1 hour, 20 minutes earlier

Brad Kepler and Naresh Surani waited in an NYPD conference room that featured a single speckled window that overlooked a building that, Kepler believed, overlooked New York Harbor. This was as good as most views got at least for detectives third in One Police Plaza. At least when they were involved in an operation that had no name, that n.o.body knew about, and because of that, that could presumably f.u.c.k a career as much as make one.

Kepler admired his arm, less muscular than when he'd joined the force but more robustly tanned. He then regarded Surani, who had a nearly gray complexion, which stayed gray no matter how much sun he got. Both men were more or less mid-thirties and more or less fit, though Kepler's physique reflected the reality of life as a detective: sedentary, with walking the most strenuous exercise on the job. He'd chased somebody a month ago, and caught him, but his hip still hurt.

f.u.c.ker.

'This guy the s.h.i.t he seems to be?' He tapped a file on the table in front of him.

'Dunno,' Surani answered his partner. 'Never heard of him. What's this room for? I didn't know it was even here.'

The office, near their division, Major Cases, was scuffed and dim and populated with a lopsided table, six chairs, three of them unmatched, a filing cabinet, and dozens of boxes labeled Discard.

And the f.u.c.king useless view. But at least it was a view, unlike his cubicle, five or six or a thousand floors away, where the only thing he could feast his eyes on was the a.s.s of Detective Laikisha Towne. Which was a lot to see. And that image appealed not in the least.

Kepler now regarded the boxes and decided it was amusing, the labels. The boxes looked like they'd been here for months. So why hadn't somebody just discarded them, per instructions?

Welcome to the NYPD.

The time was just after 11:00 a.m. You could smell old oil, garlic, fish like you could in much of the building from time to time, depending on prevailing winds and humidity, given the proximity, and the relentless encroachment, of Chinatown. As for Little Italy: Arrivederci!

'I'm hungry,' Kepler said.

'I am too. But.'

'Where is everybody?'

Surani didn't know. So they took phone calls, they made phone calls.

'Because,' said Kepler, on his Droid, explaining to a perp he'd busted, now out on bond, 'they wouldn't knock it down any farther. It's the best they'll do, which means it's the best you can do. Eighteen months. You can serve that standing on your head.'

's.h.i.t, man' came Devon's voice from the other end of the line.

'Okay. Gotta go.' Kepler disconnected, snuck a look at his warm brown arm once more. He didn't tell anybody its source was the lamps of the Larchmont tanning salon, fifteen miles from home. He told people he jogged every day, he played golf, he swam.

'That was Devon?' Surani asked.

'Yeah.'

'Eighteen months? Standing on his head? No way. He's f.u.c.ked.'

'I know that. You know that. Devon will know it. Too bad but he shouldn'ta drove the getaway car.'

'Which it wasn't,' Surani said.

'What?'

'The car. n.o.body got away.'

Kepler gave a laugh. 'Captain's late. They're both late. And I'm hungry. You f.u.c.king ruled at trial yesterday.'

Surani said with some modesty, 'Yeah, that went good. I was happy. Good jury. I like good juries.'

The two detectives bickered more than they complimented each other, and were sometimes downright insulting but all forms of repartee were based on a similar affection. 'Infuriating' was a word that often arose.

He and Surani had been lovers for the past seven years, and partners in the professional sense for four. Someday soon, one or the other would propose marriage. Kepler was pretty close to popping the question.

And G.o.d save anybody on the force who made a single comment about it, lifted a single eyebrow, exhaled a single sigh.

Kepler examined his phone again, to order takeaway. At the beginning of his address book on the Galaxy were three folders, !breakfast, !dinner, !lunch, the punctuation mark added so the files would stay first in line, before people. He was debating between the first and third he was sort of in a pancake mood when the bra.s.s finally cruised into the room.

The promise of sausages and waffles went away, along with the phone itself, when the harried man, in a suit, strode inside. Wrinkled of face, boasting multiple chins, Captain Paul Barkley was in his late fifties. He carried the round belly of somebody who ate when it was convenient for him, not when the long hours and necessities of a case required him to grab breakfast to go when it was really lunchtime, or vice versa.

Still, the man had a rep as righteous as Kepler's tan and far more genuine. Everybody knew Barkley had paid his dues and he carried bullet scars to prove it, according to legend. So none of the detectives griped, at least not too much, and definitely not to his face.

'Gentlemen.'

'Captain,' Surani said. A nod from Kepler.

'Busy day,' Barkley muttered and looked at his iPhone to prove it. Read a text. Sent a text, ignoring the men.

Kepler's stomach protested. Waffles. He wanted waffles. Or maybe a club sandwich.

Barkley snapped, 'So, what's this about? Request for an undercover op?'

'Right,' Kepler said.

'Where's Detective McNamara?'

'On the way,' Kepler said.

'Well, get started.' Barkley raised an intimidating eyebrow. Impatience ruled.

'Well, you know, sir, we're not sure. We didn't put it together.'

'It was-' Surani stopped speaking and looked behind the captain, into the doorway. 'Here's the mastermind of the op. She can give you all the details. Hey, Gabby!'

The beautiful but severe woman stepped into the room. Unsmiling, typically, she looked over all three men, nodding a greeting to the captain.

Kepler, with his proclivities, wasn't the least interested in Detective Gabby for her body. But, man, she dressed well. He appreciated that. A thin white blouse beneath the black-and-white-checked jacket. What was that cloth called again? There was some word for it, that pattern. A gray skirt.

And those were great dark stockings. Nice high heels too.

He and Surani weren't into cross-dressing, but if they had been, there were worse people to mimic than Detective Gabby.

She was a bit of a legend herself. Daughter of a detective working Organized Crime, she'd joined the force right out of college, working Crime Scene. When her father was killed in the line of duty, she became a detective and moved up to Major Cases, often working OC detail, like her old man had, specializing in the ultra-violent Eastern European gangs based in Brooklyn and Queens.

Known for her undercover work, she had a shining arrest record. And more important her conviction rate was off the charts. Anybody could collar anybody; having the brains and b.a.l.l.s to make sure the f.u.c.kers went away for a long period of time was something else altogether.

Gabby pushed an ornery strand of auburn hair off her forehead.

The captain asked her, 'So you want to run an undercover op?'

'Sounds like a TV show,' Kepler quipped, trying to get her to smile. Everyone ignored him and he decided to stop being cute.

'That's right,' she told them.

'What's the deal?'

'I heard from a CI of mine there's a player who's surfaced. Guy named Daniel Reardon.'

'Never heard of him. Organized crime?'

'No connection with any of the crews I could find,' Gabby reported. 'According to my informant, he runs a small operation out of a Wall Street front. He's got two partners he works with. Have first names only. Andy or Andrew, and Sam.'

'Or "Samuel"?' Kepler inquired.

She turned her eyes on him; usually they were green, today they were more yellowish, eerie. 'Only "Sam."' Spoken briskly, as if: Wouldn't I have mentioned the longer name if that was what I'd heard? 'Don't know anything else about them. But my CI heard it's an eight-figure operation.'

'Jesus. Who's your informant?'

'Guy connected with the Sedutto crew.'

With some reverence, Kepler asked, 'Your guy's a confidential informant embedded with Sedutto? And he's still alive?'

As if irritated at the interruption, she said curtly, 'He's very good. And I pay him a lot of money to be good.'

The captain asked, 'What're Reardon and his crew into?'

'It's serious s.h.i.t, Paul. Mostly cleaning money, some drugs, some guns. Offsh.o.r.e stuff. But the worst is he's. .h.i.t at least a half-dozen people. A couple witnesses and some rivals. And one of the witnesses? Apparently the guy's family was with him. Killed them too.'

'Oh, man,' Surani said, shaking his head. He and Kepler were exploring adopting.

'Multimillion operation and hits,' the captain mused. He did not sound at all dismayed. Good press material, he'd be thinking. This was cynical but Kepler knew you had to consider image in this business. White Knight s.h.i.t mattered at budget time, it mattered at promotion time. This was a game everybody learned and n.o.body felt guilty about playing.

'What do you have in mind for the set?' Barkley asked.

'It's going to be tricky. Reardon's smart. And suspicious as h.e.l.l, according to my CI. I need to set up a fake office somewhere in Manhattan.'

'Office? What does that mean?' Barkley asked bluntly.

Her voice matched his: 'A company. A business, an office. Probably an investment firm. I don't need much. A couple of rooms, furniture. Some phony files I'll gin up myself. Decorations, props. The office'll be deserted and half empty, like it was raided. That's part of my plan.'

'We're not Abscam, we don't have a lot of money.'

'What's Abscam?' Surani asked.

No one answered. Kepler reminded himself to explain to his partner that it was one of the biggest stings in U.S. history.

Gabby said, 'Won't cost us much. I was thinking we could use that place Narcotics closed up last month. It's just sitting empty. Midtown. Turtle Bay. Oh, and I'll need an unoccupied town house somewhere on the Upper East Side. Just for the exterior. The whole thing'll probably come in under a couple G's.'

Barkley grumbled, 'That's probably do-able.'

'I'll have IT put together a fake website for the company. I'll make it look like it was just raided. And I'll do a Facebook page for my cover ident.i.ty. Simple stuff. But good enough to fool Reardon if he checks. Which he will.'

Barkley grunted once more. 'Hold up. You gotta convince me, Detective. Tell me more about Reardon.'

'Don't have a lot. I've datamined him. He's rich, lives fast. Owns a Maserati, but it's slower than his Porsche. He's got a fancy boat in Connecticut and another one in lower Manhattan.'

'Well, well,' said Surani. 'We're going after a whole new cla.s.s of perps. Moving up in the world.'

'Or down,' Gabby corrected, frost in her voice. 'He kills families, remember?'

At least Kepler wasn't the only one she tapped with her whip.

'Reardon's single. Never married, though my CI tells me he sometimes claims he's divorced and sometimes he's a widower. He's got a loft in TriBeCa worth three million and a company on Wall Street. It's legit he's involved in venture capital work. The Norwalk Fund. But he only made one point two million last year, according to his taxes. His lifestyle's five times that. So the investing's a cover for the money washing, arms sales and other things he does.'

'Maybe he just lies to the IRS about how much his legit company makes,' Kepler suggested.

'Not about his cover business. Why would he do that? Who'd do that? It's suicide. He's not stupid, Brad.'

Ouch.

Surani asked, 'And the partners? Andrew and Sam? They're connected to The Norwalk Fund?'

'I checked out the company, of course, trying to find their full names. And, no, they're not.'

Of course ...

'So whatta you want to have happen out of this?' Barkley asked. He was known for his love of the big picture.

'I'll get close to Reardon, then lay out some bait, give him and Andrew and Sam the chance to hook up with my CI informant in something big. I'll be an innocent, so they'll have to take me out.'

'Nail them on criminal conspiracy,' Barkley said.

'Exactly. My CI, his name's Joseph'll be wired. As soon as they meet with him and mention the kill word, we can move in. And get warrants for their offices and houses. If we're lucky we can find something linking him to the earlier hits weapons, records, cash transfers.'

'Seems like you've thought this through like you always do, Detective. Tell me how you want to run it.'

She explained, 'My cover for the set will be Gabriela McKenzie, manager for the phony business I mentioned. I'm calling it Prescott Investments. It'll look like my boss Charles Prescott has been doing some kind of illegal stock trades. And you two have been investigating him for that. It's time for the bust, but he's disappeared. You come up to Reardon and me on the street. You break the news about Prescott. That'll get Reardon's attention. Then, after you leave, my Joseph comes up too. He'll tell me that he was doing some illegal deals with Prescott and he's p.i.s.sed he skipped town. He'll ask me to hand over this mysterious list that's worth millions.'

Barkley asked. 'What's in the list?'

A good question, Kepler reflected.