Then, standing right in front of the window, she instructed, “Come here.”
“What—?” Daniel asked.
“Come here,” she repeated firmly.
Frowning, curious at her tone, Daniel did as instructed. As a cool autumn breeze flowed into the room from the open window, she gripped him hard and kissed him on his mouth. Tentatively at first, then more firmly.
“Kiss me back,” she whispered.
He was startled but he did as ordered, firmly and with passion — his grip on her shoulders nearly hurt. She could sense his genuine desire. She felt a burst of longing within her.
Then Gabriela forced herself to tell him in a whisper, “Step back, and look me over like you’re enjoying what you’re seeing.” She stripped her burgundy sweater off.
“I don’t have to pretend about that,” Daniel mouthed.
In her pale blue bra and close-fitting stretch pants, she walked to the window, paused for a moment and pulled the curtain shut. She then put the sweater back on.
“Bummer,” he whispered.
She held her fingers to her lips. She grabbed the TV remote and — muting the volume — turned the unit and the cable box on, then scrolled through pay-per-view channels until she found an adult movie. Two clicks and the bad film came to life in medias res, depicting a young couple going at it poolside in a very stressed lounger. The volume rose.
Uhn, uhn, uhn...
She nodded to the door then snagged the leather jacket from the rack in the hall. But her face grew somber as she looked at the garment on a neighboring hook: a child’s faux-fur parka.
More tears flowed.
Daniel put his arm around her shoulder, gave an encouraging hug. Gabriela pulled on sunglasses. He did too and they stepped out the door into the hallway, which smelled of carpet and cleanser. In ten minutes they were slipping out of the service entrance in the back of the building, and heading once more for Central Park, free of prying eyes and ears.
Chapter 13
Intimate
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 day’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. Which meant, Kepler guessed, that the party was over with.
“Post-coital bliss,” whispered Surani. “About time. I’m ready to get the hell off the roof. It’s freezing up here.” He rose from his squat.
Kepler said, “When she leaves, you better be ready for it. We stick on her like glue.”
“I’m ready,” Surani said. “Do I look like I’m not ready? And ‘stick on her like glue’? Could you pick a worse cliché?”
Kepler ignored him.
But the pursuit didn’t happen just then. From inside Gabriela’s apartment, whispers arose. And the game began again.
Uhn, uhn, uhn...
“Fuck,” Surani muttered, sitting down once more.
Kepler stared. His partner rarely swore. The Charles Prescott Op was bringing out the worst in everybody.
Chapter 14
Daniel’s First Job, Circa 1998
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.