The October List

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 victims 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 now 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 the deceptive sunlight; brilliant but useless against 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