Heat Rises

Seventeen

Rook fortified his first cup of coffee of the morning with a shot of espresso and said, “Mother, are you sure you are up for this?”

“Up for playing the role of a wealthy socialite? Up for it isn’t the phrase. Born to it would be more accurate, kiddo.”

Nikki plucked the mug shot of Alejandro Martinez from Murder Board South and said, “Think it over, Margaret, this is the man you’d be meeting. He’s a notorious drug dealer who’s done prison time. He claims he’s reformed, but he’s also funneling drug money through a church. He may even be responsible for a priest’s torture and murder.”

“Look at that noble chin, will you?” said Margaret Rook. “And if you think I’m passing up a chance to have those eyes squeeze me across a mimosa, you’re crazy.”

When Rook had come up with this notion of asking Emma Carroll to set up a fake donor brunch meeting with Martinez, Heat was all for it as a way to bait him with some cash they could track and see where it ended up. By the time she realized the sting would be played out by his mother, the momentum was too strong and Emma had already made her call. “It’s not too late to back out,” Nikki cautioned. “If you have any worries, don’t be proud.”

“My greatest worry is which wealthy socialite from my Broadway career I shall reprise. Perhaps Elsa Schraeder from Sound of Music?”

“Isn’t she the one von Trapp eighty-sixed for Maria?” said Rook.

“Oh...” Margaret made a sour face. “I’ve lost too many men to the nanny to endure that again. I know. I could bring back Vera Simpson from Pal Joey.” She examined the mug shot again. “No, he won’t spark to her, too sulky. Let’s see... Ah! I have it. Muriel Eubanks from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. She got seduced by a con artist. Perfect.”

“Whatever works for you, Mother, but you are doing the seduction.”

“You bet I am.”

“With this.” Rook placed a Vuitton epi leather Keepall on the dining table. “There’s ten thousand dollars of my movie option for the Chechnya article in here. Nikki and I spent all last night recording serial numbers, so no tipping, no dipping.”

“Jameson, you are determined to spoil Mother’s good time, aren’t you.”

They arrived in their rental car an hour early so they could claim a parking spot close to Cassis on Columbus Avenue. Heat and Rook had chosen it because it was small and the ambiance was quiet, so they could hear better from the car. “How’s this going to work?” asked Margaret from the backseat. “On TV they always wear wires.”

“Tada,” said Rook. “From my new friends at the spy store, I got you this.” He handed her a smart phone.

“That’s it? Darling, I was hoping I could wear a wire.”

“So 21 Jump Street. This baby has state-of-the-art noise canceling and sound pickup. Just set it on the seat beside you and we’ll hear everything. It also has a GPS. I had better not need to track you, but if something happens, I want to be able to.”

“I approve,” Nikki said in a British accent. “Very thorough, Q.”

“You don’t know half of it.” He handed her a cell phone. “Since my e-mail got hacked, I’ve been worried about our phones, too. So while I was there, I got us new ones. I already did a GPS sync and programmed our speed dials.”

Heat pressed a button on her new phone. Rook’s rang. “Hello?”

“Nerd,” she said. And then hung up.

From the front seat of their Camry they watched Mrs. Rook establish herself early at the window table they had told her to take. She also claimed the inside seat, as instructed by Nikki, so that from the curb they could keep an eye on Martinez and have a clear view of his hands. “I’ll tell you now,” came her voice through the speaker phone, “this blocking may work for you but it’s far too drafty for me.”

Rook made sure his phone was muted and said, “Actors.”

While they waited in silence for the drug dealer to arrive, Heat’s cell buzzed and Rook said, “You sure you still want to use your old phone instead of the new one I gave you?”

“It’s the FBI, I think I can take this.”

Her contact at the Violent Crime Unit in Quantico began with an apology for the delay. “It took me a while to get anything for you on Sergio Torres because I hit a firewall and had to get some approvals.” A tingle of adrenaline stirred in Heat. “But it’s for you, so I kept banging on it till I got clearance. Your man’s records were classified because he was deep-cover law enforcement.”

Nikki said, “Sergio Torres was a cop?” Rook stopped finger drumming the steering wheel and whipped his head to her.

“Affirm,” said the FBI analyst. “Now, his whole jacket, the jail time he served, that was all real. Part of the legend that was built to give Torres street cred.”

“What agency was he with?”

“Torres was in Narcotics, NYPD, assigned to the Forty-first Precinct. That’s in — ”

“ — The Bronx,” said Heat, “I’m familiar.” Just then she saw the dapper figure of Alejandro Martinez walking down the sidewalk toward them. Nikki quickly thanked her NCAVC contact, hung up, and grabbed Rook. “Make out with me.”

She pulled him to her and they kissed deeply, and then, just as abruptly, she pulled away. “I didn’t want Martinez to clock me.”

“No complaints here.” Then while they watched Martinez kiss Margaret’s hand as he sat, Rook said, “Did I hear the human popsicle is actually a copsicle?”

The conversation in the restaurant was introductory small talk, so Heat quickly filled him in on her Torres briefing. Then Nikki said, “Whoa, whoa, I’m not liking this.”

On the cell phone speaker, Martinez was saying he wanted to move to a table toward the back. “I am not so comfortable sitting in windows.”

Heat said, “We should get her out of there.”

“No.” She had never seen Rook appear so cowed. “You don’t know Mother. If I intrude on her moment, I will pay dearly.”

Margaret, savvy to the arrangement, took care of it herself — and in character. “Oh, but you don’t understand. This is my usual table, where I like to see and be seen. Especially with you, Mr. Martinez.”

“Very well then,” came the smooth voice. “But only if you call me Alejandro.”

“It means Alexander, does it not? I’m fond of that name. I have a son, his middle name is Alexander.” Nikki gave Rook a teasing glance.

“You’re right, Nikki, we should get her out of there.”

“No, no,” said Heat. “I’m learning all sorts of things.”

Margaret and Alejandro’s brunch continued like any first date, which is to say replete with surface banter and feigned interest in the mundane stories of each other. “I’ve always found it creepy to listen in on my mother’s private moments with men,” Rook said. Then he immediately walked it back, saying, “Not that I ever do. Did.” He changed the subject. “I’m thinking this news that Torres was a narc in the Forty-first makes perfect sense.”

“This ought to be good.”

“Hear me out,” he said. “Then you can eviscerate my hypothesis.” When she gestured like a game show model for him to continue, he did. “One: Who else worked Narco in that precinct? Steljess. Two: Who got killed in that precinct? Huddleston. Three: Who was the drug kingpin in that precinct then? My mom’s date. Same gentleman whose DEA stash was in Father Graf’s attic. So yes, Nikki Heat, I am seeing a connection or two.”

Nikki smiled at him. “I’ll hate myself for saying this, but go on. What are these connections pointing to?”

“I’m smelling some kind of highly organized narc bribery ring that’s been operating in the Bronx. The way I see it, the drug dealers outsmarted the system and started funding crooked cops with DEA money so they wouldn’t have to cut into their own profits. Elegant, I’d say. Hang on a sec.” He listened to the table in Cassis. Martinez was laughing about the time Margaret went skinny dipping in the fountain at Lincoln Center. Rook said, “If only she had done it at night....”

“Your theory’s not totally ludicrous, Rook. But how does Graf figure in? And Justicia a Garda?... Or don’t they?”

“Been thinking about both. Remember how my man in Colombia, T-Rex, said Pascual Guzman from Justicia received that secret shipment three weeks ago? What’s the secret? Drugs? To quote Charlie Sheen, ‘Duh.’ And I’m thinking... just like our friend in there with his hand on my mother’s knee... Guzman launders the drug money through Father Graf, who innocently thinks it’s philanthropic donations for la raza justicia. He finds out it’s drug money, and bye-bye padre.”

Nikki stared into the middle distance, pondering. “OK. Then why bother with the Emma Carrolls and Margaret Rooks of the world?”

“Simple,” Rook said. “First, it’s more money to fund the bribes. And more importantly, it keeps up the façade. It’s probably what prevented Father Graf from looking too deeply.”

“Until?”

Rook frowned, willing the answer to come. Suddenly his face brightened. “. . . Until he heard about the video. That’s it, I’ll betcha. I bet that video they want so bad blows the lid off the bribery ring in the Forty-first.”

“Possible,” she allowed.

“You’re not convinced?”

“I’m convinced we have a theory. And not a bad one — for once. But we still need something solid. I can’t go to the department with a yarn. Especially with my disciplinary status.”

“So what do we do?” he asked.

“I believe we are doing it. Waiting for some money to follow.”

After a brunch of moules frites and a frisée au lardon salad, which Margaret proclaimed to be perfect, she paid the bill. Through her binoculars Heat noticed that Martinez made no effort to even pretend to grab it. After the waiter picked up the check folder, conversation dipped into that awkward lull that signals the transition to business. It didn’t last long. Alejandro Martinez was not a shy man. “Emma tells me you are ready to support our cause.”

“Oh, I am. Very interested. You believe in it strongly?”

“Of course. I am not myself Colombian, but as the great Charles Dickens once wrote, ‘Charity begins at home and justice begins next door.’ ”

Rook turned to Heat. “Prison library.”

Martinez continued, “But, as with all things valuable, this comes at a price.” He paused. “It requires money.” And then he said, “You brought the cash, right?”

Once they were on the sidewalk outside Cassis, Nikki said, “Smart. Your mother has the sense to stand so Martinez has to have his back to us to face her.”

“Trust me, thirty years on Broadway, one thing my mother knows how to do is upstage the other person.”

Martinez took the Louis Vuitton bag from Margaret, bent to kiss her hand, and the two parted. She walked south, as planned; Martinez hefted the strap over his shoulder and headed uptown. Nikki gave Mrs. Rook a thumbs-up as she passed, and Margaret gave a mild bow, her version of a curtain call.

They had decided on renting a car, figuring it would be the best way to tail his mother’s date. They could split up on foot if he took a subway, but if a man like Alejandro Martinez felt vulnerable in windows, public transportation would be unlikely. Up at 72nd Street he got into the backseat of the black town car that was waiting for him, and the tail was on.

It was well before lunch hour, with just enough traffic to hide in but not so much to make it a difficult shadow. Approaching 112th Street, Martinez’s driver gave plenty of right blinker for the turn east. Rook lagged before he made his right and kept a few cars between himself and the Lincoln all the way to First Avenue in Spanish Harlem. When the town car made a sharp right at Marin Boulevard and pulled over between a hubcap store and a funeral parlor, Rook drove past so they wouldn’t get spotted. Halfway up the block, he pulled over and checked out the side mirror. Nikki unbuckled and knelt on her seat to watch out the rear window, and saw Martinez whisk across the sidewalk and into the doorway of Justicia a Garda, carrying the bag of cash.

A parking spot opened ahead of them right in front of a taqueria, and Rook eased into the space, which afforded a fine view of the sidewalk from both mirrors. As they waited and watched, Rook’s cell vibrated. “Sure you want to answer that tainted phone instead of your new one?” Nikki teased.

“Shut up.”

“No, you shut up.”

“This is Rook,” he said, answering his call. “Yeah?...” He mimed for a pen. She gave him one and held out her notebook for him. He jotted down a date. May 31, 2004. “Listen, thanks, I — ” And then he held out his phone and stared at it. “Ass. Hung up on me.”

“Your pal from Gotham Outsource?” Rook nodded and Heat said, “Huh. And here I thought you two hit it off.”

They both did a mirror check. No sign of Martinez, although his driver was still idling, double-parked outside the building. Rook said, “May 31st of ’04 was Memorial Day. Mr. Happy told me Alan Barclay quit and left him in the lurch on a legal holiday, when all the TV stations reduce their union crews and he’s most busy.”

Heat said, “Not insignificantly, the same day they discovered Huddleston’s body in that Beemer.”

“Here’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.” Rook made another mirror check and continued. “The TENS burns on Huddleston. When they zapped Horst Meuller and Father Graf, they were trying to get them to give up the video. Why torture Gene Huddleston, Jr.?”

Heat shrugged. “Maybe he was connected to the video?”

“I’m liking that,” said Rook. “This was a Hollywood kid, right? Is it possible he and Alan Barclay made some secret gotcha video to bust the narcs who were on the take?” When she wagged her head side to side signaling doubt, he added, “Not for public service reasons. I mean for extortion. Trying to cut a better deal on product using the video as leverage.”

“You don’t leverage guys like that.”

“My point,” agreed Rook. “I think he found that out the hard way, and meanwhile, his videographer slipped away under the radar — with the video as his insurance policy if he was ever found out.”

“I’m freaking out here,” Heat said. “Either your theories are getting better, or working with you, I’m starting to lose it.”

He cupped his hands and breathed like Darth Vader. “Nikki... Come to the Dark Side...”

She got out her phone and, while scrolling her address book, asked, “How confident are you that you can keep the tail on our friend?”

“Hey, that’s my ten grand. Highly.”

“And do you think you can resist getting yourself into trouble and call me when he starts to move?”

“Why,” he said, “where are you going?”

“A little divide and conquer.” She found the number she was looking for and pressed Send. “Hello, Petar? It’s Nikki, how are you doing?” While she listened to her old boyfriend celebrate hearing from her, she watched the mirror. At one point Heat flashed a glance at Rook and met the eyes of fear and loathing. Ever since Rook crossed paths with her former college live-in on a recent case, he could barely keep a lid on his jealousy. Even though Nikki ultimately shut down Petar’s attempt to rekindle, she could see that the green beast lived on in Rook. “Listen, Pet,” she said, “I have a favor to ask. You were freelancing for the gossip mags back around 2004, 2005, right? If I took you to coffee today and picked your brain about Gene Huddleston, Jr., would you have any dirt to tell me?”

When she hung up, Rook said, “That Croatian reprobate doesn’t know squat about Gene Huddleston, Jr., he just wants to have sex with you.” When she got out of the car, he said, “Hey, you forgot this.” He held out the new cell phone he got her and said, “Call me after?”

Heat leaned in the passenger door and took it from him. “Would it make you feel better if I had a chaperone? I could maybe ask Tam Svejda.”

Nikki was still grinning when she set out for the subway.

Ninety minutes later Rook was still on stakeout in Spanish Harlem when his cell phone buzzed. “Any movement?” she asked.

“Nothing. Even his driver shut off his engine. Say, that was a quick coffee.”

“I got what I needed and Petar had to get back to a production meeting.” Her old boyfriend was a segment producer for Later On, one of the numerous desk-and-couch shows that fought over insomniacs after Dave and Jay and Jimmy.

“That’s good,” he said.

“Rook, you are so transparent. You don’t even know what I learned from him, you’re just relieved he went straight back to work.”

“OK, fine. Tell me what you got from him.”

“Something that connects Huddleston, I think.”

“Tell me.”

“I need one more piece, and to get that I need to take a little trip out of town.”

“Now?” he said.

“If it weren’t critical, I wouldn’t go. This is why God invented homicide squads, so we could split up duties. You’re my squad now, Rook; can you cover that base until I get back later this afternoon? With train time I should be back by four, four-thirty.”

He paused. “Sure. But where are you going? And don’t say Disney World.”

“Ossining,” said Heat.

“What’s in Ossining, the prison?”

“Not what, Rook. Who.”

There was a small blue plastic litter bag in the glove compartment, and Rook was calculating how much urine it could hold. Images of him kneeling above it in the driver’s seat, trying to deal with the potential overflow made him chuckle, which only made his bladder press all the more. He thought, This must be what it’s like for those middle-aged dudes in that commercial, missing the big play at the ball park having to get up and run to the can. He was seriously thinking about a dash into the taqueria when he spotted motion in the rearview.

Martinez stepped out of the door to Justicia a Garda. He was followed by a man in a cammy jacket with a Che Guevara beard, who was carrying the Vuitton money bag. Rook remembered the face from Murder Board South as Pascual Guzman’s.

As before, Rook kept his tail loose, erring on the side of not being made, although their driver still didn’t seem concerned about anything but his own ride. After he looped a few turns and headed south on Second Avenue, the blinker came on after crossing East 106th, and Rook eased back to a stop at the corner and waited as the town car stopped mid-block. Guzman got out without the black bag and trotted into a mom-and-pop farmacia. While he waited, Rook dialed Heat, got immediate voice mail, and left her an update. By the time he was done with the call, Pascual Guzman was back outside fisting a small white prescription bag. He got into the rear of the Lincoln without looking back and the journey resumed.

They convoyed down Second until the lead car worked a right at Eighty-fifth that eventually fed them into a Central Park transverse much like the one in which Nikki got ambushed days before. Coming out the other side, Rook almost lost them at Columbus when the taxi he was following as a buffer stopped short to pick up a fare. He jacked the wheel and sped around the cab, managing to catch up with the Lincoln at a red light at Amsterdam. The light changed to green, but the car didn’t move. Instead Martinez and Guzman got out and entered a bar. Guzman had the black leather case with him. The town car left and Rook pulled into a loading zone around the corner from the pub.

He knew the Brass Harpoon for several reasons. First, it was one of those legendary writer’s bars of old Manhattan. Booze-infused geniuses from Hemingway to Cheever to O’Hara to Exley left their condensation rings on the bar and on tabletops at the Harpoon over the decades. It was also a mythical survivor of prohibition, with its secret doors and underground tunnels, long since condemned, where alcohol could be smuggled in and drunks smuggled out blocks away. Rook knew this spot for another reason. He could picture its name in Nikki’s neat block capitals on Murder Board South as the preferred hangout for Father Gerry Graf. He ruminated on the priest’s missing hour and a half between getting the video from Meuller and showing up drunk at the Justicia headquarters and the math wasn’t hard to do.

Rook was questioning what his next move should be. His bladder answered. On his way to the door he reasoned that neither Martinez nor Guzman had met him, so his chances of being recognized were slim. Unless he waited too long and walked in with wet khakis, he shouldn’t attract any notice. But then, this was the Brass Harpoon, so wet trousers were probably the norm. Safe either way then.

It was just after four and there were only six customers in the place. All six swung their heads to check him out when he stepped in. The two he had followed were not in sight. “What can I do you?” asked the barkeep.

“Jameson,” said Rook, eyeing the bottle of Cutty Sark on the top shelf under the small shrine that had been created in honor of Father Graf. His framed laughing photo was adorned in purple bunting, and a rocks tumbler with his name etched in the glass rested on a green velvet pillow underneath. Rook put some money down and said he’d be right back.

There were no feet under the stalls in the gents’. Rook hurried to his business, achieving blessed relief as he read the sampler hung above the urinal: “ ‘Write drunk; edit sober.’ — Ernest Hemingway.”

Then he heard the voice he had been listening to at brunch that morning. Alejandro Martinez was laughing and joking with someone. He zipped but didn’t flush, instead roamed the restroom to hear which wall the voices were coming through. But they weren’t coming through the wall.

They were coming through the floor.

Easing out the men’s room door, Rook scoped the bar and saw a Jameson at his place, but nobody seemed interested in his whereabouts. He backed his way into the hall, and past the manager’s office, coming to a brick wall. He had read the legends — what writer worth his or her hangover hadn’t? He squared himself to that wall, scanning it, his fingers fluttering before him like a safecracker’s. Sure enough, one of the bricks had a slight discoloration, a patina of finger grime on its edging.

He thought about calling Nikki, but someone was coming. Maybe to use the restroom, or perhaps the manager. Rook pinched the brick between his thumb and forefinger and pulled. The wall opened; its brickwork was just facing over a door. The air coming out was cool and smelled of must and stale beer. He slipped through the doorway and pushed the wall closed. In the murky light he could barely make out a flight of exposed wooden stairs. He tiptoed down, keeping his feet close to the side to minimize the chance of the steps creaking. At the bottom he paused to listen. Then his eyes were blinded by flashlights. He was grabbed by his jacket front and spun against a wall.

“You lost, buddy?” It was Martinez. And he could smell his mother’s Chloé on him.

“Totally.” Rook tried to laugh it off. “Were you looking for the men’s room, too?”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” came the voice of someone beside Martinez who Rook figured to be Guzman.

Rook squinted. “Think you could cool the high beams? They’re killing me.”

“Turn them off,” said a third voice. The flashlights lowered from his eyes. He heard a switch thrown and the overheads came on. Rook was still blinking to adjust when the third man came into view like an apparition. Rook recognized him from the news and from his books.

There before him, standing in the middle of a makeshift apartment in the secret basement, among old kegs and cartons, was the exiled Colombian author Faustino Velez Arango.

“You know who I am; I can tell by the way you look at me,” said Velez Arango.

“Nope, sorry. I’m just getting my vision back after your friends gave me the eye exam.” Then he started backing toward the stairs. “I’m obviously the buzz killer at your little party, so don’t let me intrude.”

Guzman braced him by the shoulders against an old refrigerator and frisked him. “No weapons,” he said.

Alejandro Martinez asked, “Who are you and why did you come here?”

“The truth? OK, at brunch this morning my mother gave you ten thousand dollars of my money in that black case over there and I want it back.”

“Alejandro, he followed you?” Pascual Guzman’s agitation manifested in scanning the basement as if their intruder had arrived with a platoon of ninjas.

It could have been a grave tactical error, but Rook gauged the author as the most powerful in the group and keyed off him for cues. He took a chance and said, “Relax. There’s nobody else, I came alone.”

Guzman took Rook’s wallet and opened it to his license. “Jameson A. Rook.”

“The A is for Alexander,” he said, eyeing Alejandro Martinez, hoping that would lend credibility to his story about following the money. “Nice name.” But Rook’s attention was drawn to Faustino Velez Arango, whose thick brow had lowered over a glare fixed on him. As he approached, working his jaw, Rook braced for a blow.

The exile stopped inches from him and said, “You are Jameson Rook, the writer?” Rook nodded tentatively. Faustino Velez Arango’s hands came up at him, both suddenly clutching his right hand and shaking it with delight. “I have read everything you ever wrote.” He turned to his companions and said, “This is one of the best living nonfiction writers in print today.” Then back to Rook, he said, “An honor.”

“Thanks. Coming from you, that’s — well, I especially like the part about ‘living’ because, I plan to do a bit more of it.”

There was an immediate sea change. Velez Arango gestured for Rook to sit in the easy chair, and he pulled up a wicker seat beside him. The other two were not yet aboard but seemed to relax a bit as they stood by. “I must say, Mr. Rook, that it takes courage not only to gain the access to a story as you do from all sides but then to overcome dangerous obstacles to get the hard truth into mainstream media.”

“You’re talking about my piece on Mick Jagger’s birthday, right?”

Velez Arango laughed and said, “I was thinking more of the ones on Chechnya and also the Appalachian coal miners, but yes, Mick in Portofino was brilliant. Excuse me one moment.” From the end table the novelist took a vial beside the white bag from the farmacia and shook out a pill. While he washed it back with some water, Rook noted the prescription label. Adefovir dipivoxil, the same drug unaccountably found in Father Graf’s medicine chest. So now it was accountable. Graf was bearding for Velez Arango’s meds. “Another bonus of being a guest of the government in prison,” he said as he screwed the cap back on the bottle. “An inmate cut me with a blade and I contracted hepatitis-B.”

“It must be hell to live the life of Salman Rushdie.”

“I hope to write as well and live so long,” he replied.

“How did you end up here?”

Pascual Guzman cleared his throat in an obvious manner. “Faustino, if he’s a reporter...”

“Mr. Rook is more than that. A journalist. Which means he can be trusted. May I trust you not to reveal my secrets if I tell you about them, how is it said, off the record?”

Rook thought it over. “Sure, not for publication.”

“Pascual and his heroic group at Justicia a Garda saved me from certain death. I was the target of a contract killer in prison — that was the man with the blade — and more were being recruited. As you know a rescue like mine was logistically complicated and quite expensive. Señor Martinez, who is a man of sincere reform, raised funds here in New York to mount human rights legal efforts in Colombia, as well as to gain safe passage for me here to my glorious exile.” He chuckled and gestured to the basement he was living in.

“When did you get here?”

“Three weeks ago. I arrived in New Jersey after departing in a wooden cargo crate on a ship from Buenaventura, you know the place?” Rook nodded and thought of his tip from T-Rex in Colombia about the secret shipment sent to Guzman from there. But the secret shipment wasn’t C4, after all — it was Faustino Velez Arango! “As confining and dismal as my basement life appears, it is a paradise compared to what I left. And I have been much helped by openhearted New Yorkers, especially the pastor and parishioners of one of your churches.”

He reached into his shirt collar and pulled out a large religious medal on a thin metal chain. “This is St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. Just last Monday a wonderful man, a priest who championed our cause, came here just to give this to me.” The author became drawn, creases appeared on his forehead. “I understand the poor man has since died, but what a kind gesture, don’t you think?”

“Father Graf gave that to you Monday?” Rook knew it had to be soon after the priest met Horst Meuller at his agent’s.

“Sí. The padre, he said to me, ‘It is the perfect medal for hiding.’ ”

Rook didn’t speak. He just repeated those words in his head as he watched the medal swing on its chain. His cell phone buzzed, startling him. It was Heat. “May I take this? It’s my girlfriend and I know it’s important.... Look, I won’t say where I am.”

Martinez and Guzman shook no, but Velez Arango overruled them. “All right, but use the speakerphone.”

Rook answered just before she dropped to voice mail. “Hi, you,” he said.

Nikki said, “Took you long enough. Where are you?”

Martinez moved a step closer. “You first,” said Rook, and Martinez backed off a hair.

“Back at Grand Central trying to get a cab. Ossining was big, Rook. Huge.” He was afraid to say the wrong thing in such a pressure situation, and as he thought, she said, “Rook, are you OK?”

“Yeah, just eager to talk to you. But let’s do it in person.”

“Truly, this is going to blow you away. Shall I come to you? Are you still following your money?” There was a rustling sound and she groaned. “Hey, what are you — ?” Nikki started to scream.

And then her phone went dead.