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invited to supper a few times. He had three repetitive memories of the occasions: Barkley telling the same quasi-blue jokes over and over. The roast beef being very good. And Kepler’s spending the entire time trying to figure out if there was any possible scenario for telling Barkley’s know-it-all college-student daughter to shut the fuck up. Which, of course, there was not.
    Kepler himself read the release again.
    Fred Stanford Chapman, 29, … wife, Elizabetta, 31, two children, Kyle and Sophie … Surgery to remove a bullet lodged near his heart is planned for later today … Investigations continue … Prognosis is not good …
    Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera …
    ‘How many calls?’ Barkley asked the youngster.
    ‘From the press? A hundred.’
    Barkley snapped, ‘That’s an exaggeration.’
    Kepler thought: Probably isn’t. His partner, Naresh Surani, seemed to concur.
    ‘I wanted to keep it quiet,’ the captain said.
    ‘A shooting?’ From the PA youngster.
    Public affairs. Crap.
    ‘Yes, a shooting. In goddamn Manhattan. I wanted to keep it goddamn quiet. But I guess that didn’t work out, did it? This was a leak the size of the Titanic .’
    Kepler corrected, The Titanic wasn’t a leak. The Titanic was a ship that got fucked because of a leak.
    But, of course, the edit was tacit.
    Barkley snatched up a pen and began to revise.
    Which gave Kepler the chance to look around their new digs. This was the second room the Charles Prescott Operation – the CP Op – had been assigned to in the past two days. Sure, this happened to be a busy time for bad guys and little operations like the CP Op didn’t mean very much, in terms of chalking up cred, so they had to take whatever room was free at the moment. But this one was the pits. The twenty-by-thirty-foot space did have a few high-def monitors, but they were off, and they didn’t even seem hooked up. The walls were scuffed – nothing new there – and the government-issue furniture was cheap. Nearly a third of the floor space was devoted to storage. Something smelled off too, as if a take-out turkey sandwich had fallen behind one of the filing cabinets a long, long time ago.
    At least it couldn’t get any worse.
    Barkley slid the press release back like an air hockey puck. ‘Fix it. And by the way, no comment from me, other than the investigations continue. Stop at that. Nothing more.’
    The press officer tried again. ‘But a hundred calls, sir.’
    ‘Why’re you still here?’ Barkley made a sound like a disagreeable transmission. This one came from his throat, not his belly.
    ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’ The Public Affairs officer scooted out.
    Why the hell does that kid wear a sidearm? Kepler thought.
    Barkley turned to the two detectives, sitting at a battered fiberboard table, and barked, ‘Jesus.’ He nodded toward Kepler’s copy of the release.
    Fred Stanford Chapman, 29, … gunshot wound …
    Then the boss changed direction. ‘Now, her .’
    He didn’t need to say Gabriela. There were no other women causing them so much anxiety at the moment.
    ‘I told you yesterday I wanted her under surveillance. Twenty-four seven. What the hell happened? You were at her place, right? Cameras, microphones.’
    Her.
    Brad Kepler shrugged. ‘She tipped to us. I don’t know. And then started using evasive tactics.’
    ‘The hell does that mean? Sounds like something from a bad cop movie.’
    ‘But,’ Kepler said, ‘we’re still on her.’ A glance at his partner. ‘Right?’
    Surani called Surveillance, had a discussion, then clapped his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Barkley and Kepler, ‘We’ve got officers close. It’s righteous.’
    Which sounded like something out of an even worse cop movie.
    Righteous?
    The captain asked, ‘How’d you manage the tail, if she slipped you at her place?’
    Surani explained, ‘Brad got a GPS on her.’
    ‘How the hell you do that?’ The captain gave one of his broad frowns that he used for