Naked heat

Chapter Four

"I'm Toby," he said when they got to the front door. Before Nikki could introduce herself, he said, "Could we take this inside? I don't want to draw a crowd out here, if you don't mind."

He held the door for both of them and followed them into the foyer. The baseball star was in a white polo shirt and jeans and was barefoot. Nikki couldn't tell if his slight limp was from being shoeless or from his sore hamstring. "Sorry about the mix-up out there. I was taking a nap and they didn't want to wake me." To Rook, he said, "And then I saw you and said, 'Oh, man, I can't send Jameson Rook away mad.' And you're with the police?"

"Hi. Nikki Heat." She shook his hand and tried not to be the typical fan. "A pleasure, really." So much for playing cool.

"Well, I thank you for that. Come on in. Let's get comfortable and see what I've done now to have the police and the press pounding on my door."

There was a spiral staircase to the left, but he led them to an elevator on the back wall of the entryway. Beside it, a man who looked like a secret service agent, in a long-sleeved white shirt and maroon patternless tie, sat at a desk watching a split screen of four security cams. Toby pushed the elevator call and, as he waited, said, "Lee, when Jess gets here, would you tell him I'm taking our guests up to the den?"

"Sure thing," said Lee. Nikki recognized his voice from the intercom, and he registered her reaction and said, "Apologies for the confusion, Detective."

"No problem."

The elevator showed five floors in the town house, and they got off at the third. They were greeted with a new-carpet smell as they stepped into a circular room with halls branching off in three directions. From what Heat could tell, two of them led to what were most likely bedrooms, toward the rear of the rectangular property. Mills hooked his multimillion-dollar arm to indicate they should follow him to the near doorway, which put them in a sunny room giving out onto the street below. "Guess you could call this my man cave."

The den was a sports trophy room, done with taste. Mounted baseball bats shared wall space with classic sports photos: Ted Williams watching one fly out of Fenway, Koufax in the 1963 Series, Lou Gehrig enjoying a Babe Ruth headlock. Atypically, it wasn't a shrine to Toby. The only pictures of him were with other players, and none of the trophies were his, although he could have easily filled the room. Heat read this as where he came to escape the hype, not to bask in it.

Toby stepped behind a wet bar of blond wood with turf green inlay and asked if he could fix them something. "Now, all I've got is Colonel Fizz, but, truthfully, it's not just because they sponsor, I like the stuff." Heat could hear the Oklahoma in his voice and wondered what it was like to graduate high school in Broken Arrow and come to all this in fewer than ten years. "I assume you're working; otherwise, I'd offer something more of a bump up."

"Like what? Is there a General Fizz?" said Rook.

"See? There it is. Writer." Toby snapped open some cans and poured drinks over ice. "I'll start you off with the cola. It hasn't killed anyone, not yet, anyway."

"I'm surprised you knew me," said Rook. "Do you read that much of my stuff?"

"To be honest, I read your Africa trip with Bono and the Portofino article about Mick Jagger on his boat. Man, I have to get myself one of them. But the political stuff, you know, Chechnya, Darfur, I can do without, no offense. But I know you mainly because we have a lot of friends in common."

She wasn't sure whether Toby Mills was a natural host or was stalling them, but while they talked she took in the view from the window. A few streets over, she picked out the Guggenheim. Even cropped by the rows of town houses, the distinct shape of the roof gave it away. Up the street, the treetops of Central Park were just beginning to show a hint of autumn. In two weeks, the color would bring out every amateur photographer on the eastern seaboard.

Nikki heard a man talking to Toby, but when she turned he wasn't in the room yet. "Hey, Tobe, I got here fast as I could, buddy." Then he stepped in, a fit-looking guy in a power suit with no tie, moving quickly to Rook. "Hi, Jess Ripton."

"Jameson Rook."

"I know. You guys should clear these with me first. We don't do press without advance clearance."

"This isn't a press interview," said Nikki Heat.

Ripton turned, seeing her for the first time. "You the cop?"

"Detective." She gave him her card. "You the agent?"

Behind the counter, Toby Mills just laughed. An actual "Whoa, ho, ho."

"I'm not an agent. I'm a strategic manager." He smiled, but it did little to soften him or take the clang off his brass balls. "The agent works for me. The agent stays out of the way and collects the checks and we're all happy. I handle public relations, bookings, media, endorsements, every point along the value chain."

"Must be tough to fit all that on a card," said Rook, earning another laugh from Toby.

Ripton sat in the corner easy chair. "So tell me what this is about."

Nikki didn't sit. Same as she didn't take dictation from Chester Ludlow, she wasn't going to honor Jess Ripton's type-A stampede. She wanted to keep this her meeting. But now, at least, she understood the stall. Daddy's here.

"Are you Toby's attorney?"

"I have a degree but no. I'll call the attorney if I think we need one. Do we need one?"

"Not my call to make," she said with a bit of push-back in her tone. Then she thought, what the hell, and left Ripton in his chair to take a bar stool facing Mills. "Toby, I want to ask you about an incident last week at the residence of Cassidy Towne."

The PR handler shot to his feet. "No, no, no. He's not answering any questions like that."

"Mr. Ripton, I am a New York City homicide detective on official business. If you'd rather have me conduct this interview at the Twentieth Precinct, I can arrange that. I can also arrange for those news trucks on 78th Street to roll four blocks north for some choice video of your client's arrival for questioning. Now tell me, exactly what point would that be along your value chain?"

"Jess?" Toby broke the silence. "I think we should just clear the air and get this behind us."

Nikki didn't wait for Jess. Toby was willing, so she grabbed the moment. "An eyewitness says a few days ago you kicked in the door at that residence. Did you?"

"Yes, ma'am, I sure did."

"And may I ask why you did that?"

"Easy. I was pissed off at that bitch for dickin' with me."

Jess Ripton must have bent over and picked up the face that he'd lost, because he got back in the mix, albeit with more diplomacy. "Detective, would it be all right if I told the story? Toby's here to correct me if I miss anything and you can still ask him all your questions. I think it will go a lot smoother for all of us, and, as Tobe says, we can put this behind us. Looks like the team is going to advance to the ALCS next week, and I want him focused on getting his hammy better so he can be ready for the opener."

"I am a baseball fan," said Heat. "I'm a bigger fan of a direct answer."

"Of course." He nodded then continued as if she had never spoken. "I don't know if you've noticed, but Toby Mills isn't found in the scandal sheets. He has a wife, a young child, and one on the way. His brand value is family friendly, and he not only has multiple top-tier endorsements, but a thriving charitable foundation."

Nikki turned her back on the suit and faced the client. "Toby, I want to know why you kicked in the door of my murder victim."

That got Ripton on his feet. He took the bar stool between her and Rook and drew it back so he formed the center of a semicircle around his client when he sat. "It's a simple story, really," said the manager. "Toby and Lisa just moved into this place two weeks ago. They wanted to be in the heart of the city he plays in instead of Westchester County. What does Cassidy Towne do? She prints the story, including the street address, right? So there it is in the New York Ledger, a full half page of her column. A picture of Toby. A picture of this house. And the street address for every nutjob in the world to see.

"Well, two guesses what happened. Toby has a stalker. Last week, a couple mornings after they move into their new dream home, Lisa takes her son for a walk to Central Park. The sailboat pond is, what, a block away? They're crossing into the park, and this stalker rushes up, starts yelling his crazy talk, and scares the crap out of both of them. Her security guy intervened, but the guy got away."

"Do you know the name of the stalker?"

"Morris Granville," said Toby and Jess together.

"Is there a police record of this?" Heat asked.

"Yes. You can check it out. Anyway, Toby was at the stadium when Lisa calls him, crying, and he goes ballistic."

"I tell you, I freaked."

"Do I need to school you about stalkers? Do I need to tell you what happened to John Lennon less than a mile from where we're sitting? So, forget the baseball star crap, Toby Mills is a man. He did what any good husband and father would do when the primal threat comes. He charged over to Cassidy Towne's place to read her out. And what does she do, but slam the door in his face."

"So I kicked it in."

"And left it at that. Game over."

"Game over," echoed Toby.

The manager smiled and reached out to the bar to pat his client's arm. "But we're much calmer now."

Jess Ripton escorted Heat and Rook out to the sidewalk and paused to chat. "Have you found her body yet?"

"Not yet," said Nikki.

"Tell you something. In my career, I've had to handle my fair share of PR nightmares. I don't envy One Police Plaza today. Although, at my fee, I could get over that, if anyone asks." He laughed at his own joke and shook Heat's hand. "Listen, sorry I gave you a slam at first," he said. "It's my protective instinct. It's how I got my nickname." Asshole? thought Nikki. "The Firewall," he said with no small measure of pride. "But now that we're on the right foot, let's keep it that way. Anything you need, call me."

"I'll tell you what I would like," she said.

"Name it."

"Any communication this stalker had with Toby. Letters, e-mails, anything."

Ripton nodded. "Our security boys have all that on file. You'll have copies on your desk by the end of the day."

"You guys have a lot of security cameras. Do you have a picture of him?"

"A couple, unfortunately. I'll include them, too."

He started to go back to the town house, but Rook said, "I've been thinking about something, Jess. I'd been working pretty closely with Cassidy on a profile I was doing of her and she never told me about Toby's door kick."

"Your point?"

"That was the same afternoon he pulled his hamstring," Rook made air quotes, " 'in the game,' right?"

"You're going to have to spell it out for me, Jameson, because I'm not following." But Ripton's look of innocence was unconvincing.

"The math I'm doing suggests maybe he injured himself before the game. Or his stunt contributed to it later. That would have an impact on his contract, not to mention a few family-friendly endorsements, if it came out, wouldn't it?"

"Don't know about any of that. If she chose not to be open with you, that was her choice." He paused and gave the mirthless smile again. "What I do know is we apologized and compensated her for her damage," said The Firewall. "And her trouble. You know how this song goes. She got a little money and a few pieces of gossip I happened to be privy to. That's how we fill the favor bank. Trust me, Cassidy Towne was not unhappy with the results."

Nikki smiled. "I'll have to take your word for it." Nikki Heat heard the hissing and turned from her desk. Rook. Across the bull pen, steaming milk. She resumed her reading, and when she finished a no-foam latte arrived blotterside.

"I primed it," said Rook. "By myself."

"A skill you will, no doubt, find useful." She called, "Hinesburg, you there?"

"Yo," came the voice from the hall. It bugged Nikki that Detective Hinesburg spent so much time away from her desk, hanging out, and she made a mental note to discuss it with her privately.

When the roaming detective entered, Heat said, "I'm looking for that record I asked you to run on Holly Flanders."

"Look no further. Just came in." Hinesburg handed over a manila interoffice envelope and snapped her chewing gum. "Oh, and I screened the calls on Cassidy Towne's answering machine. It produced no leads, although I did learn a few new curse words."

While Nikki finished unwinding the red string from the cardboard button on the interoffice envelope, she said, "Trade ya," and handed Detective Hinesburg the sheet she'd just been reading. "This is the incident report from a stalker assault last week." She made an aside to Rook, "Toby's story checks out, as advertised."

"Are we working this?" asked Hinesburg between gum snaps.

Heat nodded. "Central Park Precinct owns it, but the victims live in the One-Nine. Let's make it a party and join in. Don't get in a turf contest, but stay close. I'm especially interested in any leads on the stalker."

"Morris Granville?" Hinesburg said, scanning the sheet.

"He took a powder. Just let me know if he surfaces. I have some pics coming in later. I'll shoot them to you."

Detective Hinesburg took the sheet to her desk and began reading it. Heat took the file out of the interoffice and gave it a quick scan. "Yesss."

Rook sipped his double espresso and said, "Your winning lottery numbers?"

"Better. A lead on Holly Flanders."

"F-L-A-N-D-E-R-S, as in the Chester Ludlow 'Flanders'?"

"Uh huh…," she said as she turned a page in the file. "A sheet, but not much of one. Twenty-two years old, a few petty this's and misdemeanor that's. Recreational drugs, shoplifting, a little street grifting, now graduated to low-echelon hooking."

"And they say all the good ones are taken. She doesn't seem like much. Here's my theory."

"Oh, God, I forgot. The theories."

"Young woman, nefarious hooker over here." He cupped his left hand and held it up. "Ageing boomer S and M demolished politico over here." He held up his cupped right. "I think she's the tipster who took him down and now he wants payback for her."

"Your theory is interesting, except for one flaw."

"Which is?"

"I wasn't listening." She stood and put the file in her bag. "Let's go meet Holly F-L-A-N-D-E-R-S."

"What about your latte?"

"Oh, right." Heat returned to her desk, scooped up the latte, and then gave it to Detective Hinesburg on her way out.

But Heat's route to the parking lot included a detour. She made her usual side scan of Captain Montrose's office window as she went by. Typically, he was on a call, at his computer, or out making surprise appearances to his officers and detectives in the field. This time, he was hanging up his phone and gave Detective Heat a beckon with his forefinger that stopped her. She knew what it would be about. Rook waited until they pulled out onto Columbus Avenue before he asked how it went. "With the Cap, it always goes fine," said Nikki. "He knows I'm doing everything to find the corpse. And clear the case. And make the planet safe for a better future. One of the things I like about him is that he knows he doesn't have to hold my feet to the fire."

"But…?"

"But." Out of nowhere a wave of gratitude washed over her for having Rook beside her. She wasn't accustomed to having an ear. No, more than that, a sympathetic ear. The self-sufficiency she prized so much worked, but it never smiled back or cared how she felt. She looked over at him in the shotgun seat, watching her, and an unexpected warmth filled her. What was this?

"But what?"

"He's under pressure. Cap's review is coming up for his promotion to deputy inspector and this isn't the best timing. He was in the middle of phone calls from downtown and from press. People want answers and he just wanted to ask me the most current status."

Rook chuckled. "No pressure on you, or anything."

"Right, well it's always the elephant in the room. This time it was just sitting in his lap."

"You know, Nikki, while I was waiting for you, I was thinking how much Cassidy Towne would be enjoying this. Not the being dead part-that would pretty much suck-but what's happened since."

"You're creeping me out now, you do know that, don't you?"

"Hey, I'm just sharing," he said. "One thing I got to know about her for sure is that she loved having impact. See, that's the discovery for me about what kind of person writes a column like hers. At first, I thought it was all about the salacious parts. The spying, the gotchas, all that. For Cassidy, both the column and her life were all about the power. Who else leaves abusive parents and an abusive husband to go into a business that isn't any kinder?"

"So you're saying her column was her revenge on the world?"

"I'm not sure it's that simple. I think it was more a tool. Just one other way for her to wield power."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"Similar, agreed, but what I'm getting at-what I looked for in my profile-is her as a person. To me, her story was about someone who survived a life of getting the crap kicked out of her and was determined to control situations. That's why she sent perfectly cooked steaks back to be redone. Because she could. Or screwed actors because they needed her more than she needed them. Or made guys like me show up to work at the crack of dawn and then mosey off to get a bagel. Know what I think? I think Cassidy loved the fact that she was able to get so into Toby Mills's head that he came to her place and kicked down her door. It validated her power, her relevance. Cassidy Towne thrived on making things happen her way. Or when she was at the center."

"Couldn't be much more at the center than now."

"My point exactly, ma'am." He rolled down his window and looked up like a little kid at the cotton-ball clouds reflecting on the towers at Time Warner Center as they rounded Columbus Circle. As they came out of the rotary onto Broadway, he continued. "All things considered, she'd rather be alive, I'm fairly sure, but if you've got to go and you're Cassidy Towne, what's a better legacy than having half the city looking for you while the other half is talking about you?"

"Makes sense." And then she added, "But you're still kind of creeping me out."

"Does it make you scared?… Or happy-scared?"

She mulled that and said, "I'm sticking with creeped out." The gentrification of Times Square in the 1990s had miraculously transformed the once-dangerous and skeevy zone into a wholesome family destination. Broadway theaters got face-lifts and blockbuster musicals, good restaurants popped up, megastores flourished, and people came back, symbolizing, and maybe driving, the comeback of the Big Apple.

But the Skeeve Factor didn't go away. It mostly got pushed west a few blocks, and that's where Heat and Rook were headed. Holly Flanders's last known address after a prostitution bust was a weekly-rate hotel off Tenth and 41st.

The two drove in silence most of the way down Ninth Avenue, but when Heat turned onto Tenth and the streetwalkers started to show, Rook started singing a cold-cut jingle. "Oh, my hooker has a first name, it's H-O-L–L-Y…"

"All right, listen," Heat said. "I can put up with your theories. I can tolerate your inflated sense of significance to this case. But if you insist on singing, I need to warn you, I am armed."

"You know, you keep needling me about my significance in this case, but let me ask you, Detective Heat, who got you in to see Toby Mills when you were stonewalled? Who got you in with Fat Tommy so we can now be happily en route to question a woman whose very existence we didn't know of until Fat Tommy led us to Chester Ludlow, which led us here?"

She thought a moment and said, "I should have shut up and just let you sing."

An undercover police car is anything but undercover to most street prostitutes. A champagne-gold Crown Victoria might as well have "VICE" written in Day-Glo lettering on the doors and hood. The only thing more obvious would be to light the gumball and run the siren. Mindful of that, Heat parked around the corner from the Sophisticate Inn so she and Rook could make their approach without lighting up the radar too much. It could only help that the parking spot was behind a mound of uncollected garbage.

In the manager's office a skeletal dude, with a nasty patch of hair missing where somebody had ripped it out, was reading the afternoon edition of the New York Ledger. Cassidy Towne's face filled the space above the fold. The headline was in giant font, the kind usually reserved for V-E Day and moonwalks. It read: R.I.P. = M.I.A

Murdered Tattler's Body Missing

For Nikki Heat today, there was just no escape.

The dude with the pale skin and bloody patch of scalp kept reading and asked them if they wanted it for an hour or a day. "If you get day, ice and baby oil comes with."

Rook leaned over to Heat and whispered, "I think I know why they call this the Sophisticate."

Nikki elbowed him and said, "Actually, we're looking for one of your guests, Holly Flanders." She watched his eyes dart up from the paper toward the ceiling above his head and then back to her.

"Flanders," he said. "I'm trying to remember." And then, pointedly, "Maybe you can help me."

"Sure." Nikki drew aside her blazer and flashed the tin on her belt. "That help you any?"

The room number he gave them was down a dingy second-floor hall that smelled like disinfectant and puke. There was an outside chance Ichabod Crane was going to call the room and tip Flanders off, so Heat told Rook to stay down there to watch him. He didn't like the assignment, but agreed. Before she left, she reminded him what happened last time he didn't stay downstairs when she told him to.

"Oh, yeah. I have a vague recollection. Something about getting taken hostage at gunpoint, right?…"

Behind every door she passed, daytime television blared. It was as if people blasted TV noise to cover life noise and only succeeded in making more noise. Inside one room, a woman was crying and moaning, "It's all I had left, it's all I had left." It sounded like prison to Heat.

She stopped outside 217 and positioned herself off-line with the door. She didn't know how much to put into Ludlow's warning about the handgun purchase, but she checked her coat clearance anyway. Always good policy if you planned to go home that night.

She knocked and listened. A TV was on in there, too, although not as loud. Seinfeld, from the bass guitar riff after the laugh. She knocked once more and listened. Kramer was getting banned from the produce market.

"Shut up out there," came a man's voice from somewhere across the hall.

Heat knocked louder and announced herself. "Holly Flanders, NYPD, open this door." As soon as she said the word, the door flew open and a chubby man with braided pigtails ran past her and up the hall. He was naked and carrying his clothes.

The door had a pneumatic closer, and before it shut, Nikki crouched low and clotheslined it open with her left arm as she put her hand on her gun butt. "Holly Flanders, show yourself." She heard Jerry himself getting thrown out of the produce market and then a window sash thrown in the room.

She rolled in low and came up with her Sig Sauer just in time to see a woman's leg disappear out the window. Heat ran to it, pressed her back against the wall, and made a quick look out and then back. A yelp came from below, and she looked down to see a young woman, early twenties, in jeans but topless, lying on her back on a pile of trash.

When Heat holstered her weapon and ran out into the hall, it was crowding with people, mostly women, coming out of their rooms to see what the excitement was. Nikki shouted, "NYPD, back, back, clear the way," which only brought more curiosity-seekers. Most of them were slow movers, too; drugged or dazed, what did it matter? After fighting her way through them, she bounded the stairs in twos and pushed through the glass doors to the outside. A large dent in a black trash bag marked Holly's landing spot.

Heat stepped to the sidewalk and looked right. Saw nothing. Then left, and could not believe what she saw. Holly Flanders being led back to her by the elbow, escorted by Rook. She was wearing his sport coat but was still topless underneath.

When they arrived, he said, "Think we could get her into the Milmar like this?" An hour later, wearing the clean all-purpose white blouse Nikki kept in her bull-pen file drawer to change into after all-nighters, field scrapes, or coffee mishaps, Holly Flanders waited in Interrogation. Heat and Rook stepped in and sat side by side across from her. She didn't speak. Just looked up over their heads, staring at the slip of acoustical tile that ran above the observation mirror.

"You don't have much of a rap sheet, at least not as an adult," Nikki began, opening Holly's file. But I have to warn you that, as of today, you've taken your game to the next level."

"Why, because I ran?" She finally brought her eyes down to them. They were bloodshot and puffy, rimmed by too much mascara. Somewhere in there, given some good living, and losing the hardness, thought Nikki, was somebody pretty. Maybe even beautiful. "I was afraid. How did I know who you were or what you were doing?"

"I announced myself as police twice. The first time you may have been too busy with your john."

"I saw that guy racing through the lobby," said Rook. "May I say? No man over fifty should wear pigtails." He caught Nikki's shut-up look. "I'm done."

"That's beside the point, Holly. Your main worry isn't the flight or the hooking. In your room, we found a Ruger nine-millimeter handgun, unlicensed and loaded."

"I need that for protection."

"We also found a laptop computer, stolen, by the way."

"I found it."

"Well, just like the other charges, that's not your worry. What's on the computer is your worry. We've been looking at the hard drive and we've found a number of letters. Threatening letters and extortion demands addressed to Cassidy Towne."

This part was getting through to her. The hard pose was crumbling as the detective slowly, quietly, and deliberately tightened the screw with each revelation. "Are those letters familiar to you, Holly?"

Holly didn't answer. She picked at the chips of nail polish on her fingers and kept clearing her throat.

"I have one more thing to ask you about. Something that wasn't in your room. Something we found somewhere else."

The manicure destruction stopped and a puzzled look crossed Holly's face, as if the other things were something she expected and had to cope with. Whatever this lady cop was now referring to seemed a mystery to her. "Like what?"

Nikki slid a photocopy out of the folder. "This is your fingerprint array from your booking on a prostitution charge." She pushed it across the table to let Holly examine it. Then Detective Heat took another photocopy from the folder. "This is another set of prints, also yours. These were taken by our technicians this morning off several doorknobs at the home of Cassidy Towne."

The young woman didn't respond. Her lower lip trembled and she slid the paper away. Then found her spot to stare at again above the Magic Mirror.

"We took these fingerprints because Cassidy Towne was murdered last night. In that apartment. The one with your fingerprints." Nikki watched Holly's face grow pale and then still. And then Nikki continued. "What would a prostitute be doing in Cassidy Towne's apartment? Were you there for sex?"

"No."

Rook asked, "Were you one of her sources, maybe? A tipster?"

The woman shook her head no.

"I want an answer, Holly." Heat gave her the look that said this would go on until she got it. "What relationship did you have to Cassidy Towne?"

Holly Flanders closed her eyes in a slow blink. And when she opened them, she looked at Nikki Heat and said, "She was my mother."