Naked Heat (17 page)

Soleil’s eyes darted around. She took a step as if to go, but stayed. “OK, here’s the deal. It’s a reflex thing. Whenever I have something to handle like a detail thing, I always refer it to the record company.”

“That’s weak,” said Nikki.

“That’s the truth. Besides, I told you, I was also with Zane. Did you talk to Zane?”

“Yes, and he said you were with him at the Brooklyn Diner for all of about ten minutes.”

Soleil shook her head. “That bastard. So much for having my back.”

“Let’s forget about where you were, or weren’t, that night.”

“Fine by me,” said the singer.

“Why did you lie to me about not having contact recently with Cassidy Towne?”

“Probably ’cause it was no big deal, didn’t register.”

“Soleil, you knocked her out of her chair in the middle of a restaurant. You called her a pig and threatened to stab her in the back.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, as if her answer could be found among the suspended rigs holding the stage lighting. “Well,” she finally said, “think about how she died. Why do you think I didn’t want to tell you what I said to her?”

Heat had to admit there was logic to that, but she responded, “I am trying to find a killer. Every time you lie to me, you’re making yourself look more guilty and making me waste valuable time.”

“Fine, whatever.”

Heat brought out some pictures. “Have you ever seen this man?”

Soleil examined the DMV photo of Esteban Padilla. “Nope.”

“What about this man?” She handed her the police sketch of the Texan. “Ever see him?”

“Nuh-uh. Looks like the
Bad Santa
guy.” She gave Nikki a smug smile.

“And what about him? Do you know him?” Nikki handed her a head shot of Derek Snow at his autopsy and watched the arrogance melt off her face.

“Oh, my God . . .” She let the picture flutter to the floor.

Heat said, “His name was Derek. The same Derek you popped a cap on in the Dragonfly House last December. Is that the Derek you got a call from when you were with Zane Taft? I’m asking because you left the Brooklyn Diner and this man, Derek Snow, was murdered shortly after that.”

“I can’t . . . I . . .” Soleil’s face went ashen.

“We’re talking two people connected to you who were killed that night, Soleil. You think good and hard and tell me what’s going on. Was Cassidy Towne writing something about you? And I want the truth, no more lying.”

“I have nothing more to say to you.”

The crew was coming back onto the set. Soleil Gray pushed through them as she ran out. Rook said, “Aren’t you going to try to hold her?”

“For what? I can charge her with lying to a police officer? Go back in time and hit her with illegal discharge of a firearm? That’s not getting me anywhere. The record company lawyers would have her out in time to sing on tonight’s show. I’d rather save that card for when it would do me some good. Right now, what I want to do is keep pressure on her and let her freak.”

“All right. But if she blows that cartwheel tonight, it’s on you.”

They waited around in their back row seats for rehearsal to resume. In Nikki’s experience, sometimes difficult people had changes of heart after she jammed them, and she wanted to give Soleil a breather to reflect and, perhaps, return in a more cooperative mode. But after they’d spent fifteen minutes in the freezing studio, the stage manager called a one-hour meal break and Soleil didn’t come forward, so they left.

As they turned the corner into the hallway leading to the elevators, someone called out behind them, “Oh, my God. Is that Nikki Heat?”

She whispered, “I don’t need this right now.”

Rook said, “Maybe we can outrun this one.”

“Nikki?” said the man.

Hearing his voice again, she stopped walking, and Rook watched a look cross over her, the annoyance transforming into dawning surprise. Then Nikki turned and her face lit up into a radiant smile. “Oh, my God!”

Rook twisted to look behind him at the lanky, sandy-haired guy in the V-neck and jeans approaching with his arms spread wide. Nikki ran to him, colliding with him, and they hugged. She squealed with glee and he laughed. And then they rocked each other back and forth, still hugging. Not sure what to do with himself, Rook shoved his hands in his pockets and looked on as the two pulled apart to hold each other at arm’s length, beaming.

“Look at you,” said Nikki. “With no beard.”

“You look the same,” he said. “No, better.” Rook noticed his “r” had a guttural sound, not a burr like he was Scottish, but definitely an accent.

Then Nikki gave him a kiss. Brief, but—as Rook made note—full on the lips. Finally, still holding him by one arm, she turned to Rook and said, “This is Petar. My old boyfriend from college.”

“No kidding.” Rook put a hand out and they shook. “I’m Jameson.”

“James?” he said.

“Jameson. And you’re . . . Peter?” Rook was a man who could be proud of a cheap shot.

“No, Petar. Rhymes with ‘guitar.’ People make that mistake all the time.”

“I can’t get over this.” Nikki gave Petar a shake with the arm she had around his waist. “I didn’t even know you were in New York.”

“Yes, I work here as one of the segment producers.”

“Petar, that’s great. So you’re the producer?” she asked.

He looked sheepishly around the hall. “Shh, you’ll get me fired. Not the producer, I’m a segment producer.”

Rook made himself known. “You book the guests and do the pre-interviews.”

“Very good. Jim knows his stuff.”

Heat looked at Rook and smiled. “Jim. Love it.”

Petar explained, “The pre-interviews are to help Kirby know what to ask his guests. They get about six minutes with him once they hit the chair, so I talk to them before the show and give him a list of suggested topics, maybe some funny story that happened to them.”

“Sort of like being a ghost writer,” said Rook.

Petar frowned. “Well, better than that. I do get my name in the credits. Listen, I have some time, do you want to come to the green room for something to eat or drink? We could catch up.”

Rook tried to get Nikki’s eye. “We’d love to but—”

“We’d love to,” said Nikki. “We can spare a few minutes.”

The show was a live broadcast, so it wasn’t on for hours; therefore the green room was all theirs. Rook began to feel, what . . . ? Sullen. He had hoped to take Nikki out to dinner, but there they sat, filling up on Thai chicken skewers and smoked salmon wraps.

“This has turned into a day of good omens. First, five minutes ago, Soleil Gray suddenly canceled for some unknown reason.” Heat turned to catch Rook’s eye, but he was already doing the same with her. “So with her taking a powder that means one of my backup guests is coming in to take her segment, a feather for me. And now you, Nikki. How many years has it been?”

Nikki swallowed a tiny bite of salmon roll-up and said, “No, no. Let’s not start counting years.”

“No, let’s,” said Rook.

She dabbed her mouth with a napkin and said, “I met Petar when I took a semester abroad. I was in Venice studying opera production at the Gran Teatro La Fenice when I met this gorgeous film student from Croatia.”

The accent, thought Rook. Rrr.

“We had this mad fling. Or at least I thought it was a fling. But when I came back to the States to resume my classes at Northeastern, who shows up in Boston?”

“Pete?” answered Rook.

Nikki laughed. “I couldn’t send him back, could I?”

“No, you couldn’t.” And Petar laughed, too. Rook just kept himself busy twirling his satay in some peanut sauce.

Nikki and her old flame exchanged phone numbers and promised to get together and catch up. “You know,” said Petar, “when I saw your article in that magazine, I thought of looking you up.”

“But why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t sure what your life was. You know.”

Rook chimed in. “It’s pretty busy. In fact, Detective, we should get going.”

“You are working on a big case?”

She looked around to make sure the room was clear and said, “Cassidy Towne.”

Petar nodded and shook his head at the same time. Rook started trying to figure out how he did that and then decided not to.

“It was a shock. And then it also wasn’t. She didn’t have many friends, but I liked her.”

“You knew her?” asked Nikki.

“Sure. Hard not to. In my job here I am constantly barraged by columnists, PR folks, book people. Some want to get authors on the show, some want to know who’s on or, in Cassidy’s case, how they behaved, who they were with, stories I might have heard that didn’t make it on the air . . .”

“So you and Cassidy had some sort of relationship?” Rook tried to put just enough stink on it for Nikki to absorb with the most unsavory connotation.

“We had a great relationship,” said Petar without equivocation. “Was she the warmest person in the world? No. Did she deal in human weakness? Yes. But I have to tell you, when I started this job, I almost didn’t make the cut. Cassidy saw I was foundering and took me under her wing. Took me to boot camp on getting myself organized, hitting deadlines, how to manipulate PR flaks into getting their stars to come on our show first, ways to talk to the celebrities so they would let their guard down for the host interview . . . She saved my ass.”

Nikki said, “I’m sorry, Petar, I stopped listening when you said she taught you to be organized.”

“And hit deadlines, Nikki, can you believe it?”

While they laughed about some private memory, Rook could picture Petar ten years ago, a bewildered Croatian shuffling around her dorm, wearing her bathrobe, going “Nee-kee, no can find shoose.”

When the laughter faded, Petar lowered his voice and moved closer to Nikki, his knee touching hers, Rook noticed. He also noticed she didn’t move away. “I heard she was working on something.”

“I knew that,” said Rook. “Something big, too.”

Nikki explained, “Rook was doing a profile of her.”

Petar said, “Oh, so then she told you what it was?”

Rook couldn’t tell if Petar knew or was fishing for what
he
knew, which could have been less than Petar knew, so he said, “Mm, not in so many words.”

“I don’t know, either.” Petar used his forefinger to poke a caper off Nikki’s plate. He stuck it on his tongue and said, “I heard about it from one of my publishing contacts. Cassidy was supposedly working on a tell-all book about someone. She was writing a tattler. And when it came out, some very powerful people were going to go to jail for a very long time.”

Chapter Eleven

J
ameson Rook got up at five the next morning to get his life back in order. After he showered and dressed, he ground beans for a pot of strong coffee then carried a broom, dustpan, and bucket of cleaning products down the hallway to his office to confront the shambles created by the Texan two days before. Standing there in the doorway, he paused to assess the post-tornado zone of his cozy writer’s workplace: strewn files; emptied desk drawers; broken glass from pictures, awards, and framed magazine covers; banker’s boxes of research clawed open and dumped; his own bloodstain dried on the floor; rummaged cabinets; scattered books; lamp shades off-kilter; the writer’s chair that had become his prison—OK, he thought, actually, that one wasn’t much of a change.

His view was a snapshot of personal violation, both disheartening and overwhelming. Rook couldn’t figure out where to begin. So he did the only logical thing. He put the broom, the dustpan, and the cleaning products in the corner and sat down at his computer to Google Petar Matic.

He smiled as he typed in the name. Say it quickly and it sounded like an erotic toy. Best don’t go there, he thought. Not if he wanted the morning to be about getting his life in order.

To his surprise, numerous Petar Matics came up. A prominent financial guy, a teacher, a Cleveland firefighter, and so on, but no hits on Nikki Heat’s college beau. Not until the second screen page. The sole link was to a dated bio excerpted from a wildlife documentary film he had shot once in Thailand,
New Friends, Old Worlds
. It wasn’t much of a mention. “A film student and adventurer from the village of Kamensko in Croatia who had resettled in the United States, Petar Matic was honored to received a grant for a film introducing the world to a host of newly discovered species.” So Petar was one of those guys who shot footage of snakes with two tails and birds with hair under their wings.

Next he searched: “Petar Matic Nikki Heat” and was glad for no matches. He was especially relieved there was no link to any film project. He nudged out of his brain the image of Nikki and some Croatian Romeo as haunting green ghosts in some night vision video and started sweeping up broken glass.

About a half hour later his cell phone rang with the
Dragnet
theme. “Notice I’m calling you this time before I show up,” said Nikki. “I’m around the corner, and you’ve got exactly two minutes to shoo the cougars.”

“All of them? I’m growing fond of this one. In fact, hang on.” He pretended to cover the mouthpiece and said, “Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?”

When he got back on, Nikki said, “Careful there, Rook. You’ll give yourself another nosebleed.”

She arrived with coffee that even she admitted was no match for his and a bag of warm Zucker’s bagels seeing their first sunrise. “I figured I’d stay downtown this morning so we can go visit Cassidy Towne’s editor right when the publishing house opens and then head up to the precinct from there.” She saw something come across his face and said, “What?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t know we’d be going to the publisher together, that’s all.”

“You don’t want to come? Rook, you want to come everywhere. You’re like a golden retriever with a Frisbee in your mouth the moment you hear car keys.”

“Sure, of course, I want to go. I’m just bummed I didn’t make more progress. It’s still a FEMA site back there.”

She brought her coffee and a gouged-out sesame bagel half to the office for an assessment. “You’ve hardly made a dent.”

“Well, I got started, and then got on the computer and got caught up working on my Cassidy Towne piece.”

Nikki looked at his monitor, where the
Big Lebowski
screen saver was engaged—a floating image of the Dude’s head on a bowling ball. Then her gaze drifted to the radio-controlled toy helicopter on the desk. She put her hand on the fuselage. “Still warm,” she said.

“The bad guys don’t stand a chance with you, Nikki Heat.”

They had a half hour before they had to leave for the publisher, so Nikki began collecting loose papers off the floor. Rook found a home for the helicopter on the windowsill and said, as casually as he could make it sound for a man who was fishing, “Must have been bizarre seeing your old boyfriend like that.”

“Blew me away, is what it did. Of all the gin joints, you know?” And then she said, “So you think he was one of Cassidy’s conquests, do you?”

“What? Huh, I hadn’t thought of it.” He turned away quickly to scoop pens back into his souvenir mug from the Mark Twain Museum. “Is that what you think?”

“Don’t really know. Sometimes it’s nice to take someone at face value.” She looked at him, and he turned away again, this time on paper clip patrol. “It was a different side to hear about Cassidy, helping someone out like she did for Pet.”

Pet. Rook concentrated so he wouldn’t roll his eyes. “Well, from what I saw of Cassidy, she was tough but she wasn’t a monster. But I wouldn’t say she was altruistic, either. I’m sure by helping Pete learn the ropes she was also building a relationship with a TV insider on a solid foundation of ‘IOU.’ ”

“Did she have anybody who you would call a close friend?”

“From what I saw, no. She was wired to be a loner. That’s not to say lonely. But her downtime was spent with her flowers, not people. Did you see the porcelain plaque screwed into her wall by the French doors? ‘When life disappoints, there’s always the garden.’ ”

“Sounds like Cassidy spent a lot of her time coping with disappointment.”

“Still,” he said, “you can’t fault a person whose passion is for helping living things. Albeit vegetation.”

Nikki hefted a pile of recovered papers and evened the corners by tapping them against her tummy. “I don’t know where you want these filed, so I’ll just make stacks on your credenza. At least you’ll be able to walk around in here while you play with your toy chopper.”

He worked alongside her, chucking anything that was broken into the kitchen trash can he had put in service. “You know, I like this little bit of shared domestic activity.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said. “Although, mm-mm-mm. What says turn-on to a police gal more than cleaning up a crime scene?” The credenza was full, so Nikki set an armful of files on the desktop, and when she did, her arm grazed the space bar on Rook’s keyboard, causing the screen saver to vanish. The Dude disappeared, exposing the Google search results for “Petar Matic Nikki Heat.”

Rook wasn’t sure she saw it, and he closed his laptop, muttering something about getting it out of her way. If she had seen it, she didn’t let on. Rook forced himself to wait a few moments, working in silence. After a decent interval, he transitioned to shelving books, then casually dropped in a “Hey, I tried calling you last night but you didn’t answer.”

“I know” was all she said.

When they left the
Later On
studios the night before, Rook had pushed for a dinner date but she wasn’t up for it, telling him that she was exhausted from the evening before.

“You mean our sex?” he had asked.

“Oh, yes, Rook, you wore me out.”

“Really?”

“Feel good about you. If you recall, I had an altercation with the Texan right before our night of bliss. Followed by a pretty full day of trooping around on this investigation.”

“I did all those things, too.”

She crinkled her brow. “Pardon me, but did you actually fight with Tex? I thought it was more like sitting down in a chair and tipping over.”

“You wound me, Nikki. You lash me with your mockery.”

“No,” she had said with undisguised lust, “that was the sash from my robe.” It only made him ache all the more to share another night with her. But, as ever, Nikki Heat was protective of her independence. He’d taken a sulking cab ride back to Tribeca, his writer’s imagination filling his head with possible consequences of reunited college sweethearts exchanging phone numbers.

He slid a volume of his
Oxford English Dictionary
into its home and said, “I almost didn’t call. I was afraid I’d wake you up.” He put another blue
OED
next to its companion before he added, “Because you said you were going to sleep.”

“Are you checking up on me?”

“Me? Get real.”

“I’ll tell you if you want to know.”

“Nik, I don’t need to know.”

“Because I wasn’t home asleep when you called. I was out.” For an avid poker player, he was masking his tells about as well as Roger Rabbit after a swig of whiskey. At last, she said, “I couldn’t sleep so I went to the precinct. I wanted to run a check through an FBI database searching specific weapons and duct tape and persons with a history of torture. Sometimes an MO will jump out. I got nowhere last night, but I connected with an agent at the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico who’s going to stay on it and see what kicks. I also got them the fingerprint partials we pulled off the typewriter ribbon.”

“So all that time you were working?”

“Not
all
that time,” she said.

So there it was. She had seen the Google screen. Or maybe she hadn’t and she actually had connected with Petar. “Are you trying to torture me, Detective Heat?”

“Is that what you want, Jameson? Do you want me to torture you?” And with that, she finished her coffee and took her cup back to the kitchen.

“It’s the code, man,” said Ochoa. “It’s that stupid code that keeps people from helping us.” He and his partner Raley sat in the front seat of their unmarked across the street from the Moreno Funeral Parlor at 127th and Lex.

The door to the funeral home was still idle, so Raley let his gaze wander up the block to watch a MetroNorth train on the elevated tracks slowing for the Harlem station, last stop before depositing its freight of morning commuters from Fairfield County at Grand Central. “It makes no sense. Especially when it’s family. I mean, they must know we’re trying to find whoever killed their own kin.”

“Doesn’t have to make sense, Rales. The code says you don’t snitch, no matter what.”

“But whose code? Padilla’s family doesn’t show any banger ties.”

“Don’t have to. It’s in the culture. It’s in the music, it’s on the street. Even if snitching doesn’t get you whacked, it makes you the lowest. Nobody wants to be that. That’s the rule.”

“So what can we hope to do then?”

Ochoa shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe find the exception?”

A black van pulled up to the receiving door of the mortuary and honked twice. Both detectives looked at their watches. They knew OCME had released Esteban Padilla’s body at 8
A.M.
It was now a quarter to nine, and they watched silently as the rolling metal door rose and two attendants emerged to offload the gurney and the dark vinyl bag containing the victim’s remains.

Just after nine a white ’98 Honda pulled up and parked. “Here we go,” said Raley. But he cursed when the driver got out and the uncooperative cousin from the night before went inside the building. “So much for finding our exception.”

They waited ten minutes without talking, and when nobody else arrived, Raley started the car. “I was thinking the same thing,” said his partner as the Roach Coach pulled away from the curb.

Nobody answered their knock at Padilla’s row house on East 115th. The detectives were just about to leave when a voice came through the door, asking who it was, in Spanish. Ochoa identified himself and asked if they could have a word. There was a long pause before a security chain slid, a deadbolt shot, and the door opened a crack. A teenage boy asked if he could see badges.

Pablo Padilla brought them to sit in the living room. Although the boy didn’t say so, it seemed the invitation was not so much about hospitality as to get them all in off the street. Ochoa reflected on how this no-snitch thing was supposed to be about solidarity, but the eyes of the kid looked more like those of victims of terrorism he had seen. Or the townsfolk in some old Clint Eastwood Western who were scared of the tyrannical outlaw and his boys.

Since he was the Spanish speaker and was going to be doing the talking, Ochoa decided to go gently. “I’m sorry for your loss” was a good place to start.

“Did you find my uncle’s killer?” was where the boy started.

“We’re working on that, Pablo. That’s why we’re here. To help find who did this and arrest him so he can be sent away for good.” The detective wanted to paint a picture of this person off the streets, impotent as a source of vengeance to anyone who cooperated.

The teenager absorbed that and looked appraisingly at the two cops. Ochoa noticed Raley was keeping a low profile, but was being eyes and ears. His partner seemed especially interested in numerous garment bags hanging on the back of a door. The boy picked up on it, too. “That is my new suit. For my uncle’s funeral.” The sound of his voice was broken but brave. Ochoa saw the water rimming his eyes and vowed never to call the vic Coyote Man again.

“Pablo, what you tell me here will be between us, understand? Same as if you called an anonymous tip line.” The boy didn’t respond, so he continued. “Did your uncle Esteban have any enemies? Anybody who wanted to harm him?”

The boy slowly shook his head before he answered. “No, I don’t know anyone who would do this. Everybody liked him, he was always happy, a good dude, you know?”

“That’s good,” said Ochoa, while thinking, That’s bad—at least for what he needed—but he smiled, anyway. Pablo seemed to relax a bit, and as the detective delicately asked him the usual questions about his uncle’s friends, girlfriends, personal habits like gambling or drugs, the boy answered in the short-form way teenagers do, but he answered. “What about his work?” asked Ochoa. “He was a produce driver?”

“Yes, it wasn’t what he liked, but he had experience as a driver, so that was what he got. You know, a job’s a job sometimes, even if it’s not as good.”

Ochoa looked over to Raley, who had no idea what they were saying but could read his partner’s look signaling he had hit a point of interest. Ochoa turned back to Pablo and said, “I hear that.” Then, “I notice you said ‘not as good.’ ”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not as good as what?”

“Well . . . It’s sort of embarrassing, but he’s dead, so I guess I can say.” The boy fidgeted and shoved his hands under his thighs so he was sitting on them. “My uncle had a, you know, classier job before. But a couple of months ago . . . well, he got fired all of a sudden.”