The October List Part 15

'Heard that part. But saying that tells me you don't have the money. And since you dodged the question about describing the list, I'm a little skeptical of that too.'

'No, no! I swear!'

'Ever notice,' Joseph offered, 'when people say things like "I swear" and "you've got to believe me," they are invariably lying?'

'I'm not lying! I have it. It's in a place for safekeeping. I didn't want to walk around with it.'

'Not much need for that. Proportionately there're less muggings in New York than Portland, Maine. So, fine. You've found the list. Wunderbar! Let's get back to money.'

'I've been running around town all day trying to do what you asked,' she cried. 'Please, just a little more time. It's taken longer than I thought. I'm sorry!'

'Racked with guilt, are you?'

Daniel stiffened with anger. His face grew dark. But he remained silent.

She leaned close to the phone. 'Please, it's been a nightmare. The police are everywhere! I can't just sneak into the garden behind Charles's town house and start digging for treasure, can I?' Her voice caught. Then she muttered angrily, 'Tell me right now! How is my daughter?'

'She's alive.'

'Alive? But is she okay?'

'Pretty much.'

'She must be terrified.'

'And I'm afraid of heights. Snakes aren't my favorite either. But we cope. Now, money makes the world go 'round. That was the deal we made.' He seemed again to be pouting. 'You've breached it. You've broken our agreement.'

'I'll get your money,' she snapped. 'I just need more time! I'm doing everything I can.'

'More time, more time.' His voice was taunting.

'Just a little.'

'Could be, you know, that you've found the money and you're stalling, trying to figure out a way to keep it and get your daughter back.'

'No! Why would I do that?'

'Because you're out of a job, remember?'

She began to tremble. Daniel put his arm around her.

Joseph said, 'You were Charles Prescott's office manager.'

'Yes,' she whispered.

'So you know something about business?'

She hesitated. 'What?'

'You know about business?' he repeated petulantly.

'I ... I know some things. What are you asking?'

'You familiar with the concept of penalties?' Joseph's voice was completely flat. The smarmy tone was gone. 'Like you don't pay your taxes on time, there's a penalty? Well, you didn't pay me on time. You missed the deadline.'

'I tried.'

'"Try" is a non-word. Either you do something or you don't. It's impossible to try to do something. So. New deadline. Six p.m. tomorrow-'

'Thank you! I-'

'I'm not through. Six p.m. tomorrow you deliver the October List. And, now, five hundred thousand.'

'No! You can't do that.'

'Is that what you say to the IRS? "I'm so sorry. I can't pay what you want. No penalty for me!" Look at me as the Excuse n.a.z.i.' Giddy once more. His laugh was nearly a giggle.

'Why not just a f.u.c.king million?' she raged. 'Or ten million?' Daniel squeezed her arm. She said to Joseph, 'I'm doing the best I can.'

'Ah, just like "trying." There's no "best" or "worst." There's keeping up your half of our agreement or not.'

'We don't have an agreement! You're extorting me, you kidnap-'

'h.e.l.lo! Didn't we have a conversation about movie dialogue? Now, consequences, I was saying: First, the penalty, the extra hundred K. Then, second, you have to go on a scavenger hunt.'

'A what?'

'A scavenger hunt.'

'I don't understand,' Gabriela said, her voice choked.

'What's not to understand? It'll be easy. I'll bet it won't take you more than thirty minutes to find the prize.'

'You're insane!'

'Well, now, that's all relative, isn't it? Go to Times Square. Behind a Dumpster in the alley at Forty-Eighth and Seventh. West side of the intersection.'

'What's there?' she asked in a high, shaky voice.

But Joseph's response was to disconnect.

They didn't need a cab.

The prize Joseph had sent them to find was only four or so blocks away. They plunged into Times Square, a disorienting world of brilliant lights, ma.s.sive high-def monitors, overlapping tracks of pulsing music, hawkers, street musicians, impatient traffic, mad bicyclists, tourists, tourists, tourists ... The crowds were denser now, more boisterous, antic.i.p.ating plays and concerts and meals and movies.

In ten minutes they'd come to the intersection that Joseph had described. She said, 'There! That's the Dumpster.' And started forward.

'Wait,' Daniel said.

'No,' she said firmly.

He tried to stop her. But she pulled away and dropped to her knees, looking behind the battered, dark green disposal unit.

Gabriela fished out the CVS pharmacy bag and looked inside. She choked. 'It's Sarah's sweatshirt!' The pink garment was wadded up tightly. She started to lift it out and froze. 'Blood, Daniel!' The streaks, largely dried to brown, were obvious. There was something primitive about them, like paint on the face of ancient warriors.

Gabriela gingerly lifted out the shirt, which was tied with a gingham hair ribbon. As she did, the garment unfurled and something fell from the inner folds to the grim floor of the alley. The colors were the pink of flesh and red of blood, and the shape was that of a small finger.

Daniel got to her just before her head hit the cobblestones.

CHAPTER.

17.

5:30 p.m., Sat.u.r.day

25 minutes earlier

The only good is what furthers his interest ...

Joseph Astor recited this to himself as he carried his shopping bag toward a warehouse on the far west side of Manhattan, in the Forties. Traffic on the streets was noisy; on the Hudson River, silent.

His large form bl.u.s.tered over the sidewalk, and people glanced at his bulk and his dead eyes and his curly blond hair and they got out of his way. Joseph paid them no mind, after noting that none of them was a cop or other threat.

An impressive view of the Intrepid aircraft carrier before him, Joseph turned down a side street and approached the one-story warehouse. He undid the heavy Master padlock and muscled the door open, stepped in and slammed it shut. He flicked on the lights. The warehouse was mostly empty, though there were two vans parked inside, one completely useless, and sagging boxes stacked in one corner, molding into an unpleasant ma.s.s on the floor. The place was little used and typical of a thousand such buildings, two thousand, three, throughout the New York area. Small, solid structures, always in need of paint and fumigation, either windowless or with gla.s.s panes so grimy they were virtually blacked out. Most of these buildings were legitimate. But some were used by men, mostly men, who needed safe houses for certain activities away from the public, away from the police. Long-term leases, paid in advance. Utilities paid by fake companies.

Tonight would be the last time he'd use this warehouse; he'd abandon it forever and move to the other one, similar, in SoHo, for the rest of the job, which he might have called the Gabriela Job or the Prescott Job but instead had with some perverse humor taken to calling Sarah's Sleep-Away.

He took his jacket off but left on the beige cloth gloves always the gloves. He strode to the corner of the place, a workbench. In the center of it was the windbreaker he'd showed Gabriela earlier in the day, along with a pink sweatshirt, on which Sarah was st.i.tched across the chest. To the right were a dozen old tools and from the pile he found a large pair of clippers, like the sort used for cutting branches or flower stems. The edge was rusty, but sharp enough.

The only good ...

From the shopping bag he extracted the fibergla.s.s hand of a clothing store mannequin. He'd stolen the plastic appendage from an open loading dock behind a showroom in the Fashion District earlier that afternoon, after he'd been tailing Reardon and Gabriela near the building with the Prescott Investments sign on the front.

Gripping the clippers firmly, he cut into the dummy's little finger at the second knuckle. This he rested in the middle of the sweatshirt and lifted out the last item in the bag, a beef tenderloin, sealed in thick cellophane. He used the clippers to snip a hole in the end of the bag and let the blood dribble onto the plastic digit and the sweatshirt. There was more liquid than expected; the result was suitably gory.

Excellent.

He bundled the shirt up with a gingham hair ribbon.

Seeing the beef blood spread, he thought: How lovely, how delicious ... A line he would remember to share with Gabriela later. As he worked, he opened a bottle of his favorite beverage in the world. His Special Brew. It was virtually all he drank. Sustaining, comforting. He drank deeply.

A bottle a day ...

After tidying up and putting the steak into the refrigerator in a tiny kitchen area of the warehouse, he put his handiwork into a CVS drugstore plastic bag.

He returned to the table and sat, sipping his beloved Hawaiian Punch the original flavor, red.

Joseph wondered what the reaction would be to the memento inside the bag.

Another glance at his watch. The deadline was looming. He was thinking about Gabriela and the October List and Daniel Reardon. Joseph had met him only about six hours ago, on the street with Gabriela, and already disliked him intensely.

Then his thoughts segued to Gabriela's friend, Frank Walsh, whom he did not know, but had only followed around and, of course, datamined. Joseph always did his homework before he went out to ply his craft.

Pudgy Frank Walsh. Nerdy Frank Walsh.

Joseph didn't have any particular dislike for Mr Walsh; he considered him to be a rather stupid, naive man. Pathetic.

He reflected that it was a shame Frank was going to spend his last night on earth with his mother, and not getting laid. At least, Joseph thought, sipping the sweet drink, he a.s.sumed not. Ick.

The September cold seeped in and, even though he had plenty of natural insulation on him, he shivered. Joseph was eager to get this part of the job over with and return home to Queens, where several new Netflix movies awaited, snug in their little red envelopes. Most people would probably be surprised that a man like him, who had killed twenty-two people in his life men, women and, though only out of necessity or accidentally, children would enjoy movies. And yet, why not? Killers were people too. In fact, he'd learned some things about his line of work from movies and TV.

The Long Good Friday, The Professional, Eastern Promises, others. The Sopranos not so much. Although he liked the acting, he wasn't quite sure why Tony and the crew none of them particularly clever hadn't been arrested and thrown in the slammer halfway through the first season.

Luck, he guessed.

No, scriptwriters.

He turned his jacket collar up and contemplated, with pleasure, returning home, sitting in front of the Sony by himself, well, with his Maine c.o.o.n cat, Antonioni, and watching the latest disks. He wondered if he should take the tenderloin with him for dinner.

No, he'd do a Lean Cuisine tonight. Save the calories.

Joseph glanced at his watch. He took the CVS bag, stepped outside and locked the warehouse door.

CHAPTER.