The October List

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
13
     

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 Saturday’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 .