The October List

Chapter 8 Morning After, No.1

9:00 A.M., SATURDAY

1 HOUR EARLIER

They sat across from each other in the spattered window of Irving’s Deli, Upper West Side.

The restaurant, a mash of linoleum, dinged chrome and worn wood, was chaotic. The smells were of garlic, fish, bagel steam, toast, coffee. Mismatched perfume and aftershave, too, sprayed on in lieu of a shower; on Saturday, why preen?

The day was beautiful, a bright weekend in September, and people were swarming. Many locals were at tables and in the queues, but many “interlopers,” too, as Gabriela said.

“You mean from my ’hood,” Daniel called over the ocean-roar of the patrons. “TriBeCa?”

“We’re thinking of requiring passports for you people to cross Fourteenth Street,” she said.

“That’s profiling,” Daniel said.

They returned to their food.

She thought it curious that Daniel wore a suit on the weekend — gray like yesterday, though a different cut — and a dress shirt of blush pink. No tie. Had he planned to attend a meeting later? Or was he simply more comfortable not wearing casual clothes? Gabriela was in tan stretch pants, a burgundy sweater, pearls too. Ankle boots. He’d looked at her figure once — when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. The sweater was tight.

The table was small and she adjusted the distinctive turquoise Tiffany bag on the corner. “Thanks again for this.”

“The least I could do.”

Daniel asked where exactly she lived, relative to the deli, which was on Broadway, near 75th.

Gabriela grimaced. “About four blocks away. I come here way too often. The hips I have, I have Irving’s to thank for.” Her eyes swept around the counter, piled high with every imaginable taste. “Kosher, I’ve learned, does not mean low calories.” She paused, frowning. “I’m waiting.”

Daniel tapped his forehead with a palm. “What hips?”

“Too little, too late.”

“But obviously you work out.”

“I’ll give you a few points for that,” she said.

Daniel looked philosophical. “You notice when men say to women, ‘Oh, you work out,’ it’s a come-on line. When women ask it, they want to know if he’s going to cuddle in bed on Sunday mornings or get up at dawn for a date with his Adidas.”

“I’d have to think about it. Was that a come-on line?”

Daniel asked, “You want some jam?”

Breakfast was coffee, pumpernickel bagels and smoked salmon. No onions. “Onions are a fourth- or fifth-date thing,” Gabriela announced.

“Is this a date?”

She was thinking about last night. Her response was, “I don’t know that we need to overthink it.”

“Fair enough. Still, you manage an investment house and I run a venture capital firm. We’re professional overthinkers. No?”

“True,” she said.

“But it’s not overthinking it to say we survived a completely excruciating night last night.”

“No, that’s accurate.”

He frowned. “You’re picking at your food. Can I have that piece of salmon? The lonesome one on the side?”

“Yours.”

He speared and ate it. “What’re your plans for today?”

“I pick Sarah up at one from dance class. And we spend the rest of the weekend together.”

“You two have a great time. I can tell.”

“Oh, we do.” Her eyes grew wide. “We go to American Girl and FAO, naturally. But MOMA and the Met too. Sarah asks for the art museums. She’s so smart. I have to keep reminding myself she’s only six.”

“Smart. So she’s got your genes.”

“She got my temperament genes. Ah, I think I just sniped at my ex again. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that.”

They nodded to the young male server for coffee refills. And thanked him. Daniel looked her over with a coy smile. “Is this where you tell me about the complication?”

Gabriela laughed hard. “You make your clients a ton of money, I’ll bet. With that kind of insight.”

“No engagement ring,” Daniel said, glancing toward her finger. “You’re beautiful — which by the way is less of a come-on line than ‘Wow, you totally work out.’ I just have a feeling there has to be a complication.”

“Okay. There’s this tiny complication.”

“How tiny?”

“Stop it!” She laughed again. “His name’s Frank. Frank Walsh.”

“What an awful name,” Daniel said, wrinkling his perfect nose.

“Are you listening?”

“Tell me about Frank,” he said, thumping the last word with his lips. “I’m dying to know about complicating Frank.”

“You’re mean! We date some.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

After a pause: “Fact is, he’s a little more interested in me than I am in him.”

“Never heard of that happening before,” Daniel said sardonically. “I actually got proposed to by a woman on a first date. She popped the question as soon as she heard I had a job. I’m not making that up. But I should add that there was some tequila involved.”

“Did you say yes?”

“To what?” Daniel asked with feigned innocence.

She continued, “Frank’s quirky — he’s a computer nerd. And reclusive. But he knows movies — which I love — and he’s funny and considerate. You don’t find that a lot nowadays.”

“Here’s my guideline,” Daniel said. “The sweet factor.”

“Sweet?”

“If you describe your present love interest as infuriating and exasperating, then you’re in love. If you say he’s sweet, it’s doomed and you need to ditch him pronto — for somebody who infuriates you.”

“I’m withholding all future adjectives about Frank for the time being.” She glanced at her watch. “I don’t have to be at the dance school for a while. Want to walk me back to my apartment?”

“Good idea,” he said, “it’ll help work some of that excess weight off your hips.”

“Nice try. But you’re not infuriating me. Yet.” She took his fork, which contained his last piece of salmon, dunked the pink cube in sour cream and ate it fast.

Chapter 9 Sarah

10:00 A.M., SATURDAY

30 MINUTES EARLIER

The two made their way past the Sheep Meadow in Central Park and under the boughs of trees lit by unfiltered sun. The leaves still clung to branches and the configuration of tissue and vein was as busy and colorful as a Jackson Pollock painting, changing shade and glow constantly; the wind was persistent.

Her purse over her shoulder, Gabriela carried in one hand the Tiffany bag that Daniel had brought her, and in the other a paper sack containing a walnut cream cheese bagel for her daughter.

“Let’s go that way,” she said, nodding.

Soon they were at the reservoir, walking wide of the path to stay clear of the many manic runners. A serious race walker, with his camel gait, overtook many of those jogging.

The conversation had turned substantive, typically morning-after-meeting, and Daniel asked about her history with Prescott Investments. She added with some passion, “I love the work. I mean, really love it. I was one of those people who got good grades, graduated with honors, all that. But I didn’t want to do anything practical. I was Ms. Creative. That’s what was important to me: writing, drawing, design, photography mostly. A headhunter sent me to Charles Prescott. He needed a freelancer to take some photos for a brochure.”

Gabriela smiled. “He was asking me about using Photoshop and some other software and right in the middle of the interview he stopped me. He said, ‘Forget it.’ I thought I was going to cry; I really needed the job. But he laughed and said, ‘I’ve seen your portfolio. The photos’re great. You’re an artist. But I can tell by talking to you your real talents are analysis and organization. Business.’

“Of course, I thought he was just telling me to get lost, but then he offered me the job on the spot: office manager. Full-time, benefits, everything. At first I was insulted; I mean, I knew I was going to be a famous artist. But then I admitted maybe I didn’t want that.”

Gabriela regarded Daniel with a smile. “So have you learned not to ask me any questions? You get a whole Google-search of information. You going to flee?”

“Not yet. So far, this isn’t the disaster last night turned out to be.” Then Daniel angled his head in that charming way of his and added with just the right amount of serious, “But you didn’t give up your photography.”

“Right. In fact, it was funny. I got more productive. Working full-time was liberating. I didn’t have to worry about making a living with the pictures or designing, art, writing. I could take the images that moved me. And, it turned out, Charles was right. I had a head for business. Running the office, negotiating equipment leases, planning meetings, bookkeeping... everything. Meeting Charles saved my life. I was going through the divorce and I needed some direction, some validation, you know. He became my mentor... And guess what?”

“He never hit on you.”

“Not once. Always a gentleman. Kind, funny. Just a wonderful man. In a business where there are a lot of people who aren’t so wonderful.”

“I know that all too well.”

They walked slowly over the pocked sidewalk. Their shoulders brushed several times. She felt an electric charge each time that happened. “Funny, once or twice in your life you meet somebody who’s a good person and it changes you forever. That’s Charles.”

“And I assume,” Daniel said, “that he knows the business. He makes money.”

“Oh, yeah. Charles’s a genius. We’ve done well.”

“Maybe I’ll give him a call. I’m always looking for outfits to do business with. Something to think about. And does he handle your investments? Your 401(k) or annuity?”

“He’s put me in a couple good positions...” The words braked to a halt as she blinked, her mouth open.

Daniel was clearly struggling to keep a detached expression. Then he gave up and coughed a laugh.

“Shit,” she said, chuckling as well. “He suggested some investment strategies. I won’t become a millionaire, but when Sarah’s ready for college there’ll be money for that.”

“Does your ex contribute?”

Interesting change of tack, she observed. She kept her voice neutral as she said, “Tim’s trying to find himself. I used to joke — to myself — he should look under a rock. But he’s doing the best he can, I think. It’s just, if you have children, they’re your priority. If you’re not happy at your job, suck it up until they graduate. If you’re depressed, deal with it for their sake. If the last thing in the world you feel like is another ballet recital, shut up and go.” Gabriela clicked her tongue. “Okay. Nothing more from me on my ex. Now, tell me about your... kids.”

He laughed at the pregnant pause. “Okay, Bryce and Steven. Fifteen and seventeen.” He described two handsome, all-American sorts of boys. He added that they were smart and never did anything worse than sneak a beer or get home an hour or so late. “No drugs, no fights.”

Daniel explained that he had plans for them to go to good colleges but not Ivy League. He wanted them to get solid educations but at big, diverse schools.

“Finance? Business?”

“I wouldn’t mind it. Capitalism’s been good to me. It’s exciting. I love it. But whatever they’re happy with is the main thing. That’s the only way to be a success. Who knows? Maybe they’ll be artists, writers or photographers... Anyway, does anybody really know what they want to do until they’re thirty?”

Not far away an elegant horse, ridden by an attractive young brunette in full gear, cantered along the bridle path.

He asked, “You have your camera? You could take a picture for Sarah.”

“No, I don’t carry it around generally. Besides, I’ve taken lots of horse pictures.”

They watched the beautiful creature disappear north, striding toward Harlem.

She was silent. Daniel frowned and glanced up the sidewalk.

“What?”

“Just thought I saw somebody looking our way.” The light grew fierce and he pulled on Ray-Bans.

She looked. “I don’t see anybody.”

“Imagination, maybe. Some man, I thought. In a dark overcoat.”

They continued their stroll to her apartment, looking over some of the vendor carts. Used books, CDs, food, of course. Always food.

Then Gabriela sensed Daniel’s body language shift. He said, “That complication you were telling me about at the restaurant? How much of a complication is he?” He glanced back once more, to the spot where he thought someone had been watching them.

“Frank Walsh isn’t going to be following me.”

“No? Are you sure? Wait, is he bigger than me?”

She sized up Daniel’s athletic shoulders, arms and chest. “If it comes down to a fight, I think you’ll win.”

He exhaled. “Then I’ll relax.”

“Seriously,” she said. “Frank is a nice guy. He’s dependable. He’s... sweet.”

Daniel began to laugh hard at the telling word.

“I’m there.” She pointed to a nondescript building up a cross street, affordable only because of the bizarre but kind rent laws in New York City.

Daniel began to say something but at that moment two men in suits, which didn’t fit particularly well, approached with obvious intent.

They didn’t come from the place in the park where Daniel had believed he’d spotted their follower, Gabriela noted.

One of the men, Anglo and tanned, wore aviator shades; the other, of Indian — South Asian — extraction, wore those glasses that dimmed automatically in the sun. Gabriela blinked, looking down at their NYPD badges and ID cards.

“You’re Gabriela McKenzie.”

“Yes. I... Yes, I am. Who are you?”

The one with the aviator sunglasses said briskly, “I’m Detective Kepler, this is Detective Surani. Could we talk to you for a moment?”

Chapter 10 Central Park

10:30 A.M., SATURDAY

45 MINUTES EARLIER

Light bore down on the foursome in Central Park. Stark light, painful.

Putting away his NYPD gold shield, Naresh Surani glanced at Daniel Reardon, ignored him and asked Gabriela, “Have you heard from Charles Prescott today?” Even the brilliant sun couldn’t warm the detective’s gray complexion.

“My boss? No. My God, is he all right?” Her eyes eased toward Daniel. The other detective, Brad Kepler, had noted him too but was ignoring him as efficiently as his partner was.

“When was the last time you saw him?” tanned Brad Kepler asked.

“Yesterday, at work. In the morning. Then I went to a meeting and was out all day. Has there been an accident? Please. You have to tell me!”

They were regarding her with what seemed to be suspicion. Surani offered, “Mr. Prescott has disappeared... with, it seems, a lot of his clients’ money.”

Gabriela barked a laugh. “No, that’s impossible. There’s a mix-up.”

“I’m afraid not. Detective Surani and I are with the Financial Crimes Division of the police department. Mr. Prescott’s been under investigation for the past two months.”

“A different Charles Prescott. It has to be a different one.”

Surani had taken to doing most of the talking and he continued now, “The SEC and the FBI were investigating cash flow into and out of suspicious stock trading accounts here and abroad. Some of those accounts were set up by Mr. Prescott and it appears they were for the benefit of various clients. There were New York connections so we got involved. It’s been going on for months.”

“It can’t have!”

Surani continued, “We were going to raid the office and arrest him at home this morning, but he must’ve gotten word about the investigation and fled late yesterday. There’re teams going through the office and his houses now. He’s vanished, cleaned out a half-dozen accounts in the U.S. and transferred the money into untraceable accounts overseas.”

She looked down. They were standing at a water main access panel in the sidewalk. The ironwork was from somewhere other than New York. It wasn’t even American. She told them, “He did say he was going to work late yesterday. I told you — I was at a meeting out of the office most of the day. I saw him for about an hour in the morning. We hardly said a dozen words. I assumed he worked late and then went home.”

“He didn’t go home. We had it under surveillance.”

“He left? Oh, God.”

Kepler asked Daniel, “You a friend of Ms. McKenzie’s?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know Charles Prescott?”

“No,” Gabriela said. “He doesn’t.”

Daniel explained, “We just met last night. Gabriela and I.”

They lost interest in him, as if thinking it had been a pickup, a night of sex and breakfast this morning. Daniel didn’t seem to care about their impression of him.

She continued, “This just has to be a mistake. First of all Charles would never do anything illegal. It’s not conceivable.” Her voice quivered. She cleared her throat. “If he left unexpectedly, I’m sure it was an emergency. One of his clients had a problem. Charles’s that way. He’s more than an investment adviser. He’s a friend—”

“A problem, yeah. A federal indictment.” Kepler added, “Really, Ms. McKenzie, there’s no mistake.” He was unemotional, but you could also hear a fragment of irritation in his voice.

She was blurting now: “I’m the office manager. How could he possibly do anything like that without my knowing? How could that be?”

Daniel stirred, his meaning probably: That might not be the wisest thing to say, suggesting she was complicit. She fell silent. Surani blinked through his none-too-effective shades and said, “We don’t have any evidence you were involved in the scheme.”

His tone, however, added the word “yet” onto the end of that sentence.

“Who’re the clients you were mentioning?” Gabriela demanded.

“We don’t have any names. A fair number were from the Far East, South America and the Middle East, according to the FBI. They’ve been tracing the cash and stock purchases.”

Gabriela laughed, albeit a bit hysterically. “It is a mistake! I’ve never heard of any clients there. And I know all of them.”

Surani countered, “Well, our information is that he did have clients there. Thirty-two, apparently. And he was shuttling money into these accounts. Who knows why? Money laundering most likely. But we aren’t sure.”

“My God.” A dismayed whisper. “Thirty-two clients?”

“That was as of two days ago.”

Gabriela opened her mouth and then slowly pressed her lips together as if words failed her completely.

Surani: “Ms. McKenzie, you have to understand, Mr. Prescott caught us by surprise. We knew he had a one-way ticket to Zurich on Columbus Day weekend, so we thought he’d be in the country until then.”

“One way?” Gabriela said. “No. I make all his travel arrangements. He didn’t have any plans to leave. Surely not one way.”

“Well, he did,” Kepler barked.

His partner continued, “Prescott must’ve gotten word about the investigation and skipped early. But not to Switzerland. We don’t know where. So we need to get the names and addresses of those thirty-two clients.”

“You didn’t find anything at the office?”

Surani explained, “We know he flew to St. Maarten yesterday about six p.m. He disappeared after that. The authorities down there can’t find him. Now we’re hoping you’ll cooperate. We need to know where he went.”

“Tell us what you know,” Kepler said emphatically, dark eyes narrow.

“I don’t know anything!”

“You probably do, Gabriela,” Kepler said with a sardonic tone. “For instance, did you know he had a house in Miami?”

“His beach house. Of course.”

“There! See? You did know something. And yet you didn’t volunteer it. Let’s keep going. How about other houses — overseas is what we’re particularly interested in. Or any friends or romantic partners he might be staying with.”

She was looking down at the sharp shadows on the sidewalk, the sunlight falling stridently on leaves.

“Ms. McKenzie?”

She looked up. “What?”

Kepler asked more bluntly, “Does Prescott have any homes outside the country? Does he visit anyone in particular in any foreign countries?”

“He... no, not that I’ve ever heard of. He goes to the Caribbean a lot. I mean, he has clients there.”

The look on the cops’ faces said, We know he does.

Some of them among the infamous Thirty-Two, of course.

“Come on, Gabriela, keep going. You’re on a roll!”

Daniel said, “Why don’t you lighten up? You just delivered some pretty tough news. And I don’t think you handled it very well.”

The cops ignored him yet again. It was Surani, the easier-going one, who continued, “Think back, Ms. McKenzie. Any references to trips he’d taken? People he was going to see?”

“Ah, ah,” Kepler said, “looks like you’re thinking of something. Share. Come on.”

Daniel glared at him. But the cop kept his eyes fixed on Gabriela’s face.

She said, “You mentioned St. Maarten. When he was down there he sometimes flew to St. Thomas. I don’t know who he met with — maybe one of those thirty-two special clients you mentioned. All I know is that this man was from Europe and he lived in St. Thomas nine months out of the year. And he had a big yacht, a huge one. I think ‘Island’ or ‘Islands’ was in the name of the boat.”

The cops looked at each other, as if they were intrigued by these crumbs.

“Okay, we’ll check that out,” Surani said.

Kepler nodded. “Good job, Gabriela. I knew you had it in you.”

Daniel seemed to want to slap the smirk off the detective’s face.

She asked Surani, “Have you talked to Elena Rodriguez? Charles’s other assistant?”

“Yes, an hour ago,” Kepler answered. “She wasn’t any more helpful than you were.”

Surani handed her his card. “If you can think of anything else, give us a call.”

She took it but then her hand dipped. And her face revealed yet more dismay. She stared at the policemen. “But, my God. I just realized... I mean, my job? What am I going to do for money? My salary... And my retirement funds?”

Surani glanced at Kepler, who at last showed a façade of sympathy. “I’m sorry to say, but Prescott cleaned out all the company accounts late last night. Payroll and retirement too. He moved close to twenty-five million into a bank in the Caymans and then it vanished. There’s nothing left. Not a penny.”

Chapter 11 Doll

11:15 A.M., SATURDAY

45 MINUTES EARLIER

“I still can’t believe it,” Gabriela whispered. “If you ever met him, met Charles, you’d think it was impossible what those men were saying.”

She and Daniel continued walking in silence into the shadows of the Upper West Side. They were almost to her apartment. There, she’d explained, she’d call co-worker Elena and Charles’s lawyer and see if she could piece together what had happened.

She added, “He was the nicest guy in the world. When I got divorced, he said anything I needed, just let him know. He found a lawyer for the divorce. One of the best in the city. He lent me ten thousand for expenses. But it wasn’t a loan. I tried to pay him back but he wouldn’t take a penny.” She took a tissue and pressed it to her eyes.

They turned down a canyon-like cross street to head west. In a moment they were at her building, a five-story brick structure a few blocks from Central Park, between Columbus and Amsterdam.

As they walked into the lobby a man, standing near the elevator, looked her up and down. “Gabriela McKenzie?”

“Shit. Another cop?” she whispered to Daniel.

Then their eyes noted he carried a paper Whole Foods shopping bag.

“What’s this?” she asked softly.

“You are Gabriela?” The man was six-two. He was solid, but not fat. Solid the way a bag of fertilizer’s solid. His hair was a mass of curly blond ringlets.

“Yes. I’m sorry, who are you?”

A giddy laugh. “Hey, there. How’re you doing? Beautiful morning, isn’t it? Gorgeous. Predicting overcast and temperatures plummeting later, but let’s enjoy what we’ve got now, shall we?”

He strode up to them, moving in a lithe way for a large man. A faint grin. “I’m Joseph.” He didn’t extend his hand. “Don’t try to rack your brains. We’ve never met.” A nod at Daniel, who gazed into the man’s dark eyes. Under an unbuttoned black overcoat, he wore a loose-fitting brown suit and a dress shirt with two slashes of crease across the belly. His teeth curiously had a slightly pinkish tint.

“And you...?” She didn’t complete the question but instead asked, “How do you know me?”

“Oh, I don’t yet. Not personally, that is. My loss, that. How you doing today? Not in the mood to chat? No worries. I’ve got something you’ll be interested in.”

“What’re you talking about? Leave us alone.”

“Wait. ‘Interested,’ I said. Aren’t you curious exactly what?”

“No.”

“Oh, hey. I’ll bet you will be. Betcha five bucks. Want to take me up?”

“Hey, fuck off, mister,” Daniel said, moving forward an inch or two.

Joseph held up a hand as if warding off a blow. Grinning, cringing. Playful. “Just take a peek. Pretty please? I’m begging you.” He lifted the shopping bag.

Gabriela’s head swiveled toward Daniel as Joseph reached into the bag and withdrew a windbreaker, black and blue like the water of New York Harbor at dusk. It was a child’s size. He also displayed a plastic doll, similar to Barbie. But the dress had been removed from the toy. The beige flesh glowed in a band of sunlight.

Gabriela screamed.

Joseph frowned broadly. “The ears. The ears!” He tapped his own. “That was noisy.”

She raged, “Where did you get those? That’s Sarah’s jacket! And her doll!” She stepped back and grabbed her cell phone.

Joseph said, “Oh, about the phone. Just think about why I might not want you to make any calls. Is that too much of a stretch? I’ll vote it isn’t.”

“What the fuck is this?” Daniel barked.

Joseph wagged a finger his way but said nothing.

Her voice cracking, Gabriela repeated, “Where did you get those? Where is she? Who are you?”

“So many, many questions... Let’s take ’em one at a time. I got the jacket from Ms. Sarah. That’s a no-brainer. And where could she be? Where do you think? With some friends of mine. As for question number three, I’ll hold off on that for the time being.”

Gabriela lunged, grabbing him by the lapels. This caught Joseph off-guard and he stumbled back, an angry frown replacing the smirk. Daniel restrained her.

Then the slick grin was back on Joseph’s face. “Re-lax! Little Sarah’s fine.”

Daniel eased closer yet. Joseph opened his coat and jacket and displayed the butt of a pistol. “More show-and-tell! So settle down there, Cowboy.”

Daniel, eyes wide, stepped back.

Gabriela gasped as she stared at the weapon.

Joseph looked Daniel up and down. “And who exactly are you, Cowboy?”

“I’m a friend.”

“Friend. Okay. Let me see your wallet.”

Daniel hesitated, then dug into his pocket and handed him a wad of cash. Hundreds and fifties. Probably a thousand dollars.

“That’s what goes into a wallet. That’s not a wallet.”

“Take it.”

“I don’t want it. I want your wallet.”

Gabriela shouted, “Where’s Sarah? What’ve you done?”

Joseph tapped his ears again. “Let’s not draw too much attention to ourselves. This” — he tapped the pistol — “is even louder than your hysteria. Now, Cowboy, wallet.”

Daniel handed the supple leather over.

“No, no...” Gabriela was crying now.

As he flipped through the billfold, Joseph seemed to be memorizing various facts. He slipped out one of the business cards and examined it. “The Norwalk Fund. Sounds lucrative.” He handed everything back. “Here you go, Cowboy Dan, a resident of Eighty-Five Franklin Street. Nice area. That’s all I want for now. But if I ever do have need of a loan, glad to know you’re sooo willing to part with your cash.” Then to Gabriela, “Now, about Ms. Sarah. The reason she’s visiting my friends is because of your boss. Which maybe you figured out. Charles Prescott disappearing. Which troubled me mightily. You’ve heard from the police about that, I imagine?”

“Yes, but what does—”

A finger to his lips silenced her. “Yes’ll do just dandy. Don’t say any more unless I ask. Okay?”

She nodded, her hands clenched.

“Now, if the fine constabulary of the city of New York calls you again, don’t talk to them. If your phone rings and you don’t recognize caller ID don’t pick up. If they leave a message don’t return their calls. If they stop you on the street and ask you anything, from the time of day to where to buy good donuts when they’re on break to details about your boss’s underwear preferences, tell ’em you’re not saying anything until you see your lawyer. If I find out you’ve been talking to the police I won’t be happy. And that means Ms. Sarah won’t be happy.”

“Stop it! Quit playing these fucking games!” Gabriela swallowed and stared at the windbreaker and doll. “How do I know you have her? Maybe you stole them.”

Joseph carefully rolled the blue windbreaker up and slipped it into the bag, dropped the doll on top of it. “Here’s what’s happened. Your ex-husband, Timothy, dropped your daughter off at her dance class this morning. Not long after that, an associate of mine who looks like Tim’s father came to the school and signed her out. Grandpa’s name and picture are on the assigned release list.”

“How did you know that?” Gabriela whispered in shock.

Joseph seemed not in the mood to answer. “He said that there was a change of plans and he was supposed to take Sarah to some friends. You had an unexpected trip. Grandpa look-alike dropped her off with said friends. I.e., me. That’s how it worked. And pretty damn smooth if I do say so myself.”

“No! She wouldn’t go away with a stranger!” Gabriela cried.

“The last time she saw her grandfather was two years ago. I learned that with a few mouse clicks. Tsk, tsk — all that social network stuff. People are sooo careless nowadays.”

Wiping her eyes with her fingertips, she whispered, “I don’t have much money. But I’ll get you whatever you want. I’ll borrow it. I’ll—”

Joseph’s amused eyes took in Daniel again. “You’re gettin’ tense there, Cowboy; you’re getting antsy. I can see it. Like you’re thinking about playing hero. You want to take a pen and stab me in the eye? Well, first, I’d kill you before you got six inches toward me. But if you managed to grab a bat or have an RPG hidden on your person and you took me out, what do you think would happen to our Sarah? Be a little smarter, okay?”

Daniel said evenly, “The police’ll get you. And the FBI. Kidnapping’s a federal crime.”

Joseph sighed. “Oh, pul-ease...” His eyes swayed back to Gabriela. His voice was more reasonable now. “Listen. She’s fine. She’s watching TV. She’s got some toys. She thinks she’s with some friends of yours she hasn’t met. You had to go out of town for a day or two.”

“If you hurt her, I’ll—”

“Movie dialogue alert... Let’s not waste time, okay?”

“I want to talk to her. I want to see her.”

“In a minute.”

“Please.”

“In a minute.” Joseph looked around them. There were no observers. “Now, listen to me carefully. Are you listening?”

“Yes, but—”

“Shhh. All I want is you to listen.”

“All right.” She looked down past her trembling hands.

“Have you heard from Charles Prescott today?”

“No, I swear. I’d tell you if I’d heard from him. Please... What do you want?”

Joseph was nodding. Again he looked up and down the street out the front door. A few passersby but nobody was paying this group any attention. “There’s a list — with detailed information on some clients of Charles’s. Thirty-two of them, to be exact.”

“Thirty-two?” she asked, looking quickly at Daniel.

“That’s right. He called it the October List. These were special clients he did, let’s say, some private work for.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s not really my concern, now, is it? Anyway, I’m one of those clients. And we were involved in an important project — which has been derailed thanks to your boss vanishing unexpectedly. I don’t like derailings and now I need to be in touch with the others. Without him we’re a rudderless ship. Did you catch that word, by the way? ‘Need’ the list? And you’re going to get it for me.”

“But how can I get you something I’ve never heard of?”

“You knew Charles better than most people. Even if you’re telling the truth — I’m not exactly sure about that, by the way — but even if you are, you better than anybody can figure out where it is.”

Daniel said, “But if it was that important, he wouldn’t’ve kept it himself. He’d give it to somebody for safekeeping. His lawyer, his—”

“His lawyer doesn’t have it. I checked.”

Gabriela asked, “Mr. Grosberg? You’ve talked to him?”

Joseph paused, and his thick lips eased into what might have been a smile. “We had a meeting. A... discussion. I’m convinced he doesn’t have the list.”

“Meeting? You don’t mean that at all. What the hell did you do to him?”

“Relax. He’ll be okay in a month or two.”

“He’s seventy years old! What did you do?”

“Gabriela, we on the same page here? I don’t need you to be weird. I need you to be focused, for Sarah’s sake. Now, I heard about the list from a little bird — who’s no longer with us, by the way.”

“What?”

Joseph wrinkled his nose, dismissing her shocked expression. “This Tweetie Pie, I was saying, this little bird told me that Charles was so paranoid he didn’t keep the list on computers. He said if the Mossad could be hacked, then he could be hacked. So he only had hard copies. And he kept one in New York. It’s here somewhere. You get to find it.”

“How?”

Joseph held up a finger. “Maybe you know more than you think you do.”

“I don’t! Maybe some other employees heard of it, but—”

“Elena Rodriguez, his nod to affirmative action? The occasional temps? The bookkeeper? No, you were the only one who worked that close to Mr. Charles Prescott. He told me that. He said there was nobody like Gabriela. So you’ve got to be the little gal who can. I need you to find me the October List.”

He turned his eerie gaze at Gabriela probingly. “And there’s something else I want. The initial fee I paid Charles. I want it back. Four hundred thousand dollars.”

“Fee?” Gabriela asked. “There is no up-front fee at Prescott. We get an annual percentage of the portfolio...” And then she nodded and added with disgust, “But I get it: These’re the special clients you’re talking about. These thirty-two.”

“Exactly!”

“But if you’re secret how would I know where any money for... you people is?”

“Oooo, that stung.” Joseph pretended to pout.

Daniel said, “Listen, Joe. Be realistic. If her boss took off he’d take the cash with him.”

“ ‘Joe’?” The man looked around broadly.

“Joseph.”

“Oh, moi.” He smiled. “Charles left town pretty fast. According to my sources, when Prescott heard there was a warrant he bailed and didn’t get all the money he could have. Maybe the police found some of it. But I’ll bet there’s a lot more. And I’m hoping for your sake — and Ms. Sarah’s — that you can hit the jackpot. Now, Gabriela, let’s get some more ground rules set. First, like I said, no police. And a cone of silence with everybody else: Your ex-husband, your best friend, your hairdresser. Everybody.”

“You’re despicable!”

Joseph turned to Daniel, who looked like he was considering slugging the man. “Sorry you walked into the middle of this. But you get the picture. You don’t seem stupid. You keep your mouth shut too. You agree to that?”

“Yeah.”

Joseph laughed. “If looks could kill.” To Gabriela he said, “Now, it’s nearly noon. I’ll need the list by start of business Monday, so I’ll give you — I’ll generously give you — until six tomorrow to find it. Sunday. But about the money — that’s a different story. In case everything falls apart and the police come knock, knock, knocking on my door, I’m going to need that cash in my hot little hand, so I can jump ship. That I want by six o’clock tonight.”

“Tonight? Impossible!” she said, gasping. “Four hundred thousand dollars?”

“For Sarah’s sake you better figure out how to make it extremely possible.”

Then, with an edge of resolve in her voice, Gabriela said, “I’m not doing anything until you let me talk to my daughter.”

“You can’t talk to her.” Joseph opened his phone and displayed a video. “But...”

Daniel and Gabriela looked down. The cute blond girl was sitting watching TV cartoons. Oblivious to the shadowy forms of two adults in the background.

“How could you do this?” she raged once more.

Joseph sighed, looking bored, and put the phone away. “Time for a pop quiz. Now, what’s the most important ground rule?”

“No police.” The words sounded as if uttered underwater.

“Hooray, you get an A plus.” He picked up the bag containing the doll and the sweatshirt. “Oh, and by the way, somebody’ll be watching you. Every minute. You do believe me? No need to answer. See ya.” And he was gone.

Chapter 12 Childless

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?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m impressed.” He walked along the carpeted floor in front of them, bending close to examine each one.

“I used to paint but I decided I liked photography better. There’s something seductive about taking reality and controlling it.” Her voice was enthusiastic, but that energy suddenly vanished and she fell silent, as she gazed at a framed crayon drawing of a heart. I love you Mommy was painstakingly written in the margin.

Now Daniel eased to the window.

“See the cops?” She turned away from the artwork.

“Not yet,” he replied looking out again.

They discussed what to do next, how to save Sarah — getting into the Prescott Investments office, trying to find the October List and the money.

She fell silent and sat heavily in a chair. “It’s overwhelming,” she said.

“Nothing’s overwhelming if you take it step by step.” Scanning the street, he clicked his tongue. “Yep. There they are. There’s a playground across the street, a couple hanging out there, heads down. Only they’re in business suits and there’re no kids nearby. They might be talking into microphones in their sleeves. Oh, and then on the roof of the building facing yours? It looks like that duo from the street.”

“The roof?” she asked with a frown of disbelief. “They’re looking in?”

“No, they’re just setting up equipment, it looks like. Microphone — a dish of some kind.”

Gabriela turned away and looked absently around the room.

“All right.”

Daniel looked at her inquiringly.

“Let me know when they’re finished.”

She walked back and forth in front of the window, pacing anxiously.

Only a minute later he said, “Okay, they’re aiming some big phallic lens this way.”

She stepped close to him and whispered, “Let’s talk about Charles and the case, but don’t say anything about Joseph.”

He nodded.

For five minutes they carried on an improvised but credible conversation about Charles Prescott’s alleged crimes and her desperate situation. At one point, though, real tears began cascading down her cheeks and she had to pause to compose herself.

Then, standing right in front of the window, she instructed, “Come here.”

“What—?” Daniel asked.

“Come here,” she repeated firmly.

Frowning, curious at her tone, Daniel did as instructed. As a cool autumn breeze flowed into the room from the open window, she gripped him hard and kissed him on his mouth. Tentatively at first, then more firmly.

“Kiss me back,” she whispered.

He was startled but he did as ordered, firmly and with passion — his grip on her shoulders nearly hurt. She could sense his genuine desire. She felt a burst of longing within her.

Then Gabriela forced herself to tell him in a whisper, “Step back, and look me over like you’re enjoying what you’re seeing.” She stripped her burgundy sweater off.

“I don’t have to pretend about that,” Daniel mouthed.

In her pale blue bra and close-fitting stretch pants, she walked to the window, paused for a moment and pulled the curtain shut. She then put the sweater back on.

“Bummer,” he whispered.

She held her fingers to her lips. She grabbed the TV remote and — muting the volume — turned the unit and the cable box on, then scrolled through pay-per-view channels until she found an adult movie. Two clicks and the bad film came to life in medias res, depicting a young couple going at it poolside in a very stressed lounger. The volume rose.

Uhn, uhn, uhn...

She nodded to the door then snagged the leather jacket from the rack in the hall. But her face grew somber as she looked at the garment on a neighboring hook: a child’s faux-fur parka.

More tears flowed.

Daniel put his arm around her shoulder, gave an encouraging hug. Gabriela pulled on sunglasses. He did too and they stepped out the door into the hallway, which smelled of carpet and cleanser. In ten minutes they were slipping out of the service entrance in the back of the building, and heading once more for Central Park, free of prying eyes and ears.

Chapter 13 Intimate

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 were 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 cliché?”

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 14 Daniel’s First Job, Circa 1998

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 15 Crime Scene I

3:15 P.M., SATURDAY

1 HOUR, 35 MINUTES EARLIER

Moving cautiously, the couple continued down the damp, tree-lined street of Midtown in silence. Cautious of necessity. They knew the police had to be watching the Prescott office.

Gabriela eyed cars speeding along the cross street. Dark cars, pale cars, taxis, limos, trucks. Vehicles, as much as pedestrians, were part of the tapestry of Manhattan. But she noted nothing out of the ordinary, nobody paying particular attention to them.

Though seeing the unmarked police car at the curb, they paused near a ginkgo tree encircled by a low, wrought-iron fence to keep marking dogs from the trunk. “That’s it,” she whispered, indicating a six-story office building about fifty feet east, on the same side of the street where they stood. On a sign beside the front door a half-dozen businesses were listed — therapists, a chiropractor, a graphic design company.

At the top: Prescott Investments, LLC.

“How’re you holding up?” Daniel asked.

“I’m fine.” Dismissing the question.

Gabriela recalled that when she was a teen the Professor often comforted her by asking the very same or a similar question. “You okay?” “All right?” He’d sit close and look her over. She could smell tobacco and aftershave. She’d initially reply that she was fine, in this same tone as now, but he’d smile and persist. And he’d finally work out of her that she was sad or angry about some incident at school or because somebody had laughed at her (even at thirteen she was tall and skinny as a post) or simply because the day was cold and overcast.

Gabriela had had mood problems all her life.

The Professor could usually trick the sadness away, for a time at least.

This memory she put away. With difficulty.

“There she is,” Gabriela said, nodding in the direction of her attractive Latina co-worker, Elena Rodriguez, across the street. The woman was walking toward the building from the opposite direction, her eyes down, face grim.

Elena Rodriguez looked up and saw them, then started across the street. Her gaze swiveled to the unmarked police car parked in front of the office building, manned by a single officer. She hesitated in the street, as if trying to avoid being seen, and stepped back. When a truck passed, she hurried across after it — straight toward an oncoming taxi. There came a wrenching scream and the screech of tires like a bird of prey’s cry, followed by a loud thud. Daniel’s and Gabriela’s view was obscured but an instant later they saw Elena spiral to the curb.

“God,” Daniel whispered.

Immediately the officer sitting in the police car leapt out and ran to her aid. The cop looked around once then bent down toward the woman and pulled out his radio. The cabbie raced up, gesturing frantically with his hands.

“Jesus,” Daniel muttered. “Is she all right?”

It did look bad, Gabriela realized, but she whispered, “We can’t worry about her. Let’s go.”

She gripped Daniel’s arm and pulled him forward. Taking her keys from her pocket, she hurried to the office building. As the cop was bending down over Elena and making a call they stepped into the lobby. Gabriela slipped the key into the inner door lock and in less than a minute they were on the second floor, at the door marked with another brass plaque: Prescott Investments, LLC.

The door was sealed with a yellow adhesive marker. Crime Scene Do Not Enter. The phone number to call in case one wished to access the office was at the bottom.

Daniel hesitated but Gabriela opened the door of the office and pushed inside, tearing the NYPD notice neatly in half with a loud, ripping sound.

Closing the door after them, she stopped, blinking, and looked around. “My God, they took everything! The computers, shredders, hard drives, file cabinets, credenzas. They must’ve brought moving trucks!”

Daniel too examined the rooms, then glanced from the window. “I can’t tell how Elena is. The trees are blocking the view. I think she’s still on the ground.”

“We can’t worry about her. We have to search! The money and the October List. We need them!”

Her head swiveled as she regarded what few objects were inside. Some bad artwork, photographs and diplomas and certificates up on the walls. Also, vases of fake flowers, office supplies, cups, mugs, wilted flowers, pictures of family, bottles of wine, boxes of coffee and snacks. On two coffee tables were professional journals, recent editions of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, several books: Debt Markets in BRIC Countries, Accounting Procedures and Tax Treatment of Oil and Gas Leasing Partnerships.

In a corner were some storage boxes, missing lids but filled with papers.

Gabriela dropped to her knees and prowled through the cartons.

“Helpful?” Daniel asked as he began looking through drawers, which all appeared to be empty, except for office supplies.

She read through them quickly. “No. These’re just real estate records about the building. Nothing to do with Charles’s business.”

She began rifling drawers and looking through closets while Daniel was prying up carpet and knocking on walls, searching, apparently, for hidden compartments.

A man’s approach, Gabriela thought. Not necessarily a bad one.

They continued the search. But twenty minutes later Gabriela stood, stiffly, and looked around. She said in despair, “Nothing.” She closed her eyes and sighed. Then she looked mournfully at the clock on the wall. “He kept his own watch fast, ten minutes, Charles did, so he’d never be late, never miss an appointment or conference call.” Her eyes still on the timepiece, she said, “We have two hours. Oh, Sarah.” She choked a sob. “What’re we going to do?”

Daniel peered out the window again, carefully. “The cop’s on the radio, looking at the building. He seems suspicious. Oh, hell.”

“What?”

“Somebody just came out of the building. Some woman. The cop called her over.” Daniel stepped back fast. “He’s looking up again. I think he’s suspicious. We better get out.”

Which was when Gabriela cocked her head. “Oil and gas.”

“What?”

She pointed to the reception area coffee table. “That book?”

It was a textbook, thick and intimidating. Tax Treatment of Oil and Gas Leasing Partnerships.

She said, “We’ve never done any of that kind of work.” She picked up the tome. Flipped through it. “Daniel, look.” The first hundred pages were dense text about accounting and tax procedures. In the middle, though, were a dozen pages bound into the book that had nothing to do with partnerships.

On the top of the first page were the words: October List.

Gabriela laughed. “Yes!”

“He hid it in plain sight.”

“Smart of him. The list’s actually bound in, like any other pages, so it doesn’t bulge suspiciously. No one would think twice about it; and there wasn’t much chance of anyone stealing a boring textbook on leases.”

Gabriela carefully tore the list out. “Let’s copy it.” She looked around. “Wait. The copier’s gone. The police took it. Why?”

Daniel shrugged. “Maybe the memory chip. Fingerprints, I don’t know.”

Gabriela glanced out the window. “Shit.” She stepped aside fast. “Stay back.”

“What? The police?”

“No. Somebody else. I saw a man in the alley across the street, looking up at the window. It might’ve been Joseph. A dark coat, like his. I couldn’t really tell.”

“How could he’ve followed us here? Why would he want to?”

“He said he’d be checking out if we went to the cops.” Gabriela glanced carefully out the window again. “I don’t see anyone. I’m probably being paranoid.”

Daniel said, “Maybe not. We don’t exactly know what’s in the list, but something tells me Joseph won’t be the only one who wants it.”

She looked again out the window. “The cop? He’s on his radio. He knows something’s up.”

“We have to get out of here.”

“This is the only copy of the list. We can’t risk Joseph or the police or whoever’s out there”—a nod at the street—“stealing it. It’s my only bargaining chip to get Sarah back.”

She examined the room fast and spotted on a credenza the bottles of wine. “Gifts from clients,” she said. She nodded at a dark green box of Dom Pérignon champagne. “Could you open that up?”

Daniel undid the clasp and lifted the top. She folded the pages of the October List very tightly and, when he lifted the bottle, slipped them under it. He sealed the box back up and put it into a plastic bag. With a black marker she wrote a note on a Post-it and added that to the bag.

“What are you doing with it?” Daniel asked.

“I’m going to have it delivered to my friend Frank.”

“Frank Walsh, Mr. Complication,” Daniel said with a dry smile.

“Yeah. But a trustworthy complication.” She glanced at the window. “What’s the cop doing?”

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 16 Escape

4:50 P.M., SATURDAY

40 MINUTES EARLIER

“I never thought we’d find it,” Gabriela said breathlessly. “The October List.”

They were on Third Avenue, walking fast away from the office building.

Daniel Reardon said, “I didn’t get a look at it. What could you tell?”

“I just glanced at the first page. Names and places and numbers. Maybe accounts, maybe dollar amounts. I don’t know what they mean. And I didn’t recognize anybody.”

They continued in silence for a few minutes before he said, “In the list, did you see anything about ‘October’?”

“No.”

“I wonder what it means. An anagram, a name?”

“Maybe,” Gabriela suggested, “it means something’s going to happen next month. Something really bad.” She sighed, as if feeling all the more guilty about not turning the list in.

“How long?” she asked. “Until Joseph’s deadline?”

A pause, and Daniel said, “About an hour and ten minutes.”

“No! It’s that late?” Gabriela tugged her jacket closer. The wind was brisk and filled with autumn chill. “There’s no way we can find the money in time! We don’t have any leads.”

Daniel agreed. “I don’t see how.”

“We have the list, though!”

He hesitated then said, “That’s not what he wanted by six. He wanted the money.”

“But it’s the most important thing to him. Didn’t you get that impression? If he’s reasonable, he’ll take it and let Sarah go.”

“I’m sorry, Gabriela, but I don’t think he is a very reasonable man.”

She stared at him and there was hysteria in her voice. “But it’s all I’ve got!”

“Still,” he persisted, “we’ve got to try to find his money. Or at least a place where it might be, so we can tell him we’re getting close. That could be enough — if we can give him something specific — to buy more time.”

Her shoulders slumped and she nodded back at the building. “If there’s nothing in the office, then I don’t know where else we could find any clues to—” She abruptly stopped speaking.

“What?”

Frowning, Gabriela said, “Last night, when I met you?”

He smiled. “I remember.”

“I’d left work early for that meeting about negotiating the warehouse lease in Bankers’ Square? The rush job? I had some files with me.”

“Right. I was thinking you were quite the workaholic. What’s in them?”

“Open items for the accountant. Some business, but some personal of Charles’s. If I find something in them, we can at least tell Joseph we’ve got a lead.”

“Then let’s get to your place. Fast. We don’t have much time.”

They hurried toward the uptown street, to catch a cab.

Daniel was lifting his arm to flag one down when a voice from behind them barked, “Hold it right there.”

They stopped, exchanged surprised glances, then turned around.

Gabriela blinked and looked at the two detectives with unbridled anger. She whispered to Daniel, “No, we can’t wait! We have to get to my place now!”

She turned to the cops. “Detective Kepler and...” She looked toward the other one, smaller, his complexion grayish.

“Surani.”

Kepler gestured the cab to keep going.

“No!” Gabriela barked.

The driver hesitated and then, responding to the detective’s angry glare, sped off to pick up another fare.

Surani asked, “Have you heard from your boss?”

“No. I don’t know anything more about where he’s gone. I would’ve called you if I found out anything.”

“Would you?” Kepler asked. “You weren’t too busy?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice was flint.

“Hanging out in your apartment, watching TV?” the detective shot back. “Who knows what you’ve been up to?”

She asked, “How did you find me here? You’ve been following me?”

“We were at Prescott Investments. Someone fitting your description was spotted walking away from the place. We thought we’d take a stroll around this beautiful neighborhood. And see if you happened to be here. After committing a felony.”

The more relaxed of the two, Surani, said, “There was a report that somebody maybe broke into the Prescott office just now.”

“What?” she asked, frowning.

Kepler regarded her closely — and cynically. “Was it you?”

“I—”

“Don’t lie.”

“No,” Daniel said firmly.

Gabriela turned to look at Daniel, who was easing forward to the officer. “Gabriela wanted some personal items. But we saw there was a police seal, so we left.”

“Yeah?” Kepler asked.

“That’s right,” Gabriela said, looking around, as if Joseph was nearby, coolly observing this conversation.

Oh, and by the way, somebody’ll be watching you. Every minute...

“Look, we have to go. I don’t have time for this.”

Kepler continued, paying no attention to her protest, “There was an officer in front of the building. Why didn’t he see you go into the lobby?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriela said stiffly. “If he was supposed to be guarding the place, ask him.”

Kepler snapped, “What the hell were you looking for?”

“Some personal things. You heard that. A checkbook, some bank statements of mine. Nothing you’d be interested in. Nothing having to do with Charles.”

“And you didn’t break the crime scene seal?”

“Of course not.”

“It’s a crime, you know,” Surani said.

“I assumed so. That’s why we left.”

Kepler said ominously, “I’ve got an officer going through the place now. Just to see if anything’s missing.”

Daniel said, “This’s been a tough time for her. Couldn’t you just give her a break?”

Kepler seemed to be practicing his skills at ignoring people. He looked Daniel up and down with what appeared to be contempt, then moved away, pulled out his cell phone and made and received several calls.

Surani stood nearby, less hostile, but at attention as if to grab them if they tried to escape.

She glanced at her watch. Daniel too looked down at it. “The time,” she whispered. “The deadline...” Her jaw was trembling. “We have to get those files in my apartment!”

The deadline was forty-five minutes away.

“We really have to go!”

Kepler disconnected. “Glad we ran into you,” he said, not sounding particularly glad at all. He nodded to his phone. “The FBI’s just found out something else. Those clients I was telling you about earlier today? A number of them are in the financial services area — the U.S., Europe and the Far East. Brazil, too. A lot of stock and bond traders. But at least one was a known arms dealer, specializing in explosives and chemical weapons. He’s the only one we’ve been able to identify. Gunther. Probably that European guy you mentioned, in St. Thomas. Thanks for that by the way. Don’t know the first name. From Frankfurt originally. We think he has a safe house somewhere on the Upper East Side. That name ring any bells?”

“No. Charles never had a client named Gunther.”

“Well, he did,” Kepler snapped. “I just told you that.”

“What I mean is I never heard of him.”

Suddenly Kepler glanced down at her purse and saw the corner of an envelope protruding. “What’s that?”

She eased away. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? I’ll bet it’s more than nothing.”

“Just personal things.”

“What?”

“I’m not answering that. If you want ’em, get a fucking warrant.”

Kepler looked at Surani and said, “What’d we learn in detective school?”

His partner said, “Which part?”

“About when there’s been suspicion of a felony — say, breaking and entering.”

“Oh, breaking and entering an office building?”

“Yeah, exactly. That means that we can search a suspect without a warrant, right? The Constitution lets us do that.”

Surani said, “It encourages us to do that.”

“Don’tcha just love that Constitution?” Kepler mused, ripping the bag from her hands and lifting out the envelope.

Chapter 17 The Victim

5:30 P.M., SATURDAY

25 MINUTES EARLIER

The only good is what furthers my interest...

Joseph Astor recited this to himself as he carried his shopping bag toward a warehouse on the far west side of Manhattan, in the Forties. Traffic on the streets was noisy; on the Hudson River, silent.

His large form blustered over the sidewalk, and people glanced at his bulk and his dead eyes and his curly blond hair and they got out of his way. Joseph paid them no mind, after noting that none of them was a cop or other threat.

An impressive view of the Intrepid aircraft carrier before him, Joseph turned down a side street and approached the one-story warehouse. He undid the heavy Master padlock and muscled the door open, stepped in and slammed it shut. He flicked on the lights. The warehouse was mostly empty, though there were two vans parked inside, one completely useless, and sagging boxes stacked in one corner, molding into an unpleasant mass on the floor. The place was little used and typical of a thousand such buildings, two thousand, three, throughout the New York area. Small, solid structures, always in need of paint and fumigation, either windowless or with glass panes so grimy they were virtually blacked out. Most of these buildings were legitimate. But some were used by men, mostly men, who needed safe houses for certain activities — away from the public, away from the police. Long-term leases, paid in advance. Utilities paid by fake companies.

Tonight would be the last time he’d use this warehouse; he’d abandon it forever and move to the other one, similar, in SoHo, for the rest of the job, which he might have called the Gabriela Job or the Prescott Job but instead had — with some perverse humor — taken to calling Sarah’s Sleep-Away.

He took his jacket off but left on the beige cloth gloves — always the gloves. He strode to the corner of the place, a workbench. In the center of it was the windbreaker he’d showed Gabriela earlier in the day, along with a pink sweatshirt, on which Sarah was stitched across the chest. To the right were a dozen old tools and from the pile he found a large pair of clippers, like the sort used for cutting branches or flower stems. The edge was rusty, but sharp enough.

The only good...

From the shopping bag he extracted the fiberglass hand of a clothing store mannequin. He’d stolen the plastic appendage from an open loading dock behind a showroom in the Fashion District earlier that afternoon, after he’d been tailing Reardon and Gabriela near the building with the Prescott Investments sign on the front.

Gripping the clippers firmly, he cut into the dummy’s little finger at the second knuckle. This he rested in the middle of the sweatshirt and lifted out the last item in the bag, a beef tenderloin, sealed in thick cellophane. He used the clippers to snip a hole in the end of the bag and let the blood dribble onto the plastic digit and the sweatshirt. There was more liquid than expected; the result was suitably gory.

Excellent.

He bundled the shirt up with a gingham hair ribbon.

Seeing the beef blood spread, he thought: How lovely, how delicious... A line he would remember to share with Gabriela later. As he worked, he opened a bottle of his favorite beverage in the world. His Special Brew. It was virtually all he drank. Sustaining, comforting. He drank deeply.

A bottle a day...

After tidying up and putting the steak into the refrigerator in a tiny kitchen area of the warehouse, he put his handiwork into a CVS drugstore plastic bag.

He returned to the table and sat, sipping his beloved Hawaiian Punch — the original flavor, red.

Joseph wondered what the reaction would be to the memento inside the bag.

Another glance at his watch. The deadline was looming. He was thinking about Gabriela and the October List and Daniel Reardon. Joseph had met him only about six hours ago, on the street with Gabriela, and already disliked him intensely.

Then his thoughts segued to Gabriela’s friend, Frank Walsh, whom he did not know, but had only followed around and, of course, datamined. Joseph always did his homework before he went out to ply his craft.

Pudgy Frank Walsh. Nerdy Frank Walsh.

Joseph didn’t have any particular dislike for Mr. Walsh; he considered him to be a rather stupid, naive man. Pathetic.

He reflected that it was a shame Frank was going to spend his last night on earth with his mother, and not getting laid. At least, Joseph thought, sipping the sweet drink, he assumed not. Ick.

The September cold seeped in and, even though he had plenty of natural insulation on him, he shivered. Joseph was eager to get this part of the job over with and return home to Queens, where several new Netflix movies awaited, snug in their little red envelopes. Most people would probably be surprised that a man like him, who had killed twenty-two people in his life — men, women and, though only out of necessity or accidentally, children — would enjoy movies. And yet, why not? Killers were people too. In fact, he’d learned some things about his line of work from movies and TV.

The Long Good Friday, The Professional, Eastern Promises, others. The Sopranos not so much. Although he liked the acting, he wasn’t quite sure why Tony and the crew — none of them particularly clever — hadn’t been arrested and thrown in the slammer halfway through the first season.

Luck, he guessed.

No, scriptwriters.

He turned his jacket collar up and contemplated, with pleasure, returning home, sitting in front of the Sony by himself, well, with his Maine coon cat, Antonioni, and watching the latest disks. He wondered if he should take the tenderloin with him for dinner.

No, he’d do a Lean Cuisine tonight. Save the calories.

Joseph glanced at his watch. He took the CVS bag, stepped outside and locked the warehouse door.

Chapter 18 Scavenger Hunt

5:55 P.M., SATURDAY

2 HOURS, 35 MINUTES EARLIER

They walked along a northbound street on the East Side, dodging trash and tourists and early diners, night-shift workers, dog walkers and homeless men and women... or perhaps just locals who appeared homeless — scruffy, inattentive to hair and beard and laundry.

Their mission, which was proving difficult, was to find a cab to take them to her co-op apartment. Gabriela muttered angrily, “What they did back there, those assholes, it set us back an hour! And the deadline’s in minutes!”

“At least you’re not in jail,” he said.

She didn’t respond to this tepid reassurance. “Jesus, Daniel, it’s hopeless. I knew we couldn’t get the money in time but at least we could’ve found some concrete lead before the deadline. Something to reassure Joseph that we’d have the cash soon. But now... shit.” Desperation crimped her voice. She jerked her head to the east and south, where they’d just come from. “They’re fucking sadists, those two.”

“And where the hell are all the cabs?” he muttered.

Several sped by, either occupied or off-duty. Daniel waved his wallet at one of the latter but the driver just kept going.

They turned up a street that was grubby, darker and more pungent than in tourist-land, less congested, in hopes of finding a taxi. They passed stores in which dusty displays of DVDs or lace and buttons or used books or hardware sat faded behind greasy glass, a sad porn shop lit with bile-green fluorescents, Chinese and Mexican take-out restaurants that could not possibly have passed city inspection. In front of several of these establishments sat slight, dark-complexioned men, smoking and speaking in hushed tones or making mobile calls.

Gabriela’s cell phone rang. She looked at her watch. “Deadline time.” They paused and stepped to the brick wall of a building, so no one else could hear the conversation.

She took a deep breath, hit Accept and activated the speaker so Daniel could hear.

“Joseph?”

“Ah, Gabriela. I’ve been looking at the phone. Staring. It didn’t ring.”

“It’s just six. I was going to call you! I swear. Listen—”

“You have my money?”

“I’ve found the October List!”

“Have you now?” That teasing voice again. “Cause for celebration! What does it look like? Is it thick, is it thin, is it printed on construction paper?”

She blurted, in a guttural tone, “Tell me — how’s my daughter? Tell me!”

“She’s a little... troubled.” As if Joseph was pouting.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I told her I hadn’t heard any good news from you. So there might not be any good news for her.”

“You told her that?” Gabriela whispered.

“Now, what do you think? Would it be in my interest to make your daughter feel any more panicky? Honestly, I can’t even joke with you. You need to relax a bit. Okay, the money?” he asked, his tone suddenly blasé.

“I’ve got the list.”

“Heard that part. But saying that tells me you don’t have the money. And since you dodged the question about describing the list, I’m a little skeptical of that too.”

“No, no! I swear!”

“Ever notice,” Joseph offered, “when people say things like ‘I swear’ and ‘you’ve got to believe me,’ they are invariably lying?”

“I’m not lying! I have it. It’s in a place for safekeeping. I didn’t want to walk around with it.”

“Not much need for that. Proportionately there’re less muggings in New York than Portland, Maine. So, fine. You’ve found the list. Wunderbar! Let’s get back to money.”

“I’ve been running around town all day trying to do what you asked,” she cried. “Please, just a little more time. It’s taken longer than I thought. I’m sorry!”

“Racked with guilt, are you?”

Daniel stiffened with anger. His face grew dark. But he remained silent.

She leaned close to the phone. “Please, it’s been a nightmare. The police are everywhere! I can’t just sneak into the garden behind Charles’s town house and start digging for treasure, can I?” Her voice caught. Then she muttered angrily, “Tell me right now! How is my daughter?”

“She’s alive.”

“Alive? But is she okay?”

“Pretty much.”

“She must be terrified.”

“And I’m afraid of heights. Snakes aren’t my favorite either. But we cope. Now, money makes the world go ’round. That was the deal we made.” He seemed again to be pouting. “You’ve breached it. You’ve broken our agreement.”

“I’ll get your money,” she snapped. “I just need more time! I’m doing everything I can.”

“More time, more time.” His voice was taunting.

“Just a little.”

“Could be, you know, that you’ve found the money and you’re stalling, trying to figure out a way to keep it and get your daughter back.”

“No! Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re out of a job, remember?”

She began to tremble. Daniel put his arm around her.

Joseph said, “You were Charles Prescott’s office manager.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“So you know something about business?”

She hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“You know about business?” he repeated petulantly.

“I... I know some things. What are you asking?”

“You familiar with the concept of penalties?” Joseph’s voice was completely flat. The smarmy tone was gone. “Like you don’t pay your taxes on time, there’s a penalty? Well, you didn’t pay me on time. You missed the deadline.”

“I tried.”

“ ‘Try’ is a non-word. Either you do something or you don’t. It’s impossible to try to do something. So. New deadline. Six p.m. tomorrow—”

“Thank you! I—”

“I’m not through. Six p.m. tomorrow — you deliver the October List. And, now, five hundred thousand.”

“No! You can’t do that.”

“Is that what you say to the IRS? ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t pay what you want. No penalty for me!’ Look at me as the Excuse Nazi.” Giddy once more. His laugh was nearly a giggle.

“Why not just a fucking million?” she raged. “Or ten million?” Daniel squeezed her arm. She said to Joseph, “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Ah, just like ‘trying.’ There’s no ‘best’ or ‘worst.’ There’s keeping up your half of our agreement or not.”

“We don’t have an agreement! You’re extorting me, you kidnap—”

“Hello! Didn’t we have a conversation about movie dialogue? Now, consequences, I was saying: First, the penalty, the extra hundred K. Then, second, you have to go on a scavenger hunt.”

“A what?”

“A scavenger hunt.”

“I don’t understand,” Gabriela said, her voice choked.

“What’s not to understand? It’ll be easy. I’ll bet it won’t take you more than thirty minutes to find the prize.”

“You’re insane!”

“Well, now, that’s all relative, isn’t it? Go to Times Square. Behind a Dumpster in the alley at Forty-Eighth and Seventh. West side of the intersection.”

“What’s there?” she asked in a high, shaky voice.

But Joseph’s response was to disconnect.

They didn’t need a cab.

The prize Joseph had sent them to find was only four or so blocks away. They plunged into Times Square, a disorienting world of brilliant lights, massive high-def monitors, overlapping tracks of pulsing music, hawkers, street musicians, impatient traffic, mad bicyclists, tourists, tourists, tourists... The crowds were denser now, more boisterous, anticipating plays and concerts and meals and movies.

In ten minutes they’d come to the intersection that Joseph had described. She said, “There! That’s the Dumpster.” And started forward.

“Wait,” Daniel said.

“No,” she said firmly.

He tried to stop her. But she pulled away and dropped to her knees, looking behind the battered, dark green disposal unit.

Gabriela fished out the CVS pharmacy bag and looked inside. She choked. “It’s Sarah’s sweatshirt!” The pink garment was wadded up tightly. She started to lift it out and froze. “Blood, Daniel!” The streaks, largely dried to brown, were obvious. There was something primitive about them, like paint on the face of ancient warriors.

Gabriela gingerly lifted out the shirt, which was tied with a gingham hair ribbon. As she did, the garment unfurled and something fell from the inner folds to the grim floor of the alley. The colors were the pink of flesh and red of blood, and the shape was that of a small finger.

Daniel got to her just before her head hit the cobblestones.

Chapter 19 Sweet Dreams

8:30 P.M., SATURDAY

1 HOUR, 30 MINUTES EARLIER

“Horrible,” Gabriela whispered, her teeth set close.

She was quivering. Eyes closed, breathing heavily. “How could he do that?” In the back of the taxi she leaned into Daniel and he put his arm around her shoulders. She wiped her eyes. “How could somebody do something so despicable?” Looking at the CVS pharmacy plastic bag at their feet, Gabriela eased closer yet and he tightened his grip. He was strong. The nice suits he wore, the thick yet draping cloth, largely concealed his physique, but one touch of his arm left no doubt he was in good shape.

She thought again about meeting him Friday, yesterday.

And what had transpired.

Felt a low pop within her, at the memory of Daniel, so very close, wiping the moisture from her forehead — then, with the same handkerchief, from his.

Was it just twenty-four hours ago? It seemed ages.

The ping again, lower, warmer, pulsing. But she pushed the thought away. Now was hardly the time.

Sarah...

A half hour earlier their taxi had stopped at his loft in TriBeCa, and he’d picked up a gym bag containing toiletries and a change of clothing. They were now on the way to her apartment so she could do the same — and, most important, collect the file folders.

She told him, “The documents might not have anything helpful but they’re all we’ve got to save Sarah’s life. I’m grasping at straws at this point.”

Now it was Daniel’s gaze that settled on the plastic bag, crumpled like a tiny pale body. Despite what they’d been through, he had remained the epitome of calm — until, in that disgusting alley, he’d seen what tumbled from the sack. He’d jerked back, a more violent reaction than hers.

He’d hissed, “Jesus...”

The shock was gone but in its place was a surfeit of anger and, perhaps, resolve.

“Why did you want to keep it?” she asked.

When they’d been in the alley Gabriela had flung the bag away fast, as if it were coated in acid. But Daniel, using his elegant silk handkerchief, had collected the sack, along with its contents.

He now said, “Evidence. There’ll be DNA on it” — a nod toward the bag—“maybe even Joseph’s fingerprints... if he got careless.”

“Sure. I hadn’t thought about that. I was emotional.”

“Pretty understandable under the circumstances.”

They now drove in silence. When the cab reached Central Park and was nearing her apartment she glanced at the driver to see if he was listening but he was on the mobile speaking in some Middle Eastern language, lost in his conversation. She whispered to Daniel, “The police’ll be watching. Joseph could be too.”

So she directed the driver to the street one block north, behind the apartment building. The yellow cab parked on a dark side street. “I’ll just be a few minutes,” she told the driver.

But the waiting clock on the cab meter was running and he couldn’t have cared less what his passengers were up to, what secret missions loomed. He resumed his staccato conversation.

Gabriela slipped from the cab and, walking close to the walls of the adjacent buildings, as if spies were after her, made her way to the service door of her apartment. The loading dock wasn’t locked but the door leading into the basement was. Her front door key, however, let her in.

In five minutes she was in her apartment, which she kept dark. Working mostly by feel, she found and stuffed clothing and the business files she wanted into her nylon gym bag and then looked out of the door carefully, checking to make sure there were no neighbors or, of more concern, NYPD officers lurking in the halls. But no one was present.

She locked the door behind her.

Outside once more, she slipped quickly into the backseat and the driver eased away from the curb.

Daniel pressed her knee.

After several blocks: “Sarah,” she said, a plaintive musing. “I wonder what she’s doing now, what’s going through her mind.”

“Don’t think about that,” Daniel whispered. She felt the enveloping sense of warmth as his arm encircled her shoulders again.

Winding through Saturday-evening traffic, which slowed with congestion around Lincoln Center, the cabbie steered south and east through Midtown. In ten minutes they were at the Waldorf Astoria. Daniel paid the driver and they stepped out onto the sidewalk on Park Avenue. Using a napkin again, he took the plastic bag, with its sick contents, and stuffed it into his gym bag.

“Be careful,” she said, numbly. “The blood.”

As they walked into the lobby, she stopped and blinked. “My God, it’s beautiful.”

“You’ve never been to the Waldorf?”

“Not exactly in my financial genetics.”

“I generally just meet clients here, but I’ve stayed a few times. When I’m having work done on my place. This’s old New York. That’s what I like about it.”

Her head swiveled back and forth, taking in the rich wood, the massive clock in the center of the lobby, the soaring ceilings.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll sightsee later.”

At the desk, they checked in, two rooms, Daniel using his credit card; he was worried that the police or someone else who might want the October List could track her here if she used hers. Datamining was all the rage nowadays, she’d read in the New Yorker.

They got out of the elevator. Their rooms weren’t adjacent but were on the same floor, not far apart. As they walked down the corridor, Gabriela felt the seeds of attraction unfolding again — even greater than the feelings she’d sensed in the bar yesterday when they’d met.

Yes, she kept thinking, Sarah. The name didn’t stop the stirrings deep within as she stole a glance at Daniel. But then: How can you possibly think of sleeping with him?

Still, she countered: Perhaps because you’ve been lonely for too many years.

And because Daniel Reardon is a little — maybe a lot — like you?

But she reminded: Stay focused.

Sarah, Sarah, Sarah...

In the hallway he said, “Let’s get something to eat. Or a drink at least.”

“Yes, I guess I need something.”

That morning’s breakfast, which they’d shared, was a hazy memory.

After dropping the bags in their respective rooms, they met downstairs in the subdued, elegant lobby bar. They sat beside each other in a banquette, their knees touching. The server, a woman with severely bunned hair, approached and greeted them, sharing that her name was Liz. She inquired if they were in town on business or for a vacation. Gabriela let Daniel answer.

“Just seeing the sights,” he said amiably.

“Sorry the weather’s not nicer. It was warm last week.”

They ordered: cheese and pâté and bread, and a bottle of Brunello.

Sipping the potent Tuscan wine, they talked about everything, free associating — everything, that is, except the October List and the kidnapping, much less the plastic bag. She’d brought to the table with her the files from her apartment, labeled Prescott Investments — Open Items. But she let them sit unopened, as if afraid they might not have the answers as to how they could save a kidnapped child.

She looked at her phone and sighed. “From Rafael. He got out safe and made the delivery. So far, so good.”

Nodding at this bit of good news, Daniel slipped his jacket off and she caught a glimpse of a line of reddish flesh, a scar visible in the V where his shirt tugged open. It crossed from chest to shoulder. He caught her eyes and pulled his shirt closed again, self-consciously.

“Can I ask what happened?”

He seemed to be debating.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, I’ll tell you. A few years ago I was driving with the kids up to New Hampshire and I was really tired. I shouldn’t have pushed it. I fell asleep and went off the road.”

“Jesus.”

“The car went down an embankment into a river. The doors were wedged shut. It started to fill up with water.”

“Daniel, no!”

“God, it was cold. We’d gone to see the leaves. It was September but really frigid.”

“What happened?” she whispered.

“We would all’ve drowned but some local guy happened to drive by — looked like he was out of Deliverance, you know? A mountain man sort, a redneck. He drove his pickup down the embankment, grabbed an ax and jumped in after us, even though the water had to be about thirty-five degrees. He just swam to the car and kept smacking away at the back window until he got us out. I got cut on a piece of metal after I shoved the boys out.”

“Oh, how terrible.”

Daniel gave a brief laugh. “And you know what? As soon as we were on the shore, he waved goodbye and left. Wouldn’t take any money, wouldn’t give me his name even. He just acted like, hell, who wouldn’t risk freezing to death to save somebody? Like it was the most natural thing in the world.”

“It hurts still?” A nod toward his chest.

“No, no. That was five years ago. Stiff sometimes, in the damp. But that’s all.” He grew quiet. “I was stupid and nearly got my sons killed. It was like that guy gave me a second chance. I don’t really think I deserved it. But there he was.”

She lowered her hand on his arm and pressed. She wanted so badly to kiss him but, with some effort, refrained. They returned to the wine and both fell silent.

Daniel signed the check and, at her suggestion, they divided up the files. They would spend the remaining hours of the evening, until exhaustion struck, looking for any leads to cash that Charles Prescott might have hidden. They walked to the elevators. When they exited the car he accompanied her to her door.

She hugged him. “Daniel, I—”

“Don’t know how to thank me?”

Her response was to grip him harder and surrender to sobbing.

“She’ll be okay,” he said. “Your daughter’ll be all right.”

Gabriela wiped her eyes and, stepping away, breathed deeply. Controlled herself.

A few seconds passed; they remained immobile, listening to voices laughing a few rooms away, a TV rumbling with an action flick.

She opened her door and stepped inside, turned back to him. Daniel eased closer.

Would he kiss her? she wondered.

She wondered too how she would respond.

But instead he offered the most chaste of embraces, murmured, “Good night,” and, holding his stack of folders, stepped back into the hall. The door swung shut and she was alone.

Chapter 20 A Good Judge

10:00 P.M., SATURDAY

10 HOURS, 30 MINUTES EARLIER

“Hal. Sorry to ruin your Saturday night.”

“Never a problem to see you, Pete.”

The men pumped hands vigorously. Both right wrists, coincidentally, were encircled by gold bracelets. One tasteful, one not.

“Well, sit down,” said Peter Karpankov, gesturing toward a chair across from the ornate but well-worn antique table he used for a desk, deep mahogany. “Have a seat. Do you want a drink? You want some whisky? Is that your drink? You want something else?”

“Naw, but thanks.” Hal Dixon, body a bit stocky, suit a bit rumpled, but shirt pressed, even now at this hour of the evening.

They were on the top, the third floor, of the ancient building on Tenth Avenue that housed Karpankov’s company.

The Russian poured some vodka and sipped it warm. He lifted his eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Naw, really, Pete. I mean, you’re right, yeah, I like whisky but nothing for me. The wife smells it on my breath I go home and it’s all hell to pay. I can have a drink with her but not a drink before her. You know how it is.”

“Ah, women, women, women...” The lean man chuckled. He looked so much like Vladimir Putin that Dixon had wondered if he was somehow related to the Russian president. He had no accent but sometimes you imagined he did.

There was a rumble from the corner and Karpankov’s large dog — whose breed Dixon didn’t recognize — stretched and looked over the visitor slowly. Not exactly hostile, not exactly friendly. He flopped back down on his cushion and sighed. The thing had to weigh 150 pounds. The dog’s brown eyes settled on Dixon and would not let go. Black-and-gray fur maybe naturally spiky, maybe rising, as in hackles.

As in just before the attack.

“He’s a good boy,” Karpankov said affectionately.

“Big,” Dixon said.

“Things’re going good for you, I hear.” Karpankov looked impressed. “The new shopping mall project.”

“Sure,” Dixon said. And kept his eyes locked with the Russian’s. “We’re making money hand over fist, even though I have no idea what the fuck that expression means.”

Karpankov blinked. Then laughed. “Ha, that’s true. I never thought about it. ‘Hand over fist.’ What’s that mean? People are careless, what they say. Clichés, lazy speaking. Makes you sick, sometimes.”

“Sick.”

The view from Karpankov’s office was of the Hudson River. Now, at night, the water was just a strip of black. What ebbed and flowed were lights, yellow, red, green, white, easing north and easing south.

Karpankov disconnected and then turned to Dixon, who regarded the man’s eyes for as long as he could.

Those are some very weird pupils, he thought, looking away. Not fifty shades of gray. Two.

The Russian said, “I’m thinking we should talk about that project in Newark. You and me.”

A joyous drumbeat tickled Dixon’s gut. He said enthusiastically, “That’s going to be a ball buster, Pete. Eight figures, easy. Mid eight figures.” Then to himself: Calm the fuck down. You’re talking like a tween gushing about Bieber.

“Eight, yeah, we’re figuring.”

“You’ll clean up with it,” Dixon said.

This was a joke because part of the project involved leases to a large dry-cleaning outfit. Dixon had been dying to participate.

Karpankov didn’t seem to get the play on words, though.

Dixon kept his face still — you had to when dealing with people like Karpankov — but his pleasure was growing by the second. He’d been hoping for a year that Karpankov would bring him in on some project, any project. But Newark? Jesus. That was Boardwalk. That was Park Place.

“But I need a favor, Hal.”

For a piece of Newark, he’d definitely help Karpankov out. Whatever the task. He sat forward, frowning with pleasant anticipation.

“Anything.”

But details of the carrot, or stick, were delayed.

Karpankov’s phone rang and he said a polite, “Excuse me.”

“Go right ahead.” Dixon looked at the dog; the dog looked back. Dixon was the first to disengage.

He lifted one shoulder then the other, adjusting his gray suit jacket. It was tight and the cloth was thin wool, too thin for the day’s chill. He’d realized this as soon as he’d left the house but didn’t want to go back for his overcoat. The wife. His shirt was a pastel shade of blue that some people probably thought was too gaudy. Dixon didn’t care. He wore bright shirts; it was his trademark. Yesterday pink, today blue. Tomorrow he’d wear yellow. The canary yellow. It was his favorite. And he always wore it on Sunday.

The Russian ended his call. Then, as always happened in discussions between men, Dixon knew, the mood changed, unmistakably, and it was time for serious horse trading. Karpankov put his fingers together, like he’d buried the pleasantries and tepeed dirt over their grave. “Now, I’m aware of something.”

“Okay.”

Karpankov often said that. He was aware of something.

“Have you ever heard of the October List?”

“Not familiar. Nope. What is it?”

“I’m not exactly sure. But I do know this: It’s a list of names of some people who’re powerful. And dangerous. About thirty, maybe a few more. I’ve heard some of ’em I might’ve done business with in the past.”

“October List. Why’s it called that?”

A shrug. “Nobody I’ve talked to knows. A mystery. It could mean all hell’s going to break loose in October.”

“Next month.”

“Next month. Or maybe it’s that something big happened last October and there’re plans in place as a result. Now, Hal, I want that list. I need the list. But I can’t have my people do it—’cause I may have a connection. Those people I’ve worked with. You don’t have any connection.”

Because I’m smaller fucking potatoes, Dixon thought. But that didn’t bother him. He nodded eagerly, like a dog. Well, a normal dog, not the big fucker in the corner.

The Russian continued, “Now, here’s the thing. I heard from Henry — you know Henry, my facilitator?”

“Right. I know Henry. Good man.”

“He is, yes. He heard that there’s a woman lives in the city has the list or knows where it is. You get the list from her, then you and me, we’ll go half and half on the Newark project.”

“Fifty percent?” Dixon blurted. “That’s very generous, Pete.”

The man waved off the gratitude. “This woman’s name is Gabriela McKenzie. She was the office manager of the prick who kept the list — he’s skipped town.”

“You have her address?”

“Upper West Side but she’s not there.” Karpankov tepeed his fingers. He leaned forward. “She and some guy she’s with’re keeping low, but my sources say they’re in the city somewhere. His name’s Reardon. My people tell me they’ll find out their location tonight or tomorrow and let me know.” His voice lowered further, and he put his hands flat on the table. “Hal, I heard you were the go-to man when it came to life in the streets, you know what I mean? Life in the trenches.”

“I try,” Dixon said modestly. “I know my way around.”

Karpankov cleared his throat. His eyes slid away to a model car on his desk, one of the six Fords, an Edsel. “And you’d do whatever you need to, to get the list? You have no problem with that, do you? Even with this person being a woman. And innocent.”

“Not a problem at all.” Dixon meant this, though he didn’t add he already found the task a turn-on.

“She’s going to be skittish.”

“Girls get that way. Especially depending on the time of month.”

Karpankov smiled. “I mean, she’ll be cautious. I’m not the only one who wants the list. There’re some other people after it.”

“Sure, you get me her location, and I’ll take care of it.” Dixon frowned as he considered the job. “So she knows people are looking for her?”

“That’s right.”

“You know one thing I’ve done works pretty good especially with the ladies? I tell ’em I’m like a deacon in a church. It gets their guard down. I even carry a Bible around with me.” He fished the little black book out of his breast pocket.

“Smart, Hal.”

The man beamed. “That’ll let me get up close. Then I pull out my piece and get her into my car. Take her to one of the construction sites, and go to work on her. She’ll tell me where the list is. And after? We’re pouring concrete Monday at the shopping center. They’ll never find the body.”

“Good.”

“And the guy with her? He connected?”

“No, just some businessman she’s sleeping with, I think. I don’t care about him. But...” A third tepee.

“I’ll take care of him too. Probably better just to shoot him.”

An approving nod from the Russian. “I’ll call you as soon as my people find her.”

The men rose and shook hands again, even more energetically this time, and the gold links clinked dully. Seeing Dixon grip his master’s hand so fervently, the dog stood. Dixon released and stepped back immediately.

“It’s okay,” Karpankov said. “He likes you.”

Yeah, Dixon thought, for a main course. He smiled at the dog, who was content to stand and stare.

In five minutes Hal Dixon was outside on the cool, windswept street, tugging his light suit around him. He was relaxing now that he was away from organized crime overlord Peter Karpankov and Godzilla. He began down the street with a jaunty bounce, wondering who he could sell the October List to once he made his own copy.