Naked heat

Chapter Eleven

Jameson Rook got up at five the next morning to get his life back in order. After he showered and dressed, he ground beans for a pot of strong coffee then carried a broom, dustpan, and bucket of cleaning products down the hallway to his office to confront the shambles created by the Texan two days before. Standing there in the doorway, he paused to assess the post-tornado zone of his cozy writer's workplace: strewn files; emptied desk drawers; broken glass from pictures, awards, and framed magazine covers; banker's boxes of research clawed open and dumped; his own bloodstain dried on the floor; rummaged cabinets; scattered books; lamp shades off-kilter; the writer's chair that had become his prison-OK, he thought, actually, that one wasn't much of a change.

His view was a snapshot of personal violation, both disheartening and overwhelming. Rook couldn't figure out where to begin. So he did the only logical thing. He put the broom, the dustpan, and the cleaning products in the corner and sat down at his computer to Google Petar Matic.

He smiled as he typed in the name. Say it quickly and it sounded like an erotic toy. Best don't go there, he thought. Not if he wanted the morning to be about getting his life in order.

To his surprise, numerous Petar Matics came up. A prominent financial guy, a teacher, a Cleveland firefighter, and so on, but no hits on Nikki Heat's college beau. Not until the second screen page. The sole link was to a dated bio excerpted from a wildlife documentary film he had shot once in Thailand, New Friends, Old Worlds. It wasn't much of a mention. "A film student and adventurer from the village of Kamensko in Croatia who had resettled in the United States, Petar Matic was honored to received a grant for a film introducing the world to a host of newly discovered species." So Petar was one of those guys who shot footage of snakes with two tails and birds with hair under their wings.

Next he searched: "Petar Matic Nikki Heat" and was glad for no matches. He was especially relieved there was no link to any film project. He nudged out of his brain the image of Nikki and some Croatian Romeo as haunting green ghosts in some night vision video and started sweeping up broken glass.

About a half hour later his cell phone rang with the Dragnet theme. "Notice I'm calling you this time before I show up," said Nikki. "I'm around the corner, and you've got exactly two minutes to shoo the cougars."

"All of them? I'm growing fond of this one. In fact, hang on." He pretended to cover the mouthpiece and said, "Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?"

When he got back on, Nikki said, "Careful there, Rook. You'll give yourself another nosebleed."

She arrived with coffee that even she admitted was no match for his and a bag of warm Zucker's bagels seeing their first sunrise. "I figured I'd stay downtown this morning so we can go visit Cassidy Towne's editor right when the publishing house opens and then head up to the precinct from there." She saw something come across his face and said, "What?"

"Nothing. I just didn't know we'd be going to the publisher together, that's all."

"You don't want to come? Rook, you want to come everywhere. You're like a golden retriever with a Frisbee in your mouth the moment you hear car keys."

"Sure, of course, I want to go. I'm just bummed I didn't make more progress. It's still a FEMA site back there."

She brought her coffee and a gouged-out sesame bagel half to the office for an assessment. "You've hardly made a dent."

"Well, I got started, and then got on the computer and got caught up working on my Cassidy Towne piece."

Nikki looked at his monitor, where the Big Lebowski screen saver was engaged-a floating image of the Dude's head on a bowling ball. Then her gaze drifted to the radio-controlled toy helicopter on the desk. She put her hand on the fuselage. "Still warm," she said.

"The bad guys don't stand a chance with you, Nikki Heat."

They had a half hour before they had to leave for the publisher, so Nikki began collecting loose papers off the floor. Rook found a home for the helicopter on the windowsill and said, as casually as he could make it sound for a man who was fishing, "Must have been bizarre seeing your old boyfriend like that."

"Blew me away, is what it did. Of all the gin joints, you know?" And then she said, "So you think he was one of Cassidy's conquests, do you?"

"What? Huh, I hadn't thought of it." He turned away quickly to scoop pens back into his souvenir mug from the Mark Twain Museum. "Is that what you think?"

"Don't really know. Sometimes it's nice to take someone at face value." She looked at him, and he turned away again, this time on paper clip patrol. "It was a different side to hear about Cassidy, helping someone out like she did for Pet."

Pet. Rook concentrated so he wouldn't roll his eyes. "Well, from what I saw of Cassidy, she was tough but she wasn't a monster. But I wouldn't say she was altruistic, either. I'm sure by helping Pete learn the ropes she was also building a relationship with a TV insider on a solid foundation of 'IOU.' "

"Did she have anybody who you would call a close friend?"

"From what I saw, no. She was wired to be a loner. That's not to say lonely. But her downtime was spent with her flowers, not people. Did you see the porcelain plaque screwed into her wall by the French doors? 'When life disappoints, there's always the garden.' "

"Sounds like Cassidy spent a lot of her time coping with disappointment."

"Still," he said, "you can't fault a person whose passion is for helping living things. Albeit vegetation."

Nikki hefted a pile of recovered papers and evened the corners by tapping them against her tummy. "I don't know where you want these filed, so I'll just make stacks on your credenza. At least you'll be able to walk around in here while you play with your toy chopper."

He worked alongside her, chucking anything that was broken into the kitchen trash can he had put in service. "You know, I like this little bit of shared domestic activity."

"Don't get any ideas," she said. "Although, mm-mm-mm. What says turn-on to a police gal more than cleaning up a crime scene?" The credenza was full, so Nikki set an armful of files on the desktop, and when she did, her arm grazed the space bar on Rook's keyboard, causing the screen saver to vanish. The Dude disappeared, exposing the Google search results for "Petar Matic Nikki Heat."

Rook wasn't sure she saw it, and he closed his laptop, muttering something about getting it out of her way. If she had seen it, she didn't let on. Rook forced himself to wait a few moments, working in silence. After a decent interval, he transitioned to shelving books, then casually dropped in a "Hey, I tried calling you last night but you didn't answer."

"I know" was all she said.

When they left the Later On studios the night before, Rook had pushed for a dinner date but she wasn't up for it, telling him that she was exhausted from the evening before.

"You mean our sex?" he had asked.

"Oh, yes, Rook, you wore me out."

"Really?"

"Feel good about you. If you recall, I had an altercation with the Texan right before our night of bliss. Followed by a pretty full day of trooping around on this investigation."

"I did all those things, too."

She crinkled her brow. "Pardon me, but did you actually fight with Tex? I thought it was more like sitting down in a chair and tipping over."

"You wound me, Nikki. You lash me with your mockery."

"No," she had said with undisguised lust, "that was the sash from my robe." It only made him ache all the more to share another night with her. But, as ever, Nikki Heat was protective of her independence. He'd taken a sulking cab ride back to Tribeca, his writer's imagination filling his head with possible consequences of reunited college sweethearts exchanging phone numbers.

He slid a volume of his Oxford English Dictionary into its home and said, "I almost didn't call. I was afraid I'd wake you up." He put another blue OED next to its companion before he added, "Because you said you were going to sleep."

"Are you checking up on me?"

"Me? Get real."

"I'll tell you if you want to know."

"Nik, I don't need to know."

"Because I wasn't home asleep when you called. I was out." For an avid poker player, he was masking his tells about as well as Roger Rabbit after a swig of whiskey. At last, she said, "I couldn't sleep so I went to the precinct. I wanted to run a check through an FBI database searching specific weapons and duct tape and persons with a history of torture. Sometimes an MO will jump out. I got nowhere last night, but I connected with an agent at the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico who's going to stay on it and see what kicks. I also got them the fingerprint partials we pulled off the typewriter ribbon."

"So all that time you were working?"

"Not all that time," she said.

So there it was. She had seen the Google screen. Or maybe she hadn't and she actually had connected with Petar. "Are you trying to torture me, Detective Heat?"

"Is that what you want, Jameson? Do you want me to torture you?" And with that, she finished her coffee and took her cup back to the kitchen. "It's the code, man," said Ochoa. "It's that stupid code that keeps people from helping us." He and his partner Raley sat in the front seat of their unmarked across the street from the Moreno Funeral Parlor at 127th and Lex.

The door to the funeral home was still idle, so Raley let his gaze wander up the block to watch a MetroNorth train on the elevated tracks slowing for the Harlem station, last stop before depositing its freight of morning commuters from Fairfield County at Grand Central. "It makes no sense. Especially when it's family. I mean, they must know we're trying to find whoever killed their own kin."

"Doesn't have to make sense, Rales. The code says you don't snitch, no matter what."

"But whose code? Padilla's family doesn't show any banger ties."

"Don't have to. It's in the culture. It's in the music, it's on the street. Even if snitching doesn't get you whacked, it makes you the lowest. Nobody wants to be that. That's the rule."

"So what can we hope to do then?"

Ochoa shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe find the exception?"

A black van pulled up to the receiving door of the mortuary and honked twice. Both detectives looked at their watches. They knew OCME had released Esteban Padilla's body at 8 A.M. It was now a quarter to nine, and they watched silently as the rolling metal door rose and two attendants emerged to offload the gurney and the dark vinyl bag containing the victim's remains.

Just after nine a white '98 Honda pulled up and parked. "Here we go," said Raley. But he cursed when the driver got out and the uncooperative cousin from the night before went inside the building. "So much for finding our exception."

They waited ten minutes without talking, and when nobody else arrived, Raley started the car. "I was thinking the same thing," said his partner as the Roach Coach pulled away from the curb.

Nobody answered their knock at Padilla's row house on East 115th. The detectives were just about to leave when a voice came through the door, asking who it was, in Spanish. Ochoa identified himself and asked if they could have a word. There was a long pause before a security chain slid, a deadbolt shot, and the door opened a crack. A teenage boy asked if he could see badges.

Pablo Padilla brought them to sit in the living room. Although the boy didn't say so, it seemed the invitation was not so much about hospitality as to get them all in off the street. Ochoa reflected on how this no-snitch thing was supposed to be about solidarity, but the eyes of the kid looked more like those of victims of terrorism he had seen. Or the townsfolk in some old Clint Eastwood Western who were scared of the tyrannical outlaw and his boys.

Since he was the Spanish speaker and was going to be doing the talking, Ochoa decided to go gently. "I'm sorry for your loss" was a good place to start.

"Did you find my uncle's killer?" was where the boy started.

"We're working on that, Pablo. That's why we're here. To help find who did this and arrest him so he can be sent away for good." The detective wanted to paint a picture of this person off the streets, impotent as a source of vengeance to anyone who cooperated.

The teenager absorbed that and looked appraisingly at the two cops. Ochoa noticed Raley was keeping a low profile, but was being eyes and ears. His partner seemed especially interested in numerous garment bags hanging on the back of a door. The boy picked up on it, too. "That is my new suit. For my uncle's funeral." The sound of his voice was broken but brave. Ochoa saw the water rimming his eyes and vowed never to call the vic Coyote Man again.

"Pablo, what you tell me here will be between us, understand? Same as if you called an anonymous tip line." The boy didn't respond, so he continued. "Did your uncle Esteban have any enemies? Anybody who wanted to harm him?"

The boy slowly shook his head before he answered. "No, I don't know anyone who would do this. Everybody liked him, he was always happy, a good dude, you know?"

"That's good," said Ochoa, while thinking, That's bad-at least for what he needed-but he smiled, anyway. Pablo seemed to relax a bit, and as the detective delicately asked him the usual questions about his uncle's friends, girlfriends, personal habits like gambling or drugs, the boy answered in the short-form way teenagers do, but he answered. "What about his work?" asked Ochoa. "He was a produce driver?"

"Yes, it wasn't what he liked, but he had experience as a driver, so that was what he got. You know, a job's a job sometimes, even if it's not as good."

Ochoa looked over to Raley, who had no idea what they were saying but could read his partner's look signaling he had hit a point of interest. Ochoa turned back to Pablo and said, "I hear that." Then, "I notice you said 'not as good.' "

"Uh-huh."

"Not as good as what?"

"Well… It's sort of embarrassing, but he's dead, so I guess I can say." The boy fidgeted and shoved his hands under his thighs so he was sitting on them. "My uncle had a, you know, classier job before. But a couple of months ago… well, he got fired all of a sudden."

Ochoa nodded. "That's too bad. What did he do when he got fired?" Pablo turned when he heard the keys in the front door, and the detective tried to get him back. "Pablo? What job did he get fired from?"

"Um, he was a driver for a limo company."

"And why did he get fired?"

The front door opened and Padilla's cousin, the one they had left at the funeral home came in. "What the hell's going on here?"

Pablo stood up, and his body language needed no translation even for Raley. It said this interview was over. Even though Detective Heat didn't have an appointment, Cassidy Towne's editor at Epimetheus Books did not make her wait. Nikki announced herself in the lobby, and when she and Rook stepped off the elevator onto the sixteenth floor of the publishing house, his assistant was waiting. She keyed the code into the touchpad that opened the frosted glass doors to the offices and escorted them through a brightly lit hallway of white walls with blond wood accents. This was the nonfiction floor, so their path was decorated by framed covers of Epimetheus books, each a biography, expose, or celebrity-rant best seller encased side by side with a reprint of its peak New York Times list.

They reached a bull pen area of three assistants' desks outside three wooden doors that were conspicuously larger than the others they had passed. The center door was open and the assistant led them in to meet the editor.

Mitchell Perkins smiled over a pair of black-rimmed bifocals, dropped them onto his blotter, and came around the desk to shake hands. He was cheerful and much younger than Nikki had expected for a senior editor of nonfiction-in his early forties, but with tired eyes. She quickly understood when she saw the piles of manuscripts spilling out of his etagere and even sprouting up from the floor beside his desk.

He gestured to a conversation area off to one side of his office. Heat and Rook sat on the couch; he took the armchair in front of the window that spanned his whole north wall, giving a spectacular unobstructed view of the Empire State Building. Even for the two visitors who had spent most of their lives in Manhattan, the panorama was awe-inspiring. Nikki almost remarked that the office could be used as a movie set with a backdrop like that, but it wasn't the proper tone for this meeting. First she had to offer condolences for the loss of an author. Then she had to ask him for his dead author's manuscript.

"Thank you for seeing us on short notice, Mr. Perkins," she began.

"Of course. When the police come, would I do anything but?" He turned aside to Rook and added, "These are unusual circumstances, but it's wonderful to meet you. We almost met last May at Sting and Trudie's Rainforest Benefit after-party, but you were in deep conversation with Richard Branson and James Taylor and I was a bit intimidated."

"No need for that. I'm just people."

So Rook, thankfully, provided the ice-breaking laugh, and Nikki could then steer to business. "Mr. Perkins, we're here about Cassidy Towne, and first of all, we're sorry for your loss."

The editor nodded and puckered his cheeks. "That's very thoughtful, certainly, but may I ask how you came to hear we may, or may not, have had some association with her?"

She wouldn't have been much of a detective if she hadn't noticed the thick smoke screen of his word choice. Perkins hadn't come out owning the simple fact that Cassidy was writing a book for him. He'd parsed. Nice guy, perhaps, but he was playing a chess game. So she decided to come straight up the gut. "Cassidy Towne was writing a book for you and I'd like to know what it was about."

The impact was visible. His eyebrows peaked and he recrossed his legs, shifting himself to get comfortable in his soft leather chair. "Well then, the small talk portion is over, I suppose." He smiled, but it lacked heart.

"Mr. Perkins-"

"Mitch. This will strike a more pleasant note for all of us if you'll call me Mitch."

Heat remained cordial but pressed the same theme. "What was her book about?"

He could play that game, too. His non-answer was to turn again to Rook. "I understand you were contracted by First Press to do five thousand words on her. Did she say something to you? Is that how we got here today?"

Rook never got a chance to respond. "Excuse me," Nikki said. She maintained the decorum Perkins had established but rose and moved away to lean with her hips on his desk so he had to twist and pivot away from Rook. "I am running an open homicide investigation and that means following every possible lead to find Cassidy Towne's killer. There are a lot of leads and not a lot of time, so-if I may? — how I got my information is how I got my information. How I got here is not your concern. And if striking a more pleasant note is what you want, let's begin with me asking the questions and you being direct and cooperative, all right… Mitch?"

He folded his arms across his chest. "Absolutely," he replied. She noted that he closed his eyes briefly as he said the words. Mitch was one of those.

"So can we start over again with my question? And if this helps, I do know she was working on a tattletale book, a tell-all."

He nodded. "Of course, that was her wheelhouse."

"So who or what was the subject?" She sat down again across from him.

"That I don't know." In anticipation of her, he held up a staying palm. "Yes, I can confirm we had a deal for a book with her. Yes, it was to be a tell-all. In fact, Cassidy guaranteed it would be newsworthy across the board, not just the tabloids and ambush TV shows. It would, in the parlance of the Paris Hilton generation, be hot. However." He closed his eyes again and opened them, making Nikki think of barn owls. "However… I can only say that I do not know the subject of her expose."

"You mean you know and won't say," responded Heat.

"We are a major house. We trust our authors and give them great latitude. As such, Cassidy Towne and I operated on blind faith. She assured me she had a blockbuster book, I assured her I would get it to market. Now, sadly, we may never know what the subject was… Unless you can locate the manuscript."

Detective Heat smiled. "You know, and you're not telling. Cassidy Towne got a huge advance, and especially in this economy, that doesn't happen without a solid proposal and everybody signing off."

"Forgive me, Detective, but how would you know whether she got any advance, let alone a sizable one?"

Rook weighed in on that issue. "Because it was the only way she would be able to fund her network of tipsters. You know newspapers. She didn't have the budget from the Ledger to pay that tab. And she wasn't a wealthy woman."

Nikki added, "I can get into her bank records, and I bet I'll see a deposit from Epimetheus in a sum that says you knew exactly what you were buying."

"If you do, and there is such an advance, the linkage you insinuate is only conjecture." He said no more, and a beat of silence passed between them.

Nikki got out a business card. "Whoever this book was about could be the killer or lead us to the killer. If you change your mind, here's how to reach me."

He took her card and put it in his pocket without reading it. "Thank you. And if I may say, as good as Jameson Rook here is, his article barely did you justice. In fact, I'm starting to think there may even be a book in Nikki Heat."

For her, nothing could have more definitively ended the meeting. As soon as the elevator door closed, Nikki said, "Shut up."

"I didn't say anything." And then he smiled and added, "About a Nikki Heat book…"

The car stopped at the ninth floor and several people got on. Heat noticed that Rook had turned himself to the wall. "You all right?" she asked. He didn't answer, just nodded and scratched something on his forehead, covering half his face for the rest of the ride down.

At the ground floor, he let the elevator clear before he slowly got off. Nikki was waiting for him. "Did you get bitten on the face by something?"

"No, I'm fine." He turned and speed-walked ahead of her, crossing the lobby at a fast pace. He had just put his hand on the door leading out to Fifth Avenue when Nikki heard a woman's voice echo across the marble.

"Jamie? Jamie Rook, is that you?" She was one of the women from the elevator, and something in the way Rook hesitated before he turned from the door to face her told Heat to hang back and watch this play out from the near distance.

"Terri, hello. Where's my head? I didn't see you." Rook stepped to her and they hugged, and Nikki saw a blush come to his face and blend with the scratch marks he had just excavated on his forehead.

When they separated, the woman said, "What are you doing coming here and not saying hello to your editor?"

"Actually, that's just what I was going to do, but then I got a call for an assignment I'm working on so I figured, next time." He looked up and caught Nikki watching and stepped around, presenting their backs to her.

"You'd better," said the editor. "Listen, I have to run, too. But you saved me an e-mail. Your manuscript is due back from copyediting next week. I'll ship it as an attachment as soon as it comes in, OK?"

"Sure thing." They embraced again, and the woman ran off to join her companions, who were holding a cab at the curb.

When Rook turned back toward Nikki, she was gone. He scanned the lobby, and his stomach tightened as he saw her over by Security, reading the building directory.

"You have an editor here?" she said as he approached. "I see a lot of book publishers in the building, but I don't see a listing for First Press magazine."

"Ah, no. They're in the Flatiron."

"No Vanity Fair, either."

"They're in the Conde Nast. Off Times Square." He touched her elbow. "We should get up to the precinct, huh?"

Heat ignored his prod. "So why would you have an editor here if it's all book publishers? Do you write books?"

He rocked his head side to side. "In a manner of speaking, yes."

"Now, that woman, Terri-your editor-got on at the ninth floor, as I recall."

"God, Nikki, do you always have to be such a cop?"

"And according to this"-she ran her finger along the glass covering the building directory-"the ninth floor is Ardor Books. What would Ardor Books be?"

The security guard at the counter beside them smiled and said, "Ma'am? Ardor Books is a romance fiction publisher."

Nikki turned back to Rook, but he wasn't there. He was speed-walking to the Fifth Avenue door again, thinking he had a chance in hell to escape.