Frozen Heat

EIGHT

The caller ID read “Twentieth Precinct.” Nikki stepped away from the cash register to let the customer behind her go ahead while she pressed answer. “Heat.”

“Roach,” came the voices of Raley and Ochoa together.

“Hey, in stereo.”

Raley said, “Uh, actually that technology is years away. Your earpiece is, sadly, monaural.”

“Buzz killer,” said Ochoa. “Detective Sean Raley, where joy goes to die.”

“Did you two call to try out your morning zoo routine? Because I have news for you. Howard Stern is safe.”

Ochoa led off. “Calling with an update on that taxi you shot up, figuring we’re still allowed to keep you in the loop. Catch you at an OK time?”

“Sure, I’m just buying a new rug. A runner for my entry hall.”

“Listen,” said Ochoa, “you need any help cleaning up over there? Because Raley’s got, like, no life.” The pair laughed, and he continued, “Seriously, we can swing over after shift.”

“Thanks, really. But I spent the rest of my afternoon sweeping and scrubbing. I’m good. Whatcha got?”

Forensics had just shipped the prelim, and Roach wanted to let her know they lifted lots of prints and were running them. To expedite things, Feller drove a mobile ID kit to the driver’s house so his could be eliminated. Roach didn’t sound hopeful about the rest of the fingerprints. Ochoa said, “I’m guessing the bulk are going to be from the parts scavengers. Man, they hit that cab like a school of piranha.”

“Even took the security dash cam and the hard drive, so no video of our shooter.”

Heat asked, hopefully, “How much blood on the seats?”

“What seats?” said Raley.

“He’s still out there, Detective. You watch your back.”

When she got off the phone, the clerk had already rung up her purchase, a three-by-seven Turkish wool with a color and pattern similar to the one she was replacing. Nikki paid, and he asked, “You want it delivered? We’re closing for the night, but we can have it there first thing tomorrow.”

Heat smiled and shouldered the roll. “It’s three blocks.”

Eight P.M., and traces of the departing day greened the sky to the west on 23rd Street. Window lights flicked on at a thrift store, and she stopped to admire a lamp, thinking she’d come back for closer inspection when they opened in the morning. Something reflected in the polished brass of the base moved behind her. Nikki spun.

Nobody there. When she turned back around, the roll of rug balanced on her shoulder almost whacked a passing leafleteer holding a stack of handout ads for men’s suits. Relieved to avoid a Three Stooges moment, Heat rounded the corner to take Lexington home. Whether it was Ochoa’s admonishment that the shooter was still out there or primal wariness as the street transitioned from shops to apartments and lost commercial light, she decided to hail a cab. Nikki raised her free hand as she walked along, but the only two cabs that passed were occupied, so she gave that up after she passed East 22nd with only two blocks to go.

Halfway to 21st, tires squealed followed by an angry horn behind her, and a woman’s voice, “Asshole, it says don’t walk!” Nikki turned around to check up the block, but all she saw were the car’s taillights lurching west and the Chrysler Building’s silvery glow a mile uptown. She continued on, but couldn’t pause the streaming video of the night before replaying in her head: the footsteps of the shooter in the hoodie stomping across her rooftop; his footsteps on the planks of the scaffold; his footsteps on the asphalt of Park Avenue South. Was she just jumpy from lack of sleep or could this really be happening again? It’s what fills your mind when you know somebody out there wants you dead and is looking for his next opportunity. What was she doing alone on the street at night? Heat missed the two pounds of reassurance gone from her hip after Captain Irons took possession of her service weapon. Her backup Beretta 950 sat in a desk drawer in her apartment, doing no good up there. Nikki sped up her pace.

Jaywalking across East 20th Street, she definitely heard footfalls matching hers, and when she stopped, they did, too. She pivoted, but the sidewalk was empty. It crossed her mind to lose the rug, but with her building coming in sight on the opposite side of the square, Nikki pushed it to a jog, double-timing west along the spiked wrought iron that fenced in Gramercy Park.

The notion of an ambush occurred to her. If this guy had an accomplice staking out her front stairs, she might be racing right into the jaws of a trap. She began to calculate one-on-one as better odds, especially if she surprised him with an impromptu reversal. At the corner of the park, the fence didn’t cut a sharp angle but curved. As soon as Heat rounded it, she stopped and dropped.

Squatting in a crouch, Nikki waited and listened. Sure enough, the jogging footsteps approached but halted fifteen yards off. Her view was blocked by the park shrubbery hiding both of them, but she heard panting. And a man softly clearing his throat. Resting a palm flat on the flagstone sidewalk, she leaned to her left and found his distorted reflection in the restaurant window across the street. He was only a dark shape in the soft lighting of the park, but she made out his hooded sweatshirt and ball cap. She lost him when he moved forward, resuming his pursuit. Heat got ready.

He came around the corner of the sidewalk at a trot. When he did, Nikki thrust herself upward, ready to bat his face with the three-foot roll of Turkish wool. Then she recognized her pursuer as Rook.

Heat just managed to pull her swing and missed hitting him, but he startled, shouting “Whoa, no, no!” flailing his arms up defensively and losing his balance. He pitched forward, bent over in a stoop, desperately fighting gravity and losing. Rook crash landed with an “oof!” on the slate flagstones, managing, at least, to shield his face, putting his forearm between it and the sidewalk as he dropped.

“God, Rook, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Protecting you,” came his muffled voice spoken into the sleeve under him. He turned over and sat up. Blood streamed from both nostrils.

When they came into her apartment, she said, “Please don’t bleed on the floor, I just cleaned it.”

“Love the compassion. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

She sat him down on a bar stool with a box of tissues and washed him up with the remaining towelettes Lauren Parry had given her the night before. While she dabbed the dried blood from his upper lip and nose, she said, “Rook, think back over the past year. Haven’t you learned yet not to shadow me?”

“Clearly, not. Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“And clearly, you haven’t learned that, if you’re being shadowed, it just might be the cavalry. Meaning me.”

“I.”

“No grammar police, OK?” He pulled a wad of tissue away from his nose to examine for fresh blood. Satisfied, he lobbed it into the trash can. “What’s wrong with us, Nikki? Why can’t we be like a Woody Allen movie? Two old lovers with unfinished business running into each other on a New York sidewalk?”

“You mean,” she said, “instead of running into a sidewalk?”

“Is my nose broken?”

“Let’s see.” She reached her fingers for it, but he pulled back.

“No. Enough pain.” He got up and checked his face in the teakettle. “Reflection’s too distorted to tell.” He shrugged. “Well, if it is broken, it’ll give me character. I’ll be even more rugged in my rugged handsomeness.”

“Until people find out how you did it.” That made him check himself out in the kettle again. While he turned away, bending to assess the damage, she said, “Thank you for trying to protect me.” Then she added, “Guess you can’t be that angry.”

He rose upright and faced her. “Wanna bet?” But his look told her he had, at least, downgraded to a simmer.

“And I don’t blame you. I know you felt blindsided.”

“Why? Because you ditched me, and a couple of hours later, I find a naked dead man in your apartment? And when I dare to ask, you think you can get away with saying it’s complicated and giving me the boot?”

“OK, so I guess you may still be angry.”

“What if roles were reversed? What if you had come into my place and found a naked Tam Svejda with her brains on the floor? All right, maybe not so much the brains, but you get the idea.”

A stillness charged by unseen toxic particles settled in the chasm between them. Nikki knew that it fell to her to break the silence, or not to. She recognized a tipping point when she saw one and waded in. “You may not agree,” she began, “because of the… indignity of your nose injury, but tonight’s unexpected encounter is sort of good timing. Today my shrink suggested I make contact with you.”

“This is sounding more like Woody Allen, after all. You saw a shrink?” And then for emphasis, he added, “You?”

“Mandated. Long story involving Captain Irons, but it did get me to a session with a department therapist.” Nikki drew a breath that hitched in her chest. Compartmentalization always got her through, so this was scary territory. Vulnerability meant exposure, but she opened herself to him, unarmed and unprotected. “I’m willing to explain, if you’re willing to listen.”

That’s when the part of him she considered his essence, the part she most connected to, the part that jumped in front of bullets to protect her, softened him another degree. Yielding to his innate compassion, he held out his hand to her and said, “We’d probably be more comfortable on the couch.”

As with most great fears, including imagined monsters behind a door, hers became merely life-sized once she confronted it and opened up. Rook’s willingness to listen instead of interrupting her to judge, get defensive-or even to wisecrack-helped her immensely in telling him the saga of Don. After she informed him of their sexual hiatus after she had met Rook the summer before, he nodded, accepting that as fact. He even had the elegance not to ask her if they had slept together the night before. When she finished, he said one thing, and it was the best thing he ever could have.

“This must be absolute hell for you to face alone.”

Nikki’s tears erupted, and she threw herself from where she sat into his arms, shaking with sobs, allowing herself the unguarded emotional display without restraint. Her weeping rose from a deep, seemingly bottomless source that dredged up not just the raw hurt of the past twenty-four hours, but a decade of suppressed feelings of loss, hurt, anger, frustration, loneliness, and fear, which-until that moment-had been neatly boxed and locked away. He embraced her, cradling her into his shoulder, seeming to know that his caring silence was their strength, and that his encirclement of her with his arms signaled hope and unwavering friendship amid her catharsis.

When, after a time, Nikki was cried out, she drew herself away and they stared at each other, their gaze speaking volumes about trust and the bond they shared. They kissed lightly and parted, smiling, holding each other’s gaze some more. Just as they had never declared their exclusivity, they also had never shared the love words. Right then, basking in the intimacy of some new sanctuary they had just forged, that would have been the time to say them. But neither would know if it had crossed the other’s mind then in that tender, vulnerable moment. The time for voicing that came and then passed, banked for another day, if ever.

She excused herself to splash some cool water on her swollen eyes. When she came back, he helped her unroll the new rug for the entryway. After they squared it with the line of the wall, Rook stood on the curled ends to press them down flat and then took in the area. “Looks like somebody’s been cleaning.”

“‘Out, damned spot,’” said Nikki. “The super hung a new door and plastered the holes. Tomorrow, he’s going to paint. Pretty soon it will all be back to normal.”

“Like it never happened.”

“But it did. And we live with that.”

Rook’s face clouded. “I’ve spent all day thinking it could have been worse. It could have been you.”

“… I know.”

“Or even worse, could have been me.”

“Even worse?”

“For you. Not having me around to pull your pigtails and shake my moneymaker.” He danced a goofball dance in place-indeed accenting his fine moneymaker. He finished with a “Ka-ching!” and she laughed. The man could sure do that, get a serious girl to lighten up when there seemed to be no reason in hell to.

They were both hungry but wanted to get out rather than order in and spend too much more time just then in that apartment, with its recent history. Griffou down in the Village had quiet spaces and served late, so they set out for Ninth Street. Heat made sure to slip the Beretta Jetfire into her pocket along with an extra clip of. 25s before they left.

At that hour, they had their pick of the four salons in the former 1800s boardinghouse that one blogger got right when she said it vibed “subterranean swank.” Rook chose the Library for its tranquility and the warming company of books. After sampling their Manhattans, he surveyed the room, once frequented by Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Edna St. Vincent Millay and wondered if the day would ever come that they lined the room with Kindles and Nooks.

She ordered the chopped salad and he got the grilled octopus, and while they ate, Rook said, “I have a thought about your forced leave. Have you considered flexing some muscle?”

“You mean deal out a sweet beat-down to Wally Irons?” she asked. “Between us, yes. But only as a fantasy.”

“Not that kind of muscle. Political muscle. The power of downtown, Nikki. It’s how I got my ride-along with you in the first place. You should get on the horn to that weasel at One Police Plaza. What’s his name?”

“Zach Hamner? Forget it.”

“You don’t have to like him to use his clout. And he’s made for this. You said yourself this guy looks like he pleasures himself to pictures of Rahm Emanuel.”

“I never said that.”

“Oh. Perhaps I reveal too much. Know any good shrinks?”

“No way am I calling The Hammer.” She shook her head as much to him as herself. “Just being around that whole political cesspool is why I said no to my promotion.”

“Have you considered that if you had taken it, you wouldn’t be sitting on the wrong side of Cap’n Wally’s Iron gate?”

“Of course I have, but the answer is still no. It’s not worth the IOU it would cost me. And trust me, Zach Hamner would call in that chip. No,” she repeated, “no.”

“I think I get it,” he said. “Then I have an alternative.”

“I should have whacked you with that rug.”

“Hear me out. I know you and how you hate this downtime, but, now that you’re forced into it, you should do something relaxing.”

“We are not going to Maui.”

“No, I’m talking about continuing to work the case. Together, of course. Come on, you think I could ever imagine you relaxing in Hawaii? That’s not where we’re going.”

She set her fork down. “Going? We?… Where?”

“To Paris, of course.” He upended his Manhattan. “My treat. I worked it all out in the cab on the way over here.”

“Oh, you did, did you?”

“Uh-huh. The stars have all lined up, Nikki Heat. First, you’re sidelined, anyway. Second, it might not be the worst time for you to make yourself scarce in this city, considering your buddy with the shotgun is still at large.”

“I am not running from him or anyone, ever.”

“And third,” he steamrolled on, “while Roach and the rest of the squad work the case here, we can go investigate the odd sock of your mom’s life, which is why she gave up her dream there during that summer in 1971.”

“Doesn’t feel right to me.”

“Neither did Boston, and look.” He saw her register that and continued, “Nikki, there are precious few leads, and those you have either dead end or get screwed up by the Iron Man. The only forward movement on this case has come from going backwards. Am I right?”

“Yes…”

“It’s back to what I keep telling you about pure effort. I may not be a cop, but in my own investigative career, I’ve learned you can’t always force things to happen. Results have their own mind. Sometimes when you have been really, really patient for a long time, the answer is more patience.”

Heat’s objections began to melt away. She picked up her fork and raked together some fennel and almonds with bites of apple and pear. “I suppose you’re going to say my forced leave is win-win.”

“That phrase is so 1980s,” he said. And then added a barb. “Like Sting.” He speared a tentacle and continued, “No, I see this more like making lemonade out of lemons. Or, more appropriately, sauce meuniere out of lemons and butter.”

The first flight they could get to Paris didn’t leave until four-thirty the next afternoon, which worked fine for Nikki. Damn, she needed sleep. The trauma of Don’s awful killing, the chase-correction: chases, if you counted the faux one with Rook-the myriad stresses over her dad, Irons, her forced leave, the unsolved case, and the emotional ups and downs with Rook, had all delivered body blows. Fold into that an all-nighter at the precinct the night before, and Heat checked out as soon as her head hit the pillow at Rook’s, and stayed there until she awoke to a roll of thunder and rain tapping at the glass across the bedroom.

Rook was already up and dressed, flogging his MacBook for a hotel and calling to arrange a meeting with Nicole Bernardin’s parents in Paris. “Want to know where we’re staying?”

“No,” she said, lacing her arms around his neck from behind. “I’m putting myself in your hands. Surprise me.”

“All right. But it’ll be hard to top the one you gave me the other night.” She swatted his shoulder then poured some coffee while she got on the phone to Roach for a case update.

“What happened with the assignment I gave Feller and Rhymer to canvass Nicole Bernardin’s neighbors about the carpet cleaning van?”

“Nothing at first,” said Ochoa. “Her immediate neighbors had zip.”

Then Raley added, “But since her house faced Inwood Hill Park, Rhymer got the idea that exercisers and dog owners might be habitual passers-by and decided to hang out awhile and see who turned up. A lot of zeroes, but they finally scored a woman who power walks Payson Avenue daily. This lady not only noticed the carpet cleaning van, she tried to hire them to do her place around the corner.”

Ochoa picked up the story. “She rang the bell to ask for a brochure and said the guy got all crabby with her and said to forget it, he was booked.”

Nikki said, “Did she get a description of him?”

“Negative,” said Raley. “The guy never opened the door.”

“That’s bizarre,” said Heat. “Did she remember any company name or get the phone number off the van?”

“Nope,” answered Ochoa. “She didn’t bother. Too pissed off.”

A thought occurred to Heat. “Did she say what color the van was?”

“Maroon,” Roach said in unison.

“A van that same color tried to run me and Rook down the other morning.”

Raley said, “You never mentioned that.”

“I never connected it until now. Put it on the Murder Board. There is still one there, I hope.”

“There is, we’ve got you covered.”

Detective Ochoa added, “Along those lines, please know we’re doing all we can to get something to shake loose on this case.”

Raley continued, “Don’t get too excited yet, but before shift this morning, Miguel and I met up with Malcolm and Reynolds. We thought, just to double-check, we’d walk the area around Bruckner where they found the taxi your shooter jacked.”

Detective Ochoa continued, “There was this pile of old tires and paint cans in the flood control drain up the block. We had some rain overnight, so I thought I’d give it a look in case the runoff carried anything there. I found a men’s glove.”

Heat started to pace. “What color?”

“Brown leather.”

“That’s what he had on,” she said, seeing the gloves grip the shotgun.

“It’s a long shot,” said Raley, “because it’s waterlogged and looks like a dog or something turned it into a chew toy. But it definitely has blood traces and gunpowder residue. Lab’s running it now for prints, inside and out, as well as DNA.”

“Good work, you two. Tell Malcolm and Reynolds, also.”

“No,” said Ochoa. “We’re pretty much hogging credit on this one.”

Rook could see the change in her when he came out of his office to join her. “We’re still going,” he said. She told him about the glove and his response was “We’re still going.”

“But I feel like I’m being irresponsible. Like I should stay close in case something breaks.”

“You’re on leave. And what are you going to do, sit outside the door to Forensics, yelling ‘Hurry up’ every half hour?” She chewed at the inside of her lip, unsold. “Nikki, we covered this last night. Remember Boston? We ended up ID-ing Nicole and connecting her to your mom, big-time.”

“All right,” she said. “We’re still going.”

“Excellent. Because the real reason is those tickets are nonrefundable.”

Their overnight flight got them into Paris-Charles de Gaulle at six the next morning. Both slept soundly on the plane, but as a contingency, Rook had reserved and paid for their room from the previous night so they could nap and adjust if they needed to without waiting for afternoon check-in. “Nice,” said Nikki on their ride up in the elevator.

“I know it’s not the George V, and the name Washington Opera doesn’t sound very French, but as boutique hotels go, this is a find.” Rook told her the elegant building was the former town house of Madame de Pompadour, and Nikki couldn’t help but think of her father’s job when he arrived in Europe in his twenties, finding properties just like this to invest in and flip. The thought both comforted and unsettled her. She reflected on her therapist’s message to reconnect to the past she had been avoiding and accepted that this would be a trip of mixed emotions that needed to be felt.

From their room, Rook opened the shutters to show her Paris’s oldest bakery across the street, promising warm croissants and pain au chocolat every morning. “The Louvre is a few blocks that way,” he said, pointing to his left. “The Opera is to our right, and out the back of the hotel, the gardens of Le Palais Royale. Curb your dog, please.”

“If we were here for sightseeing, that would all be splendid,” she said. “Or does this fall under your rather loose definition of Romantic Trip While On The Case?”

“Paris? How can you talk about romance while we’re in Paris? We have work to do. You’ve got the number of Nicole’s parents, and as soon as it’s nine A.M., we’re calling them.”

“That’s a half hour away.”

“Then I say we strip and knock off a quick one.”

“How romantic.”

“Paris, baby,” he said, and they raced each other bare.