The October List Part 5

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

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

Her.

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

'The h.e.l.l does that mean? Sounds like something from a bad cop movie.'

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

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

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

Righteous?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'And she was with the guy?'

'That's right.'

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

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

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

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

'What?' Barkley snapped. 'Move the op center? Again? You gotta be kidding me?'

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

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

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

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

The other was another copy of the press release.

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

'We'll make this work. I know we will.' This flimsy rea.s.surance came from Kepler.

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

Vi-cin-ty.

Jesus, Kepler thought.

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

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

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

CHAPTER.

30.

2:10 p.m., Sunday

5 minutes earlier

The sky had changed for the worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Look!'

He too noted the blue-and-white patrol car speeding their way, the lights flas.h.i.+ng urgently. Gabriela shucked the backpack off her shoulder and they veered, stepping closer to a store, putting a stream of pa.s.sersby between them and the street.

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

The blood ...

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

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

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

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

'Mac!'

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

They continued walking.

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

'The Complication.'

'What did he say?'

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

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

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

Into his backpack he stuffed the shopping bag containing the gray Ca.n.a.li suit and s.h.i.+rt he'd changed out of at the store. Gabriela examined the contents of her bag and noticed spatters of blood on her sweater and windbreaker. 'I'm dumping these. s.h.i.+t. I loved that sweater.'

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

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

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

CHAPTER.

29.

1:40 p.m., Sunday

30 minutes earlier

Frank Walsh was standing in the tiny kitchen of his dim Greenwich Village apartment, thinking of the killing that morning.

It hadn't been easy.