The October List

turn-on.’
    ‘You’d be armed?’ Surani asked.
    ‘How can I be? I’m an office manager of an investment company.’ A glance at the script she’d written.
    ‘A wire then,’ Kepler offered.
    Gabby said, ‘No.’ Frowning as if infinitely perplexed he didn’t get it.
    Surani said, ‘We’ve got some good gadgets from the tech department, Gabriela, surveillance gear, I mean. We’ve got a GPS and mike in a cigarette lighter—’
    ‘You’d give me a cigarette lighter when I don’t smoke? What’s Reardon going to do with that?’
    ‘I’m just saying. Something.’
    ‘No. No wires. And no third-party surveillance either. You two and everybody … keep your distance. I can’t take any chances that Reardon’ll tip to the set. That’s the biggest danger. He hasn’t survived this long by being careless. Now, read the script until you’ve got it memorized.’
    She pushed the pages forward and, like students in front of a stern teacher, Surani and Kepler did as she instructed. When they’d nodded, Gabby swept it up and walked to a shredder. She plugged the unit in and made confetti. Then she slung her purse over her shoulder. She said to the detectives, ‘I’ll email you more details tonight. Intercept us on the corner near my apartment around ten or eleven.’
    Surani recited, ‘“Detectives Kepler and Surani contact Detective McNamara and Subject Reardon re: Charles Prescott fleeing city.”’
    Her first and only smile. ‘Good.’
    Kepler said, ‘One thing?’
    Gabby regarded him seriously. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Your CI, this Joseph. You trust him?’
    ‘Pretty much I do.’
    ‘Pretty much,’ Kepler echoed. ‘Okay, Joseph’s boss? Sedutto? He’s trouble; you know that. Is there any chance Joseph’s running you ? I mean, maybe he’s thinking that Reardon’s a source for some big money. And he’ll take you out too when he gets what he needs.’
    The best confidential informants were morally always just an inch away from the perps they were embedded with.
    Would Gabby be pissed off that he’d questioned her judgment in trusting this Joseph?
    But she said only, ‘I appreciate that, Brad. But I’ve assessed the risk and it’s acceptable. Not much we can do about that.’
    Then she was gone.
    ‘Well, that’s one hell of a gal,’ Barkley said.
    A noun that neither Kepler nor his partner wanted to go anywhere near.
    The captain then said, ‘I want eyes and ears on her.’
    ‘But,’ Surani pointed out, ‘she said no surveillance.’
    ‘I don’t care what she said. I want to know everything she says and where she goes and who she sees. Twenty-four/seven. This’s too dangerous to leave her spinning in the wind. Get on that now.’

CHAPTER
1
     

8:20 a.m., Friday
2 hours, 40 minutes earlier
     

 

 
     
    ‘I’m going to tell you what I need. I need someone dead. Someone who’s bad and who’s been troublesome and has caused me and other people a great deal of pain. It’s a simple goal – a killing – but there are complications. A lot of complications.’
    Peter Karpankov paused, as if these words were too dramatic. Or perhaps not dramatic enough, ineffectual in conveying the magnitude of the sins he wanted justice for. Today his weathered skin was more wan than normal and he seemed sixty years of age, not his actual fifty. The man’s bullet-shaped head, dusted with short, thinning hair, was looking out the window of Karpankov Transportation, Inc., a medium-sized company, which he had run for years, inherited from his father. The building, unimpressive and scuffed, squatted in Midtown, near the Hudson River. He had enough money to build a large, modern facility, but he kept the company’s original building. The same way he lived in the same two-thousand-square-foot red-brick detached house in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, that had been in his family for nearly a hundred years.
    His eyes still averted, Karpankov continued speaking. ‘I didn’t know where else to turn for help – because of the complications, you understand. And because I would have a clear motive for this man’s death. I’d be a suspect. That’s why I need you. You can make sure that the motives aren’t what they seem to be. You’re good at that. No, not good. You’re the best.’
    He finally turned and his eyes met those of the woman across the desk. Gabriela McNamara looked back easily, taking all this in. ‘Go on, Peter.’
    ‘Oh, and for this job, I’ll double your fee. Plus all expenses, of