The October List (23 page)

He drove carefully. The streets were slick with colorful layers; wind and rain had conspired to thin the canopy of oak and maple, decimating the foliage (almost literally, removing about every tenth leaf or so – Daniel grew irritated when people used the verb incorrectly).

He steered onto Henderson Lane, presently deserted of traffic, and continued past houses less opulent than the mansions but just as quiet. The windows of the structures were dark, mostly, and he spotted not a single person on the clean sidewalks. At a four-way intersection, he braked to a stop and let a Grand Cherokee, dark red, precede him, turning into Henderson. Daniel accelerated slowly and fell in behind the vehicle.

Several blocks away, when the SUV eased up to a stop sign, Daniel stabbed the brake pedal. The Prius skidded on the leaves and tapped the bumper of the Jeep gently.

He frowned and glanced forward. He saw the eyes of the occupants of the Jeep: the driver’s in the mirror and his college-aged passenger’s directly; the girl turned to gaze with some generic hostility.

Daniel winced and climbed out. He joined the driver, standing by the Jeep’s open door. He shook his head. ‘I am so sorry!’

The stocky man in a navy sport coat, tan slacks and blue shirt grinned ruefully. ‘Not like you were doing a hundred miles an hour.’

‘I didn’t think the leaves’d be that slick. Man, it was like ice. I just kept going.’ Daniel looked into the front seat. He said to the girl, clearly his daughter, ‘Sorry, you okay?’

‘Like, yeah. I guess.’ The blond girl returned to her iPod. The day was warm but she wore a stocking cap pulled down tight over her long hair and the sleeves of her thick sweatshirt extended nearly to her fingers.

The two men walked to the back of the SUV and regarded the vehicle. The Cherokee driver said, ‘They make ’em tough. I was going to say American cars, but, hell, I don’t really know where these babies’re built. Could be Tokyo.’ A nod at the Prius. ‘And that could’ve been made in Arkansas. Parts of it anyway.’

Daniel looked around the immaculate neighborhood. All was still deserted. ‘Thomas, listen carefully. Are you listening?’

The driver kept grinning. Waiting for an explanation. When there was none, he asked. ‘Do I know you?’

‘No, you don’t. Now, I want the name of the bank in Aruba your investment partnership uses. And the main investment account number and the PIN.’

‘Wait. What is this?’

Daniel unbuttoned his jacket and displayed the narrow grip of an old Smith & Wesson revolver. A .38 special.

‘Oh, my God.’ His eyes went to his daughter, lost in the elixir of music.

‘Just give me the information and you’ll be fine. She will too.’

‘Who are you …?’ His voice rose into a filament of sound, not unlike a note from a reed instrument.

‘Hold on, hold on,’ Daniel said, keeping a smile on his face, just in case anybody
did
happen to be behind one of those black windows. ‘Don’t panic. You don’t want to do that. This is just business. All I want is that information. I’ll verify it and then you go on your way. You’ll be out twenty million dollars but no one will get hurt. Besides, you didn’t exactly get that through socially minded investments, did you?’

‘You’re insane,’ he whispered. Panic was gone, anger had taken its place. And fast. ‘You fucker. You do this in front of my daughter? Who are you working for?’

‘Thomas, you don’t have much time. I’ll shoot your daughter first, because I need you alive to give me—’

‘All right. Don’t even mention that! Don’t even say it! All right, I’ll give it to you.’

Daniel placed a call.

‘Hello?’ came the low, melodious answering voice.

‘Andrew.’ He handed the phone to Thomas and instructed, ‘Give him the information.’

‘I don’t have it memorized!’

‘She gets shot first and—’

‘I just mean it’s in my phone! It’s encrypted. It’ll take a minute.’

Daniel said into the phone, ‘He’s got to decrypt it.’

Andrew Faraday said through the tinny speaker, ‘Okay. But hurry.’

Daniel glanced into the Jeep. The girl seemed irritated that she couldn’t find a song on her playlist.

With Daniel watching, to make sure that Thomas didn’t hit 911, the businessman began typing on his mobile. He lost his place. He took a deep breath. Daniel told him, ‘Stay calm. Take your time.’

‘He said hurry!’

‘Calm,’ Daniel said.

Thomas started over. He nodded at the screen and took the phone from Daniel’s hand. He began reciting numbers.

Daniel took back the iPhone. ‘Well?’ he asked Andrew.

He heard keyboard taps. A delay. ‘It’s good.’ The phone disconnected.

The whole incident from car tap to confirmation had taken four minutes, just the time for two drivers to good-naturedly swap insurance info and agree there’d be no point in calling the police.

‘Now get in your car and drive home. It’s okay. You gave us what we wanted. It’s all over with now. Just go home.’

Thomas turned and reached for the Jeep’s door with shaking hands. When he’d opened it, Daniel took a paper towel from his pocket and, wrapping it around the grip of the gun, drew the weapon and shot the businessman twice in the back of the head. He leaned down and looked in the passenger compartment, where blood flecked the dashboard and the windshield and the face and hat of his daughter, who was screaming as she stared at her father’s twitching body. She was clawing frantically at the door handle.

Daniel held up a reassuring hand. She froze, uncertain about the gesture, he imagined, and turned slightly toward him. He shot her once in the center of the chest. As she slumped back, staring up, he shot her twice more, in the mouth. For the brain stem. This emptied the five-round cylinder.

Daniel dropped the gun on the seat and pocketed the paper towel. He returned to the Prius and pulled around the Cherokee slowly. He drove out of the neighborhood, occasionally checking the rearview mirror, but saw no lights, no emergency vehicles. He noted only a few SUVs, two, coincidentally, with nearly identical infant seats affixed in the backseat.

He took a direct route to the parkway and then headed into the city. Eventually he ended up in the South Bronx. GPS sent him to an intersection, near one of the better – or at least cleaner – housing projects. He drove to where a Taurus sat idling in a parking space. He eased up behind it and flashed his lights, though the driver had already seen him, he’d observed. When the Ford had pulled out of the space, Daniel parallel parked, wiped the interior for fingerprints, then climbed out and dropped the keys on the floor of the car, leaving it unlocked. He got into the Taurus’s passenger seat.

Daniel nodded to bald, fit Sam Easton, behind the wheel, and Sam lifted his foot off the brake and sped down the street.

‘Heard it went good. Andrew called.’

‘Fine. And no tail,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m ninety-nine percent sure.’

Sam nodded, though – as Daniel would have done – he continued to check the rearview mirror more frequently than a prudent driver might.

Before the Ford turned onto the street that would take them into Manhattan, Daniel glanced back and noted two young men slow as they walked past the Prius, looking around, then easing closer, like coyotes sniffing out wounded prey.

Daniel read a text. The cash had been drained from the Aruba account and was already laundered, scrubbed clean.

‘You want to go home?’ Sam asked. ‘Or drop you at the usual place?’

‘Downtown. The club.’

Daniel invariably spent Friday afternoons swimming at his health club in Battery Park, then would have a drink or two at Limoncello’s and take his boat out for a sunset ride in New York Harbor.

After that some Indian or Thai food and back home, where he’d summon one of the girls from the outcall service he used. Whom to pick? he wondered. Daniel was in a particular mood after the shooting – he found himself picturing the outstretched bloody body of the target’s daughter. This memory was persistent and alluring.

He decided he’d ask for one of the girls who allowed her customers to practice rough trade. Still, he reminded himself that he’d have to exercise a bit more restraint than several weeks ago when Alice – or was it Alina? – ended up in the emergency room.

CHAPTER
3

12:20 p.m., Friday
1 hour, 10 minutes earlier

‘Gabby!’

She turned to see the pudgy redheaded man approaching through the aisles of the electronics superstore, near City Hall.

She thought again of her initial impression from a month or so ago, when they’d met. The round thirty-something had
farm boy
written all over him. A look you didn’t see much in Manhattan. Not that there was anything wrong with this image intrinsically (anything but the hipster look, Gabriela felt); the problem was just that it was too easy to picture him in overalls.

She smiled. ‘Hi!’

‘What’re you doing here?’ Frank Walsh asked her, as he beamed, smiling.

He wore a tan Polo shirt, which matched everybody else’s here. His name tag reported,
F. Walsh, Computer Fix-It Dept. Manager
.

She took his hand, which he turned into a hug.

Gabriela said, ‘Have a meeting downtown. Thought I’d say hi.’

His face seemed to glow. ‘No kidding! I was just thinking about you. Wow, Tiffany’s.’

She glanced down at the bag. ‘Just my comfy shoes.’

‘I like the ones you’re wearing,’ he whispered, noting the spiky high heels, which elevated her to his height. Stuart Weitzmans. They cost the same as one of the computers on sale at a nearby end cap.

‘Try walking to work in them sometime,’ she said with a laugh.

On the far wall scores of the same Geico commercial flickered from TV screens large and small.

Frank glanced at his watch. ‘You free for lunch?’

‘No, I have to get back to that meeting. Got time for coffee, though.’

‘Deal.’

They went to a Starbucks next door, collected their drinks – she a black coffee, Frank a frothy latte. They sat and chatted, amid the muted grind of blenders and the hiss of the steam device.

Despite appearances, Frank was about as far removed from the farm as could be. ‘Nerd’ was a better descriptive, a word that she would have avoided but he’d said it about himself once or twice so maybe it was politically correct. Computers consumed him. His job here, of course. And he seemed to be an avid participant in online role-playing games; she deduced this from the way he had coyly asked her if she knew certain titles (she’d never played one in her life). Then, looking a bit disappointed, he’d changed the subject and didn’t bring the topic up again, probably embarrassed.

Frank Walsh was a film buff, too; he went to the movies twice a week. This they had in common.

They sipped coffee and chatted. Then he confided with a grimace, ‘I’ve got the weekend off … but I’ve got to visit my mother.’

‘Congratulations. And all my sympathies.’

He laughed.

‘She’s on Long Island?’ Gabriela recalled.

‘Syosset. But I’m back about noon Sunday. There’s a noir festival at the SoHo that starts then. You interested? Sterling Hayden, Ida Lupino, Dan Duryea. The best of the best.’

‘Oh, sorry, Frank. Have plans Sunday.’

‘Sure.’ He didn’t seem particularly disappointed. ‘Hey, I’m making a mix tape with those songs you liked. Well, mix
download
. Mention “tape” to a new clerk here and they’re like, “Huh?”’

‘Wow, thanks, Frank.’ Though she wondered: Which songs were those? She didn’t listen to much modern music, no pop at all. A lot of classical and jazz. Many old-time crooners and cabaret singers. Sinatra, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Rosemary Clooney, Denise Darcel. She’d inherited a massive collection of marvelous albums. Hundreds of them, embraced by their beautiful, rich-smelling cardboard jackets. She’d bought a Michell Gyro Dec turntable a few years ago, a beautiful machine. When she cranked up the volume in her apartment, the sounds it sent to the amplifier were completely pure. Arresting. They stole your soul.

She may have mentioned this to Frank in passing and he’d remembered.

Conversation meandered: to De Niro’s latest film, to Frank’s mother’s health, to Gabriela’s plans to redecorate her Upper West Side apartment.

Then: ‘Funny you show up today.’ Uttered in a certain tone.

‘How’s that?’

‘I was going to call you later. But here you are. So.’

Gabriela sipped the strong coffee. She lifted an eyebrow toward him pleasantly. Meaning,
Go on
.

‘Ask you something?’

‘You bet.’

‘Any chance of us?’ He swallowed. Nerves.

‘Us …?’ Gabriela wondered if that pronoun was the end of the sentence, though she suspected it was.

Frank filled in anyway: ‘Dating, more seriously. Oh, hey, I’m not talking about marriage. God. I don’t even think that makes financial sense nowadays. But every time we’ve been out, it’s clicked. I know it’s only a few times. But still.’ He took a breath and plunged forward. ‘Look, I’m not a Ryan Gosling. But I’m working at losing a few pounds, I really am.’