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 victim 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 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 deceptive sunlight, which didn’t do much to cut 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.
Gabriela introduced Daniel as a “friend.”
Looking the handsome man up and down, Elena Rodriguez shook his hand and winked to Gabriela, woman-to-woman, meaning, Well, he’s a keeper. “We work together, Gabriela and me.”
“I know. I heard.”
She puffed air from her cheeks. “I guess I mean worked together. Not anymore.” To Gabriela, “Have you heard anything else?”
“No, just what the police told me this morning.”
Elena’s pretty face darkened. “Did you talk to the same ones? Kepler and some Indian man. I didn’t like them at all. Kepler, especially.”
“Yep.”
Elena looked wistful and nodded in the direction of the office building. In a soft voice: “I walked this way to work hundreds of times and I’ve always been so happy. Now...” She shrugged. Then the woman sighed and asked, “So what can I do? I’ll do anything to help.”
“Daniel and I are going to try to find something in the office that’ll prove Charles’s innocent.”
“Find the asshole who’s setting him up.”
Gabriela hesitated and then said, “Exactly.”
Daniel glanced her way, undoubtedly thinking how guilty she felt for lying to her co-worker and friend.
“And we need your help.”
“Sure.”
“I have to tell you, Elena, it’s kind of... extreme.”
“Hey, girl, did I say ‘anything’?”
“All right. I need you to get hit by a car.”
“What?”
“I don’t really mean get hit. Just start to cross the street and pretend to get hit. When a cab or car goes by, slap it on the door or the side and fall down on the sidewalk. The cop guarding the building’ll come to help you. When he does, Daniel and I’ll slip inside and search the office. Just don’t give him your real ID. Make something up — you left your purse at home. So you don’t get in trouble after they find out the office got broken into.”
Daniel Reardon stared at Gabriela for a moment then gave a shallow laugh. “You come up with pretty good plans,” he said.
“I was one hell of an office manager,” Gabriela replied.
“When I said ‘anything,’ ” the pretty woman muttered, “I kind of meant stay up all night reading through files. But if you want me knocked on my ass, girl, you got yourself an accident. Hey, I get to scream?”
“As loud as you want.”
Chapter 15
Crime Scene I
3:15 P.M., SATURDAY
1 HOUR, 35 MINUTES EARLIER
Moving cautiously, the couple continued down the damp, tree-lined street of Midtown in silence. Cautious of necessity. They knew the police had to be watching the Prescott office.
Gabriela eyed cars speeding along the cross street. Dark cars, pale cars, taxis, limos, trucks. Vehicles, as much as pedestrians, were part of the tapestry of Manhattan. But she noted nothing out of the ordinary, nobody paying particular attention to them.
Though seeing the unmarked police car at the curb, they paused near a ginkgo tree encircled by a low, wrought-iron fence to keep marking dogs from the trunk. “That’s it,” she whispered, indicating a six-story office building about fifty feet east, on the same side of the street where they stood. On a sign beside the front door a half-dozen businesses were listed — therapists, a chiropractor, a graphic design company.
At the top: Prescott Investments, LLC.
“How’re you holding up?” Daniel asked.
“I’m fine.” Dismissing the question.
Gabriela recalled that when she was a teen the Professor often comforted her by asking the very same or a similar question. “You okay?” “All right?” He’d sit close and look her over. She could smell tobacco and aftershave. She’d initially reply that she was fine, in this same tone as now, but he’d smile and persist. And he’d finally work out of her that she was sad or angry about some incident at school or because somebody had laughed at her (even at thirteen she was tall and skinny as a post) or simply because the day was cold and overcast.
Gabriela had had mood problems all her life.
The Professor could usually trick the sadness away, for a time at least.
This memory she put away. With difficulty.
“There she is,” Gabriela said, nodding in the direction of her attractive Latina co-worker, Elena Rodriguez, across the street. The woman was walking toward the building from the opposite direction, her eyes down, face grim.
Elena Rodriguez looked up and saw them, then started across the street. Her gaze swiveled to the unmarked police car parked in front of the office building, manned by a single officer. She hesitated in the street, as if trying to avoid being seen, and stepped back. When a truck passed, she hurried across after it — straight toward an oncoming taxi. There came a wrenching scream and the screech of tires like a bird of prey’s cry, followed by a loud thud. Daniel’s and Gabriela’s view was obscured but an instant later they saw Elena spiral to the curb.
“God,” Daniel whispered.
Immediately the officer sitting in the police car leapt out and ran to her aid. The cop looked around once then bent down toward the woman and pulled out his radio. The cabbie raced up, gesturing frantically with his hands.
“Jesus,” Daniel muttered. “Is she all right?”