Raging Heat

Ascramble. Nothing else could describe the charged atmosphere in the Homicide Squad Room of the Twentieth Precinct. Nikki covered the phone and alternately called out directions or hollered answers to questions from her crew, all the while keeping a compulsive check on the clock.

She finished her call with Yardley Bell of the CIA with both pretending to agree that they should get together sometime. “I hear you’re up for the new task force,” Rook’s former girlfriend had said, causing Nikki to wonder if he had told her, or if Agent Bell was just that damned looped in.

“That’s a can I’m kicking down the road for the moment,” said Nikki. Heat thanked her for agreeing to do the favor, knowing she now owed one to the ex. “Ya do what ya have to do,” she muttered to herself after she’d hung up.

Rook saw she was off the call and sauntered over. “You going to tell me the favor now?”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s not into three-ways.” Then she craned to search the room. “Anyone seen Raley?” That sent Ochoa disappearing up the hall on a search.

“First of all, I beg to differ about Yardley. And second, I’m reckoning you have less than ten minutes,” said Rook.

“You don’t need to tell me, I’m pedaling as fast as I can.” Nikki went over her mental checklist one last time. She had sent Detective Rhymer and a pair of policewomen off on their assignment forty-five minutes before. On the precinct cell phone she’d signed out to replace her waterlogged 4s, Heat received a confirmation text from him of a mission accomplished. Feller and a team of uniforms were in holding outside Zarek Braun’s and Seth Victor’s cages, at the ready. Now that she’d secured major help from Yardley Bell, she had one more call to make, but that would wait for the caravan.

“I think we’re set to roll.” Heat called in a loud voice. “Once we have the complete Roach.”

“Then everyone grab your car keys,” said Raley as he jogged in on the heels of his partner. “Sorry to keep you waiting, but, trust me, it was time very well spent.” He held up his laptop and said, “I’ll fill you in on the road.”

Detectives Raley and Ochoa departed the bull pen for the Roach Coach. Nikki texted the green light signal to Feller while Rook gathered her files and the thumb drive. “Ready?” he asked.

In the sudden quiet of the empty squad room, Heat paused, ever-thorough, and ran her checklist one more time. With a parting glance to the Murder Board she said, “As I ever will be.”

A deputy inspector with gold laurels and oak leaves pinned to his starched white uniform shirt stood in the doorway. He peered through the glass wall into Captain Irons’s office, which sat dark, as it had since his killing, then turned his attention to the bull pen. “I’m looking for a Detective Heat.”

Nikki approached him and said, “I’ll let her know.”

And then she and Rook double-timed out past him to the car.

Storms never just came and went. Nikki knew all too well that every tempest left its destruction; all fury spawned repercussions. En route to her objective, the caravan of four police vehicles led by Heat, who’d appropriated Captain Irons’s former Crown Victoria, got a firsthand look at the aftermath of a super-storm in New York City. Uptown, the wet streets now reflected dazzling sunshine that intermittently broke between pinwheeling clouds on the rear end of Sandy. Heavy traffic slowed them at a detour around West Fifty-seventh Street where the arm of a construction crane at a new high-rise had collapsed in the monster winds and wagged precipitously seventy-five stories atop the site. Elsewhere, the sidewalks teemed with residents and tourists antsy from being cooped up and eager for a chance to restock pantries and assess the damage. Marathoners training for Sunday’s upcoming race weaved down the sidewalks in defiance of doubters that the event would even be held.

The effects were more evident below Midtown where the power outage lingered, creating an exodus of citizens heading north to use uptown as their supermarket. Two major hospitals down there, Bellevue and NYU Langone, suffered generator failures and had to mount heroic-scale patient evacuations to health facilities outside the blackout zone.

In spite of the delays, blockages, and roundabouts of the journey, the small convoy finally arrived at its destination. Under a spot shower falling in the milky light, Heat got out for one last huddle with her squad, reviewing the choreography once again. Before going inside, she bent her head back for a look up at the height of the Port Authority office tower, and the rain felt good on her face. To everyone else, it was the last gasp of the super-storm. To Heat, it marked the leading edge of the torrent she was about to unleash upstairs.

Gaining access to the Port Authority Emergency Management Office came easily enough — if you planned ahead. Which is just what Heat had done. She was too experienced to come all that way with her entourage only to be turned back. So Nikki had phoned Cooper McMains, the commander of the NYPD Counterterrorism unit to discreetly secure entry for her entire group. The bond of trust that had developed between the commander and the detective was strong enough that he did not ask her the reason for her visit, nor did she volunteer it. She knew McMains to be not only one of the most trustworthy cops she’d met, but one of the smartest. In her heart, Heat believed he had her mission figured and was tactful enough not to carry the conversation further into potentially uncomfortable zones.

The result of laying such groundwork was to witness the utter shock on the face of Port Authority commissioner Keith Gilbert when Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook strode into his situation room during one of his press briefings. “Thank you,” he boomed mid-question to the gathering of media, some of who reacted with dismay at the uncharacteristically short shrift when he stepped away from the podium. Gilbert was so taken aback that, for a moment, he waffled in place, unsure of which direction to go — to Heat, or away. Nikki decided to help the man decide.

“Commissioner Gilbert,” she said, marching forward directly to him. “Detective Heat, NYPD. You remember me, I’ll bet.”

The commish smiled the politician’s smile — the one that gets pasted on when there’s a chance a picture might be taken. And God knew there was a press pool’s worth of lenses surrounding them both. He put out his hand and when she took it he gave a hard squeeze then pulled her close so he could speak low in her ear through his grin. “What the fuck do you think you are up to?”

With a hand that still felt rubbery from the previous night’s rodeo on the roof of the BearCat, Nikki returned a bone vise of her own. “What I’m paid to do, Commissioner. I catch murderers.”

Behind her, the public information officer for Gilbert’s campaign approached Rook. After greeting each other Rook said, “A little out of your area, aren’t you, Dennis?”

“How so?”

“This isn’t exactly a political event.”

The PIO chuckled. “My friend, when you’re ramping up for a nomination, everything is a political event. I’ve got a video guy here getting footage of him for future ads.”

“Tell your guy to keep his lens cap off,” said Rook. “He may get some unexpected candids.” He moved over beside Heat, leaving the flak to wonder what that meant.

When he joined her, Keith Gilbert had turned his back to the press pool to square off with Nikki. His face was empurpled with suppressed rage. Still, he maintained a hushed tone. “What are you, some kind of a stalker? Use your goddamned head. Look around. You’ve come into my situation room in the middle of a crisis.” Heat scanned the nerve center. Clearly the immediate danger had passed sufficiently that the other commissioners, officials, and their lieutenants were running things just fine on their own.

“Seems like things have slackened enough for you to do your media thing against this nice backdrop.”

“Your guy’s getting some sweet footage, too,” added Rook with a thumbs up to Dennis and his shooter across the room.

“As usual, Heat, you’re out of line and your timing sucks.”

“Think so?” said Nikki. “I think my timing may be just about perfect.”

“Hear me loud and clear. You are not going to make a scene in here. Especially not now.” Then he saw something over Heat’s shoulder that made his forehead tighten enough for the weathered creases to go smooth.

Across the room, Detective Rhymer stepped through the glass doors accompanied by two uniformed policewomen escorting Alicia Delamater. His spurned mistress gave him a hard glare that he broke off to sweep the area. All he saw were too many underlings. And press.

“Not in here.”

“No,” said Rook. “You can’t have a situation in the situation room.” And then, to explain, “Strangelove. The movie, not you and Alicia.”

Gilbert put a hand on the shoulder of a woman who wore a headset. “Josephine, take over for a few, OK?” Then he turned back to Heat. “There’s a more private room.”

Nikki said, “I know.”

Keith Gilbert speed walked to a side door then up a short corridor as if he could, through swiftness, shake the police and the ex. But when he opened the door to the conference room he lurched to a halt. Because inside, Nikki Heat had arranged a tableau to greet him. Detectives Raley and Ochoa had entered moments before to set up the monitors and audio playback in the high-tech boardroom, and stood with arms folded. At the far end of the long mahogany table sat a pair of urban mercenaries in orange, flanked by standees Randall Feller, plus two uniformed NYPD officers holding M16s pointed to the floor. It wasn’t lost on Heat that they were guarding the very man who had put the mourning bands on their badges.

The dumbfounded commissioner remained in the doorway as Detective Rhymer, Alicia Delamater, and Rook filed in. Gilbert turned to the aide at his elbow and said, “Get Lohman.”

“Good idea,” said Heat. She gestured to the chair of honor and closed the door when Gilbert sat on the edge of the cushion, not quite ready to lounge back in the command pose he customarily adopted on that leather throne. “I’d want Frederic Lohman, too. I’d want the whole Dream Team. My guess is that it will take your lawyers a bit of time to get here. But look who I’m talking to. You’ve got all the latest data, so you know they’re a long way off.” His expression changed as if solving a puzzle and he started to rise. “And if you try to leave, we can always conduct this out there.”

“That’d make some campaign ad,” said Rook.

The commish sat down. Detective Heat left her spot by the door. “Alicia, I want to thank you for coming.”

“Like I had a choice when your detective and those other two showed up at my hotel this morning.” She indicated the policewomen whose backs were visible through the glass as they stood sentry outside.

“Legally, you could have refused,” said Gilbert. It sounded like parental disapproval wrapped in a scold.

“Yeah? Well maybe I’m glad I’m here.”

Perfect, thought Heat. Just what she’d counted on. Animosity, still raw and smarting. Once she knew Delamater had hidden the gun, Nikki hoped Alicia would still be pissed enough to give up her old flame as Beauvais’s shooter. Especially in exchange for dropping charges on illegal possession of a firearm. Get ’em while they’re hot, thought Nikki. She set a clear plastic evidence bag containing the Ruger on the table. Both Gilbert and Delamater went a shade paler.

Alicia whispered an “Oh my God.…”

“Where’d you find that?” said Gilbert as he cleared some phlegm. “Certainly not at my house.” So this is how bad it gets when it goes bad, thought Heat. If there had been a bus in that room, Ms. Delamater would be wearing tread marks. But then, Nikki — and everyone — got a surprise. Everyone, that is, except Keith Gilbert.

“Oh.…” Alicia’s mouth quivered as she lost her words.

Gilbert tried to shut her up. “Alicia. Stop. Right there.” To Nikki’s dismay, the lost woman responded to being directed, and began to consider his instructions. She might have just done that, stopped and asked for a lawyer. Except Keith had to add one more thing. “I’m serious, bitch. You’ve fucked up enough already.”

Alicia reacted with a small jolt, as if slapped by an invisible hand. Then a resolve came over her and she rotated her head to Heat. “I was there that night.”

“At Conscience Point?” Nikki gave her a sympathetic face to counter Gilbert’s bullying. “It’s OK, let it out, Alicia.” Rook offered a handkerchief from his pocket, which Delamater took without noticing, and dabbed her eyes.

“Yes. I was there for his meeting—”

“Alicia.”

“No, I want to say this.” Her stance was so firm, it went beyond plea bargains or concerns about hiding a gun. “I was at Conscience Point for his meeting with Fabian.”

“Beauvais?” asked Nikki for the record.

“Right. Keith told me about the blackmail. I didn’t know what it was about, just that Fabian was putting the screws to him about some shit he’d dug up, and he wanted hush money.”

Heat gave Gilbert a preemptive glance and said to her, “You’re doing fine, keep going. You followed him in your car?”

“No.” Nikki, Rook, and the other detectives flicked eyes at one another. This was veering from the scenario they had painted. “I was already there. Waiting.”

“Alicia, I’m pleading with you, you don’t have to do this.”

“Mr. Gilbert, let her speak.” Heat went back to her. “Alicia, why were you there waiting?”

“Because I had the gun.”

That surprise sent more furtive looks around the table. “You brought the gun for Mr. Gilbert?” asked Heat.

“No, he didn’t even know I’d be there.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened.”

Delamater nodded. Done with tears, a resolve had come to her as if this was her pivotal moment to say what she needed to, or regret it every eternal dawn of her life. “I knew he was meeting Fabian, so I got there early. I parked on the lawn behind the marina offices so they wouldn’t see my car and waited in the dark under the stairs.

“Fabian got there first, about a half hour before he said. He sat across the parking lot on the steps of the rec center like he told Keith he would.” She tilted her head Gilbert’s way. “When Keith pulled up and got out with the money, ten thousand, I think it was, and Fabian came forward…I stepped out and fired.”

“Oh, Alicia, don’t,” moaned Gilbert.

Heat asked, “How many shots?”

“Two. It was dark. I was nervous, and I missed. Fabian ran. Keith yelled at me.” She mimicked him disparagingly, “‘What the fuck did you do?’ then he drove off to catch him. But he got away.” That made sense to Heat, and would explain the second car the Conscience Point resident had heard speeding off. It was Alicia Delamater’s.

A troubled silence hung in the room. Even the hardened prisoners at the other end of the table seemed riveted. But the same way something noisy refuses to get ground in the garbage disposal, elements of this story felt way off to Heat. It was out of whack enough that she wondered if this was some fabrication the two had cooked up. Didn’t Beauvais say Gilbert shot him? But then again, Heat could understand how darkness and surprise might have led him to that assumption. She’d known seasoned cops to get it wrong in the fog of war. Nikki wished she had more time to reflect, but concern that Delamater would lose her impulse to unload her soul forced her to take a leap and trust her instincts.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” said Nikki. “Why in the world would you do something as drastic as that?”

Gilbert jumped in. “Are you listening? The guy was shaking me down.”

Heat ignored him and persisted. “Killing someone — with such premeditation. That is big. You would have to have a very strong reason.” She avoided the word motive. No sense sobering her with legalities. Alicia didn’t answer, just panted as if steeling herself for the next round.

In that interval, another piece of story grit rejected itself, and Nikki addressed it. “Also, can you help me with this? If you did go there with the intent to kill Fabian Beauvais, why didn’t you just do it when he got there early?”

“Jesus fucking Christ. It was all to protect me, don’t you get it?”

“You egotistical son of a bitch!” blurted Alicia. “I wasn’t trying to protect you. I was trying to kill you.” Heat had certainly figured Delamater to have been part of the incident in that marina parking lot. But as an eyewitness, at best; an accessory, at worst. Shooting the gun, and not just hiding it, was bombshell enough. But this. This was a twist even Heat had not seen coming. From his face, neither had Keith Gilbert.

“Fuck it. If I’m getting arrested for shooting at someone, at least it’s going to be for the right person.” Alicia continued to rail, imploring Heat to understand, “Keith and I reconciled after the restraining order. At least I thought we had. But then he cut me off when he officially decided to run for senator. Then he called me that thing again.” Nikki silently pronounced the words as Delamater said them aloud. “A political liability.”

“Leesh,” said Gilbert in a bedroom voice, “we don’t need to—”

“Suddenly, I’m fucking off the boat.” Alicia clapped her hands together. “Just like that.”

Rook jumped into the conversation. “So you used the payoff as a setup to kill Keith and make it look like Beauvais did it?” He turned to Nikki. “Sorry, I just kinda got caught up in this.”

Heat said, “Was that the idea, Alicia?” And when she nodded, Nikki asked, “And you wounded Fabian by accident, or were you going to kill him, too?”

“I didn’t need to kill him. Who’d believe him? I mean, come on.” The ugliness of the statement matched the actions.

“Alicia, Goddamn it, I helped you.”

“You helped yourself, as usual. You weren’t protecting me. You kept quiet because if it ever got out what happened, all the questions would hurt your stupid campaign. So don’t fucking insult me.”

Stunning as it was, this version worked for Heat. She could even picture how Alicia got the Ruger. Back when Detective Aguinaldo responded to the prowler call at Cosmo, and Gilbert had his gun out, Delamater was there. Which made it feasible that she not only knew he kept the .38 locked in a desk, but she saw him get the key from the cabinet. Sneaking onto the property weeks later to get it would have been no problem. Even Topper the guard dog wouldn’t stop Alicia because he knew her.

The pragmatist in the commissioner weighed in. “Detective, I think what’s happened here is that I am now exonerated from any wrongdoing in the shooting of this illegal. In fact, I’m technically the victim, aren’t I?”

But the wounding of Beauvais represented only one piece of the entire case jigsaw, and Heat moved forward to the next. “Except with Fabian Beauvais running around as a loose end, you had to do something about that.” Heat’s attention turned to Zarek Braun and Seth Victor, who remained stoic. “Am I right?”

“Bullshit.” Gilbert flung a hand in the direction of the prisoners. “Why are these guys here, anyway?”

“Are you saying you don’t know them?” asked Heat.

“Nope. Don’t.”

“Are you certain?”

Gilbert leaned toward them and glowered. “I have never seen them before this moment.”

Nikki moved on. All things in time. “What was Fabian Beauvais’s shakedown about?”

“I have no idea.”

“Mr. Gilbert, we know that a complaint got called in to the Midtown North Precinct by your security at your corporate office building when your extortionist, Fabian Beauvais, was seen trespassing.”

“Trivia like that wouldn’t come to my attention.”

“I expect not. But the reason for his trespassing was that he routinely stole documents for use in ID theft and fraud. I want to know what he scored that made you want to pay him off, and when that failed, to kill him.”

“You’re back where you were, Heat, clutching at straws.”

Watching Keith Gilbert rock back in his executive chair, the picture of confidence and self-possession, sage words reverberated from her past — the wisdom of her beloved mentor, Captain Charles Montrose, who once said, “Nikki, never underestimate the ability of the devils among us to see only the saints in themselves. How else could they go about their day?” Heat decided it was time to hold up a mirror.

“Fabian Beauvais was planning to get married. His fiancée’s name was Jeanne Capois. She’s dead now. Murdered.” Nikki briefly took in Zarek Braun. The man in charge of that killing registered nothing. “But before she died — and, probably why she died — Jeanne sat for some interviews with a documentary filmmaker. She had some interesting revelations.”

Detective Raley started the video selects he had copied to the thumb drive. The beauty of Opal Onishi’s interview technique was that it required no setup. Even edited down to four minutes of essentials, Jeanne Capois’s story was self-contained. Her lovely image filled the flat screen and, thus, the entire conference room as she recounted the journey she and Fabian had made from Haiti to America by way of the filthy, crowded, suffocating hold of a cargo vessel.

The core of her narration spoke of hopes raised, then dashed, then crushed over weeks that turned into months of squalid living conditions, debasement, and cruelty from their various overseers before landing in New York for hopeless days and nights of soul-robbing labor in exchange for a shitty meal and a putrid mattress in a locked room. “At first, I always asked the others,” she said, “‘Why don’t you run?’ and they would all say the same: ‘Even if we could get away, where would we go?’” Their bondage came from deadbolts and violence, for sure. But penniless foreigners, illegals in a strange land with no connections, were doubly captive.

“Fabian said he would make us free, and I believed him. My Fabby, he has intelligence and courage. So we did our labor. And we kept doing it, waiting for our chance. I was afraid they would put me into prostitution like the other girls, but they kept me in the entrepôt — the, um, warehouse — sorting papers and putting the tiny shred pieces together to make documents. I was worth more than sex work because I could read.

“We did that all last year. Then Fabian — he’s so smart — he got trusted with an outside job. With one of the crews that harvested paper from trash at office buildings. So he did that and then somehow got a side job butchering chickens to make enough to get us away. We have no money, though. I clean an apartment for a nice old man But my fiancé, he says he found out a way to make a big lot of money to get us home to Port-au-Prince and have our lives back.

“From anyone else, I would say big talk. But Fabian is smart and has that courage. He said he knows who runs the boats that brought us all here, and he is going to make him pay for him not to go to the police. He found out he is a powerful, rich man named Keith Gilbert. I hope Fabian knows what he is doing. Sometimes, I think he is too smart.” Her chuckle was the last thing on the screen before it went blank.

When all eyes in the room went from the flat screen to Gilbert, he dismissed their stares. Alicia’s especially bored into him in disgust.

“Oh come on, are you serious? I deny that.”

“It’s from the mouth of one of your human traffic victims,” said Rook.

“You print that, I’ll sue.” He turned to Heat. “You try to take that to court, you’ll get laughed out. It’s hearsay. Reality-show theater. Where’s the proof? It can’t be substantiated.”

“What if it could be?” asked Alicia. His head whipped toward her, but she was leaning the other way, sober faced, to address Heat.

“If it could be, that would be important,” said Nikki.

“Let’s talk about this then. I’m in trouble, I know it. I didn’t kill anyone. I’m so sorry I hurt that man, but I didn’t kill him, did I?”

Nikki had been in these conversations so often, she could lip-synch them. So she began. “Are you saying you want some kind of deal?”

“If I told you what Fabian was blackmailing him with, would that be worth something?”

“Do you know what it was?”

“She doesn’t. This is bullshit.”

“Would it help? What if I said I knew where the documents were?”

Heat said to Alicia, “Ms. Delamater, if you have material evidence to lead to an arrest and conviction in this case, I will offer you a deal.”

“What kind?”

“Fuck you both.”

“I will personally speak to the DA about making the most liberal deal possible. I can’t promise you what, but I can promise it will be the best they can do.”

They waited as Alicia, the cast out mistress and political liability, weighed all that. “They were shipping manifests.” She fixed an icy grin on her ex-boyfriend, who rolled his eyes. “Shipping manifests, including names of men, women, and children I realize now must have been slaves, or whatever you’d call them.” Gilbert dismissed her with a loud exhale, but she went on. “There is also accounting of how much was paid per unit. That must mean people.”

“You’re guessing.”

Unfazed by him, no longer under his thumb, Alicia continued. “There was more. Not only manifests but an accounting printout of bank transfers going back over nine years. I spent a whole weekend reading them after you shut me out, Keith.”

“What kinds of transfers were they?” asked Heat.

“They all came out of the big fund generated by moving the units. Units, God, that’s sick. But the payouts were a million here, a half mill there — millions and millions over time to accounts with weird names. Let me think. Most of the payments went to one called Framers Foremost.”

“Alicia,” snapped Gilbert.

“Framers Foremost?” said Rook. “That’s a super PAC named after the framers of the Constitution. They’re a clearinghouse that bankrolls political candidates.” He turned to Gilbert. “So that’s it. You were using your ships for human trafficking so you could generate income off the books to launder into a political war chest. Brilliant!”

And then Rook realized what he had said. “I mean, in a completely evil-genius sort of way. Ah…Heat?”

“Is that why you were doing all this, Mr. Gilbert? To skirt election laws to launder your campaign funds as soft money to PACs?”

“Enjoy yourselves. This is all talk.”

“No, I have the documents,” said Alicia. “I noticed some things had been moved in my garage and found a manila envelope hidden under my golf bag a few days after the shooting — after you told me you’d handle everything. I kept it, in case someday one of the things you decided to handle was me. Same reason I kept the gun instead of throwing it in the ocean like I told you I did.”

Gilbert scoffed. “You’re bullshitting. If you even do have any documents—”

“Oh, I do,” said Alicia to Heat. “In a friend’s safe-deposit in Sag Harbor.”

“Doesn’t matter. Doctored papers with no verification? Illegally obtained? By fucking lowlife, Third World scavengers? My lawyers would suppress without breaking a sweat. You’ve shown nothing here linking me to any of this.”

Nikki flopped back in her chair and searched the faces of her squad. “He’s right. I hate to say it, but he’s right.”

“About fucking time.” Gilbert rose to leave.

“So there’s only one thing left to do.” Heat nodded, and Detective Raley bent over the video controls.

“Can I say it?” asked Rook.

Raley said, “You got it.”

Rook stood up. “Cue the zombies.”

The harsh scraping of a creaking door filled the conference room, but it wasn’t from Keith Gilbert leaving. In fact, upon hearing it, he took his palm off the brushed aluminum handle and turned to gape at the flat screen with everyone else.

It was nighttime on the video, and the camera panned across dark forms lying on sand. This was amateur handheld stuff — uneven moves and a rocking horizon. But the audio sounded professional-grade, especially the wolf howl that had to have come from a sound effect recording. Then a familiar — even iconic — musical beat began, and the dark forms all stood up at once, revealing dozens of young people in tattered rags and hokey stage makeup.

Zombies.

When the colossal signature notes of Michael Jackson’s Thriller sounded, the splash of brass and organ raised gooseflesh on Heat. The song always had that impact, even as a little girl, but more so at that moment as she watched her prime suspect tugging at his goatee, watching the case against him become undead. “You recognize this, Keith?” she shouted over the din. On the giant LED behind her, college students threw their heads back, stomped, and rotated in choreographed unison, lit by moonlight and flaming tiki torches.

“Let me refresh your memory,” Nikki said. “That’s your backyard at Cosmo. And this is the Thriller flash mob one of my detectives found posted on YouTube.” Over at the video deck, Raley took a slight bow.

“So? It was annoying then, and it’s annoying now.”

She took a step nearer so she wouldn’t have to yell. “I know. So annoying that you called the police.”

Rook did a Vincent Price impression. “For terrorizing yawl’s neighborhood.”

The music on the video abruptly stopped and the dance lines sputtered to a halt as several Southampton cops arrived on the scene. One of the undead, through a blistered, ash-blue face with one side melting, said something like, “We’re just having a beach party” to a policeman.

“I don’t see why this is relevant,” boomed Gilbert, in a voice still pitched to be heard over the music. But just as he said it, there was a chorus of boos from the college kids. The camera operator panned to the edge of the mob and zoomed to Keith Gilbert who was in animated discussion with another cop, a uniformed sergeant.

He was far enough away that only pieces of his diatribe could be picked out. Snippets came though like “my fucking taxes,” and “private property” that were as embarrassing as they were trite. Nikki wondered how many times law enforcement in wealthy neighborhoods had to endure those words. Then Heat saw what she was waiting for and called to Raley, “OK, Sean, right there.”

The video froze on a still vignette of the patient Southampton Village police sergeant, the irate Cosmo resident, and several men who were standing behind him. They were in the dim shadows, but recognizable to those who knew Nicholas Bjorklund, Roderick Floyd, and Zarek Braun. The first two men, Heat had killed when they attacked her in Chelsea. The third man was quite alive. Nikki didn’t turn, but she heard him sniff back sharply at the other end of the table. Gilbert said nothing. His eyes pinballed in their sockets as he scrambled to access his next lie.

“And just in case you are you still going to contend you never met this gentleman.…” Heat signaled to Raley who resumed play of the YouTube show. The camera jounced as the operator drew closer to the complainant and the cop. Just as the lens arrived, Gilbert walked over, put his arm around Zarek Braun’s shoulder and whispered something. The mercenary, dressed for leisure in an untucked Nat Nast bowling shirt, nodded in agreement — or obedience. The property owner nosed up to the sergeant and said, “If you won’t take care of it, my security will.”

And the signature Thriller notes blasted, punctuating the threat as the video jumped to a disappointed flash mob dispersing. When the credit said THE END, Rook applauded.

Nobody else clapped, but Heat flashed a smile to Raley, who retained his title as her King of All Surveillance Media for catching the notation in his Murder Board quadrant about the otherwise minor flash mob complaint, and drilling down.

The commissioner palmed the table to steady himself and sat back down. Heat sauntered to the other end of the room and stood behind Zarek Braun. “Zarek, I am going to give you one final opportunity to talk.” At the opposite end of the mahogany, Gilbert lasered him with a ruthless stare.

“I have nothing to say.”

“You’re sure about that? Think. It may be the most important decision of your life.” The hired killer didn’t reply, except to twist to peer up at her and then turn away in disregard.

“Your choice.” Then Nikki said, “Miguel?”

Detective Ochoa went to the door and hand signaled to someone through the glass.

Keith Gilbert had no idea who the man was who entered the room, but he must have been alarmed by Zarek Braun’s reaction. Heat watched orange denim bunch at his shoulders at the sight of his former employer from Lancer Standard, Lawrence Hays. “Do you two know each other? It’s a small world, I guess.”

Heat made her way to the middle of the conference table for a view of Braun, and he of her. “Thank-you for coming on short notice, Mr. Hays.”

“Wouldn’t pass this up.”

“Zarek, I should probably fill you in,” said Nikki. “I have been in contact with federal officials about you. CIA, in particular. There seems to be a high degree of interest in you. So, in the spirit of interagency cooperation, I have received the go-ahead to employ this gentleman’s firm, a known special services contractor to the United States government, to provide you secure transport today.”

The prisoner spoke for the first time, and he did not sound like such a cool customer. “…Where?”

“Now, that wouldn’t be very secure, would it?” Heat slipped him a sympathetic grin. “But, since you have made it clear you have nothing to offer me, I see no reason to hold up whatever plans the feds have for you. Mr. Hays, are you set?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve got a Gulfstream 450 all fueled up in Westchester, set to roll. You ready to take a little trip, Z-Bra?”

Zarek Braun stared at the man he had failed to kill and knew all the consequences that would come under his supervision. Zarek could imagine the black hood. The rendition. The lengthy, unspeakable physical and psychological tortures that would leave him gasping, pleading to die. He knew these things because he had inflicted them himself routinely over the years. The whole history of their savage, warring ways played out in the milliseconds of their held stares. The hollow silence of that instant felt like the eternity after the metallic snap of a rifle bolt in the dark.

The mercenary disconnected from Lawrence Hays, passed his glance above Gilbert so he would not see him, and came to rest on Heat. Nikki recognized the dispirited eyes of defeated soldiers from textbooks and war documentaries. But the detective held no sympathy for this one. Especially when she heard his statement.

“I first worked for him providing elite security on his cargo ships to keep the Somali pirates from hijacking them. Now and then I would do other odd jobs for him. For this assignment, he called me in after he fucked things up trying to handle the payoff himself.”

“Who called you in?” Heat pressed for detail so that he knew this was for the record. “I want you to say the name.”

As his last futile attempt at defiance, he flared. “Him, Keith Gilbert. Did you not understand who I am talking about?”

Nikki took a seat and angled it toward Braun. “What did Keith Gilbert ask you to do? Specifically.”

“What it is that I do. Take him out.”

“He told you to kill Fabian Beauvais?”

“Jesus, yes. Jasna cholera, he said to kill him. Kill him and to make the problem go away.”

“Including killing Jeanne Capois?”

“That was not specified. But I am not stupid. When a problem needs to go away, I know what that means, right?”

“So you also killed Jeanne Capois as part of your contract with Gilbert?”

“Yes.”

Heat suppressed a lilt of excitement. The Port Authority commissioner had bent over with his elbows on his thighs and practically had his chin on the table while his hit man sang. She tamped down the thrill because she wasn’t there yet; there were still details — vital stuff — that were necessary to get on record to lock the case down. If that worked, there’d be ample time to do a happy dance.

“How did you come to kill Fabian Beauvais.”

“Can I tell you a funny thing? That was an accident.” Zarek laughed alone. “OK, not so funny he died, but I was meant to kill him later.”

“Mr. Braun,” said Heat, “how did you come to kill Fabian Beauvais?”

“I had him at my hide.”

“Up in the Bronx?”

“That place, yes. I needed to find out who else knew about this blackmail, this, how you say…extortion information. I worked on him good. But he was stubborn. I thought fuck it. I knew Mr. Gilbert flew in from Southampton on his helicopter, so I had the pilot pick me up after it dropped him off for his speech. So the chopper picked us up in Crotona Park near my place, and I took the bastard for a little thrill ride to loosen his tongue.” He paused, sharing a brief, knowing look to Hays. “It is a legitimate technique of interrogation.”

Heat had an idea, but needed it said. “Describe it.”

“It is a terrifying thing to behold a potential fall from great heights. Men talk. They always do. Beauvais talked. He fought hard, very hard. But he gave up this fiancée. The maid on West End Avenue.” Nikki’s heart clinched at imagining Fabian’s anguish at giving up his lover in terror, and of the indelible picture of Jeanne Capois at her murder scene as a result.

“After the Haitian talked, I brought him in the hatch. The plan was to drop him over the ocean, past the Rockaways. But he still had fight. His hands were zip tied, but he tried to butt my head. I smacked him. A little too hard, huh? Out he went.”

And then came the shared thought of the detectives and Rook. Each one rerunning the tourist video taken outside the planetarium that had captured Beauvais’s plummet into the glass.

Rook said, “I thought there was no reported copter traffic that morning.”

“Only police and government,” said Ochoa, who directed himself to Gilbert. “Government chopper. Son of a bitch.…”

Nikki steered Zarek Braun back on track. “So Fabian Beauvais’s information led you to the home invasion? You and your guys did that, too?”

“Completing the assignment, lady.”

“Even if it meant killing an old man?”

“Shit happens.”

“And why did you torture Jeanne? Why not just kill her?”

“Because her boy gave up that she was talking to some filmmaker. The maid cashed out before we got a name or address.”

“So you followed me to Chelsea,” said Nikki.

“Where you killed my two best men.”

“Shit happens.”

Nikki took a moment to run everything in her head. She’d been through this once before with unhappy results. Satisfied, she stood and surveyed her people: Raley, Ochoa, Feller, Rhymer, and finally, Rook. She wordlessly checked them for assent. They all gave her good-to-go nods.

“Stand up, please,” she said when she reached the head of the table.

This time, as Detective Heat read off the charges for his arrest, Commissioner Keith Gilbert, billionaire, power broker, senatorial hopeful, and golf buddy with the mayor, did not bite back. Like Hurricane Sandy, his bluster, too, had become a spent force. This time he knew Heat had nailed him.