Raging Heat

SEVEN

Nikki studied Rook’s face anew, waiting for the gotcha smile or the way he playfully narrowed his eyes when he was pulling her leg. She got neither. All he said was, “Seriously.”

And he looked it.

“Well, you can’t be. Or, if you are, you’re mistaken.”

“I’m telling you, Gilbert’s not the killer.”

Heat noticed a tabloid freelancer edging toward them, trying to surf their conversation and said to Rook, “Not here.” She took his hand and led him inside, past the Hall of Heroes memorial in the vestibule, and into the precinct lobby, which was all theirs but for the duty sergeant behind the bulletproof reception glass and the ever-present odor of a disinfecting cleaning agent. The row of orange molded plastic chairs was empty, and they took seats beneath the big STOP sign, commandeered from the traffic division, that demarcated the boundary between visitors and cops.

“I know you’ve had all day to dream up some alternate scenario,” she began, still holding his hand as they sat there, thighs touching, “but you’ve missed a whole lot in your absence.” Heat didn’t need notes. Sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse, she carried a nearly eidetic mental picture of the Murder Board, and quickly recapped the day, pretty much as she had earlier for Wally Irons on her warrant quest. Nikki ran it all down for him, in order: The discovery that their two infamous goons were searching for Beauvais in a Port Authority Impala; finding the body of Jeanne Capois behind the trash cans, the home-invasion housekeeper victim tortured and horribly abused; her purse, probably stashed in a hurry on the run, yielding the warning text from Fabian Beauvais about “KG.” She let go of his hand and placed hers on his knee. “I swear, Rook, after I saw that, I kept thinking, if you were with me, you’d have Gilbert in Sing Sing by now.” Surprised that he hadn’t interrupted, but merely nodded as if waiting her out, she continued, filling him in on bracing the commissioner in the empty banquet hall at the Widmark Hotel, and, finally, “what really brought this home — are you ready? — the smoking gun of multiple phone calls between Beauvais and Gilbert, who claimed he never knew the man.”

Heat didn’t get the reaction she’d expected. Rook was elsewhere. Deep in some rumination, his eyes roamed the vending machine across the lobby, and not like he was deciding on which Snapple.

“I tried to call you,” she said.

He came back to her. “Yeah, well, I’d gone full immersion.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nik, don’t get me wrong, I love my ride-alongs with you, but at a certain point, I have to break away, throw out the orange cone, and be the journalist I am.” She caught her hand gripping into his knee and brought it back to rest on her lap. He didn’t seem to notice. “I am officially on assignment with this story, you know. That’s a core deal — home plate for me — and I have to protect it. When I’m rolling with you, I benefit, for sure. I get a ton of insights and observations. But it’s too easy to lose my objectivity. If I lose that, I’m not a journalist anymore. I need to keep my independent eye.”

What was going on here? she wondered. Rook spoke so calmly and clearly about this, but the effect of what he was saying — about independence and breaking away — planted a kernel of anxiety deep inside her that took root fast and grew with every sentence he spoke. More comfortable (or, at least, safer) with facts, Nikki shifted the direction this had taken. “All right. Writers’ solitude. I’ve seen you work, I get that. But what could you possibly conjure up that makes you think I don’t have a case?”

“Just to mention, when you say ‘conjure,’ you make me sound, I don’t know, like some conspiracy whack job.”

She was trying to keep this from descending into an argument, but that one deserved a pushback. “Come on, Rook, do you need me to make a list of all the wild speculations you’ve spouted?”

“Only to get outside the proverbial box. To stimulate you to new thinking. It’s not like I went all Area Fifty-one.”

“The other day at the planetarium you suggested the unknown body fell from outer space. The next day you were pitching voodoo.”

“Well, let’s not get anecdotal. This is different. I have some solid, rather eye-opening facts, if you’ll hear them.”

“Of course I will. Glad to.” No she wasn’t. She wanted to run away. To anywhere but this moment.

He fished a notebook out of his sport coat. She couldn’t help notice he’d switched from his usual black Moleskine to a bright orange Rhodia from France. One more différance to absorb. She made an irrational decision to pitch the Clairefontaine pad he gave her. “Let’s start at the slaughterhouse,” he said. “People like Fabian Beauvais don’t just show up out of the blue to choke chickens.”

“Nice,” she said. “No, I’m sure there’s word of mouth in his community.”

“Agreed. But. There are also referrals. What’s one thing every immigrant needs, especially if he’s illegal? Someone to get him through the maze. Red tape, housing, jobs. And discreetly. Under the radar.” He opened the notebook to one of the early pages. “The slang is Gateway Lawyer. Now these are not your Park Avenue barristers. They’re not even up there with the Accidentes personal injury guys you see on bus ads. These are bottom-feeders, for sure, but they serve a role helping the margin class.”

Outside, the urgency of reporters vying to get called on caught her eye through the window and told her the press conference was winding down. “Is this going to be a civics lesson?”

“Getting there. The whole coincidence of the slaughterhouse manager pointing us to the Hamptons never went down easy for me.”

“Why not? It’s what happened.”

Rook continued without acknowledgment. “So I did some research. Our friend Jerry, the GM of the chicken plant, has a job-referral arrangement, which sounds suspiciously like a kickback deal, with a Gateway Lawyer by the name of Reese Cristóbal. Remember Fabian Beauvais had a rap sheet for a trespassing arrest? I’m going to let you guess what attorney handled his case. Reese Cristóbal. I guessed for you.”

“So far, this is all good background but—”

“Reese Cristóbal is a very busy man. He not only has strong ties to the illegal immigrant community — the night Fabian Beauvais got arrested for trespassing for his Dumpster dive, a couple of other guys got busted with him. Also immigrants. Also repped by our Gateway Lawyer.”

“Which would only follow if he’s handling a lot of these cases,” she said.

“Correct. But this was a first offense for Fabian. I found out the pair he was consorting with had more interesting records.”

Nikki cocked her head. “How did you get information on them?”

Rook grinned. “Please. Do I have to carry my Pulitzers for investigative journalism around with me?” Already chiding herself for not checking on Beauvais’s fellow arrestees, Heat urged him to continue. He referred to notes again. “Bachelor Number-One, Fidel ‘FiFi’ Figueroa had a disorderly conduct reduced to malicious mischief for lobbing a stink bomb into a crowd. Oh, and the crowd? It was in Washington Square. At a campaign rally for Keith Gilbert.”

“Go on,” she said.

“Ah, the sweet sound of your undivided attention. Bachelor Number-Two, Charley Tosh, was arrested for B and E and vandalism. To wit: In the middle of the night, he broke into, and thoroughly trashed, a storefront at Sixty-third and Lex. The Keith Gilbert campaign headquarters. Are we recognizing a pattern here? From your expression, I’d say so. And know why? This was not random stuff. They were paid for their pranks by a very active political action committee. This PAC has very benign initials. It’s registered as the CBP. Want to know what CBP stands for? The Committee to Block the PATHole.”

He glanced up from his notes. “Don’t blame me, these political wonks can be very snarky. Ever watch Bill Maher?”

In spite of herself, Heat’s curiosity piqued. “Is that ‘PATH,’ as in Port Authority?”

“Indeed, but not the train. The PATHole in question would be a certain commissioner from the Port Authority planning to run for the U.S. Senate.”

“Rook, so what? Those two did dirty work for a PAC with a sketchy name—”

“—Specifically, against Keith Gilbert’s campaign.”

“But that wasn’t Beauvais. He was only Dumpster diving.”

“With those two characters. You lie down with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas. And if you ask me, the ransack of Gilbert’s campaign HQ seems awfully reminiscent of the job we saw on West End Avenue. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Well, at the campaign office, somebody left a grumpy on the fund-raising chairman’s desk.”

She made a sour face. “You read the police report?”

“No, I got that from Keith Gilbert’s public information officer today.”

“Wait. You talked with Gilbert’s press aide?”

Rook gave a no-biggie shrug. “I knew Dennis when he was dean of the J-school at Hudson University. We met up this afternoon. That’s why I had my phone off.”

“Rook. I can’t believe this. You talked to one of my prime suspect’s staff? About this case?”

“I did. It’s called getting both sides.”

“What did you tell him about the case? Because you have to know it’s going straight to Gilbert and his Dream Team.”

“Are we getting paranoid?”

“No, we are getting annoyed.” Completely floored, Nikki fixed him with a look of indignation that unnerved him.

He got busy flipping ahead in his notebook and said, “I sense resistance, so let me get to my closer.” He came to a dog-eared page. “Remember at the slaughterhouse how some of the workers seemed a tad shy of the police, and slipped out the rear?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I went back there today and made friends in the alley.”

“You paid them?”

“Please. That would be insulting. I handed out Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards. And worth it, too, because one of them opened up to me.” He tapped a name in his book. “Hattie Pate. Hattie was friends with Fabian Beauvais. Guess you kill a few hundred chickens, you get to know somebody. Anyway, she said Fabby came in all freaked one day. She asked what’s wrong, and he told her someone was out to kill him.” He paused. “Shall I repeat that?”

“Go on.”

“Beauvais told Hattie he’d been doing some freelance work for a bunch of guys. Some sort of ATM theft ring. They turned on him all of a sudden and said they were going to — quoting now, ‘fuck him up and kill him dead.’ They knew where he lived, so it was Hattie who turned him on to the SRO where he moved and we found his hidden ten grand. Gee, is it possible money’s why they were after him?” He stared at her, nodding and grinning while she processed his information. “I’ll say it again, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

She was so absorbed chewing over Rook’s story — and his indiscretion with the press flak — that she hadn’t noticed the news conference had broken up and that Wally Irons now stood a few feet away. “What’s this?”

“Nothing,” said Nikki, jumping in ahead of Rook. “I’m just bringing him up to speed on the case.” The captain didn’t totally appear to buy that, but his cell phone lit up and he moved on into the precinct.

When Irons was gone, Heat shifted in the god-awful molded seat to face Rook. “I’ll grant that you raise a lot of interesting points. But I hear nothing that changes the case I have against Gilbert.”

“You call a death threat nothing?”

“No, and you damn well know I’ll check it out.” She patted his notebook. “I want Hattie’s contact info so I can get on this. But for now, that’s hearsay, and hearsay doesn’t trump the evidence I’ve got on Gilbert.”

“Take a step back like I did, Nikki. Can you really call it evidence?”

“You bet I can.”

“Because I can recontextualize everything you’ve got.” It struck her that, up to that morning when Rook got blindsided by the news of the task force, he would have said, “We’ve got” instead of “you’ve.” He mimed tracing a square in the space between them with both hands and said, “I could reframe everything in a scenario that shows that the only connection Gilbert had to Beauvais was coping with a political dirty trickster who was harassing him and his campaign.”

“Wow, you could be Keith Gilbert’s press aide now, Rook,” she said with no small amount of sarcasm. “Spinning the whole thing to make the poor commissioner look like the victim.”

“Maybe not a victim, but clearly he was victimized.”

“Then riddle me this. Why did Gilbert deny knowing Beauvais?”

“Who knows? Maybe it had nothing to do with the killing. Or maybe he got pissed at being harassed by the Haitian. Maybe Beauvais was going to blow the whistle on the mistress. Or Keith and Alicia had a love child; another John Edwards situation. So Gilbert threatens him — just shooting off his mouth in the heat of passion — and then that ATM theft gang ends up killing him for stealing their ten grand. That would sure make me a little circumspect.”

He closed his notebook and slapped the palm of his hand with it a few times while he mulled an idea. “I think you need to look harder at the two brutes from that SRO. You know, just because Beauvais got himself killed doesn’t mean he was a good guy.”

Valid point. Nikki often caught herself falling into the natural trap of sanctifying murder victims.

“I’m just saying, step back. Maybe things look one way, but mean another. Isn’t it possible that Keith Gilbert had nothing to do with Fabian Beauvais’s death but was merely orbiting the periphery?”

Instead of opening up to possibilities, a gloom enveloped her. Nikki had grown accustomed to, and even grudgingly enjoyed, Rook’s diverting conspiracy speculations. It was like listening to his brain popping popcorn. But this had a different tone. His assertion that something bigger might be going on didn’t pass the Redenbacher test. This felt like a challenge to her whole case.

And not diverting at all.

Detective Feller sat waiting on the other end of a blinking light for Heat when she and Rook came into the bull pen. While she took the call, Rook dropped his messenger bag on his borrowed desk and drifted over to the Murder Board to survey the updates.

“Know what this case is for me?” began Feller, who was checking in from the Port Authority’s Central Automotive Headquarters in Jersey City. “Bridges and tunnels and bridges and tunnels. Oh, and tunnels.”

“Boo hoo. I’ve got two dozen phone messages sitting here from reporters, all of whom want me to be their confidential unnamed source on Gilbert’s arrest.”

“Conference them all with each other, that’s what I’d do. Then stand back and watch the lightning bolts arc out of the phone.”

“You about done?” she said.

“About. Got a bit of the unexpected over here. Motor pool ran the registration through their system, and there is no record of anyone signing out that Impala for the last month.”

“How can that be?”

“Because — are you ready? The car’s been stolen.”

“Stolen when?”

“Well, now it gets strange. They just discovered it and reported it today.”

Nikki finished the call, sidled next to Rook and uncapped a marker to post the stolen status of the Impala. When she had finished he said, “Are you tense?”

“No, why?”

“Did I detect a certain extra degree of squeak in your block lettering, or is that my imagination?”

“Could be,” she said. “Lord knows it’s plenty fertile.”

Before Rook could respond, Wally Irons leaned in from the doorway of his office. “Detective? Gilbert’s attorneys are in Interrogation-One with him now. Everybody’s ready to roll.”

Heat entered the box alone. Captain Irons, who she had invited out of protocol, was too big a coward to sit in (thank God), and Rook, who very much wanted — and expected — to take part, got some bad news from Nikki outside the interrogation room door. With such a high-profile, high-stakes case, the lead detective could not afford to put a foot wrong. Topping the list of stumbles would be allowing a reporter to take part in the formal homicide interrogation of a government official in the watchful presence of his opportunistic Dream Team.

The first thing she noticed was Keith Gilbert’s smile. Far from looking like a man who had just had his necktie, belt, and shoelaces taken away, he gave off a relaxed, nearly genial vibe. Nikki took the lone chair that stationed her back to the mirror of the observation room. Across the table from her, flanked by his trio of suits, Keith Gilbert looked more like a tycoon judge on Shark Tank than a murder suspect. Detective Heat decided she would have to change that.

“Keith Gilbert, for the record, this is a formal interview. Just as you were informed at the time of your arrest that anything you say can and will be used against you, in this meeting you remain under caution.…” Nikki continued to recite the boilerplate, not only to keep every move legally unassailable, but also to make the statement that this was her party. With A-list criminal attorneys present, she knew, going in, that there was only a slim chance of getting anything damning on the record — certainly no confession. But her hope was that somewhere inside those narrow odds there lived a prospect that a careless slip would come, or that one of his answers would conflict with a prior statement, or that a new piece of useful information would tumble. From such small things big convictions came.

Frederic Lohman, senior partner of Lohman and Barkley, fanned the air with one of his arthritic hands as if shooing gnats. “Detective,” he said equably in his signature near-whisper, “I think I can save us all some time if we stipulate that my client has been properly Mirandized and that, indeed, his right to an attorney has been fulfilled with some adequacy.” The old lawyer let out a hoarse chuckle which his side of the table joined, including Gilbert, who somehow still managed to appear tan and robust under the sickly fluorescents that washed everyone else out. “We can further economize time by informing you respectfully up top that no statements will be made, nor will any questions be answered, by Commissioner Gilbert.”

Nikki replied coolly, matching Lohman’s understated tone. But her message’s forcefulness couldn’t be missed. “And just as respectfully, counselor, if economizing time becomes the priority of this meeting, I’ll be sure to let you know. Meanwhile, the prime concern is getting answers to questions I will be asking your client concerning his role in a homicide. You may do as you like, but my agenda is not yours to set.”

Having been in so many rooms like this with so many clients over five decades, the attorney took the pushback the way he always did. As if he didn’t hear it. Lohman merely waited with a neutral expression. She opened her file and began. Determined to visit every detail, she went back to the beginning, holding up the photo of Fabian Beauvais and asking if he knew him. “Asked and answered,” replied the lawyer. Next she displayed the sketches of the two men who fled Beauvais’s rooming house. “Asked and answered.”

It continued like that, until, after a few minutes, Keith Gilbert started fidgeting and said, “Are you getting the idea, Detective?” Lohman put a scarecrow hand on his sleeve to no avail. “What’s the point of this?”

“To gather facts. And to give you a chance to cooperate—”

“—I have been cooperating—” Gilbert jerked his arm away from his lawyer’s cautionary touch. Nikki liked to see this and hoped his frustration would make him careless. “Tell me when I haven’t cooperated, huh?”

Heat obliged. “Do you call it cooperation by making evidence disappear, obstructing an investigation?”

“How so?”

“Keith.” From Lohman.

“No, I want to hear.” He flexed his head side to side and she heard the soft crackle of a neck vertebra. “In my role as a commissioner, I am sworn to uphold the law of the land, and I want to know how I have obstructed.”

“Let’s see, Commissioner. A vehicle registered to the Port Authority, a Chevrolet Impala, was being used by two persons of interest in this case.”

“Let’s hold right there,” said the lawyer. “All this is fine stuff, very entertaining. But, Detective Heat, you do recall this victim was not killed by a Chevy Impala, right?” He smiled at his colleagues, enjoying his own joke. “I believe he was dropped from an airplane, and that my client was twenty miles away in Fort Lee, New Jersey. So what’s our issue?”

“Continuing, Commissioner,” she said, pointedly shunning Lohman. “This morning I mentioned the use of the Port Authority vehicle to you. Four hours later — what a surprise — the Impala in question is not only missing from the motor pool, but somebody at your Port Authority just happened to notice — this afternoon — that it was stolen a month ago. I’d like an explanation why that remarkable coincidence doesn’t smell like obstruction.”

Frederic Lohman brought up something grisly with a ragged cough, and said, “My client is not required to theorize on your speculations.”

“No, Freddie, I want to answer that. My reputation’s in question here.” Ignoring the don’t-do-it headshake from his attorney, Gilbert went on. “I never deal with the Automotive and Technical Center directly. I only know they have a lot of vehicles to account for. My guess about the timing is that the Impala probably came up stolen as they took inventory of assets for Sandy preparation. That would have less to do with me, and more with the hurricane, I assure you.”

“Shall I be assured like when you said you didn’t know Fabian Beauvais?”

Lohman knocked on the table as if it were a door, a first in Nikki’s experience in that interrogation room. “All right, I am going to strongly counsel my client exercise his right to silence,” he said with a glare to Gilbert. “And Detective Heat, your innuendos do not become any more credible through repetition. In fact, I expect we will be out of here soon due to the motion we have filed now that new evidence raises serious and fundamental doubts about your case.”

She didn’t know exactly where Lohman was heading, but it was more than his theater of relaxed confidence that began the slow rise of warning chimes inside Nikki. He was holding something. But what? “I’m not sure what you mean by new evidence,” she said, testing the waters, “but if you’ve retained a private investigator, those findings will have to wait to stand the test of a public trial.”

“Really? When a specific and credible threat was made against the life of the deceased by someone other than my client? To wit, a credit card fraud and ATM theft ring with motive, means, and opportunity to do so?”

Those alarm bells rang louder.

Frederic Lohman raised his tangle of eyebrows. “You don’t know about this? That surprises me. Detective, your own, ah…let’s call him friend…Jameson Rook, the respected investigative journalist, has uncovered sufficient evidence for me to file a motion for immediate release on own recognizance without bond. I expect we should hear quite soon because Commissioner Gilbert is so vital to the preparation for the coming natural disaster.”

Rook? What the hell did he say in that meeting with Keith Gilbert’s press aide? How many other of his people did he talk to about this case? Heat’s brain spun. She had intended to rock them in this session, but now it was she who’d been shaken. While Nikki tried to gather herself, the lawyer continued in his offhand monotone, “Now the release on OR is only a start. We’re going to press hard for a bench dismissal based on these new facts. Of course, that’s a tougher road, but worth a wild shot. We all take wild shots, don’t we, Detective Heat?”

Her cell phone buzzed on top of the file beside her. The caller ID said it was the DA’s office. Across the table, they were all smiles. The room indeed had become a shark tank. And to Nikki, it felt like it was filling with water.

Minutes later, Heat stood peering through the glass watching Keith Gilbert get processed out. Not to Rikers Island but, as his fossil of a lawyer repeatedly claimed, to fulfill his irreplaceable role at the Port Authority leading storm crisis preparation. Rook looked on behind her, and, as the shipping magnate fastened on his nautical racing watch, he said, “I swear, Nikki, I did not tell them anything.”

She didn’t turn to him or even raise her voice. “Funny coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, sure, I know how it looks. Especially when you’re already in a twist because I met with Gilbert’s press guy.”

“Today.”

“Give me some credit here. I know better than to divulge inner workings of a case to somebody connected to your suspect.”

“They got it from somewhere. And they kinda said it was from you. No, they actually said it was.”

“They’re lying.” He gave her a eureka look. “Or they have an inside source. Maybe a mole at First Press. I’ll bet that’s it.”

Wally Irons interrupted, joining them at the window. “Talk about a travesty.” He shook his head. “I put my face out there in public, and now this? Makes me look like a dumbshit.”

“Sir, nobody’s unhappier about this than I am,” said Heat, “but it’s just a setback. It’s an OR release. We still have a case.”

“Yeah? Sounds like you’d better start plugging holes. Beginning with asking your boyfriend to excuse himself from the precinct premises.” The captain left on that note, retreating to his office so he wouldn’t have to deal with Rook himself.

“Did he just throw me out of here?”

Heat witnessed a brisk round of handshakes between Gilbert and his Dream Team as they paraded out. Then she turned to Rook. “Probably best for all concerned.”

“What?” His head whipped to her. “Did you really just say that?”

“It’s orders, Rook.”

“But I can help. Especially now that this has blown up.”

“You’ve already done plenty for one day.”

“Nikki, are you saying you don’t believe me?”

Angry and disheartened as she felt, Heat knew better than to take it that far. “I’m saying my commander has asked you to go. We’ll sort the rest out later.”

He gave Nikki a pained look. Disappointment, it seemed, was a team sport.

The first call Heat returned when she got back to her desk was to Lauren Parry. “Bad news up top,” said the medical examiner. “Forensics can’t verify the bites on Beauvais’s trousers as any breed or specific dog. They’d been laundered and there was no dog hair or DNA. But I also had the lab study the abrasive indentations on Jeanne Capois’s wrists. They were absolutely consistent with the disposable zip-tie handcuffs found near the planetarium following Fabian Beauvais’s crash.

“Got something else that’s interesting,” said her friend. “Under the victim’s fingernails we found the usual defensive residue of human skin from scratching her assailant or assailants. Got it all tubed and tagged for DNA potential matches.”

“Let’s hope,” said Nikki. Lauren kept it clinical when she talked about normal defensive residue, but Heat found it difficult to remain detached. All she could envision was a woman brutally hauled behind some trash cans clawing against hope to survive.

“We also found some unusual fibers.” Nikki scrawled in her notepad as Dr. Parry continued. “Both under her fingernails and, as Forensics found, snagged on the clasp of her watchband, we’ve got black fibers of ripstop nylon mixed with spandex. Nikki, these suggest the kind of materials you find in police uniforms. Most especially, police tactical uniforms.”

“You mean like from ESU or SWAT?”

“Inconclusive, of course. We’re going to do some more testing on these, but I wanted to give you the preview.”

And with that short phone call another puzzle piece landed on Heat’s table — an orphan with no place for her to fit it. Why would Jeanne Capois’s attacker be wearing a tactical uniform? Was this about something that was going on with her or her boyfriend, Fabian Beauvais? Or both? The two guys Nikki chased from the SRO had a military demeanor. But how did that profile connect to Keith Gilbert beyond a Port Authority car they had been seen using? It seemed the more information Heat got, the more it muddied her thinking, rather than clarifying it. The only thing Nikki could be certain of was that a guy falling from an airplane was complicated enough. And this went deeper than that. What was the context here? Heat didn’t have it yet, but, as Rook would say, there was a story to be told. Figure out the story, figure out the murderer.

She decided it was time to fill in some blanks.

Reese Cristóbal, the so-called Gateway Lawyer that Rook mentioned, worked out of a storefront office on West Thirty-eighth near the hansom cab horse stables, not exactly a neighborhood must-see on the tourist maps. Heat found a parking spot and badged herself to the receptionist in the tiny suite with the cracked window facing the street.

After she shook the attorney’s clammy hand, she knew his peppery cologne would linger for the rest of the day — a dinnertime reminder of the visit. Cristóbal wore a short-sleeved, pink dress shirt with a harmonious tie that probably came with it in a boxed set. He returned to his place behind a stack of papers on his messy desk. Nikki took the sole guest chair and worked not to stare at the hair plugs. “I’m trying to make contact with a few of your clients. Fidel Figueroa and Charley Tosh.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “I’ll wait, if you need to check your files.”

“Correction, Detective. Former clients. And I don’t need to check my files because I remember them well, and they are so freaking gone. I got no idea where they got off to, and I don’t much care.”

“Well. That’s pretty top of mind.” Her gaze went to the transplants rimming his forehead.

“I don’t do a lot of criminal casework. Mostly, I’m assisting the huddled masses in transition, et ceter-yadda, et ceter-yadda. You know, landlord issues, securing identity docs, ICE hassles. But if a client gets in a bind, I help. These two, Tosh and Figueroa, abused the situation. I dig them out of a trespassing jam, only to find it’s a fucking scam. They’re getting paid for it as dirty tricksters for some political action assholes. Do I look like I need any trouble getting tangled up in that? No.”

“I don’t understand. What kind of trouble?”

“I am not in the business of helping undocumented cretins come to this country and throw rocks at a man who will be our next U.S. senator.”

“You’re talking about Keith Gilbert?”

“None other.”

This had gone where she hoped it would, to the anti-Gilbert PAC. The attorney’s protectiveness of the candidate intrigued her, so she stayed on that road. “Are you a supporter of Gilbert’s?”

“He’s going to be the one. Get aboard, I say.”

“Are you involved in his campaign?”

“No.”

“Do you know him? Have you ever met him?”

“Huh…I’d have to think.” He made theater of searching his water stained ceiling. “No.”

“Funny that you remembered Figueroa and Tosh, but you don’t remember whether you met your favorite political candidate.”

“Funny?” He shrugged. “Just had to think, is all.”

It wasn’t the stables Heat was smelling, but a lie. But she’d follow up on that in time. Right then, she had other things to pursue. “Do you also recall a client named Fabian Beauvais?” When he furrowed his brow, she showed him the picture.

“Oh, yeah sure. Misdemeanor trespass. Got busted with the other two. But he wasn’t ‘with them-with them.’ Good kid. Smart. But that kinda works against you when you don’t know your reality.”

Heat couldn’t let that go. “Excuse me, but doesn’t that sound a lot like knowing your place?”

“Hey, if it craps like a duck, right? Why do you want to know about him?”

“He was murdered.”

“Mm, tough break. I didn’t know him. Before the trespassing bust, I mean.”

She sniffed another dodge. “Didn’t you place him at a job?” Nikki waited then prompted him. “At a chicken slaughterhouse?”

“Huh, did I? I’d have to look it up, but glad I could help him out.” The lawyer stood up. “Hey, listen I’m late for some rent hearing up in Mott Haven. Can we do this some other day? Maybe make an appointment next time.” Whether the rent hearing was real or a fabrication, there wasn’t much she could do about it, with apologies and good-byes, he applied another dose of cologne to her hand and hustled out the door.

Out on the sidewalk, Heat watched him speed off in his silver Mercedes G-Class SUV. Nikki figured, for a storefront immigration lawyer, Reese Cristóbal was doing pretty well.

Back at the Twentieth, Heat discovered Feller had just returned from New Jersey, so she was able to gather her full squad for a late briefing. She shorthanded the release of Gilbert and skirted the captain’s banishment of Rook from the precinct. Word on that had circulated on its own, and her crew had enough compassion — or sense — not to comment on it. “I’m not suggesting the killers are cops,” she said after relaying the fiber news from OCME and Forensics. “They could be security cops, mall cops, or just buffs who bought from an army surplus. Detective Rhymer, I’d like you to show sketches of our two goons at army-navy shops. I know the clothing could have been bought online, but street-level is a good start.

Feller asked, “What about PAPD?”

“Smart. And since Port Authority is becoming your thing, why don’t you make a friend at PAPD who’ll run Beauvais and Capois through their data bank to see if there are any hits. Arrests, tickets, citizen complaints filed against a cop, basically anything. Roach, have you gotten any traction on those MetroCard swipes in Chelsea?”

“Indeed,” said Raley. “When we went through Jeanne Capois’s purse a second time, we found something on the back of a grocery receipt in her wallet. She had used it to jot down an address in Chelsea on West Sixteenth Street.”

Ochoa added, “It’s an apartment not far from the subway stop.”

“And, ironically, the Port Authority Inland Terminal Building. Before you get excited, it’s no longer owned by Port Authority, but by Google. I Googled that, increasing a seemingly infinite loop of irony.”

“Before you get pulled into a time warp, Rales, why don’t you give me that address? I’ll pay a visit tonight on my way home. I’d like you and Ochoa to go interview Beauvais’s friend Hattie Pate at the address Rook left.”

Before she released them for the night she voiced what swirled within all of them. “I don’t need to tell you this case is far from cleared. I won’t say it’s in jeopardy, but we can’t sit on what’s up here.” She indicated the Murder Board over her shoulder. “Let’s pretend this is square one and get more.”

“Higher, farther, faster,” said Rhymer.

Ochoa shook his head. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

She gave the taxi driver the address in Chelsea and settled into the seat burdened by a downer day and her own bleak thoughts. The surprise turn the case had taken and its collateral fallout was bad enough. The underpinning that kept her brain swirling had a name, and it was Jameson Rook. After the years of intimacy and happiness they had enjoyed together, not to mention the deep respect she had for his character, she had cause to believe him when he said he hadn’t shared any inside information with Gilbert’s man. Then how did this happen?

She took out her phone and opened up the text message Rook had sent her shortly after he left the Twentieth. BTW SINCE YOU BROUGHT UP VOODOO, I ALSO DID SOME RESEARCH ON THAT EARLIER TODAY. NOT AS FRINGY-SATANIC AS PEOPLE THINK. ONE OF THEIR BELIEFS IS THAT THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS OR COINCIDENCES. EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A PURPOSE — R.

Nikki wondered what purpose she could she find in this. Not in sending the text, that was obviously a makeup ping. But what reason was there to find in Rook’s dissent and intrusion? Even if he hadn’t been the direct cause of Gilbert’s release without bail, he’d been more than a loose cannon. She couldn’t escape that recurring feeling he was working against her.

Ever since news of the task force job came out.

Heat didn’t want even to think he would be trying to undermine her chance for the task force for his personal reason of keeping her in New York.

But she couldn’t stop.

So she touched the TV screen to resume the seat-back news video she had switched off before, just to get some distraction. “Hurricane Sandy Slams Jamaica.” So much for escape. The Eyewitness News report said the storm had become a Category One, moving northward, pounding Jamaica with eighty-mile-per-hour winds. Footage rolled of people walking bent into the sideways force of rain. A reporter in a yellow slicker made his obligatory stand-up report, shouting against the howl of nature from the seething breakwater about dead and missing by the dozens, buildings caving, others being swept out to sea in the surge. The raging hurricane continued its track over the Caribbean, with computer models still predicting landfall in the U.S. Northeast sometime Monday or Tuesday. Like most New Yorkers, Heat looked at the gentle mist reflecting the night-scape on the sidewalks and found it all hard to believe. But a lot could happen in five days.

When the cab let her out at Eighth Avenue at Sixteenth a new unsettling wave rolled through her. After she scoped out this address, Nikki worried: should she go to her place or to Rook’s? Their issues would all need to be confronted eventually. For the moment, that meant later. Heat double-checked the address and walked on, asking herself why the hell she ever went into the trash for that Parisian jewelry bag.

If she had been paying attention to the street instead, she might have seen them coming. By the time the man in the black SWAT uniform tackled her from behind, his partner had already yanked her gun.