The October List

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, the one from 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
15
     

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 or stung 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