“I’m sending you back home stinking of whisky. What’s your husband going to say?”
“He probably won’t find out. Since he lives thirty miles away from me.”
“Ah, you’re in that club too. I’m Daniel Reardon.”
“Gabriela McKenzie.”
They shook hands.
Conversation meandered for a bit, both of them testing the waters, and then found true north, which included the question you can never avoid in New York: What do you do for a living?
Daniel worked as a venture capitalist, private equity, he told her. “The Norwalk Fund.” He nodded. “We’re a few blocks from here. On Broad.”
Gabriela glanced at the documents. “I’m office manager for a financial adviser. Prescott Investments.”
“Don’t think I know them.” He glanced down at the documents before her, then away quickly, as if looking at confidential client details was tantamount to glancing through an inadvertently left-open bathroom door.
“It’s a small outfit. Charles was with Merrill years ago but opened his own shop. He’s a lot happier.”
“Your office is near here?”
“No, Midtown, east. Turtle Bay.” She sighed. “My boss — he’s a great guy, but he dumped this in my lap this morning. He wants to lease a warehouse on Bankers’ Square — near Wall Street — and the deal fell through. I got elected to check out some new space... and go over a forty-page lease. We need to sign it up in two weeks.”
“Two weeks?”
“Yep. And you know Bankers’ Square? It took hours even to get inside and look the place over. All that construction.”
“Oh, the new stock market annex. Supposed to be finished by now.”
“Anyway, I came here to jot some notes and unwind.”
“And get a drink spilled on you.”
“It sounded like you were working too, a business call.” She nodded at the two mobiles that sat in front of him. An iPhone and a Motorola Droid.
“I was doing a project with a partnership in Aruba. It just closed today. I’ve been banging out the details since nine.”
“Congratulations. And my sympathies.”
“Thanks.” Daniel laughed and sipped the scotch. “I went for a swim at my health club and came over here... to unwind.”
She smiled at the echo.
The talk veered slowly from the professional. Personal stats were recited. They both lived in Manhattan. He told her that he had two sons, living with his ex in Nyack.
“My husband and I have joint custody.” Gabriela tugged her phone from her Coach purse. She scrolled and displayed a picture. “This’s Sarah. She’s six.”
“Adorable.”
“She’s into ballet and gymnastics. But she just discovered horses. Oh, does she want a horse.”
“Where are you in the city?”
“Upper West. Two bedrooms, a thousand square feet. We could probably fit a horse in, but I don’t think they do well in elevators.”
“And Sarah’s dad?”
She said, “No. He’s okay in elevators.”
“You’re pretty funny.” Spoken as if Daniel didn’t date women who were.
“Tim lives on Long Island,” Gabriela continued. “But not in the horse stabling neighborhood.”
Daniel gestured to the bartender, who responded immediately. “Another for me. And the same for her.”
“No, really,” Gabriela protested.
“Cheaper than buying you a new Neiman Marcus blouse.”
“It’s Macy’s. But I didn’t mean no to the drink. I mean no to what I’m drinking. I’ll upgrade to the Merry Edwards pinot noir. Since he’s buying.”
Daniel lifted an eyebrow, impressed at her choice.
A moment later the drinks appeared. She wondered what tats the bartender was hiding with the makeup.
Occupy! Down with the One Percent!
Or maybe something simple: Fuck Capitalism.
She thought about saying this to Daniel but, while he’d probably laugh, she decided not to.
When the new glasses arrived, they tapped and talked about the agony and ecstasy of living in the city. About Ground Zero, which was visible from Limoncello’s. The Trade Towers would forever cast indelible shadows over the city.
Then a dozen subjects arose in easy conversation: restaurants, traveling, parents, politics — the last in a safely glancing fashion, though their views seemed similar.
When they were close to finishing their drinks, Daniel looked at his watch. Didn’t sneak a glance, just lifted the heavy Rolex and noted the time.
She nodded. “Dinner plans, sure.”
“Actually, no. I have a meeting.” Daniel’s eyes circled, her hair, her face, her eyes. “You have to get back to your daughter?”
She sniffed subtext. “I’ll pick her up tomorrow. She’s at her father’s tonight.”
“Don’t know if you’re interested, but that meeting? You have any interest in helping me out?”
“Doing what?”
“Actually, I’m meeting an interior designer to pick out upholstery.”
She shook her head. “That’s not a good come-on line.”
“I’m having new leather installed in my speedboat.”
“That’s a better one.”
He opened the backpack he used for a briefcase and took out a booklet of leather samples. She flipped through the pages, which were organized by color. Her favorites were the rich oranges, the sort she imagined as the color of seats in brash sports cars. The names were words like “carrot,” “pumpkin,” “amber,” “tomato.”
But her favorite was called “Princeton,” presumably after the school colors of the New Jersey university. It was the boldest offered by the company.
“I do have a preference,” Gabriela said slowly. “But how can I say for sure without seeing the boat?”
“We can fix that.”
Chapter 6
Rope, Sweat, Pain
6:30 P.M., FRIDAY
3 HOURS, 30 MINUTES EARLIER
The Aquariva Super cut an uncompromising swath through the dusk of New York Harbor, Daniel Reardon at the helm.
“How fast are we going?” Gabriela called over the sexy rumble of the engine, the wind, the waves.
“About forty.”
“Knots per hour?”
Daniel shouted, “You don’t say that. Knots include miles and hours. Forty knots. It’s about forty-five miles an hour.”
Gabriela nodded, smiling at the speed. “Feels faster.”
“Then you’d like the boat I keep in Connecticut. It’ll do seventy.”
She didn’t bother to ask knots or miles. Probably didn’t matter at that velocity.
There was no passenger seat in the front of the beautiful Italian speedboat as such — just a leather U-shaped banquette encircling the rear of the open cockpit. Gabriela could have squeezed in next to Daniel on the driver’s seat but she preferred to remain standing behind him, close, gripping his seat back, her head near his ear.
The thirty-three-footer, with her black hull and rich wood deck, plowed effortlessly through the temperate waves. The surface of the water was like dark linen and the cloudless sky over New Jersey glowed lava orange from the vanishing sun, the vista split by two purple exclamation marks of fume from distant smokestacks.
It was a photograph waiting to happen, though not to be shot by Gabriela. She worked exclusively in black and white, and this scene was about color only, without substance. Pretty didn’t interest her.
She turned her attention back to Daniel. He was a superb driver — which is what pilots of boats like this were called, she’d learned. He anticipated the drift and power of each wave, as if it were an opposing player on a sports field. Sometimes he crashed over it, sometimes he eased up onto a crest and used the mound of water itself to speed the boat forward.