SEVENTEEN


Spindrift pelted Nikki’s face, filling her mouth with a brackish taste. The howl of Sandy’s fury isolated her from any sound other than the wind and spray lashing violently at her ears. Though she ran as hard as she could, the tide measured thigh-deep in that neighborhood. Still lower than it had been farther downtown, but fighting the ferocious wave chop coming right off the East River made Heat feel like the trailing contestant on Wipeout. Underneath the FDR, she caught five seconds of shelter, adjusted the sling of the backpack, and sloshed on.

A tiny, shallow-draft Boston Whaler was not engineered for super-storms. Ahead of her on Pier Eleven, Heat saw its bow lift in a gust, turning its flat bottom into a wing that caught air and pointed the craft skyward before it flipped back upside down and then pinwheeled directly at her. She ducked behind the metal generator unit at the head of the pier and watched it sail overhead and crash into a concrete support of the highway overpass behind her.

When she came out from behind the machinery, Nikki spotted Zarek Braun recovering from his capsize. He saw her, too, as he hauled himself up from the churning water that covered the pier. Just when Heat thought she had him bottlenecked on that wharf, he turned and kicked a massive wake of his own, running to her left. Was he foolish enough to try to swim for it?

No. He was heading for the gangplank to Slip A, one of the docks where the water taxis come and go. No taxi tonight. But she did see a boat tied to the heaving berth — a twenty-four-foot Zodiac military pro Responder. A man on board caught a glimpse of Zarek Braun waving a circle in the air and fired up the twin Mercury 150s on its transom.

The floating dock took a swell, and Braun toppled facedown on his first step off the gangplank onto the lurching platform. Nikki reached the top of the gangplank, braced on the metal railing and called a freeze that got carried away unheard in the whirlwind. Zarek Braun rebounded from his fall and pivoted toward her with his assault rifle. She fired one round that went astray when the dock pitched, moving him sideways and down. He got on one knee and replied with a flaming burst from the G36 that sent Heat diving behind a soda vending machine.

His aim was off, too. All his rounds went high.

Heat made a rapid peek around the corner just as another surge knocked Braun off-balance. This time, he lost hold of his assault rifle. It slid away from him in the radical pitch and came to a stop against the safety fencing at the far end of the dock. Seizing the moment, Nikki sprung to her feet and started down the heaving gangplank toward him. But she lost her footing in a sea roll, too. Heat landed on her knees, gripping the banister with her left hand and clinging to her Sig Sauer with her right.

When she hauled herself up, she looked in disbelief as her Cool Customer lived up to his nickname. Instead of backtracking for his carbine, he turned his back on Nikki and strolled toward the waiting escape boat with out so much as a glance at her. He knew what they both knew. It was impossible to get off an accurate shot with the river tossing them about in a hurricane. But at the bottom of the gangplank, Heat braced and fired.

Zarek half turned but kept his stride. Another yaw of the dock as it strained against its pilings sent the HK skimming back her way. She grabbed it, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

It was empty.

The mercenary gave her a smug nod and laughed as he hopped into the black Zodiac. Nikki started weaving toward him with her Sig up. Braun pointed to something down inside the boat, and his accomplice, whom she recognized as the man she had shot with the nail gun in Chelsea, reached over with his unbandaged hand and brought up a fresh G36.

Proving she could be a cool one herself, Nikki stopped and holstered her weapon. That confused Zarek Braun as he took the HK from his partner. In the moment he hesitated to wonder what the hell that was about, Heat underhanded the flash-bang grenade she had brought along in the backpack and lobbed it into the Zodiac.


Back at the Twentieth Precinct, just before dawn, Heat stood in the faint light of Observation-One staring through the glass at her prisoner. The shiver she felt wasn’t from the still-damp hair tickling the back of her neck. It came from watching a paid assassin sit under the lunar wash of fluorescents with such inverted tranquility he resembled a wax replica of himself at Madame Tussauds.

She could have easily killed him hours before on that dock. Even with all the heaving and pitching, Nikki had the drop on him, and at that range, she had three nines left she could have parked in his head, with one left for his boat wrangler, if he’d gotten any ideas. Who knows? She might have worn a medal for it, cashing the chit of a double cop killer.

But Heat wanted this prick alive.

And she got him, flash, bang, boom.

Now came the harder part, and she knew it: trying to get a mercenary with psyops training to give up the man who hired him. Heat assessed him again and quietly composed herself, becoming mindful of her breathing. The room still had a tang from the old days when they allowed smoking in there, and her own clothes — the same ones that she had changed out of and balled into her file drawer the other day — weren’t the freshest, either. But they were dry.

Sandy had moved on in the overnight after making landfall near Atlantic City. The former hurricane was now somewhere over Pennsylvania, but the city was still reeling, and through the door behind her, Nikki heard the early-morning bustle of the precinct’s forces in response mode.

She had a different job to do. And it was time to jump in.

Zarek Braun’s concentration never left the spot he had chosen under the mirror. Not even when he heard the sucking sound as Heat came through the air lock that buffered the observation room from Interrogation-One. “Something different about you this morning, Mr. Braun.” She ducked her forehead toward his and squinted into a playful face. “What is it, now? Is it the orange jumpsuit? Not as flattering as your black phony SWAT outfit, is it? No, something else…Oh, I know. The manacles. You are incarcerated.” She tossed her files onto the tabletop and took her place. “Just as you will be for the rest of your life. Which may end up being shorter than you had planned.”

That brought his eyes off the wall. She winked. “That’s a topic yet to explore. First, I want to ask you some questions. Number-one is sort of a public safety issue. Are there any more members of your urban black ops cadre out there? Because I would sure like to get them off the street.” His gaze drifted front again. “That’s OK, because we’re finding out lots about that from your boat skipper in the other room. I just thought I’d give you a chance to get ahead of the rush for leniency from cooperative goodwill.”

She could have put Braun and his Zodiac captain, Seth Victor, in the same interrogation box together to play them off each other. Her decision, though, was that the Cool Customer would have intimidated his underling into silence. So she went with divide and conquer. Maybe Victor didn’t know as much as Braun, but his paranoia about getting sold out might loosen him up. This one would be a challenge, though; she knew that before she came in.

“Look, let’s keep it real. We both know you’re going to try to stonewall here. And, unlike you, we don’t go for torturing our prisoners. Although, I have thought of it, Zarek.” Addressing him by his first name brought a tiny flex to his mouth. “Not so much a thought, as a fantasy.” Heat brought up a hand to count off fingers. “Let’s see, you killed my captain. You killed a patrol officer. You killed Reese Cristóbal. You killed Fabian Beauvais, too, didn’t you?” She waited. The Cool Customer remained passive. “And you also killed Jeanne Capois. And the old man she kept house for. Look: out of fingers. Am I leaving anybody off?”

He seemed amused by some private joke. Then he spoke. “You have lovely eyes. Bedroom eyes.” His words came softly in a Polish accent, which, under other circumstances, Heat might have found sexy.

“And you know what they see ahead for you? Let me lay it out. New York does not have a death penalty, I’m sure you’ve thought that through. But guess what we’ve been busy doing. Letting our pals at Homeland Security do some checking on you. We like to cooperate. Not just with each other but with our allies in foreign lands. A little birdie told me about Operation Dream Catcher. You were a bad boy in the desert. A very bad boy. Let me ask you something. If our friends in Afghanistan want an extradition so they can repay you in all the ingenious ways they can imagine, what do you think I should tell them?”

A minuscule flare of his nostrils. A scalp flex that moved his ears. Small tells gave away his unease and let her know she’d had some impact. So Nikki tested it for the money. “I want you to tell me about Keith Gilbert. I want to know everything. I want you to tell me why Keith Gilbert wanted Fabian Beauvais dead. I want you to tell me how you killed Fabian Beauvais for Keith Gilbert.”

She gave him an opening to respond, but he didn’t take it. “Did you notice there’s a theme here? Keith Gilbert. Wealthy men have no problem hiring men like you to do their scut work. Keith Gilbert even told you to kill me, didn’t he? And you tried. Twice. Oh, and how did that work out for you, Zarek?”

Heat sat facing him, waiting. And waiting some more. She stood. “Fine. You keep it zipped like that, being all cool. Styling your orange duds and your bracelets and chains. Know what I’m going to do? Go Google the weather forecast for Kabul.”


When she left Interrogation, two and a half hours later, she found Rook waiting for her in the ob room. “These guys are hard core,” he said. They watched Seth Victor picking at his wrist bandage through the magic mirror. His face was still swollen from the broken nose Heat had given him in Chelsea. The effect made him appear even more stoic than his unit leader in the next box. “You know, in my prior, somewhat nutty ramblings about roving bands of rogue black ops mercs out on the streets, dishing out justice, I always figured it would be a little more satisfying to meet them. Like they’d have some swagger and élan.”

“You mean like an action figure?”

“Exactly.” And then he realized what she’d said and turned to her. “Was that a shot?”

“If the beard fits.”

Anyway, these guys are just punks with army-surplus gear. Lethal enough, I grant you, but swagger? Élan? I think not.” Inside the box, Victor turned toward Rook. Even though they both knew better, it seemed like a reaction. “I think we should find another room.”

Out in the hallway Rook said, “I made it to Gramercy Park. Your apartment’s fine.”

“What’s it like out there?”

“Not good. Storm’s past, but now we’re getting the nasty back ass of it. Power is still out below Thirty-ninth, subways, tunnels, and some bridges are closed; they’re still putting out house fires in Breezy Point…Oh, and somebody put a roller coaster in the ocean off the Jersey shore.” He led her into the break room and indicated the clothes on the coat rack. “Got you these from your apartment.”

“Oh, great. Thanks.”

“It’s the least I could do after you saved my life.”

She pulled the outfit off the hook. “Oh yeah, this suit definitely makes us even.”

“I beg to differ, Detective Heat, but I think we are finally even for that bullet I took for you.”

“You know, I don’t see it as even. I see it as your turn to take another one.” And she stepped into the ladies’ room to change.


The voice of Keith Gilbert echoed up the hall from the bull pen as Nikki returned in her refreshed wardrobe. She looked up at him in front of the forest of microphones on TV when she stepped into the room and thought she saw something on his face that went beyond weariness from running the PA’s emergency sitch room overnight. Did she see stress? A twinge of fear?

Rook came up behind her and voiced her thoughts. “Do you think Commissioner Gilbert knows that his soldier of fortune’s fortunes have turned unfortunate?”

“Oh, so you’re with me now on Gilbert?”

“When did I ever doubt you?”

The news from the press conference was grim. Over ninety deaths in a sixty-mile radius, forty-three of them right there in New York City, mostly in Queens and on Staten Island, which took a wallop. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark airports were closed. All seven East River subway tunnels had flooded and were closed. Same with the Midtown, Holland, and Battery Park automobile tunnels.

“Got breaking news here.” Ochoa lofted the phone on a stiff arm toward the ceiling. “Feller and Rhymer calling in from da Bronx.”

Nikki muted Gilbert’s press briefing. “Put them on speaker so we all can get it at once.” She, Raley, and Rook circled Ochoa’s desk. “Whatcha got, Detectives?”

“We found Zarek Braun’s crib,” said Feller.

Another chill, a good one this time, raised hairs on Nikki’s arm. “How’d you manage that? Neither of these guys carried ID, not even a wallet.”

“Hence the term, going commando,” added Raley.

“Correct, but as all of us who have endured long hours of stakeout know, you need to do something to pass the time.”

Detective Rhymer said, “Before you start with the dirty jokes, we combed through that Fort Knox on wheels they were driving and found a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition stuffed in the driver’s side pocket.” He paused. “Huh. Still no dirty jokes, what’s wrong with you guys? Anyway, your deceased BearCat driver, Mr. Bill Santinelli, was a subscriber, and — employing all our savvy and cunning as professional investigators — we went to the address on the magazine label. By the way it’s off Bathgate. Same block as the rest of his crew was living when I checked their places out.”

Everyone thought the same thing — about Wally Irons walking into an IED trap. “You two should hold,” said Heat.

“Not to worry. Bomb squad sniffed it and passed it a half hour ago while you were in with Zarek Braun.” Randall Feller cleared something from his throat. “By the way, if he’s still hanging around, I’d like to soften him up for you.”

Everyone on that call felt the same. Heat steered them away from that black hole. “Are you sure Braun lived there, too?”

“Affirm. Got some picture ID here with numerous assumed names. Driver’s licenses, fake passports, even a private gym card.” They could hear door hinges squeak and the acoustics change as Feller stepped outside. “I’m walking to the detached garage, which ESU is still clearing so we can’t go in yet. But, standing here looking in, I can see all sorts of ordnance, ammunition, tear gas, flash bangs.”

“Zip cuffs?” asked Ochoa.

“Don’t see any right off, but I would bet on it. The infamous Impala is also parked in here under a tarp. And there’s a big space here with some wide-track tire marks that I’m sure belong to a BearCat.”

Heat said, “Just before you called we got a trace back on that ’Cat. It was reported stolen by Mexican police last year.”

Rook said, “That explains how Braun got it. You can’t just buy those things on eBay. I’ve tried.”

“Hang on, hang on.” The phone rustled on Feller’s end and they heard muffled chatter. Then he came back on. “The bomb sarge found a wallet on the workbench. No picture ID in it, but there’s a paycheck stub from the chicken slaughterhouse. It’s made out to Fabian Beauvais.”


Feller and Rhymer hung up to resume their search of Braun’s hideout up in the Bronx. Before Heat got involved in other things, Roach led her to the Murder Board. Like the other detectives, they had taken to heart Nikki’s directive to drill down on every aspect of the case. Since both of them felt a proprietary interest in Jeanne Capois and her unresolved connection to Opal Onishi, that’s where they had put their initial efforts.

Ochoa began, “I read over the notes from your interview with Onishi.” He took his pen out of his teeth and tapped the woman’s name in his quadrant on the whiteboard. “Squirrelly, that one.”

“You think?” said Nikki. “If we ran a polygraph on her, we’d probably have to order in more ink.”

“Yeah, my antenna was up all over. So I thought, what’s in that interview that I could at least run some kind of check on? So I left word with the Happy Hazels. Remember, Opal told you that she hired Jeanne Capois through that agency?”

“I sort of prompted her with that, but, yeah.”

“But no. It took awhile because of all the craziness with the storm, but the happiest Hazel called me back about a ten ago. She never referred Jeanne Capois to anyone other than her boss, the old man from the home invasion.”

“Shelton David,” said his partner.

“And she has never heard of Opal Onishi. I’ll admit,” he said, “that it’s not so much a lead, as a confirmation of a lie.”

“At this point, everything helps, Miguel.” And then she said, “You actually read my notes?”

“Hey, just doin’ the fact-donkey dance.”

Rook scooted his chair over and said, “The next question is, why? Why lie?”

Heat agreed. “And why move in the middle of the night like some traveling circus?”

“Was she in debt?”

Raley hopped on that one. “No. I ran a credit check on her ’cause I wondered the same thing. It’s maybe the most logical reason to make a midnight run like that. Opal’s not rich, but she’s making all her payments on time. And she’s got a steady job.”

“We’re back to where we started,” said Heat. “Wondering what the connection is between Opal Onishi and Jeanne Capois.”

“Which is where some of my donkeywork might help,” said Raley. Nikki could tell by looking, Sean was holding. “Although I did mine wearing the crown.”

“As my King of All Surveillance Media?”

“A little more like a commoner. I didn’t scrub surveillance vids; I only used the Internet. To Google Opal Onishi. You can find out a lot about people online.”

“But don’t believe all of it,” said Rook. He felt their stares and dismissed them with a wave. “I reveal too much. Go on.”

Rales said, “What got me started was, in your interview — which I also read, thank-you — Onishi said she had been sleeping with an actress on a film shoot, she’s referencing old films, and we knew she went to NYU film school. Anyway, that got me thinking: gopher on Iron Chef? Rental clerk for movie equipment? That’s not career work for a film grad, that’s the J-O-B job you do to pay for your passion. Film.” He had their attention but could see they were only partly with him. “Maybe it’s better if I can just show you.” They followed him to his desk where he clicked on a bookmark that brought up a page of search engine hits.

“Check this out, she’s got her own site.” He opened the home page to a full-screen pose of Opal Onishi standing at the gate of a Cherokee reservation, resting her arm on an Arri Amira camera body presenting a defiant look to the viewer.

Nikki drew closer to the monitor. “What’s this about?”

“It’s about Opal’s other life. As an independent documentary filmmaker.”

“And a serious one, too,” said Rook. “Look at the films and subjects she’s made.” Raley obliged by scrolling as he read. “‘Village of the Slammed — Gay violence and bashing in New York’s Greenwich Village; Heart of the Bully — Chronicle of the aftermath of spousal violence; Tribe and Punishment — Exposing corruption and abuse on Native American reservations.’ That must be where that home page pic was taken.”

Raley swiveled his chair to Heat. “So, it looks to me like the Gen-Y kid who’s been fetching coffee and schlepping stage lights is really a Michael Moore in the making.”

Heat made the connections in a blink. “Kind of makes you wonder what her latest social justice project was. But I have a pretty good idea.” She went to her desk to grab her keys. “If anyone needs me, I’m off to the East Village to visit an indie filmmaker.”

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