Raging Heat

EIGHTEEN

“You keep waking me up,” said Opal Onishi when she opened the door to let in Heat and Rook. “You know, it’s polite to call first. The power’s all fucked up, but my cell works.” She thumbed the home button to check for bars and held it out as a visual aid. Heat ignored it and instead surveyed the living room. The surplus furniture remained stacked, as before, but the cardboard cartons had been razored open revealing their contents: kitchen gadgets in one; surge suppressors and orphan TV remotes in another. Some of the boxes were empty, and their contents covered every open surface in the room.

“I see you’ve had time to move in since my last visit.”

“Yeah, sorry for the mess. Wasn’t expecting company, and I was up working on a project. At least till the lights went out.”

Rook said, “What’s the project, American Hoarders?”

“You’re not a cop, are you?”

“No, this is Jameson Rook. He rides with me sometimes.”

“The writer. Cool.” Opal scooped up a few of the tall stacks of papers that filled the couch, end to end. “Here, sit here.”

When they sat, Nikki said, “So you’re trying to finish up your next documentary.”

She got back a cautious reaction. “Yeah…How’d you know?”

“Detective.” Heat side-nodded to the bundles of paper — drafts of screenplays — and four milk crates filled with DVDs, both sleeveless and in jewel cases. Fanned across the coffee table in front of a Mac Cinema Display were stapled forms entitled EDITING CONTINUITY in boldface with grids containing lists of time codes, shots, and scene notes marked by highlighters.

“What gave me away?” Onishi chuckled and then lit a cigarette with an Ohio Blue Tip. She didn’t sit, but stood because it seemed to relax her, one hand on her hip and the other taking a satisfying drag.

“Actually, to be truthful, we checked you out online.”

“If one were to be truthful,” added Rook with a calculated degree of innuendo as an attachment. “You have some impressive reviews. I checked you out on Cultureunplugged and Documentarystorm. Your film on gay bashing won a Doxie Award at South by Southwest.”

“Ancient history. That was my senior project at NYU.” She acted dismissive but seemed flattered by Rook’s notice. “Independent documentary film doesn’t get a lot of mass awareness, which is cool, really. It’s a passion. As an investigative journalist, you should screen it. I have a DVD of it here somewhere.”

Nikki said, “I’m more interested in the project you’re working on now.”

“Tribe and Punishment?”

“Stop lying to me, Opal. You know the one I’m talking about. The one Jeanne Capois was helping you with.”

“The maid? Helping me on a film?”

“Stop. The. Lying.”

“Looks to me like it’s called Smuggled Souls.” Rook held up one of the pages of editing notes.

“Hey, that’s private.” She snatched it from him and tossed it in one of the empty cartons — a futile gesture since the title appeared in boldface atop every other piece of paper that was visible.

“Opal, we checked,” said Heat. “The Happy Hazels did not refer Jeanne Capois to you. And we know now that she was a victim of human trafficking. I am forming the reasonable assumption that she had something to do with a film you are making, and I want you to cut the crap and tell me what it was.”

“OK. This is true.” Onishi stubbed out her smoke and sat on one of the boxes, lighting up another. “Jeanne came to me a few times. Helped me out with some background stuff, you know, keeping it real. That’s all.”

Detective Heat had done enough interviews in her career to know the dodges. One was the straight lie, which was what she got from Opal last time. Now she was getting the lie hidden inside a truth. Suspects and witness did that when they wanted to feed you enough to satisfy you, hoping you’d move on. Nikki wasn’t budging, and needed to call her out. “I did a records check and didn’t see any calls to you from Jeanne Capois.”

Just as the woman started to relax, Nikki pulled the rug. “But I did another one before I came here and recognized several calls that turned out to be from the home phone of her employer, Shelton David. Including one the night she was murdered. The night you moved out of your place in Chelsea like it was on fire.” The cardboard box gave in a little under Opal’s weight, startling her. Nikki ignored the distraction. “Did she share something with you that made you afraid?”

“I am not afraid.”

Heat waited out her defiant glower through the smoke curl. After a few seconds Nikki spoke quietly as she laid out the crime scene death shots of Jeanne Capois in front of Opal, one by one. “Here is where they killed her. It’s a trash storage area behind a prep school.” She set out another. “Here is a close-up of what they did to her hands and fingers to make her talk.” Then another. “This discoloration on her neck is where they choked her.” Then one more. “This is what they did to her eyes. Poured antifreeze into them until they sizzled. See the discoloration?”

“Stop it! Don’t!” She swept the pictures off the coffee table and turned away from them, covering her face. Nikki didn’t know what sickened her more: seeing the photos again or using Opal’s vulnerability to get what she needed from her. It didn’t matter. Heat had a job to do.

“Whatever Jeanne Capois shared with you so you could make your movie got her killed. And you know that. Make it right. Will you help me get these guys?”

Opal Onishi didn’t answer yes or no, but simply began in a very distant voice to narrate, as if doing a voice-over in one of her docs. “Jeanne Capois was special because she was just like all the others. A girl who grew up in poverty but raised with hope. Like a lot of the Haitians I have interviewed over the past year, hope is not just aspiration, but takes form in tenacity. It is how you survive, it is how you keep going in the face of life’s unrelenting assault. Political corruption, violence, hunger, disease, squalor — even an earthquake does not stop them from seeking a better way.” The ash fell from her cigarette and she absently ground it into the rug with her slipper, then turned to them.

“Jeanne told me she and her fiancé had been told a major hotel chain in the United States was looking for servicepeople to do the work the Americans were no longer willing to do. The man who met them at the patisserie in Pétionville bought them banana cakes and presse cafe and told them the hotel company had health insurance, training for advancement, and a weekly wage that surpassed what they could scrounge in a year in Haiti. They would also provide the transit to New York. Since Jeanne and Fabian had both lost family in the 2010 quake, they decided to take a chance and go.

“Everything changed once they boarded the ship, where their possessions were confiscated and they were locked in the holds below. They were trapped aboard for weeks as it went port to port. Jeanne said they knew where they’d been by the other people who came down into the holds with them. Dominicans, Venezuelans, Colombians, Jamaicans, Hondurans, Mexicans. Even a group of prostitutes the captain won in a card game in the Caymans.”

“Was this a cruise ship?” asked Rook.”

“A cargo vessel.”

Nikki said, “I’m going to guess who owned it.”

“If you guessed Keith Gilbert, you would guess right,” Opal said. Nikki reflected on the visceral reaction Onishi had voiced last visit when she flashed his picture in the array. “The stories I got from other people enslaved by this ring — and it is slavery, let’s call it what it is — were all transported on ships owned by Gilbert Maritime.”

“I want to see these interviews,” said Heat. “Starting with Jeanne’s. And get transcripts, if you have them. If you don’t, we can transcribe them.”

Rook asked, “Did you also interview Beauvais?”

“No, I didn’t.” Then she held up her hands in a staving gesture. “Whoa, whoa, let’s all hold on here. I’m cooperating, right? Like I’m not ducking your shit anymore, OK?”

“And?”

“And this material is mine. This is what I was afraid of when you came around before. I’ve spent a year making a film. I’ve got more interviews I want to do, more writing, and tons more editing. If I let this raw footage out and it starts circulating before I’m ready, I can pretty much kiss off my funding and distribution.”

Heat felt pressure. Half a day — or less — before the interim precinct commander arrived and took her off the case. Desperate, but trying not to show it, she pushed buttons. “I guess I was wrong. From your résumé, I kind of had you figured as someone who wanted to help fight oppression and injustice.”

It was a valiant effort, but Opal tapped out another cigarette, played with it, unlit, in her hand while she mulled, then said, “If the film releases properly, it’ll do just that. Besides, I don’t think you can make me.” She turned to Rook, fishing for support. “Don’t I get some protection as a journalist?”

He shrugged. “Might be debatable whether your indie project gets First Amendment protection. But I do have some perspective to share.”

“Yeah?”

“Ever hear of Mary Ellen Mark?” Opal shook no. “We’re going back thirty, thirty-five years here. Mary Ellen Mark was, and still is, a respected photojournalist who managed to gain access to Mother Teresa’s mission in the Calcutta slums. She’s going along, doing her job, snapping pictures of Mother Teresa and her volunteers working their asses off cleaning the lepers, mopping up after the sick, comforting dying kids, physically picking up and carrying the malnourished men and women she’d find collapsed in the gutters or sleeping in sewage. Mary Ellen got some great photos, too. Know what Mother Teresa said to her? She came up to her very calmly and said, ‘You should put down your camera and do some work.’”

While Opal thought that over, Rook tapped her shoulder and added, “And if that’s not good enough, imagine the media buzz and word of mouth Smuggled Souls will get if your film is instrumental in taking down a corrupt power broker and a human trafficking ring.”

Opal Onishi cocked an eyebrow and smiled.

Jeanne Capois was alive. At least on film. And in that digital form, the twenty-something Haitian immigrant had achieved a sort of immortality. She exuded a goodness and quiet grace that filled the screen and the entirety of Detective Raley’s media kingdom back uptown. Her Creole notes flowed musically around her even after she had spoken her words. The warm French flavor stood in sharp contrast to the disturbing testimony she was offering.

The backdrop was a bookcase — very Ken Burns-style — with her eyeline a few degrees off the camera lens as she spoke to her unseen interviewer, Opal Onishi. The young woman did not smile — this was all too intense for that — but Jeanne Capois looked like a person who commonly smiled, and made others join in just for seeing hers.

Nobody in the small room spoke. Not Raley, not Rook, not Detective Heat, who took notes and jotted time codes off the digits scrolling in a corner of the monitor so that Rales could assemble a highlight reel of the most damning allegations.

When the interview ended and the screen went dark, all three sat in silence, hearing only the cooling fans of the equipment and Rook muttering a small “Fuck.”

Nikki swept aside a tear before the lights came up then tore the relevant sheets off her pad for Raley to edit by. Heat smelled that she was inches from the truth. She stood and said, “Let’s go get this guy.”

Detectives Rhymer and Feller had returned to the bull pen when Heat and Rook came back from their screening. They were particularly animated and it took some work for Nikki to adjust to their manic chatter after what she had just experienced. “Did I score something new, or did I not?” asked Feller.

“You did,” said Rhymer. “Actually both. I was there. But it was mostly him.”

“Maybe one of you could do me a favor before they try to pull the plug on this case anytime now, and just give me a report.”

“I’ll take this,” said Feller, flattening a palm on his chest. “My quadrant — the one you assigned me from the Murder Board for drilling down — included the interview we conducted with Fidel “FiFi” Figueroa. Lots to sift through there, but, skeevy as he is, the man gave us some good intel.”

“Is this you getting to the point?” heckled Ochoa from his desk.

“Remember, Detective Heat, how he used a term to describe Fabian Beauvais?”

“Astucia,” said Heat.

“Plus-ten for you. It occurred to me that you can’t go around exhibiting balls like that, bluffing your way into office buildings with a sandwich cooler to steal documents without setting off a few alarms here and there.”

“It’s an odds game,” offered Rhymer.

“Exactly. So I thought, let me take two elements.” Randall held one hand to the sky and said, “Fabian Beauvais and his astucia right here.…” And then held his other hand up. “And bad shit involving Keith Gilbert here.” He brought the hands together and interlocked his fingers. “So I got on the blower to the Real Time Crime Center and asked the detective on duty to run a computer search for incidents and complaints at the Gilbert Maritime tower on Madison, Midtown. Took a while to get back to me with the hurricane and all, but after we wrapped at Braun’s commando post in the Bronx, I get the call. A trespass complaint weeks ago. No arrest, but officers responded, so it was in the database.”

Nikki said, “I’m interested now.”

“Just wait. We paid a visit. The building’s closed like everything else today, but security’s working. I get the security chief to look at the mug shot of Fabian Beauvais. Guess what he says.”

“‘The sandwich guy,’” said Rook.

Feller made a slow rotation to him and said. “My punch line. I tell the whole friggin’ story and you steal the punch line.”

Rook shrugged contritely. “Sorry.…Inside thoughts, inside thoughts.”

Rhymer, ever earnest jumped in. “Can we not lose track of the fact that we have established that Beauvais did work Gilbert’s corporate HQ to steal documents in his cooler?”

“It’s an important piece. Thorough work, you two. After the interview Heat just watched, she certainly knew why Beauvais was targeting Gilbert. What she didn’t know was what kind of information he had gotten on him. At least she didn’t know yet.

Rook arrived at Nikki’s desk. “What’s up?”

“I’d like you to do something for me — that is, if you’re not too busy.”

“I smart with your implication. Don’t you think a small word of acknowledgment is in order for me getting Opal Onishi to give up her raw video without a First Amendment battle?” Rook searched her face, and all he got was a flat stare. “Apparently that will have to wait. What can I do?”

“You know your old girlfriend at CIA?”

He enjoyed this moment. “Hm. You’re going to have to be more specific. Which one?”

“Rook.”

“Yardley Bell, yes.”

“See if she’s reachable. I have a favor to ask her.”

“And that would be?”

“The one I will ask her when you get her on the phone for me.”

“Right.”

As he moved off to make his call, Sean Raley delivered a thumb drive to Heat. “Here’s the edit you asked for of the Capois video. I’d call it the greatest hits, but it’s more like low moments in humanity.”

“Not many lower.” As soon as the memory key left his fingers he rushed back toward his video realm. “You on a mission?” she called to him.

He turned, walking backward so he wouldn’t lose any time talking. “Got an idea from something in my quadrant that put me onto some video.”

“You look like you think you’re onto something but won’t tell. Are you onto something?”

“Could be useful, could be a bust. I need to scrub it to see if there’s anything.”

“Go to it, King.”

But Detective Raley had already hurried out in his eagerness.

Inez Aguinaldo had called to alert Heat that she was en route with evidence from her search of Alicia Delamater’s property at Beckett’s Neck. When the lead detective from Southampton Village PD arrived just after noon, Nikki couldn’t take her eyes off the brown paper forensics sack in her hand. But to show some grace for the courtesy and effort the Hamptons cop had extended, she minded her manners rather than ripping it from her like a three-year-old going for the presents at a birthday party.

After a hello to her buddy Rook — the bullet whisperer — and squad introductions, Heat thanked her for driving in. “Yeah, it was surreal, if you want to know. A ninety-minute trip that took me five hours. Thank God for all-wheel drive. Had to badge my way over the Throgs Neck Bridge just to get here. But I know you’re up against the clock, so let’s share our Sandy horror stories later, and get to the goods.”

“If you insist,” said Nikki, getting a laugh as she lunged for the property bag. Detective Aguinaldo held it open for her, and the squad tightened the circle around Heat as she reached in with a gloved hand and brought out a Sturm Ruger .38 Spl +P in a plastic Ziploc. “You get this at Alicia Delamater’s?”

She nodded. “Last night. A half hour before the lights went out and the Atlantic Ocean creeped in her front door.

“Tell me it’s his,” said Nikki.

“Make and serial number is a match for the handgun Keith Gilbert has registered with the Suffolk County sheriff. We didn’t do prints yet. I figured you’d want control of the lab process so there’s no potential inter-department contamination for his defense attorneys to plead. As for ballistics, same deal. Plus your techs can probably turn that around faster than we could.”

“You guys what, farm yours out to Korea?” said Rook.

Aguinaldo chuckled. “Might as well. The main thing is, I knew time was of the essence; want to get this in your hands right away.”

As Nikki signed the chain of evidence voucher, Feller nodded toward the Ruger and said, “So I guess it’s no longer the virtual smoking gun.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” cautioned Heat. “This is only one piece of many. And we haven’t labbed it yet.”

Detective Aguinaldo needed to hustle back to Southampton, and Nikki thanked her wholeheartedly her for all of the valuable assists all along the way. Handing Inez a thermal copy of the receipt for the revolver she asked, “Just out of curiosity, where did you find it?”

“In her home office trash can. Hidden under the plastic liner.”

“Amateurs,” said Ochoa. And the other detectives agreed.

Nikki drifted back to a week ago and said, “You never know what you’ll find in a trash can.”

Feller said, “Yeah, but she’s got the whole ocean right there. Why keep it?”

“No kidding,” said Rook. “Has no one ever heard, ‘Leave the gun, take the cannoli’?”

Heat’s e-mail chimed. She stepped to her desk, read the screen, and hung her head. “’S up?” asked Ochoa.

“From Zach Hamner at One PP. The interim precinct commander is on his way. With my orders for administrative leave. He’ll be here in less than one hour.” She typed a short reply and hit SEND. “Which means, I guess I’d better not be.”