Jeffery Deaver
The October List
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
For Frank, Maureen and Caitlyn Jewett.
Foreword
We have Stephen Sondheim to thank for this book. Several years ago I was listening to a National Public Radio interview by the inimitable Terry Gross, on her Fresh Air program, with Sondheim, one of my favorite musical theater composers and lyricists. One of the plays he discussed was Merrily We Roll Along, which happened to be perhaps the only play of his I had not seen. I was fascinated by the fact that it began in the present and moved back in time. Of particular interest was his comment about a song that meant one thing in the present, and meant something different when first (well, later) introduced.
I happen to love the concept of a fractured time line. Look at Stanley Kubrick’s second best film, The Killing (Strangelove — not 2001 — is my number one), or Pulp Fiction, Memento, Back to the Future. And, of course, the classic Seinfeld episode “The Betrayal,” which was an homage to Harold Pinter’s own reverse-chronology play, Betrayal.
I began wondering if it was possible for a thriller writer to pull off a backward-told story that was filled with the cliffhangers, surprises and twists and turns that are, to me, the epitome of good crime fiction. The task, of course, is to present the twist (the “reveal” as they say in Hollywoodspeak) before giving the facts that led up to it and still make the surprise thrilling. It’s like telling a joke’s punch line first, then giving the setup itself — yet making the audience laugh just as hard as if they’d heard the gag in proper order. It can be done:
The bartender says, “We don’t serve time travelers in here.”
A time traveler walks into a bar.
Many, many Post-it notes later I plotted out and wrote The October List — a novel that begins with the last chapter and then moves backward in time, over the course of about two days, to the first chapter. Though it’s a bit shorter than most of my novels, I can say that it was more challenging, byte for byte, than anything I’ve previously written.
Because of my heroine’s passion for photography, I thought I would include images throughout the book, at the beginning of each chapter. Some are merely illustrative. But some are clues as to mysteries the book holds, and some are twists in themselves. As Gabriela has said, “There’s something seductive about taking reality and controlling it. Sometimes I make a literal image, sometimes I start there and manipulate it. Sometimes the end result is obscure, abstract; only I know the truth.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Rather than give the titles to the pictures where they appear in the book, I thought it was best to include them in the table of contents. That surprise thing, again.
— J.D., Chapel Hill, NC
I
Friday
Chapter 1
Plotting
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 course.”
Karpankov didn’t need to mention the latter. He always paid for her expenses when she did a job for him. A murder or anything else.
Gabriela’s green eyes focused on his, which were, curiously, two shades of gray.
The mob boss continued with a raw anger in his voice, “I wish I could kill him myself. Oh, I do wish that. But...”
Gabriela knew Karpankov had not killed anyone in a long time. Still, the lean-faced man with the two-tone eyes, and matching gray stubble on his scalp, looked fully capable of murder at the moment.
She felt warm breath on her hand. She looked down; Karpankov’s huge dog, Gunther, had ambled from his bed in the corner to lick her palm. She scratched the spiky gray-and-black fur between his ears. Gabriela knew animals; she’d hunted with bird dogs from when she was a teenager. She and the Russian’s dog had bonded when he was a puppy. He was huge now. A month ago Gunther had killed a hired assassin who’d lunged at Karpankov on a walk in Brooklyn. Lightning-fast, the dog had snatched the assailant by the throat and shaken the life from the screaming attacker. Murdering the man who’d hired him — a Jamaican drug lord — had been Gabriela’s most recent job for Karpankov.
The dog licked her fingers again, nuzzled and returned to his bed.
“What’s his name, the man you want dead?”
“Daniel Reardon.”
“I don’t know him.”
Now it was Gabriela who looked at the Hudson River through the window, which was free of curtains. The putty in the frame was curling and needed replacing. She felt an urge to strip out the old wads and replace them and paint. She did a lot of the repair work herself, in her apartment in the city and at her hunting lodge upstate, in the Adirondacks, where she frequently hunted — both with her Nikon camera and with her Winchester .270.
Karpankov now touched his cheek, then the fingers settled on the chin. Rubbed it as if searching for stray bristles he’d neglected to smooth off that morning, though the skin seemed perfectly planed to Gabriela. He muttered words in Russian. “Hui blyad cyka.”
Gabriela was adept at languages. Since she worked frequently in Brooklyngrad and the other Eastern European immigrant areas of New York, she’d learned Russian. She understood “cocksucker.”
She asked, “What’s Reardon’s story?”
“You know Carole?”
“Carole? The daughter of your assistant, Henry?”
“That’s right.”
“Pretty girl. Teenager?”
“Twenty.”
“Henry’s been with you a long time.” Gabriela had noted, upon arriving, that Henry had not been at his desk in the anteoffice, and he was not here at the moment. Usually he was a constant shadow.