Naked heat

Chapter Eight

Something stirred Rook awake. A siren, likely an ambulance, judging by its chirps and guttural honks, announcing itself at an intersection over on Park Avenue South before fading into the night. It was one part of New York living he never got used to, the noise. For some it became background they could tune out. Not for him. It challenged him in the day when he wrote, and he never got an unbroken night's sleep because this was the city that never did. Somebody should write a song about that, he thought.

With the eye that wasn't buried in the pillow, he read the luminous dial of his watch on the nightstand: 2:34. Three hours more sleep before the alarm. He smiled. Hm. Or maybe two hours. He slid backward across the bed to dock himself skin-to-skin with Nikki. When he reached the middle of the bed, he felt the sheet and her pillow. Both were cool.

Rook found her in the living room, perched on the window seat in a sweatshirt and a pair of Gap drawstring bottoms. He stopped in the hallway entrance and watched her, a catlike silhouette in the bay window with her knees pulled up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins, contemplating the street below. "You can come in," she said without turning from her view of the block. "I know you're there."

"Aren't you the trained observer, Detective," he said. He moved behind her and folded his forearms loosely around her neck.

"I heard you the second your feet hit the floor in there. You move about as subtly as a draft horse." Nikki settled back and lounged against him.

"You'll never hear me complain when the comparison involves a horse."

"No?" She turned her face up to his and smiled. "No complaints here, either."

"That's good. And saves me the trouble of leaving a survey card."

Nikki sniffed a little chuckle and turned back to the window, this time resting the back of her head on his abdomen, feeling the warmth of him on her neck.

"You thinking that he's out there somewhere?" asked Rook.

"The Texan? Oh, he is for now. Just for now."

"You worried he'll come here?"

"I hope he does. I'm armed, and if that's not enough, if he'll hold still long enough, you can subdue him with one of your famous nosebleeds." She leaned forward and head-nodded over the sill. "Besides, Captain put a patrol car out front." As Rook leaned over her to see the roof of the blue-and-white, pressing his weight on her shoulders, Nikki added, "Doesn't he know the city's in a budget crisis?"

"Small price to protect his star detective."

A change came over her. She uncoiled her legs and moved from him, sliding herself around to put her back to the window. Rook sat beside her on the cushion. "What?" he said. When she didn't answer, he leaned a shoulder against hers. "What's got you up and sitting here at this hour?"

Nikki reflected a moment and said, "Gossip." She turned her head halfway to him. "I've been thinking about how ugly gossip is. How it victimizes people, but how as much as we say we hate it, we still feed on it like it was crack."

"I hear you. It ate at me every day with Cassidy Towne. They call what she did journalism-hell, I even said it was the other day when I argued with Toby Mills's spin doctor-but, when you get down to it, Cassidy Towne was as much about journalism as the Spanish Inquisition was about justice. Although, Tomas de Torquemada had more friends."

"I'm not talking about Cassidy Towne," said Nikki. "I'm talking about me. And the rumors and gossip I've had to deal with since you put me on the cover of a national magazine. That's what got me all shitty with you in the car today. Someone made a snide comment insinuating that I slept with you for the publicity."

"It was that lawyer, wasn't it?"

"Rook, it doesn't matter who. It's not the first of those I've had to deal with. At least that was an overt remark. Most of what I get are looks or I catch people whispering. Since your article came out I feel like I'm walking around naked. I've spent years building my rep as a professional. It's never been called into question until now."

"I knew that shyster said something to you."

"Did you even hear what I just said?"

"Yes, and my advice is to consider the source, Nik. He's just working on your head to get some sort of psychological leverage in the case. His client's going down. Richmond Vergennes will be an Iron Chef, all right. Ironing in the Sing Sing laundry."

She tucked a knee up and scooted to face him, resting a palm on each of his shoulders. "I want you to listen carefully because this is important. Do I have you?" He nodded. "Good. Because I'm telling you about something that's going on with me that's a big deal, and you're spinning off on your own side road. You think you're with me but you're running parallel. Understand what I mean?"

He nodded again and she said, "You don't."

"I do. You're upset because that lawyer made an unfair crack."

She took her hands off his shoulders and folded them in her lap. "You're not hearing me."

"Hey?" He waited for her to face him. "I am hearing you, and here's what you're feeling. You're feeling like your life was rolling along fine until my article came out, right? And what did I do? I put you where you aren't comfortable-thrust into the spotlight with everybody looking at you and gossiping about you, and not always to your face. And you're frustrated because you tried to tell me it wasn't what you wanted but I had it so in my head it was good for you that I did everything but consider your feelings." He paused and took both her hands in his. "I'm considering them now, Nik. I'm sorry for how I made you feel. I thought I was doing a good job and apologize that I let it get complicated."

She hardly knew what to say, so she just stared at him a moment. At last she said, "So. I guess you were listening."

He nodded to himself and said, "We just had a Dr. Phil thing there, didn't we?"

She laughed. "Sorta, yeah."

"Because it felt sort of like one of those Dr. Phil things."

They smiled and looked into each other a long time. Nikki was starting to wonder, What now? This connection they had just made was unexpected, and she wasn't prepared for what it might mean. So she did what she always did. Decided to not decide. Just to be in the moment.

He may have been in the same place, because in some unspoken ballet of synchronization, the two leaned forward at the same instant, drawn to each other for a tender kiss. When they parted, they smiled again and then just held each other, jaws resting on opposing shoulders, their chests slowly rising and falling as one.

"And so you know, Rook, I'm sorry, too. About this afternoon in the car, being so rough on you."

A full minute passed and he said, "And so you know? I'm good with rough."

Nikki drew back from him and gave him a sly look. "Oh, are you?" She reached down and took him in her hand. "How rough?"

He cupped a palm behind her head, lacing his long fingers through her hair. "Wanna find out?"

She gave him a squeeze that made him gasp and said, "You're on."

And then she gasped as he gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom. Halfway down the hall, she bit his ear and whispered, "My safe word is 'pineapples.' " Nikki wanted them to arrive at the Two-Oh separately the next morning. She got up early and, as she left, asked Rook to cab home to change and to take his sweet time before he came to the precinct. She had enough gossip swirling around her without the two of them showing up for work together looking like the poster for Date Night.

Heat rolled into the bull pen at five of six and was surprised to find Detectives Raley and Ochoa already there. Raley was on his phone listening to someone and gave her a howdy nod, then resumed his note taking. "Hey, Detective," said Ochoa.

"Gents." She usually got a smile whenever she spoke to one member of the pair as the rep for both. This time, nothing. Ochoa's phone rang, and as he reached for it, she said, "You boys got something against sleep?" Neither one answered her. Ochoa took his call. Raley finished his and passed by on the way to the whiteboard. Nikki had a feeling she knew what these two were up to, and sure enough, when she tailed Raley to the board, she discovered that he and Ochoa had started a new section labeled "The Lone Stranger" in red marking pen.

Rales referred to his notes to update the status report they had begun under the taped-up police sketch of the Texan. As his dry-erase marker squeaked out block capitals on the bright white surface, Heat read over his shoulder: No overnight ER visits with gunshots or broken collarbones from anyone matching his description in Manhattan or the boroughs. Calls pending in Jersey. Checks of all CVSs and Duane Reades south of Canal Street and west of St. James Place came up neg for first-aid shoppers matching Tex. Digital copies of his sketch were blasted out in e-mails to private urgent-care storefronts in case he sought treatment at one of the local doc-in-the-boxes.

Under a section headed "Patrols/Quality of Life" she saw that these two had already contacted all relevant precincts with no hits on any complaints, arrests, or homeless pickups matching her man.

Nikki Heat was standing witness to how cops had one another's back. A sister detective got assaulted, and Roach's stoic response was to come in to the precinct under a setting moon to start turning over all the stones. It wasn't just a code. It was life itself. Because in their city, you just didn't pull that shit and walk.

In any other sort of profession this would be a warm moment leading to a group hug. But these were New York cops, so when Ochoa got off the phone and stood beside her, she said, "This the best you two could come up with?"

Raley, who was bent over writing, capped his marker and turned to face her, keeping an excellent straight face when he said, "Well, seeing how you let the suspect evade capture, there's not much to work with."

"But we all do our best," added Ochoa. Then, for good measure, he threw in, "At least you got a piece of him before you let the yokel slip away, right?"

And that was that. Without a high five or even a fist bump, the three of them had had their say. For one it was, Thanks, guys, I owe you; for the other two it was an emphatic, Got your wing, anytime, anywhere. And then they got back to work before one of them got all misty.

Ochoa said, "That call I just got was Forensics. I've been all over them about the typewriter ribbon you found on the subway platform. Tests are done, they're e-mailing the digital images right now."

"Way to gochoa." A poke of excitement pressed her gut at the prospect of actual evidence to examine as she moved to her computer to log on.

Rook entered with a cheery "Morning" and handed Raley a paper bag blotched with grease stains. "Sorry, all they had left was plain."

Raley squinted at the corner of Rook's mouth. "You got a little something. There."

Rook touched a finger to his face and came away with a blue sprinkle embedded in some icing. "Huh. Well, I didn't say when they ran out. Just that they had." He ate the sprinkle and turned to Nikki, selling a bit too hard. "How are you this morning?"

She flicked only the slightest of glances up from her screen. "Busy."

While Heat waited for the server to log her on, Ochoa said, "Remember yesterday at the ME's, you asked me to talk to Lauren Parry about the status of Coyote Man?" She gave him one of her nickname looks and he bobbed his head side to side. "I mean, Mr. Coyote Man?… You were right, Padilla's autopsy was stacked. She's going to get on it herself first thing this morning."

"Not so good news on the other Padilla front," said Raley. "Our canvass of residents and businesses where his body was found turned up NG. Same for security cams."

Rook said, "Which reminds me, have you seen today's Ledger?"

"Ledger's crap," from Ochoa.

"We'll leave that to the Pulitzer committee," said Rook, "but check this out. About sunset last night they spotted a coyote hiding in Central Park." He held up the front page. Nikki turned from her monitor and recognized the brazen eyes in the grainy picture of the animal peeking out of the shrubs near Belvedere Castle.

"Gotta love the headline," said Raley, who then read it aloud, as if they all couldn't make it out. It was only in the size font they use on the top line of an eye chart. " 'Coy-ote.' " He took the paper from Rook to examine it. "They're always doing that, putting some kind of groaner pun with the story."

"Hate that," said Ochoa. "Can I have it?" Rook nodded and Raley passed him the newspaper, which he set aside for later. "Like I said, Ledger's crap. But the price is right."

"Here we go, boys and girls." Detective Heat opened the attachment from Forensics. It was a huge file containing enhanced screen captures of every inch of the typewriter ribbon. Nikki read the accompanying e-mail from the lab technician aloud for the others. " 'In case you are not familiar with the low-tech phenomenon known as the typewriter,' great-geek humor," she said, and continued, " 'each time a key is touched, the corresponding raised metal letter on the type bar strikes the ribbon, which not only prints the letter on the page but also embosses itself on the ribbon. Each letter strike causes the ribbon to advance one space, allowing us to scan the ribbon like a reverse tickertape, reading the sequence of letters that were printed on the writer's page.' "

"This dude's seen Avatar six times," said Raley.

Nikki read on. " 'Unfortunately, the owner of this ribbon had rewound and reused the ribbon at the end of each spool, causing overstrikes which have obliterated most of the retrievable text.' "

"Cassidy was cheap," offered Rook. "That's already in my article."

"Is any of this ribbon readable?" asked Ochoa.

"Hang on." Nikki scan-read the rest of the e-mail and summarized. "He says he flagged those images that at least had some promise for us to examine. He's sending the ribbon to get X-rayed to see if more can be read on it. That takes time, but he'll let us know… He's happy to…"

"Happy to what?" said Ochoa.

"Live in his parents' basement," suggested Rook.

But Raley read the last line over Nikki's shoulder. " 'I am happy to have the privilege of doing any favor I can for the famous Detective Nikki Heat.' "

Nikki caught Rook's grimace but moved on. "Let's split these up and start screening them."

Raley and Ochoa each took a block of screen captures, about fifteen apiece, and brought them up on their desk monitors. This was one area where Jameson Rook's knowledge of the victim would clearly be useful, so Nikki entrusted him with a series of files to examine, too, at the desk he had claimed. The remaining prospects she kept for her own perusal.

The work was tedious and time-consuming. Each image had to be opened separately and looked over carefully for any words or, hopefully, sentences to make sense out of the blur. Raley commented that it was like staring at one of those matrix posters they used to have in malls, where, if you squinted the right way, you might see a seagull or a puppy. Ochoa said it was more like looking for the weeping Virgin on the trunk of a tree or Joaquin Phoenix on a piece of burned toast.

Nikki didn't mind their banter. It made the arduous task merely grueling. As her eyes strained and squinted at her own screen, she reminded them of her tenets of good investigation. Rule #1: The time line is your friend. Rule #2: Some of the best detective work is desk work.

"Right about now, I've got a third rule," called Ochoa from his desk. "Take the early retirement."

"Got something," said Rook. All three detectives gathered behind his chair, glad for the excuse to get away from their own desks and monitors, even if it was for nothing. "It's some decipherable words, anyway. Five words."

Nikki leaned around Rook to bring herself closer to his screen. Her breast grazed his shoulder, an accident. She felt her face flush but soon got pulled from that distraction by the image on his computer. stab me n th back

"OK, this is frame 0430. 'Stab me in the back.' " Nikki could feel a small release of adrenaline. "Bring up 0429 and 0431."

Raley said, "I think I've got 0429," and hurried back to his desk while Rook brought up 0431, which was garbled and unreadable. They had all gathered behind Raley already by the time he said, "Come look."

His screen, displaying the frame before "stab me in the back," had a name typed on it. And every one of them knew it. Heat and Rook stood against the back wall of the Chelsea rehearsal hall watching Soleil Gray with six male dancers run through choreography for her new music video. "Not that I don't enjoy my backstage access," said Rook, "but if we know Tex is the killer, why are we bothering with her?"

"We know Cassidy was writing about Soleil because of the typewriter ribbons. And the Texan stole them, right?"

"So you think Soleil and Tex are connected?"

The detective flexed her lips into an inverted U. "I don't know that they aren't. Now I have a question for you. Did Cassidy have any tension with our rock star?"

"No more than any other. Which is to say plenty. She tended to open her columns with Soleil's rehab lapses. Most of it is past history, though. Things I found in archives when I was doing research. Back in the day, Soleil had a wilder side and that always made good copy for 'Buzz Rush.' "

Six years ago, when she was twenty-two, Soleil Gray had been a brooding Emo icon, when Emo was the thing. Although, when the rock band you front has a couple of gold records and you can fill a summer's worth of venues in North America, Europe, and Australia-and you're traveling to them on Citation jets-there's not too much to brood about. The early songs she wrote and sang lead vocals on, like "Barbed Wire Heart," "Mixed Massages," and notably, from the band's second CD, "Virus in Your Soul," made millions and earned reviewer raves. Rolling Stone called her the distaff, pre-hype John Mayer, basically looking right past the rest of the band to the pale lead singer who was perennially staring through a curtain of black sloping bangs with despondent green eyes framed by mascara.

Rumors of drug use gained traction when Soleil started arriving hours late for concerts and, eventually, missing some altogether. A YouTube cell phone video capturing her on stage at Toad's Place in New Haven went viral, showing her wasted and hoarse, forgetting her own lyrics even with the audience trying to prompt her. Soleil busted up Shades of Gray in 2008. She said it was to go solo. It was more like to go party. The singer-songwriter went a year and a half without writing or recording anything.

Even though clubs and drugs replaced studios and concerts, Soleil stayed in the spotlight after she hooked up with Reed Wakefield, the hot young film actor whose own taste for New York nightlife and ingested substances matched her own. The difference was that Reed Wakefield was able to maintain his career. The couple moved into her East Village apartment after he started shooting Magnitude Once Removed, a costume drama in which he played the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. The filming outlasted their affair, which was volatile and punctuated by late-night police visits. Having already broken up her band, Soleil broke up her relationship with Reed and buried her pain in the recording studio with long sessions, creative disputes, and not much output.

The previous May, just days after he had returned to New York from Cannes, where he received a special jury prize for his role as the bastard son of France's first American ambassador, Reed Wakefield pulled a Heath Ledger and died of an accidental drug overdose.

The impact on Soleil was profound. Once again, she stopped working, but this time to go into rehab. She emerged from the Connecticut facility clean and focused. The very day after her release, she was back in the recording studio to lay down tracks for the ballad she had written on her bunk bed in the Fairfield County manor as her farewell to the actor she had loved. "Reed and Weep" got split reviews. Some thought it was a sensitive anthem to the fragility of life and enduring loss. Others called it a shameless derivative of "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor and REM's "Everybody Hurts." But it debuted on the charts in the Top 10. Soleil Gray had officially begun her elusive solo career.

She had also changed how she presented herself to the world. And, as Heat and Rook watched her run through a track from her new CD, Reboot My Life, they saw a woman whose career and new hard body had undergone a radical makeover.

The blaring music ended and the choreographer called a five. Soleil protested. "No, let's go again; these guys move like they've got snowshoes on." She went to her first position, her muscles gleaming in the harsh light of the rehearsal room. The male dancers, panting, formed up behind her, but the choreographer shook his head to the playback engineer. "Fine. Remember this, dickweed, when we're shooting and you wonder why it sucks," Soleil said to him and stormed toward the door.

As she drew near, Nikki Heat stepped to intercept her. "Miss Gray?"

Soleil slowed her stride, but only to size up Nikki, as if for a fight. She gave Rook a fleeting appraisal, but concentrated on the detective. "Who the hell are you? This is a closed rehearsal."

Heat showed her badge and introduced herself. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about Cassidy Towne."

"Now?" When Nikki just stared, Soleil dropped an F-bomb. "Whatever your questions are about her, the answer's going to be the same. 'Bitch.' " She went to the small craft services table in the corner and got a bottle of Fiji out of a cooler. She didn't offer one to either of them.

"Your dancing's awesome," said Rook.

"It's crap. Are you a cop? 'Cause you don't look like a cop."

Nikki jumped in to take that one. "He's working with us on this case." No need to freak her out that the press was there.

"You look familiar." Soleil Gray canted her head to one side, appraising Nikki. "You're on that magazine, aren't you?"

Heat ignored that path and said, "I assume you're aware that Cassidy Towne was killed?"

"Yes. A tragic loss for all of us." She cracked the seal on the blue cap and chugged some water. "Why are you talking to me about that dead bee-otch, other than to cheer me up?"

Rook joined in. "Cassidy Towne wrote a lot about you in her column."

"The scumbag printed a ton of lies and gossip about me, if that's what you call writing. She had these anonymous sources and unnamed spies claiming I did everything from snorting lines off a Hammond B3 to groping Clive Davis at the Grammys."

"She also wrote that you fired a.38 at your producer during one of the sessions with your old band," said Rook.

"Not true." Soleil grabbed a towel from a wicker basket near the window. "It was a.44." She wiped the sweat from her face and added, "Good times."

Nikki opened her notebook and a pen, always a means to help folks get serious about conversations. "Did you have any personal contact with Cassidy Towne?"

"What is this? You don't think I had anything to do with her murder, do you? Seriously?"

Nikki stayed on her own track, getting her facts in morsels, accumulating small answers, and, in them, looking for inconsistencies. "Did you have any conversations with her?"

"Not really."

There was a deflection, for sure. "So you never talked to her?"

"Yeah. We went to tea every afternoon and swapped recipes."

Nikki's newfound sensitivity about gossip helped her empathize with the singer's attitude about Cassidy Towne, but her cop sense was telling her this sarcasm was a bluff. Time to move the fences in. "Are you saying you never talked to her?"

Soleil held the cool flat side of the bottle against her neck. "No, I'm not saying never."

"Did you ever see her?"

"Well, sure, I guess so. It's a small town if you're famous, you know?"

Did Nikki ever know. "When was the last time you saw Cassidy Towne, Miss Gray?"

Soleil puffed her cheeks and made a show of looking thoughtful. Nikki felt her acting was on a par with the dog walker from Juilliard-in other words, unconvincing. "I can't remember. Probably a long time ago. Obviously not important to me." She looked over at the dancers coming back from their five. "Look, I have a music video to shoot, and it ain't happening."

"Sure, I understand. Just one more question," said Nikki, with her pen poised. "Can you tell me your whereabouts from one to four A.M. the night Cassidy Towne was killed?" With the Texan as the probable killer, Soleil's alibi-in fact everyone else's alibi on this case-became less significant. Still, Nikki clung to the procedures that always worked for her. The time line was hungry. Feed the time line.

Soleil Gray took a moment to count nights and said, "Yes, I can. I was with Allie, an A amp; R assistant from my record label."

And you were with her all that time? All night?"

"Um, let me see…" Soleil's manner lit up Heat's radar. The searching she was doing carried a whiff of stall. "Yuh, pretty much all night, till about two-thirty."

"May I have the name and a contact number for the assistant, Allie?"

After she gave Heat the information, Soleil quickly added, "Oh, wait. Just remembered. After I was with Allie, I hooked up with Zane, my old keyboard guy from Shades of Gray."

"And what time was that?"

"… Three, I guess. We had a late bite and I went home to bed about four, four-thirty. Are we done?"

"I have one more question," said Rook. "How do you build upper arms like that? You going to be opening for Madonna?"

"Hey, way things are going? Madge is gonna be opening for me." The soft elevator chime echoed across the desert-rose marble lobby of Rad Dog Records until the sound was lost in the high, vaulted ceiling. A blonde woman in her early twenties was the only one to step off. She looked up from her BlackBerry, spotted Heat and Rook at the security desk, and walked over to them.

"Hi, I'm Allie," she said while she was still twenty feet away.

After they shook hands and made introductions, Nikki asked her if it was a good time to talk. She said it was, but she could only be away from her desk for five minutes. "Did you see The Devil Wears Prada?" asked Allie. "Mine wears Ed Hardy, and he's a guy, but the rest is pretty dead-on." She escorted them across the reception area to a sofa grouping. It was made of hard molded plastic and didn't do much to absorb the sound that bounced around the room. Nikki was struck by how comfortable the sofa was.

Rook settled in opposite them on a large white molded plastic chair. "Looks like we're waiting for the next shuttle to the space station." Then he looked down at the coffee table and saw Nikki's cover on top of a stack of magazines. He picked up a day-old Variety, pretended to scan the headline, and tossed it over the First Press.

"Is this about the murder, the gossip columnist?" Allie swept her hair behind her ear and then twirled the ends with her fingers.

Nikki had figured word would reach her from Soleil before they got there, and it had. That might account for the assistant's nervous tics. Time to find out. "It is. How did you know?"

Her eyes grew wide and she blurted, "OK, Soleil called me and said you might come." Allie licked her lips, and her tongue looked like it was wearing a pink sock. "I've never dealt with the police like this. At concerts, I have, but they're mostly retired."

"Soleil Gray said you were with her the night Cassidy Towne was killed." Heat got out her reporter's spiral notebook to signal this would be on the record. And waited.

"I… was."

Hesitation. Just enough to make Nikki press. "From when to when?" She uncapped her stick pen. "As exact as you can be."

"Um, we got together at eight. Went over to the Music Hall at ten."

"In Brooklyn?" said Rook.

"Yeah, in Williamsburg. Jason Mraz had a secret show. He's not on our label, but we got passes."

Nikki asked, "How long were you there?"

"Jason went on at ten, we left at about eleven-thirty. Is that good?"

"Allie, I need to know what time she left you."

"Is this between us?"

Nikki shrugged. "For now."

She hesitated and said, "That is when she left me. Eleven-thirty." Heat didn't need to look at her notes to know that the times Soleil had given her were bogus. Allie flipped her hair around her ear again. "You won't tell Soleil?"

"That she asked you to lie in a murder investigation?" Allie's lower lip started to tremble and Nikki put a hand on her knee. "Relax, you did the right thing." Allie flashed a quick smile that the detective returned before she continued. "Soleil and Cassidy Towne had some bad blood between them, didn't they?"

"Yeah, that bitch-sorry, but she kept printing all sorts of ugly crap about her. Like if she had one beer. Made Soleil nuts."

"So we understand," said Nikki. "Did you ever hear Soleil say anything threatening about Cassidy Towne?"

"Well, you know, who doesn't say stuff when they're mad? It doesn't mean they did it." Allie could see that she had gotten their interest and looked down, rolling her thumb on the trackball on her BlackBerry just to have something else to do. When her eyes came up and found Nikki scrutinizing her, she set the PDA on the coffee table and waited, knowing what was coming.

"Tell me what you heard her say."

"It was just talk." Allie shrugged it off. Heat simply watched her, waiting.

Rook leaned forward onto his thighs and smiled. "She always wins the staring contests, trust me, I know. You might as well, you know…"

Allie made her decision to come clean. "One night last week she took me to dinner. The cool artists do that. They know my salary. Anyway, Soleil wanted Italian so she took me to Babbo." She misread the look that passed between the other two and explained, "You know, Mario Batali's place in Washington Square?"

"Yeah, it's great," said Rook.

"We were eating upstairs, and Soleil has to use the loo, so she excuses herself and goes downstairs. A minute later, I hear all this shouting and a crash. I recognized Soleil's voice so I ran down the steps and there's Cassidy Towne on the floor with her chair tipped over. Just when I got there, Soleil grabs a knife off her table and says…" Allie dry-swallowed again. "She says, you like stabbing people in the back? How would you like me to stab you in yours, you frickin' pig." Nikki walked out of the parking garage off Times Square and found Rook buying two hot dogs from a sidewalk vendor across from the GMA studios. "This is why you hopped out of a moving car?" she asked.

"I call that more rolling than moving," he said. "I saw the stand and sprung into my signature hero deployment. Keeps my reflexes sharp. Dog?" He held one out to her.

"No, thanks, job's dangerous enough." As they crossed Broadway Detective Heat made her habitual check for suspicious parked cars, ever mindful of the Crossroads of the World, the New Normal, and life on orange alert. By the time they reached the other side of the street, Rook had finished his first dog.

"Man, I don't know if I can eat two. What the hell, yes, I can." He started in on the other, filling his cheeks like a squirrel, making her laugh as they walked north, weaving between the tourists. Except for the gun on her hip, thought Nikki, they could be a suburban couple themselves.

Between swallows, Rook asked, "Why are we checking Soleil's other alibi? Let's suppose maybe she hired the Texan to stab Cassidy Towne. What's her whereabouts going to tell us?"

"It gives us a chance to talk to people in her life. We follow the leads we have, not the ones we wish we had. Besides, look what the last alibi check gave us."

"We learned Soleil lied to us?"

"Exactly. So let's talk to some more people who might tell us the truth."

Waiting for the cross signal on 45th, Rook followed her gaze to the newsstand where a dozen Nikki Heats hung from clothespins along the roof of the kiosk.

"How many weeks till November?" she said. And then the light changed and they crossed the street to enter the lobby of the Marriott Marquis.

They found Soleil's old keyboardist Zane Taft exactly where his agent had told Nikki he would be, in the Marquis Ballroom on the ninth floor. Nikki had also gotten the musician's cell phone number, but she didn't call ahead. Soleil could have already texted him, as she did Allie, but if she hadn't yet, no reason to give him a heads-up and a chance to call his former lead singer to line up their alibi stories.

He was alone in the ballroom, on a riser overlooking the empty dance floor, doing a sound check on his keyboard. The first thing Nikki noticed about him was his smile, big and open and crammed with perfect teeth. He fished out Diet Cokes from the ice bucket the hotel had left for him, a man glad for the company.

"Got a gig here tonight, a Sweet Sixty."

"Birthday party?" asked Rook.

Zane shrugged. "Life, huh? Four years ago today I'm at the Hollywood Bowl in Shades, playing our second encore, looking out at Sir Paul in the front row and making eye contact with Jessica Alba. And now?" He popped the tab on his aluminum can and Coke fizzed over. "I should have had a business manager. Anyway, tonight I'm getting duked an extra three hundred because birthday boy likes Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and I know all the songs from Jersey Boys." He slurped the overflow from around the rim of the can. "Fact is, Soleil was the band. She gets the fat contract, I get to play 'Do You Like Pina Coladas?' for boomers who are recession-proof enough to afford parties for themselves."

Nikki said, "You don't sound bitter."

"What's that going to get you? And, hey, Soleil's still a pal. She checks on me from time to time, or when she hears about a studio gig, she'll make a call for me. It's cool." He smiled and all those teeth reminded Heat of the keyboard on his Yamaha.

"Have you been in touch with her recently?" Nikki phrased it openly, seeing how he played it.

"Yeah, she called about half an hour ago, telling me to expect a visit from the famous detective, what's-her-name. That's her saying that, not me."

"No problem," she said. "Did Soleil tell you why we're here?"

He nodded and took another hit off his soda. "Here's the truth. Yes, she was with me the other night. You know, when the lady got killed. But not for long. She met up with me at the Brooklyn Diner on Fifty-seventh about midnight. I was only on the first bite of my Fifteen Bite Hot Dog when she got a call and freaked and said she had to go. That's Soleil, though."

"I can never finish those," said Rook. "And I'm a dog eater."

Nikki ignored Rook. "So she was only with you for how long?"

"Ten minutes, if."

"Did she say who the call was from?"

"No, but I heard her say his first name when she answered. Derek. I remember it because I started thinking… and the Dominos. You know as in," and then he started riffing the iconic piano solo from "Layla," the coda sounding as authentic as if the band were in the room. Later that night, he'd be playing "Big Girls Don't Cry" for a landscape contractor from Massapequa, Long Island.

As soon as the doors closed to the ballroom, Rook said to Heat, "Know how you've been kidding me, always saying my insider knowledge ain't crap?"

"Who says I was kidding?"

"Well, stop. Because I know who Derek is."

Nikki U-turned herself in the hallway and stepped in front of him. "Seriously? You know who Derek is?"

"I do."

"Who?"

"I don't know." When she moaned and strode to the elevator, he caught up with her. "Hang on, I mean I've never met him. But hear me out-I was with Cassidy Towne when she got a call from a Derek, and I heard his last name when her assistant said he was on the line."

Multiple synapses started firing in Heat's brain at once. "Rook… If there's a connection between Soleil and this Derek and Cassidy Towne… I don't want to say what it means yet, but I have an idea."

"Me, too," he said. "You first."

"Well, for one, what if he is the Texan?"

"Sure," said Rook. "Timing of the call to Soleil, her reaction… Derek could be our killer. Maybe he and Soleil were both involved in that big story Cassidy wouldn't tell me about. And they wanted it and her killed."

"Fine, fine, fine. What's the last name?"

"I forget." She shoved him and he stumbled back into a potted plant. "Hang on, hang on now." He took out his black Moleskine notebook and flipped to some early pages. "Here. It's Snow. Derek Snow." The address trace didn't take long. A half hour later, Heat was parking the Crown Victoria in front of Derek Snow's fifth-floor walk-up on 8th Street a few blocks east of Astor Place.

She and Rook made the climb of five flights with a squad of heavily armed uniformed cops borrowed from the Ninth Precinct. There was another contingent on the fire escape, both high and low. Their reward for the hike was to knock and get no answer. "It is just past one," said Rook. "He could be at work."

"I suppose I could maybe knock on a few doors to see if anybody knows where he works."

"I don't think that's going to help you."

Nikki gave him a puzzled look. "Why not?"

Rook leaned toward the door and touched his nose. She leaned in and sniffed.

They had a battering ram, but the super was there to unlock the door to the apartment. Nikki entered with one hand over her nose and the other resting on the grip of her service weapon. The uniforms rolled in behind her, then Rook.

The first thing she recognized when she saw Derek Snow's body was that it wasn't the Texan. The young African-American sat slumped forward at the kitchen table with his face down on a place mat. The dried pool of blood on the linoleum underneath him came from a puncture in his white shirt, just below his heart. Heat turned to get the OK signal from the cops who had cleared the other rooms of the apartment, and then she turned back to find Rook on one knee doing what she was about to do, checking out his forearms.

Rook turned to her and said the word just as she was thinking it. "Adhesive."