The October List by Jeffery Deaver

Author:Jeffery Deaver
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2013-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

14

2:50 p.m., Saturday

25 minutes earlier

Turtle Bay, that portion of east Manhattan near the United Nations, was once one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. In the late 1800s the area was littered with unregulated businesses – 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.

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