were on pavement crosshatched by sharp shadows from the trees overhead. The September sun continued to radiate fierce power, though little heat, like a distant spotlight. Occasionally Daniel's arm brushed hers and she wondered if he would embrace her for solace.

  He didn't.

  "We'll go to the office," she said, desperation in her voice. "Maybe the police are finished with it now. I can try to find this October List."

  She caught a glimpse of herself reflected in a window. How like everyone else she looked, how normal--tan stretch pants, tight burgundy sweater, leather jacket, the purse over her shoulder, the Tiffany bag dangling from her hand, a handsome man at her side. On their way to a movie or a health club or brunch with friends.

  How like everyone else.

  Yet how different.

  "That guy, Joseph," Daniel replied. "Jesus. You know, his giddiness was the most scary. His joking. It's just sick."

  "Part of me thinks I should go to the police anyway," she said. Then looked at him. "What do you think?"

  Daniel considered this. "Honestly, I think the consequences could be disastrous if he found out."

  "But they know how to handle these things!" Gabriela said fervently. "They have kidnap specialists. I'm sure they do. Hostage negotiators."

  "This is different. It's not like Joseph's asking for money that you can agree to pay him--and the police'd back you up on that. If you go to them--even assuming Joseph doesn't find out about it--the October List is going to come up. And the cops're going to want it."

  After a moment she said, "True." Another dab of tissue to her eye.

  "And we have to assume that Joseph's doing what he threatened: having somebody watch you to make sure you don't go near the police."

  "You don't deserve this, Daniel. You shouldn't have anything to do with it, with me. I didn't even know you twenty-four hours ago. You should just go home and forget all about me."

  Gabriela sensed his head swiveling.

  He said, "Not really interested in that."

  "In what?"

  "Forgetting about you."

  She gripped his arm and briefly rested her head against his solid biceps. She'd seen a movie starring the actor whom Daniel resembled, in which the man had removed his shirt, to the thrill of most women in the audience. Not only were their faces similar but their builds closely matched.

  "My office is in Midtown, east. Let's get a cab. We should move fast. The deadline... six p.m. We have so much to do." She turned to look for a taxi.

  "Wait," he said in a sharp whisper.

  "What?"

  "We're being followed," Daniel said.

  "Are you sure?" She sounded doubtful. But she looked behind and saw a van easing to the curb. "Joseph?"

  "I didn't see any vans before."

  "If it's police," she said, panic in her voice, "and Joseph sees, he'll think we called them! He'll kill Sarah!"

  "We're not sure it's the cops. Maybe it's a coincidence."

  But the van wasn't happenstance; it was in fact occupied by the police. This was confirmed when they noticed a blue-and-white NYPD patrol car start toward them from Columbus Circle, then brake suddenly and make a U-turn.

  She said, "Somebody in the van just radioed the squad car and told them to get the hell out of here. Yep, it's cops. They're hoping I'll lead them to Charles."

  "And look," Daniel muttered.

  She followed his eyes toward what
was probably an unmarked police car--a gray sedan with several small antennas bristling on the roof.

  "Goddammit," she snapped, furious. "They're all over the place!"

  "What should we do?"

  After a moment of internal debate, she said, "Let's go back to my apartment. Wait, walk over there, by the curb."

  "What?"

  "Stay in the sunlight."

  Daniel frowned, uncertainly. Then he gave a smile. "Ah, you want them to see us."

  "Exactly."

  IN TEN MINUTES they were back at her apartment building. They found no unwelcome assailants inside this time and stepped into the hesitant elevator for a ride to the second floor. In her unit, which faced south, she set the Tiffany bag he'd brought for her on an antique table by the door, her purse too. Shucked her jacket and slung it on a hook.

  Daniel looked around the place, focused on the books, the pictures of a little blond girl.

  "Sarah," he said.

  She didn't bother to nod. It wasn't a question anyway.

  Daniel noted other pictures, mostly of Gabriela by herself. A few with her and her parents. One he studied for a long moment.

  "You and your father?"

  She looked his way. "That's right."

  "He's a good-looking man. Do your parents live in the city?"

  "He passed away," she told him. "Mom's in a home."

  "I'm sorry. What did he do for a living?"

  "Worked for the power company. Con Ed. Manager."

  The picture had been taken a decade ago. It depicted a twenty-two-year-old Gabriela and her father, exactly thirty years older; they shared the same birthday, May 10. Taurus. She told Daniel this, then added wistfully, "He used to say people who're Tauruses think astrology is a lot of bull."

  Daniel laughed. And he looked over the image of the tall man, with trim salt-and-pepper hair, once more.

  She didn't tell him that the picture had been taken a week before his death.

  They had the same expression on their faces, easy and humorous, unrehearsed. Her mother had been having a good day and she'd playfully snapped the picture.

  Then Daniel noted a dozen framed artistic photographs, all in black and white. He walked close to examine them. They were mostly still lifes and landscape but some portraits too.

  He asked, "So these are yours?"

  She was gazing out the window, through a slit in a side curtain. "What?"

  "These photos. Yours?"