Heat Rises

Fourteen

She didn’t feel the bullet hit the door or her body. In the blink between synapses, in which Nikki wondered if she didn’t sense it because she was already dead, she heard two familiar voices shout, “NYPD, freeze!” then three rapid shots followed by a body falling heavily against her improvised shield. As she lay there, pinned, feet pounded toward her. Then came the welcome sound of a gun being kicked and skittering away across asphalt.

“Clear.” The relaxed voice belonged to Dutch Van Meter.

Detective Feller called, “Heat, he’s down. You all right? Heat?”

Feller holstered his weapon and got her out from under the pile. Even though Nikki insisted she was fine, he made her sit down on a ratty office chair that was rotting in the yard beside a plastic tub of spent cigarette butts. Blue-and-whites from the Forty-first were pulling up outside the gate behind the undercover taxi. The emergency lights flashed into the entrance to the salvage yard, giving the night a surreal quality, especially as the colored lights strobed on Van Meter. Still holding his Smith & Wesson 5906, he stood up beside Tucker Steljess’s body, after trying in vain for a pulse. He made a smooth sideways palm chop to his partner, signaling a flat line.

“Don’t worry about me, fellas, I’m fine. I’m just the one who got shot at.” Rook pulled himself up from his hiding place behind a corrugated cardboard carton labeled “Brake rotors — Fair to OK” in black marker. Rook was putting on a show of mock indignation, but Nikki knew the signs, having seen them... having experienced them herself.... He was shaken. Getting shot at does things to you.

In his statement to the incident commander, Rook said he had phoned Ochoa while he was on the run behind Heat, giving block-by-block scouting that Roach relayed over the radio. After following her across Spofford Avenue, he saw Nikki get pulled into the salvage yard. That was the last of his play-by-play. He pocketed her cell phone and snuck up to peek in the gate just as the paint locker spilled down on her. Without hesitating, he started out for Steljess, figuring he could blindside tackle him. But half the distance to him, just as Heat pegged the big man with a paint can, Rook saw the gun clear the vest. And then Steljess must have seen him out of the corner of his eye because he spun, starting to bring the Glock up in his direction. Not knowing what else to do, Rook took a dive behind some boxes just as he fired. The cops from the Forty-first, plus Raley and Ochoa, who were also in the semicircle around Rook, turned as one to look at one of the boxes. Indeed, there was a fat, nine-millimeter’s worth of bullet hole in it.

Rook had thought both he and Nikki were finished, but then he heard Detectives Feller and Van Meter identify themselves, followed by three shots in quick succession.

When they were done with him, Rook joined Heat and Feller, who had already given their statements. Dutch Van Meter had fired the three shots and was still being debriefed. “Cake,” said Feller. “This’ll come down as righteous.”

Nikki said, “Got to tell ya, if it hadn’t been for you...”

“You’re welcome,” said Rook. He saw their amused expressions. “. . . What? If that box had been filled with air filters instead of brake rotors, I might not be standing here right now.”

“In truth Rook did distract him enough to give us time to get in,” said Detective Feller. “Wasn’t the smartest play I’ve ever seen run, but effective.”

Rook gave Nikki a look of vindication and said, “Thank you, Detective. And from now on, I’ll never watch another episode of Cash Cab without thinking of you and Dutch. For me, the Mobile Shout-Out will forever be the Mobile Shoot-Out.”

Feller turned to Nikki. “Couldn’t have been a box of air filters, huh?”

“Seriously, Feller,” she said, touching his shoulder. “Your timing didn’t suck.”

“Turning into our primary mission, Heat, saving your butt. This what you call suspension?”

“Don’t know what you mean,” Heat said. “I was just being a good citizen.”

Raley and Ochoa gave them a ride back to Tribeca in the Roach Coach. As soon as they left the scene, Ochoa hopped on his cell phone to the precinct to get the results on the background check he had requested on Steljess. “Yeah, I can hold.” Then he turned over his shoulder to Nikki. “You don’t mind if I do this with you in the car, do ya? I know you’re not doing any sort of police work, so if you happen to pick up any information, I trust you won’t pay attention to it.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Heat, returning his wink.

Raley gave it some gas as he steered onto the Bruckner and said, “What’s the deal with you, Rook? I mean, you figure you have some sort of superhuman powers, you can just hero-stride into the line of fire and repel slugs?”

“Somebody had to spring into action, seeing how you gentlemen took your sweet time arriving. Tell me, if I looked on the floor up there, would I see some White Castle wrappers from your stop on the way?”

Nikki was amused by how easily Rook fell into the understated cop talk, trading barbs instead of overt compliments or thanks. But she wasn’t feeling quite like being so oblique in her gratitude for what he did trying to save her. She slipped her hand over his and gave a squeeze. And then she let go and slid it up the inside of his thigh. They were still holding radar eye contact when Ochoa finished his call.

“As I said, pay no attention to this back there while I brief my partner, all right?” The detective finished jotting a note on his pad and turned to Raley. “Tucker Lee Steljess, male cauc, thirty-three, has a few assaults in his jacket. Mostly beefs in biker bars plus he recently got early release serving fifteen days of a forty-day sentence for breaking the front window of a liquor store. By the way, know what he used to break the window?”

Raley said, “I love it when you spice the story, pard. What did he use?”

“A pimp.”

“Only awesome.”

“Just wait. You ready? Digging back, Mr. Steljess was once a cop.” Ochoa gave Nikki a quick glance over his shoulder. “That’s right. Uniform for a long time before he finally made D-3, then worked undercover Narco in the Bronx.” He consulted his notes again. “Reports are he was volatile and pretty much a loner. Nickname was Mad Dog. Service discharge says he, quote ‘identified excessively with his undercover narcotics subjects’ unquote. Also known to harass hookers. In spite of that stellar record, they cut him loose in ’06.”

“Go figure,” said Raley.

Ochoa said, “But neither of you heard that.” Then he handed his notes over the seat to Nikki.

The two of them said nothing on the elevator ride up to Rook’s loft. They just stared at each other as they had in the backseat of the Roach Coach. The air between them flowed thick with a longing that had no words, and they both knew that to try to find them or speak them would only weaken the overwhelming magnetic pull each of them felt. They stood close. Not touching — that would break the spell, too. Just near enough to almost touch... just enough to each taste the breath of the other as the rocking motion of the ride brought them to almost brush bodies.

When he closed his front door, they threw themselves at each other. The force of the heat that engulfed them plus the wave of exhilaration from their close call propelled Heat and Rook into a dimension of sexual longing that was as unstoppable as it was primal. Gasping, Nikki pulled her mouth away from his and leaped up onto him, hooking her legs behind his. Rook flexed his leg muscles for balance and steadied himself, pulling her tightly to him. She pressed her face to his ear and bit. He moaned with surprise and excitement and turned her to sit up on his kitchen counter. As he undid her coat front, Nikki reclined herself backward onto her elbows so she could watch him, finally speaking. “Now,” she said, “I need you right now.”

“This is where petting leads,” he said later.

“Petting? What century are you from?” She unfolded herself from their lazy, naked tangle on his couch and poured each of them another glass of wine from the bottle on the coffee table.

“Do not mock me because I am a wordsmith. Would you rather I called it groping? Because that’s what you did in the Roach Coach, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Nikki handed him his glass and they tinked. “You say that like you’ve never been groped in a police car.”

“Well, only yours.” Her cell phone rang, and as she got up to retrieve it from her knot of a coat, he continued, “But if you have some notion about starting some sick sexual game where we do it in police cars, I’m all for it.”

Lauren Parry said, “Hope I’m not interrupting sump’n-sump’n. Miguel says by the look of you two when he and Raley dropped you off, I should wait a decent interval. Actually, he called it an indecent interval.” Nikki looked down at herself, not wearing a stitch, and Rook, just the same, his fine ass making its way down the hallway.

“No, we were just relaxing.”

Her friend said, “Pants on fire.”

“What pants?”

The two had a nice laugh about that, then Lauren said, “Listen, since I’m betting you don’t have a pen anywhere on you, I’ll give you a second to find one. I have some interesting off-the-record stuff to share.... Even though Detective Ochoa tells me you are anything but still involved in case work due to your suspension.”

Nikki plucked a rollerball from one of the numerous coffee mugs that Rook had converted to pencil cups and scattered around his loft. One of the perks of sleeping with a writer. “I’m ready.”

“First off,” began the ME, “and this is why I really called, because I knew it would give you some peace of mind.... The bloodwork on Father Graf’s Roman collar came in and it was a negative match for Captain Montrose.”

“Yessss.”

“Yeah, I thought that would be a lift. I’m already having them run Sergio Torres, and now I’ll add this guy you took on tonight — unarmed.” Lauren put an underscore on the word that made it sound as boldly comical as it did insane. The objective view of her best friend wasn’t lost on Heat.

“OK, I do have to admit I got a little sloppy. Still adjusting to the whole unarmed private citizen thing.”

“Don’t know what to say, Nikki. I’d tell you to get a hobby, but we both know what the chances are of that.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Heat. “Is vigilante considered a hobby?”

“You’ve been hanging out with Jameson Rook too long; you’re starting to talk like him.” Which gave Nikki the second reason to smile in that conversation. Lauren continued, “I also have lab results that came in on that little chip of leather. Remember that?”

Heat pictured it, looking like a tiny bacon bit in the bottom of the vial when Lauren had showed it to her in the autopsy room. “Sure, the fragment you found under Father Graf’s fingernail.”

“That’s the one. It came back sourced from a commercial brand of leather.”

“Bondage gear?” asked Nikki.

“No. The manufacturer may be familiar to you. Bianchi.”

The brand was well known to Heat as it was to anyone who geared up for law enforcement. “It came from a police belt?”

Always precise, Lauren clarified, “Or a security guard’s. It came from either a holster or a cuff case. You’re the one who tipped me to the handcuff bruising on the victim’s lower back, so, if you want to speculate, cuff case is a good bet.”

“I wonder... that is, if you knew anyone who could possibly have a word with Detective Ochoa at this late hour of the night...”

“Go on,” she said, enjoying Nikki’s counter to her teasing about Rook.

“I wonder if a search of a certain dead ex-cop’s home or his motorcycle repair shop would show an old Bianchi cuff case with a new scratch on it.”

Heat heard the mouthpiece get covered and hushed voices. One of them was Miguel Ochoa’s. “Will do,” said Lauren when she came back on. “He and Raley will head to Steljess’s place tomorrow first thing. Do you want me to also have him look at Captain Montrose’s case and holster?”

Lauren’s question was the one Heat was afraid to ask out loud. “I suppose. I mean, it would be nice to eliminate that possibility.” And then, feeling disloyal to his memory, she added, “However remote.” As Rook drifted back in the room with a robe on and carrying one for her, Nikki said, “And Lauren, as long as we’re talking about the captain, would you mind if I pester you about one other thing?”

“Name it.”

“I know they must have run his gun by now.”

“That’s right. It had been fired, but they never recovered the slug. It was a through-and-through and out the roof.”

Heat recalled the dimple around the hole in Montrose’s Crown Vic. “And that’s that?”

“Of course not,” said the ME. “The gun had his blood and tissue on it. Also his hand tested positive for powder residue and trace metals.”

“How many bullets in the magazine?” asked Heat.

“Report said all but one... I think.”

“Humor me, Ms. Parry. Would you ask Miguel to look into it himself? And by himself, I’m not saying I don’t trust the testing. I’m just saying nobody comes close to a Detective Ochoa–quality job.” And then Nikki said with a tease, “And you must know what I mean by that, right, Laur?”

“Yes, I do,” she said with a laugh. “He’s a very thorough investigator.” Lauren was still laughing when she hung up.

Rook ordered in some chicken scarpariello and a salad from Gigino’s for them to share, and still hanging out in their robes, they ate a late supper at his counter while Nikki filled him in on the newest information from Lauren Parry.

“It all lays out, doesn’t it?” He ticked each off on a finger. “Steljess caught on surveillance in the bondage dungeon, Steljess was a fired ex-cop, Steljess would have handcuffs and a cuff case, he sure had a gun, Steljess is our killer.”

Nikki poked a grape tomato from their salad with her fork. “That’s pretty definitive. Then tell me why he did it. And why did all the shooters come after me in Central Park? And what is this all about?”

“I got nuthin’.”

She popped the tomato in her mouth and gave him a sly smile. “I’m not saying you’re wrong...”

“When you say things like that to me, I call it a Kardashian. Know why? Because I’m looking for the but.”

“However... ,” she said, “it’s still circumstantial. If Roach comes up with a matching fingernail gouge on the matching cuff case, that’s at least a solid connection. Even that’s still not proof. I need facts.”

Rook served another piece of chicken onto her plate. “Whoever said facts are funny things? Dead wrong. Can’t recall the last time I was ever amused by a fact. Now, intuition and conjecture... that’s like filling the bouncy castle with laughing gas.”

“Just so you know, I thoroughly agree that Steljess is our prime suspect.” Her face clouded. “It’s too bad he had to be taken out. I was hoping to sweat him. In my heart, I believe he killed Montrose.”

Now it was Rook’s turn to look doubtful. “It’s not that I’m saying you’re wrong... but why?”

Heat smiled. “Now you’re thinking like a cop.”

Heat woke up to an empty bed. Detective that she was, she felt Rook’s side and the sheets were cold. She found him on the computer in his office. “You’re shaming me, Rook. This is the third morning this week you’ve gotten up before I did.”

“As I lay there watching the digits change on the clock on my nightstand, stumped and more than just a bit frustrated by this case, I got up and took a page from your book, Nikki Heat. I went out to stare at the Murder Board.”

“And what did you learn?”

“That Manhattan is very noisy, even at four A.M. I’m serious. What’s with all the sirens and horns?” She sat in the easy chair across from him, waiting, knowing he was ramping up to something. He had the look of the guy holding cards. That’s why she always beat him at poker. “So I waited for one of the items on the board to jump out at me or connect to another. Didn’t happen. So I went the other way. I asked myself, ‘What don’t we have?’ I mean besides closure.

“And then it came to me. It was probably why I couldn’t sleep in the first place — because it was a touchy area last night.”

“Captain Montrose,” she said.

“Exactly. You said he was always telling you to look for the odd sock. Nikki, he was the odd sock. Think about it. Nothing he did was like the man you knew.... Like the man anybody knew.” She shifted in her seat, but it wasn’t from upset at the subject, it was because energy was moving through her. She didn’t know where Rook was going, but her experienced sense told her he was asking the right questions. “So with that in mind, I tried to figure out what he was up to. Hard to know. And why?”

“Because he had gotten so closed, so secretive.”

“Precisely. Odd sock behavior. He’d lost his wife, so he wasn’t talking with her, either. But guys, no matter how stoic we appear — unless we’re moody loners, or those Queen’s Guards at Buckingham Palace — have to talk with someone.”

“Father Graf?” she asked.

“Mm-maybe. Hadn’t thought of him. I was thinking more like some existing personal bond. A lifetime confidant. The mortgage buddy.”

“Explain?”

“The one pal you can call, no matter what time of night it is and no matter what you’ve gotten yourself into, who would mortgage his house to save your rear, no questions asked.” He saw her glint of understanding. “Tell me, who is a cop closest to?”

She didn’t hesitate. “His partner.” Nikki was just about to say the name, but he beat her to it.

“Eddie Hawthorne.”

“How could you know about Eddie?”

“Writer’s friend. A little thing called an Internet search engine. Got multiple hits on citations of valor for those two, both as uniforms and detectives. I figured if they found a way to stick together when they got their gold shields, they’d be tight.”

“Eddie retired and moved away, though.” A distant memory brought a smile to her. “I was at his retirement party.”

“July 16, 2008.” He indicated his laptop. “I loves me my Google.” Then Rook pressed a few keys and his printer came alive.

“What’s that, Eddie Hawthorne’s cholesterol level?”

He took two pages from the tray and walked over to Nikki, handing her one of them. “It’s our boarding passes. The car service picks us up for LaGuardia in a half hour. We’re having lunch with Eddie in Florida.”

Eddie Hawthorne pulled up in his Mercury Marquis as soon as they stepped from the terminal in Fort Myers. He got out and gave Nikki a big hug, and as they parted and looked at each other, Nikki’s eyes gleamed as they hadn’t in a long, long time.

He took them to a fish taco place two exits west of Interstate 75 off the Daniels Parkway. “It’s local, it’s good, and it’s close enough to the airport so you don’t have to sweat making your return flight this afternoon,” he said.

They ate at a patio table shaded from the sun blare by a Dos Equis umbrella. The first part of the lunch conversation was reminiscence about their lost friend. “Charles and I were partners so long people didn’t see us as two people after a while. I walked by our sarge once — all by myself, you see — and he looks right at me and says, ‘Hi, fellas.’ ” The old cop laughed. “That’s the way it was. Hawthorne and Montrose, the thorn and the rose, that was us, man. Damn, that was us.” Eddie Hawthorne seemed more interested in talking than the food, which was excellent, and so Heat and Rook just listened, enjoying fresh grilled fish and shirtsleeve weather while he reminisced. When the subject turned to Montrose’s wife, the laughter over glory days faded. “So sad. Never saw two people so close as he and Pauletta. It’s a stunner for anyone, but man... It hollowed Charles out, I know it did.”

“I kind of wanted to ask you a little about that, I mean the past year,” said Nikki.

The ex-detective nodded. “Didn’t think you flew all the way down here for the horchata.”

“No,” she said, “I’m trying to make sense of what went on with the Cap.”

“You won’t be able to. Doesn’t make any sense.” Eddie’s lip quaked briefly, but then he sat up, willing some steel into his body, as if that would help.

Rook asked, “Did you have much contact with him since his wife was killed?”

“Well, you could say I made a lot of attempts. I flew up for her funeral, of course, and we sat up talking most of the night after the service. In truth, maybe more sitting than talking; like I say, I made attempts, but he went to stone in there.” Eddie poked his heart with two fingers. “Who couldn’t understand that?”

Nikki said, “It’s not uncommon to sort of slide a rock over you for a time after you suffer a trauma like that. But after a period of intense grieving most people come out of the funk. And when they do, it’s sort of startling, the new energy.”

Eddie nodded to himself. “Yeah, how’d you know that?” Nikki felt Rook’s hand touch hers under the table briefly. Hawthorne continued, “It was out of the blue, like three months ago. He calls and talks awhile. Old times small talk, that kind of stuff. More conversation than I’d heard from him in ages. Then he says to me that he’s been sleeping poorly, tossing thoughts all night. I told him to join a bowling league, and he just says, ‘Yeah right,’ and keeps on about his insomnia.

“He asks me, ‘Edward, you ever get bothered by any of the old cases?’ And I said, ‘Shit, man, why do you think I retired?’ and we had a good laugh about that, but he came right back to it, like he was scratching at poison ivy. And he gets to the point, saying that he’s been thinking more and more about The Job and how he’s having doubts about his purpose. Even said — get this — wondering about how good a cop he was. Can you believe that?

“So he says he’s been sitting up nights chewing on this one case we worked together, saying he was never satisfied we got it right, and the deeper the hole gets dug around him with all the administrative bullshit he has to deal with, the more he feels the itch to do something. Something to prove that he’s still the cop he believed he was. I told him to open the Scotch and watch some Weather Channel, anything to get his mind clear, and he gets pissy with me, saying he thought that I of all people would understand the importance — the duty, he says — of getting it right. I didn’t know what else to say to that except, let’s hear about it then. Charles says he never believed it was a bad drug deal. It didn’t figure for the victim and his priors to be in with that low end of a dealer, or in that part of town. And I said what I said back then, drugs is dangerous business; if they don’t get you, the dealers will. And then I reminded him I always thought if it wasn’t a busted deal it was a Latin gang initiation.” There it was again, thought Nikki. The catch-all explanation for unsolved crimes. “But Charles, he said he was picking up pieces that smelled like a planned killing and a cover-up. He said he was looking for a revenge motive. Either way,” he shrugged, “what are you going to do? You give it your best shot and don’t look back. That’s what I did, anyway. But he wasn’t one to let anything go unfinished.” The steel left him and his lip quivered again. “I dunno, maybe that’s what finished him.”

“The case,” said Nikki. “What was the case that bothered him so much?” But she knew the answer before she asked it.

“The Huddleston kid,” answered Eddie.