The October List Read online

  CHAPTER 31

  2:15 P.M., SUNDAY

  1 HOUR EARLIER

  DETECTIVE BRAD KEPLER watched his boss read the media release once, twice, again.

  Captain Paul Barkley looked up at the NYPD press officer, a wobbly young man with persistent acne, who sat before him in this hellhole of an operations room. Then, without saying a word, he looked down and read once more.

  Barkley's stomach made a Harley-Davidson noise that everyone in the room pretended to ignore.

  Kepler knew that most Sundays, this time of day Barkley was tucking away his wife's roast beef, along with--when she wasn't looking--massive forkfuls of buttered mashed potatoes. The detective was aware of this routine because he'd been invited to dinner a few times. He had three repetitive memories of the occasions: Barkley telling the same quasi-blue jokes over and over. The roast beef being very good. And Kepler's spending the entire time trying to figure out if there were any possible scenarios for telling Barkley's know-it-all college-student daughter to shut the fuck up. Which, of course, there were not.

  Kepler himself read the release again.

  Fred Stanford Chapman, 29,... wife, Elizabetta, 31, two children, Kyle and Sophie... Surgery to remove a bullet lodged near his heart is planned for later today... Investigations continue... Prognosis is not good...

  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

  "How many calls?" Barkley asked the youngster.

  "From the press? A hundred."

  Barkley snapped, "That's an exaggeration."

  Kepler thought: Probably isn't. His partner, Naresh Surani, seemed to concur.

  "I wanted to keep it quiet," the captain said.

  "A shooting?" From the PA youngster.

  "Yes, a shooting. In goddamn Manhattan. I wanted to keep it goddamn quiet. But I guess that didn't work out, did it? This was a leak the size of the Titanic."

  Kepler corrected, The Titanic wasn't a leak. The Titanic was a ship that got fucked because of a leak.

  But, of course, the edit was tacit.

  Barkley snatched up a pen and began to revise.

  Which gave Kepler the chance to look around their new digs. This was the second room the Charles Prescott Operation--the CP Op--had been assigned to in the past two days. Sure, this happened to be a busy time for bad guys and little operations like the CP Op didn't mean very much, in terms of chalking up cred, so they had to take whatever room was free at the moment. But this one was the pits. The twenty-by-thirty-foot space did have a few high-def monitors, but they were off, and they didn't even seem hooked up. The walls were scuffed--nothing new there--and the government-issue furniture was cheap. Nearly a third of the floor space was devoted to storage. Something smelled off too, as if a take-out turkey sandwich had fallen behind one of the filing cabinets a long, long time ago.

  At least it couldn't get any worse.

  Barkley slid the press release back like an air hockey puck. "Fix it. And by the way, no comment from me, other than the investigations continue. Stop at that. Nothing more."

  The press officer tried again. "But a hundred calls, sir."

  "Why're you still here?" Barkley made a sound like a disagreeable transmission. This one came from his throat, not his belly.

  "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." The Public Affairs officer scooted out.

  Why the hell does that kid wear a sidearm? Kepler thought.

  Barkley turned to the two detectives, sitting at a battered fiberboard table, and barked, "Jesus." He nodded toward Kepler's copy of the release.

  Fred Stanford Chapman, 29,... gunshot wound...

  Then the boss changed direction. "Now, her."

  He didn't need to say Gabriela. There were no other women causing them so much anxiety at the moment.

  "I told you yesterday I wanted her under surveillance. Twenty-four seven. What the hell happened? You were at her place, right? Cameras, microphones."

  Her.

  Brad Kepler shrugged. "She tipped to us. I don't know. And then started using evasive tactics."

  "The hell does that mean? Sounds like something from a bad cop movie."

  "But," Kepler said, "we're still on her." A glance at his partner. "Right?"

  Surani called Surveillance, had a discussion, then clapped his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Barkley and Kepler, "We've got officers close. It's righteous."

  Which sounded like something out of an even worse cop movie.

  Righteous?

  The captain asked, "How'd you manage the tail, if she slipped you at her place?"

  Surani explained, "Brad got a GPS on her."

  "How the hell you do that?" The captain gave one of his broad frowns that he used for emphasis, a gesture several of his detectives had developed pretty good imitations of, Brad Kepler included.

  "She was distracted. It was chaos, weapons, screaming, diving for cover. I got the thing into her jacket pocket."

  Barkley was pleased, Kepler could tell, but his nature required him to ask, "You think that was a safe idea?" The captain could never just say, Good job.

  "Safe idea?" Kepler asked. He didn't know what that meant. "I frankly didn't think about it. It was just something I had to do: Get the tracker onto her then back off."

  Surani, his gray complexion even grayer under the inhumane lights in the dismal operations room, said, "It was pretty good, pretty smooth. She doesn't have a clue."

  "Microphone?" The captain brushed his trim white hair--senior congressman's hair--twice, then a third time. He seemed to look Kepler up and down, as if approving of his impressive tan. Or disapproving.

  "No, just a tracker. We lost her for a bit in the subway."

  The New York City metro system was huge and fast and efficient, and that meant it could transport Gabriela anywhere within a several-hundred-square-mile area. And GPS trackers wouldn't work there.

  "But then she surfaced. CCTV got a facial recognition exiting a station in Midtown. The signal's been solid since then."

  "Unless she decides to hop on the A train again."

  "She can't live in the MTA," Surani said. "The food sucks down there. And the showers? Forget about it." This drew a hard glance from Kepler because the joke was beyond stupid. It wasn't even a joke.

  "And she was with the guy?"

  "That's right."

  "Stay on her. But I want everybody tailing to be invisible. You follow me? If Surveillance gets made, then people could get killed. That's not happening on my watch."

  And why not? Kepler wondered of the dramatic pronouncement. You can protect all the innocents in New York City, can you now, boss? A lot of people have died on your watch over the years, when you think about it.

  But Surani said only, "We've told the teams to stay back. They're near but not too close."

  One of the deputy chiefs stuck his head in the doorway. "Hey, sorry, gentlemen. Need to commandeer this room."

  "What?" Barkley snapped. "Move again? You gotta be kidding me?"

  The white-haired, rotund brass shrugged, looking only slightly contrite. "Got a terrorist tip and we need an ISDN line. They're not up and running in the other rooms."

  "Terrorist. We get a thousand terrorist tips a year. Why's this one a big deal?"

  "Bureau's running it. Pretty serious. And could be going down in two, three weeks. Infrastructure target, that sort of thing. You got ten minutes to find new digs." He disappeared. Kepler glanced at Surani and knew that his partner was just barely refraining from giving the empty doorway the finger. They swapped smiles.

  Sighing, Barkley looked over sheets of paper on the table. One was headed Charles Prescott Investments.

  The other was another copy of the press release.

  Surgery to remove a bullet lodged near his heart is planned for later today...

  "We'll make this work. I know we will." This flimsy reassurance came from Kepler.

  Just then Surani got another call. He listened. He disconnected. "Surveillance. Gabriella and Reardon're on the move again. Near Forty-Eig
ht and Seventh, moving west. There're a couple unmarkeds in the vicinity, but they're staying out of sight."

  Vi-cin-ty.

  Jesus, Kepler thought.

  Barkley slid the Prescott file away as if it reminded him of a bad medical diagnosis. He asked, "Is the tracker a good one?"

  Kepler said, "Yeah. Battery lasts for days and it'll pinpoint the location down to six feet."

  Surani added proudly, "And she'll never spot it. It's inside a Bic pen."

  CHAPTER 30

  2:10 P.M., SUNDAY

  5 MINUTES EARLIER

  THE SKY HAD CHANGED FOR THE WORSE.

  The spongy clouds, which had been floating so benign and frivolous in the azure sky, were gone. Taupe overcast stretched from horizon to horizon, as if the air itself were tethered to the raw edge of these past thirty hours. The harbor was choppy, the wind rude.

  Gabriela and Daniel were emerging from the subway. After the screams, after the chaos on Second Avenue not long ago, the police had appeared in droves. She and Daniel had had no choice but to use the subway system to flee, despite the risk of getting spotted by Transit Authority police. But no one had noticed them and, on the streets now, they maneuvered among families, tourists, shoppers, and lovers, trying to find cover in the crowds--just as the two fugitives had lost themselves in the various subway lines for the past half hour. They'd ridden to Harlem from the Upper East Side, then headed crosstown and finally south to Midtown.

  From here they'd walk to the apartment that Daniel had told her about--the one his company, The Norwalk Fund, kept for out-of-town clients. It was presently empty and they could hide out there.

  He now looked around carefully. "No police, no Joseph, no anybody else after us."

  Gabriela was solemn. "All the blood, Daniel. Did you see it?"

  Of course he had. He squeezed her hand tighter. The pressure seemed to have meaning. But what? She couldn't tell.

  "Look!"

  He too noted the blue-and-white patrol car speeding their way, the lights flashing urgently. Gabriela shucked the backpack off her shoulder and they veered, stepping closer to a store, putting a stream of passersby between them and the street.

  The NYPD cruiser, though, sped quickly past, heading in the direction of the incident.

  The blood...

  Daniel directed her east. "The apartment's that way. About eight, ten blocks. Not far."

  But before they started walking Gabriela took his arm and said, "Wait. Let's ditch the hats and get some better camouflage." She tapped the dark, logo-free baseball cap she was wearing. "We need more than this to fool them." Nodding at a discount clothing store up the block. "Let's go shopping."

  Five minutes later they were out, wearing jeans--his blue, hers black--and sweatshirts and windbreakers, also dark. His top said, NYU. Hers was bare of type or images. The clothes they'd been wearing were in shopping bags.

  She grimaced and clutched her rib cage, coughed. Then wiped a spot of blood from her lip.

  "Mac!"

  She said dismissingly, "It's all right. I can handle it."

  They continued walking.

  Her phone pinged, a text. She glanced at the screen. A smile, dampened by a wince, appeared.

  "The Complication."

  "What did he say?"

  "He got his present." Gabriela decided not to tell him the rest that Frank Walsh had texted.

  They were at the corner when a dark sedan sped by--clearly an unmarked police car. This one, unlike the squad cars a moment ago, slowed as it grew close. Then sped up and continued on, vanishing around the corner.

  No other police cars or uniformed officers were in the area. "I think it's clear," Daniel said.

  Into his backpack he stuffed the shopping bag containing the gray Canali suit and shirt he'd changed out of at the store. Gabriela examined the contents of her bag and noticed spatters of blood on her sweater and windbreaker. "I'm dumping these. Shit. I loved that sweater."

  She went through the pockets and kept only the money; everything else--receipts, bloody tissues and a Bic pen--she left in the bag. She looked around and noticed a Department of Sanitation truck, filled to the brim, en route to the processing facility on 14th Street at the Hudson River.

  She slung the shopping bag into the back of the truck as the driver waited for the light to change.

  Gabriela gripping his arm, Daniel set a good pace and they wove through the herds of pedestrians filling the streets on this blustery Sunday afternoon.

  CHAPTER 29

  1:40 P.M., SUNDAY

  30 MINUTES EARLIER

  FRANK WALSH WAS STANDING in the tiny kitchen of his dim Greenwich Village apartment, thinking of the killing that morning.

  It hadn't been easy.

  Using a knife never was.

  The problem was you generally couldn't stab somebody to death. You had to slash, go for the neck, the legs--the femoral arteries. The groin was good too. But stabbing? It took forever.

  And add to the mix: If the person you were fighting was good at defense, as the victim that morning had been, you had to stay alert, you had to move, you had to be fast and you had to improvise; in knife fighting, advantages changed in seconds.

  Solid--okay, pudgy--Frank pulled his Greek fisherman cap off and scratched his unruly red hair and the scalp beneath as he stood at the open cupboard door. With his left hand he absently pinched a roll of fat around his belly. He decided against the potato chips.

  He continued to debate the food options. But was distracted.

  Gabby was on his mind. As often she was.

  Then his mind, his clever mind, slipped back to the fight that morning. Recalling the animal lust, the pure satisfaction--born somewhere, a shrink would probably say, out of revenge for the bullying he'd suffered as a teenager. He felt pride too at his skill with the blade.

  He wished he could tell Gabby about the confrontation, though some things he knew it was best to keep from her. Felt a deep ping in his belly as he pictured her and thought of the present he'd just received. He wondered what she was wearing at the moment.

  Then he turned his attention back to mealtime. His kitchen was a central hub of the apartment. The cabinets were white and the handles had actual release levers, as if the room were a galley on a ship that regularly sailed through gales. If the doors weren't secured, Doritos, Tuna Helper and macaroni and cheese would fly to the floor in the swells.

  Chips? No chips?

  No chips, he decided. And continued to stare.

  He took a breath and sensed something smelled off. Not spoiled food. What? He looked around. Noted the old scabby table, plumbed steady with folded Post-it notes under one leg. His hat sat on it. Was the hat gamy? He smelled it. Yep, that was it.

  Did Greek fishermen really wear Greek fisherman hats? he wondered.

  He'd have to wash it, he guessed. But would that take the good luck away? He'd worn it during the fight that morning. He slipped it into a Baggie until he decided.

  Back to the Titanic cabinets and the fridge. No chips, but not doing the celery thing. Celery is evil.

  An apple.

  Frank snagged a shiny red McIntosh, huge, and a bag of Ruffles and loped back to his cluttered desk, snug in the corner of his bedroom. Just as he sat in the plush chair, he thought: Hell. Forgot the beverage. The. Beverage. He returned to the kitchen and got a Diet Coke from the chair beside the table, filled with magazines and books, piled high.

  He glanced at the present Gabby had sent him. His heart stuttered. Man, he was in heaven.

  Gabby...

  How much have we lost? he wondered. Squeezing his belly. Six pounds in the past month. If he weighed himself after peeing.

  He munched and sipped, wished the soda was cold. Should have fridged it. Why do I forget things? Frank Walsh knew he had trouble focusing, but he also took pride that it was a negative compensation for being so talented in other ways.

  Like his knives.

  He regarded his specimens of cutting-edge weapons
, which took up two bookshelves.

  When was the curved kukri going to arrive? He thought of the beautiful blade--the picture on eBay had depicted a classic Nepalese army knife.

  Then he returned to reality.

  All the fucking Post-it notes I keep buying. Have to remember to use them for more than propping up table legs.

  Write: Put the soda in the fridge.

  How hard was that?

  He slowed down on the chips. Take your time. Write that down too. Don't eat another until you've masticated and swallowed the one you're working on. He noted that the soda--because it was frigging warm--had sprayed onto the Samsung monitor when he'd opened the can. He wiped the glass with an old T-shirt, aromatic with Windex he kept beside the computer. He'd have to wash the cloth soon. That was gamy too. Like the Maybe Greek Fisherman hat.

  Write it down.

  He would.

  Frank didn't write it down and returned to the computer, unable to stop thinking of the knife fight again.

  Oh, it was beautiful. Choreography. Dance. Beautiful.

  His knife sweeping down then stopping halfway as his victim went into a defensive posture--which Frank had anticipated.

  And he'd then spun around backward and whisked his steel blade along the exposed neck.

  Blood flew and sprayed and danced into the sky.

  Then fast--you never hesitated--he leapt to the right and slashed again on the other side of the neck.

  And the dying eyes stared, motionless for a moment. Then closed slowly as the pool of blood spread.

  Wait, Frank Walsh thought. Was that his phone? He grabbed for it.

  No.

  He'd hoped Gabby would call.

  Well, he knew she'd call. But he meant now. This moment. He stared at the phone, willing it to ring. It didn't.

  He thought more about the coming Tuesday.

  A brief fantasy played itself out: The doorman, Arthur, ringing on the intercom and saying, "There's somebody here to see you. Her name's Gabriela."

  Frank Walsh would smile. "Send her up."

  And he'd be waiting for her in his black jeans and black shirt--his best look, his thin look--teeth brushed and hair sprayed and body deodorized. His fisherman cap would be in a Baggie, if he hadn't washed it first, which probably wasn't going to happen.

  He'd pull out the present she'd just had delivered today.

  She'd turn her beautiful, piercing eyes on him. And they'd crinkle with fun and flirt. She'd say, "I've never seen your bedroom, Frank."