Heat Rises

Sixteen

At nine the next morning, when Heat and Rook climbed the subway steps up to 18th Street, a frozen mist was descending on Chelsea, wrapping the neighborhood in a harsh, woolen chill. They crossed Seventh, heading west, toward the agent’s office, joining an eclectic sidewalk mix of tortured young artists and upstart dancers who might have been cast in a music-video salute to brooding. By the time they reached Eighth, Rook said he had stopped counting navy berets.

When they entered the third-floor walk-up office of the Step This Way Talent Agency, Phil Podemski was eating take-out oatmeal at his desk. As he swept old trade magazines and newspapers from his couch onto the floor so they could sit, the agent eyeballed Nikki and said he could really do something with her, considering her figure and looks. “You have to strip, of course. Not for me, I don’t go for any funny business, I mean in the act.”

“Much as I appreciate the offer,” she said, “that’s not why we’re here.”

“Oh...” Podemski sized up Rook and tugged at his orange Yosemite Sam mustache. “Sure, guess I could give you a bullwhip and a fedora. We’d market you as Indiana Bones. Or maybe go sci-fi. You sorta look like that guy who roamed outer space everybody’s so crazy about.”

“Malcolm Reynolds?” asked Rook.

“Who?... No, I’m thinking we give you a space helmet and some assless chaps and call you... Butt Rogers.”

When Nikki jumped in and told him they were there to talk about Horst Meuller, Podemski stuck the plastic spoon back in the wide-mouthed deli cup and frowned while he finished chewing. “You cops?”

Nikki dodged telling an outright lie by saying, “You already spoke to one of my squad members, a Detective Rhymer?” When that seemed enough of an answer, she pressed forward. Heat wasn’t sure what she was looking for yet, but Captain Montrose had gone to great effort to leave her a posthumous clue leading to Podemski’s agency. He had also told her to be careful, although her assessment of the agent himself was that he was more colorful than dangerous, a lovable schemer straight out of Broadway Danny Rose.

Nikki told Podemski she was with his client the day he got shot but that Horst had been uncooperative. “Do you have any idea why he won’t speak to us?”

“That kid, I dunno. Since the boyfriend passed on, he hasn’t been the same. His act as Hans Alloffur is my big draw. But he ducked out on me after his pal Alan died, didn’t even tell me where he moved.”

Nikki remembered that from Rhymer’s report, which was why her plan with Phil Podemski was to drill down more on the dead lover, since that was driving Meuller’s actions. She flipped up the cover of her notebook. “Tell me about the boyfriend. Alan who?”

“Barclay. Nice guy. Older than Horst, maybe fifty. In good shape but had one of those gray complexions with the hollow eyes and dark circles like you see on people in nursing homes.”

Rook said, “And health food stores.” Nikki shot him a look. “OK, tell me I’m wrong.”

She turned back to Podemski. “He had some cardiac problems, right?”

“Yeah, that’s how he kicked. Tragedy.” The agent stirred his cold oatmeal and shook his head. “I never got that demo reel he said he’d make for my agency.”

“Was he in advertising?”

“Nuh-uh. Cameraman.” Phil held up both hands. “Videographer, pardon me.”

“What sort of video, Mr. Podemski?”

“Reality TV. You ever watch that show Payback Playback?”

Rook sat upright. “I love that show.” Nikki shrugged, unfamiliar with it. “You haven’t seen it? It’s great. Every week they have a different victim who has been screwed by someone — personal relationship, car mechanic, whatever — and they devise a hidden camera payback for the creep and play it back with him sitting right there in front of a nasty studio audience that yells, ‘Playback’s a bitch!’ ”

“My loss,” she said. “So did this Alan Barclay do any other kind of video work? Anything like porn or maybe bondage videos?” It was a long shot, but she had to ask, given where the case started.

“Porn? No way. I’d bet the farm against that.”

Nikki asked, “How come?”

“He was too religious. Strict Catholic. Alan was always trying to get Horst to give up the strip clubs and go legit. Maybe try out for Alvin Ailey or Juilliard. Messing with my income, that guy, may he rest in peace. Even tried to get his pastor to convert him.”

Rook blurted the question before Nikki could. “Do you know who Alan Barclay’s pastor was?”

“Sure I do. He’s the one who got murdered. It was on the news the day after I met him.”

Heat exchanged a glance with Rook and asked, “Where did you meet him?”

“Right here. The morning before he was killed. He was camped out in the hall when I came to open up. Said Horst Meuller told him to meet him here at nine sharp, so I let him in. All the while, I’m wondering how the hell do I entertain a priest? But Horst shows up pretty quick. Naturally, I ask him where he’s been, and he says never mind — he’s very nervous, freaked even. Then he and the priest take a walk. Last time I saw Horst till I heard he got shot.”

Heat quickly ran the events of the the past week through her memory and asked, “How come you didn’t tell any of this to Detective Rhymer when he interviewed you?”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me, I was only doing what that other cop told me to do, which was not to tell anyone.”

Heat felt her pulse flutter. “What other cop said that to you, Mr. Podemski?”

“He was a detective, too. The one who killed himself.”

Heat said, “Captain Montrose?”

“Montrose, that’s right.” Podemski fished the captain’s business card out of the slush pile atop his desk. “He showed up here a couple hours after Horst took off with that priest. Said he wanted to know where they went or if they left anything behind, you know, for me to hold or stash.”

“Did he say what it was? Money, an object?” asked Rook.

Podemski shook no. “Just told me to call him if anybody else came looking and to tell nobody about any of it. Not even other cops.”

“Has anybody else come by looking for whatever this is?” asked Rook.

“Nope.”

Nikki said, “Mind if I ask why you’re telling me?”

“Cuz I just realized that you’re the lady cop from that magazine. I figured if I can’t trust you, pack it in.”

Rook hit the sidewalk ready to rock and roll. “We’ve got him now. I’m telling you, Nik, that German is in this up to his umlaut.”

“How can you know that?” she asked.

“Come on, Meuller fights with Graf at the strip club, Meuller leads Graf away the morning he’s murdered, Meuller runs from you... If you want to know why he hid out and quit those dancing jobs, I refer you to Mr. George Michael’s theory about guilty feet and rhythm.”

“Rook, think of our timeline and tell me this. Meuller left Podemski’s agency with Father Graf just after nine A.M. How is it then that Graf shows up at Justicia a Guarda headquarters very much alive an hour and a half later?”

Rook shifted gears like nothing had happened. “Right. Alternate thought, that’s good. Any other notions?”

“No, a question. I want to know what a male stripper could have with him that Montrose would want and that got so many people killed. I want to talk to Horst Meuller again.”

“Great, let’s go.”

“Not yet.”

“Absolutely not,” said Rook, deftly flip-flopping. “Why not?”

“Because Meuller plays too close to the vest. I want to confront him, but I want to go in there knowing more than he thinks I do,” said Heat. “So let’s be smart and use the help Montrose gave us. He led us to that agent for a reason. Since we already knew about Meuller, I think it was to point us to his lover, the videographer. Let’s see what we can find out about Alan Barclay.”

Rook hailed a cab, and on the way to Gemstar Studios in Queens, where they produced Payback Playback, Heat called Mrs. Borelli at the rectory. The housekeeper not only confirmed that Alan Barclay was a parishioner at Our Lady of the Innocents but that Father Graf said his funeral Mass and delivered the eulogy two weeks earlier. “They knew each other very well, then? Were they friends?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call them friends,” said the woman. “Alan had some moral crisis he was dealing with, and Father was counseling him. The last days of poor Mr. Barclay’s life, things got quite heated in Father Gerry’s study.”

“Did you hear what they were arguing about, Mrs. B?”

“Afraid not, Detective. I may be nosy but I’m not a snoop.”

Heat told Security she and Rook would wait in the lobby for the pro ducer, mainly so nobody would ask her to flash tin. If — as the giant poster on the studio wall said, “The Playback Is a Bitch!” — so was being a cop without a shield. The bearded man in the sport coat and jeans who came out of the double glass doors to meet them introduced himself as the line producer, which meant that Jim Steele’s purview was the show’s physical production, including hiring the camera crew. He asked if there had been some neighborhood complaint about damage or noise from their location shooting and relaxed measurably when she told him no.

“I just want to ask you a few questions about one of your former crew. Alan Barclay.”

Steele closed his eyes momentarily and told her that the whole crew was still mourning him. “If you lead a good life, if you’re fortunate enough, you get a chance to work with a guy like Alan. A lovely man. Very giving and an artist with that camera. Total pro.”

Nikki said, “His name has come up related to a case we are investigating, and I’m really looking for some background on him.”

“Not a lot to tell. He’s been with me here since I hired him freelance on Don’t Forget to Duck.”

“Great effing show,” said Rook.

The producer browsed him warily then continued, “That would have been 2005. Alan was so gifted I brought him onto Playback when we got our syndication order.”

“What about before that,” asked Heat, “had he worked another show?”

“No, in fact, he was sort of a risky hire for me because his background was news shooting.”

Rook said, “Network or local stations?”

“Neither. He’d been a rover for one of the stringer companies that provide video footage to local stations that cut back on budgets. You know, stations can’t justify the union crews to wait around on the overnight shift to shoot the occasional car accidents and robberies, so instead, they buy clips from the stringers on an as-needed basis.”

“Do you know offhand who Alan Barclay worked for?” asked Heat.

“Gotham Outsource.” Steele’s smart phone buzzed and he checked the screen. “Listen, I’ve got to get back in there. Do you have all you need?”

“Sure do. Thanks,” she said.

Before he left, the producer said, “Mind if I ask you a question? Do you guys ever compare notes?”

Nikki said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“One of your detectives was here a little over a week ago asking the same questions.”

The assignment manager of Gotham Outsource had the cranky de meanor of a taxi dispatcher. He half-swiveled from his computer monitor and, over the chatter and electronic noise of a few dozen scanners, said, “I already covered all this with your other suit a week, ten days ago, you know.”

“Captain Montrose, right?”

“Yeah, same dude who ten-eightied himself,” he said, using the police radio code for “Cancel.”

Heat wanted to slap him hard enough for his headset to embed itself in his pea brain. Rook either sensed or shared her distaste and interceded. “Cover it again, it’ll take you two minutes. How long did Alan Barclay work for you?”

“Started in 2001. We doubled our crews after 9/11, and he was part of the big hire.”

“And you were happy with him?” asked Nikki, past her anger for the moment.

“I was until I wasn’t.”

She said, “Help me out there.”

“Guy ended up being my best shooter. Great shots, hard worker, not afraid to get close to the action. Then he just flakes out on me. Adios. Doesn’t even come in to quit or say kiss my royal red hinder. Just stops showing.” He sucked his teeth. “Freelancers. These lowlifes are one rung above paparazzi.”

Heat couldn’t wait to get some distance from this goon, but she had one more thing to find out. “Do you remember the date he quit so suddenly?”

He gestured with both arms to the roomful of police radios and TV monitors. “Do I look like I’d remember the date?”

“Try,” said Rook.

The man scoffed. “You’re no cop. Not wearing a fancy watch like that. You got nothing over me.”

Rook brushed past Nikki, ripped the headset off the guy, and spun his chair so he was nose-to-nose with him. “Hey, Ed Murrow, what would it cost your business if I called in a safety tip and some city inspections of your fleet of news vans stopped you from prowling for a night or three?” He paused. “I thought so.” Then Rook wrote his phone number down and stuffed it in the man’s shirt pocket. “Start remembering.”

When Horst Meuller woke up from his nap, he gasped. Rook was lean ing over his hospital bed holding a very large syringe in the German’s face. “Don’t worry, Herr Meuller,” he said in a soft voice, “I won’t hurt you.” Yet he didn’t move away, either. “But do you see how very easy it would be for someone else to kill you while you slept?” Rook gently swung the hypodermic back and forth; Meuller’s eyes followed it, big and wide like a cat clock. “You’re in a hospital, so there are so many ways. I’ve heard of contract killers who dress like nurses and inject poison into the IV drip of their victims.” Meuller felt around for the call button, and Rook smiled and held it up with his other hand. “To live, press one now.”

Horst’s face wore a sheen of perspiration. Heat tapped Rook on the shoulder and said, “I think he got the message.”

“True. No need to beat a dead... Oh, I want to say ‘Horst’ so bad. But it would be beneath even me.”

“What are you trying to do?” asked Meuller.

Nikki pulled a chair bedside. “To get you to see that if you don’t help us catch whoever you’re so afraid of, I can’t protect you from them. Nobody can. You will never be safe. Anywhere.” She waited, watching him process. “So you have a choice. Wait for them to come or help me get them before they get you.”

Meuller’s eyes went from her to Rook, who stood behind Heat. He held up the syringe and winked. “All right,” sighed the German. “Very well.”

Out came the notebook. Heat said, “Who shot you?”

“I don’t know, honestly.”

“Was it the same people who tortured you?”

He pursed his lips. “I didn’t see who shot me, and the others wore ski masks.”

“How many were there?”

“Two. Two men.”

“Why, Horst? What’s this about?”

“Whoever it is wants something. Something they think I have, but I don’t. Honestly, I don’t.”

She looked at his pleading eyes and believed him. For now. “Let’s talk about what it is they want.” He retreated into himself, and so she prompted him. “It has something to do with your boyfriend, doesn’t it? With Alan?” When Nikki saw the dramatic change of expression, she was glad she’d waited to confront him until they had done some legwork.

“Ja, that is right.”

“And what is it, Horst?” When he hesitated, she helped him along. She wanted to keep it moving while he was in the mood and also recognized he was in recovery from his wound and would fatigue shortly. “Is it money?” He shook no. “But it is something valuable.” He nodded. Nikki got tiny head shakes for each item on her list: jewels, art, drugs. Then she arrived where she wanted to land. “It’s a video, isn’t it?”

He stirred and Heat knew she had been right. It made sense to her that something from Alan, a videographer, would be a fungible item, quite valuable to someone, depending what was on it. “Tell me what’s on the video, Horst.”

“You must believe me, I do not know. Alan would not tell me for the reasons we have seen. He said it was too dangerous for me to know. That is why he kept it secret all these years. He said people would kill to get it. And now...” His mouth was dry and Nikki held out the water cup so he could sip from the straw.

Heat asked, “Did someone kill Alan, is that how he died?”

“No, he had a bad heart. From birth defect. A few weeks ago he had an episode and had to be put in the hospital.”

Nikki made a note. “And this episode, was there a cause for it?”

Something came over him. Acceptance? No, Heat had seen it in interrogation many times before. It was resignation. “You are going to make me tell it all, aren’t you?” When she just waited, Meuller’s eyes closed and opened. “OK. Yes, there was an inquiry made by a police detective. His name is Montrose.”

Nikki caught his use of the present tense. “What was he asking about?”

“It was the video. Somehow this Montrose had traced it to Alan after all these years. Can you believe it? He said he had just talked to a security guard who saw Alan the night he made the video. He denied it and sent him away, but my Alan, dear Alan, he freaked. He was so upset. We went to bed, and a half hour later I have to call 911 because of his heart. It was bad. In the hospital they gave him last rites.”

“Father Graf?”

He nodded. “That is when he made a confession about his sin of hiding the video. But the priest, he said, ‘No, no, Alan, you must absolve yourself by coming forward with this to the police.’ But Alan refused. I know they argued about this many times after he got out of the hospital. I guess the priest contacted the police detective to hypothetically explore delivering something to him on behalf of Alan, but my boyfriend refused to turn it over. He also refused to release Father Graf from his... what is it called...”

“Seal of confession?” said Rook.

“That, ja. The church law that makes a priest keep confession an absolute secret, no matter what. But when Alan was dying from his second heart failure, he told me to pass the video along to Father Graf to do as he wished.”

Rook said, “Why didn’t Father Graf just hand it over to Montrose?”

“That was the plan. But I had to get it to him first. I hesitated a few days because I, too, was scared. Finally, I met him at my agent’s office and handed it to him then, thinking it was all done.”

So now Nikki understood the phone calls between Montrose and Father Graf. And why the captain had searched the rectory. Once Graf told Montrose he was going to get the video from Meuller at the agent’s office, the Cap was looking for it like everyone else. “After you gave Father Graf the video that morning, where did he go?”

“That I do not know. I was paranoid about my safety and boogied, you know?” His accent made it sound like “boo-geet.”

“They found you, though, didn’t they?” said Rook.

“I made the mistake of going back to the old apartment, the one Alan and I shared. I thought now that the video was finally gone, I could chance it. I had some photos of him I wanted not to leave behind. I miss him so.” Nikki offered some more water, but he waved it off. “They were waiting.”

“Are these the men who attacked you?” She held up the photos of Torres and Steljess.

“I cannot be sure. Both of them wore ski masks. They turned up my stereo and lashed me to my bed. There was a metal wand they used to torture me that shocked me and burned. You have to understand, it was a terrible pain. Terrible.”

“Horst? How did you manage to get away?”

“When they left me to call someone in the next room, I slipped my restraints. You see, in Hamburg I was once a magician’s assistant for Zalman der Ausgezeichnet. I used the fire escape out the window and ran for my life.”

“Why did they stop the torture to make a call?” She closed her notebook and studied him. He grew uncomfortable under her gaze and said, “That electricity, it was the most awful thing in my life, ever. You can see, I still have scars.”

Horst was still selling the pain. Nikki knew why. She didn’t judge him, but she wasn’t going to say it for him, either, so she waited.

“It hurt through and through, you see.” Tears pooled in his eye sockets and Meuller slurped back mucus. “I am so very sorry but I... I told them. I told them I gave the video away.... To Father Graf.”

Then he sobbed in shame.

Heat and Rook had a sober, contemplative ride across town to Tribeca. Halfway to his loft, Rook said, “Father Graf on his conscience. That’s a big load to carry.”

“I feel sorry for him. Truly, Rook, who knows what any of us would do under those circumstances.” They rode in silence again. A block later her cell phone buzzed. “Raley,” she reported when she did a screen check. “Hey, Rales, what’s up?”

“Coupla things I know you’ll be interested in. First, your man DeWayne did call. Forensics is draining and sieving the tank on top of the Graestone as we speak. Ochoa’s there supervising.”

“That’s great. Let’s hope there’s a bullet in there somewhere.”

“Now, I’ve got one more item in the breaking news category. In my spare time, when not focusing on maintaining an orderly work area, I ran a financial on Father Graf.” God, thought Heat, how much she loved working with Roach. “Guess what kicked out. Remember that folder for Emma on his computer? I discovered that an Emma Carroll and Graf had a joint bank account. It’s only got a few hundred in it now, but it’s fluctuated as high as twenty, thirty grand over the past year.”

“Rales, you’re the best. At least you will be if you also have an address for Emma Carroll.” Raley gave it to her, and when they hung up, Nikki leaned forward to the cabdriver. “Change of plans, if you don’t mind. Park Avenue at Sixty-sixth.”

From a high floor in any building in Manhattan you can scan the sur rounding apartment rooftops and find a sunroom or two. Emma Carroll met them in hers, and Nikki was amazed at how warm and brilliant it was in there, even though it was near zero outside. The light did little to brighten the woman’s face, however. Emma Carroll was quite attractive in what some would call a cougarish way, but the skin was swollen around her eyes, which had a dullness from medication or despondency, or both. “I’m still reeling,” she told them as soon as they sat. “Father Gerry was a great priest and a great man.”

“Were you close?” Heat surveyed her, wondering if there was any forbidden romance lurking, but she couldn’t tell, which usually meant there wasn’t any. Nikki prided herself on having finely tuned lay-dar.

“Yes but not like that, oh, please. What the father and I had was a shared vision for doing work through the church to foster human rights and social justice.” She took a sip of whatever she had on ice on the coffee table. “Why spoil the fun with something tawdry?”

“I do see that you and Father Graf shared a bank account. An occasionally large bank account,” said Nikki.

“Of course we did. I am not only a contributor, but also the treasurer of the account we held for donations to fund a human rights organization we believed in passionately.”

Rook asked, “And that would be Justicia a Garda?”

Emma Collins perked up for the first time. “Why, yes. I’m so glad you know of them.”

“Not so well, really.” More for Heat’s benefit, he said, “We have what I believe is more of an e-mail relationship.”

Nikki ignored Rook’s suspicions about Pascual Guzman and asked Collins, “So you would do both the fund-raising and banking for this cause?”

“Well, it began that way. But more recently, I do less administration and more of the development of new donors. I don’t even use the bank account much anymore, but steer our patrons to give directly to the liaison for Justicia. They seem to enjoy the sense of hands-on funding and their capital administrator is a very charming man.”

Nikki opened her notebook. “May I ask you his name?”

“Sure. It’s Alejandro Martinez. Do you need me to spell that?”

“No,” said Heat, “I’ve got it.”