Naked Heat (27 page)

The departure of the plainclothes cop wasn’t missed by Toby. “This is starting to weird me out a little here, Detective.”

That was pretty much the effect Heat was hoping to have on the pitcher. Her instincts were on alert that Ripton had broken form and wasn’t there, but on the plus side it gave her a chance to apply pressure on Mills without the security blanket of his handler. “It’s time, Toby.”

He looked perplexed. “Time? Time for what?”

“For us to have a talk about Soleil Gray.” Nikki paused and, when she saw the blinks come to his eyes, continued. “And Reed Wakefield.” She took another beat and, when she could see him dry swallowing, added, “And you.”

He tried his best, he truly did. But as sophisticated as were the circles a multimillionaire athlete in Gotham traveled in, Toby Mills was at heart still the kid from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and his upbringing made him a poor liar. “What about Soleil Gray and . . . Reed? What have they got to do with this? I thought this was about that creep following me and my family around.”

“His name is Morris Granville, Toby.”

“I know that. But he’s always just ‘the creep’ to me. Did you get him or not? You said you got him.”

“We did.” She could see he wanted her to continue, and so she didn’t. Toby Mills wasn’t a star now, he was her interrogation suspect and she was going to run the board, not he. “Tell me how you knew Soleil Gray and Reed Wakefield.”

His eyes darted to the door where the uniform waited, then back to her. And then he studied his shoes, looking in them for the answer to give now that he had no script from The Firewall.

“Soleil and Reed, Toby. Let’s hear it.”

“What’s there to know? I heard about her today. Man . . .” And then he tried out, “I read in the paper you were harassing her. Were you chasing her today, too?”

Heat did not rise to his bait, let alone acknowledge it. “My question remains, how did you know Soleil and Reed?”

He shrugged like a child. “Around, you know? It’s New York. You go to parties, you run into people. ‘Hey, howarya,’ like that.”

“Is that all you knew of them, Toby? ‘Hey, howarya’? Really?”

He checked the door again and pursed his lips repeatedly the way she had seen him do on TV once when he had walked the ninth man to load the bases and the top of the order was coming up with no outs. He’d need different skills to get himself out of this jam, and Toby wasn’t sure he had them; she could smell it on him. So with his confidence flagging, she said, “Let’s take a ride. Want to put your hands behind your back for me?”

“Are you serious?” He met her gaze, but it was he who blinked. “I met them around. You know. Parties, like I said. Reed, I guess he played in my charity softball game for the Oklahoma tornado victims in summer ’09. Soleil, too, now that I think about it.”

“And that’s it?”

“Well, not totally. We hung out with each other from time to time. The reason I hesitated to talk about it is because it’s embarrassing. I’m past all of it now, but I kinda got a little ‘off the chain’ when I first hit New York. Hard not to. And maybe I did do some partying with them back then.”

Heat remembered Rook saying that Cassidy Towne had written up some of Mills’s wild nights in “Buzz Rush.” “So you’re saying that was a long time ago?”

“Ancient history, yes, ma’am.” He said it fast and smooth, as if he had passed the dangerous shoals and come out into calm waters.

“All before your charity game summer before last.”

“Right. Way back.”

“And you didn’t see them after that?”

He started shaking his head for show, even as he pretended to be thinking. “Nope, can’t say as I saw much of them later. They broke up, you know.”

Nikki seized the opening. “Actually, I heard they got back together. The night Reed died.”

Mills kept a game face but couldn’t keep the blood in it, and he went a little pale. “Oh, yeah?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t know that, Toby. Seeing how you were with them that night.”

“With them—I was not!” His shout made the officer at the door straighten up and stare at him. He lowered his voice. “I was never with them. Not that night. Trust me, Detective, I think I’d remember that.”

“I have an eyewitness who says otherwise.”

“Who?”

“Morris Granville.”

“Oh, come on, this is crazy. You’re going to take the word of that psycho over mine?”

“When we picked him up, he told me about Club Thermal and how he saw Soleil and Reed.” Heat leaned forward in her chair, toward him. “Of course, what I knew in the back of my mind was that the only reason I could think of for Morris Granville to be outside Club Thermal that night was because he was stalking you.”

“Sounds like a load of bull. The guy’s lying to get some kind of deal or something. He’s just lying. The creep can say anything, but without proof, forget it.” Toby sat back and crossed his arms, attempting to signal that he was all done.

Heat slid her chair over to the computer beside him and inserted a memory key. “What are you doing?” he asked.

When the thumb drive opened up, she double-clicked on a file, and as it loaded, she said, “I pulled this off Morris Granville’s cell phone.”

The image loaded. It was amateur cell quality, but the picture told the story. It was a shot of a wet street outside Club Thermal. Reed Wakefield and Soleil Gray were getting inside a stretch limo. Esteban Padilla, dressed in a black suit and red tie, held an umbrella over the open door. And inside the limousine, a giggling Toby Mills held a hand out to help Soleil get in. In his other hand was a joint.

As Mills weakened and his hands began to shake, Heat said, “Cassidy Towne. Derek Snow . . .” When he bowed his head, Nikki tapped lightly on the monitor. When he looked back up at the image, she added, “And think about this, Toby. Everyone here is dead—but you. I want you to tell me what’s wrong with this picture.”

And then the phenom began to weep.

Toby Mills had entered Stuyvesant High that night in the backseat of a black Escalade with a million-dollar check. He left in the backseat of a police car in handcuffs. The charges, for now, would be tokens just to hold him: lying to a police officer; failure to report a death; conspiracy; conspiracy to obstruct justice; bribery. From the confession he had made to her after he broke down and wept, it wasn’t clear yet to Detective Heat if meatier charges would be brought. That would be up to a grand jury and the DA. And most importantly, if she could find a way to connect the pitcher to the Texan.

The stalker’s cell phone picture would be compelling evidence. In her own way Nikki was in debt to whatever sickness in Morris Granville had taken the picture and kept it since May. When she asked him why he hadn’t come forward with it before or tried to capitalize on it, he said he wanted to protect his idol, Toby Mills. So, she had said, that raised the question, “Why show it to a cop now?” To that, Granville said, as if it was obvious, “He had me arrested.” And then the stalker smiled and asked, “If he goes to trial, will Toby be there when I testify?” Heat reflected on the stalker mentality and those of them who loved their victims so much that when they couldn’t get near, they destroyed them. Some killed them. Apparently others got them arrested. It was all about seeking relevance in an unrequited relationship. Choose your poison.

In Toby Mills’s version of the events following Club Thermal, the three of them rode around Manhattan with one objective: partying. Reed and Soleil already had a leg up, and Toby, who wasn’t due to pitch until a Monday start at home against the Red Sox, was in the mood that Friday night to blow it out after a losing road trip that had just ended in Detroit. He laughed at the MLB random drug tests. Mills and many other players either banked or bought urine to keep the commish out of their downtime. Mills had with him a small gym bag full of recreational narcotics and was a generous host. He told Heat that while they were parked briefly at the South Street Seaport, watching the East River, Reed and Soleil started getting serious about their reunion sex, and since everyone was tired of riding around in the car anyway, they all went back to Reed’s room at the Dragonfly House to continue the party there. Toby, who in normal circumstances would have been the third wheel, had the drugs, so he was most welcome. He confessed that a part of him was hot for Soleil, and he even said to Nikki that he had thought, “What the hell, who knew where the night would lead?”

Where indeed?

He told Nikki that what happened at the Dragonfly was all an accident. Up in Reed’s suite they played a game reciting famous movie titles, substituting the word “penis” for key nouns—
Must Love Penis
.
ET the Extra Penis
.
GI Joe: The Rise of the Penis
—while Toby laid out the portable pharmacy on the coffee table. Heat pressed him for details, and he listed pot, cocaine, and some amyl nitrate poppers. Reed had a stash of heroin that didn’t interest Toby and a bunch of Ambien he said he used to help him sleep. He also said it was awesome for sex, and he and Soleil both downed some with vodka straight from a bottle they kept jammed into a room service ice bucket.

While Soleil and Reed went into the bedroom, Toby said he put on some music to drown out their screwing and watched ESPN with the sound off.

When he heard Soleil screaming, he thought it was her orgasm at first, but Mills said she ran out into the living room naked, out of control, shouting, “He’s not breathing, do something, I think he’s dead!”

Toby went in the bedroom with her and flipped on the lights, and Reed was all gray-faced and had saliva bubbles in the corner of his mouth. Toby said they both kept yelling his name and shaking him and got no answer. Toby finally felt his wrist and couldn’t find any pulse, and they both freaked.

Toby speed-dialed Jess Ripton and got him out of bed. His handler told him to calm down and to keep quiet and stay put in the room. He told him to turn off the loud music and not to touch anything else and just wait there. When Toby asked if they should call an ambulance, Jess said, “Fuck no,” not to call anybody or even think about leaving the room. He amended that, directing him to call his limo driver and tell him to be out front and ready to go when he was, but not to say why or sound upset when he called. Jess said he would get there as soon as he could and would call when he was coming up. He warned Toby not to open the door for anyone else.

But when Toby finished his call with Jess, he went to tell Soleil what was happening and she was hanging up the house phone in the bathroom. Two minutes later Derek Snow came to the door. Toby said not to let him in, but Soleil didn’t listen and said the concierge would help, that they knew each other. As Nikki knew, Soleil had shot him in the leg only months before and had paid him off handsomely. Many relationships were built on less.

Derek wanted to call 911, but Toby was insistent and started to think he’d have to do something about this concierge. But Soleil took Derek aside and promised him a lot of money to be cool. When Derek asked what he could do, Toby told him to chill and just wait for his man to get there.

It turned out Derek was cooperative, and while Soleil finished getting dressed—not an easy feat considering all she had ingested—Snow helped Toby pack the drugs back into his gym bag. Twenty minutes later, Toby’s cell phone rang. Jess Ripton was on his way up. When he came into the room, he told them it was all going to be OK.

Jess wasn’t prepared to find Derek there, but he took him as a fact to deal with and put him to use, ushering Toby and Soleil out of there using the stairwell. On their way out, Jess told Derek that only he should touch doorknobs and to come back up after he delivered them to the limo.

Toby concluded his confession by saying that when they got outside the Dragonfly, Soleil was still freaked and didn’t want to ride with him. The last he saw of her she was running off crying into the night. Then he told the limo driver to take him home to his family in Westchester.

On Chambers Street, outside the front door of Stuyvesant High, Heat was about to get into her car when the Roach Coach pulled alongside her and stopped.

“Still no sign of Jess Ripton,” said Ochoa out the passenger window. “Not at Bouley, not at Nobu, or Craftbar. We checked all his other usual haunts and watering holes Toby gave us.
Nada
.”

“Think he’s helping Jess duck us?” asked Raley.

“Always possible,” said Nikki, “but I think Toby wants his Firewall about now, not to have him be MIA like this. A good indicator is that I let him try to call Jess, thinking he’d need his handler.”

“Generous of you, Detective Heat,” said Ochoa.

“In a self-serving, clever, tricky way. Thanks. Anyway, all Toby got was Ripton’s voice mail. We have someone staking out his apartment, but let’s also detail somebody else to roam on this overnight. I’ll ask Captain Montrose to pull a detective off Burglary who can keep making the rounds to Ripton’s usuals. Parking garage, his gym, his office.”

Raley said, “But don’t you think if Ripton’s trying to go off the grid, he’s too smart to go to any of those places?”

“Probably. Might be wheel-spinning, but we have to check anyway,” said Heat.

Ochoa nodded. “Man, I know somebody’s got to do it, but it sounds like a pointless exercise for some poor dude.”

Raley laughed. “Give it to Detective Schlemming.”

Roach scoffed, shook their heads, and muttered his nickname. “Defective Schlemming.”

“Sounds about his speed,” said Heat.

Ochoa’s face grew serious. “I think we ought to quit picking on Schlemming. I mean, come on, just because a guy rear-ends the mayor’s limo trying to shoo a bee out of his car is no reason to— Aw, hell, yes it is.”

“Can I tell you something?” said Raley. “All those bodies. It’s hard for me to buy Toby Mills as the contract killing type. And I’m a Mets fan.”

“Come on, partner, you ought to know one thing by now and that is that you can never know. His Yanks contract, all those endorsements? That’s millions of motives for Toby Mills to clamp a lid on that mess.”

“Or Ripton,” countered Raley. “He has a stake, too. Not just because he was the cleaner at Reed’s hotel that night, but Toby’s image is his meal ticket also. You agree, Detective?” He leaned over from the steering wheel to look across Ochoa out the side window to Heat. She was busy scrolling on her cell phone. “Detective Heat?”