While Opal thought that over, Rook tapped her shoulder and added, “And if that’s not good enough, imagine the media buzz and word of mouth Smuggled Souls will get if your film is instrumental in taking down a corrupt power broker and a human trafficking ring.”
Opal Onishi cocked an eyebrow and smiled.
Jeanne Capois was alive. At least on film. And in that digital form, the twenty-something Haitian immigrant had achieved a sort of immortality. She exuded a goodness and quiet grace that filled the screen and the entirety of Detective Raley’s media kingdom back uptown. Her Creole notes flowed musically around her even after she had spoken her words. The warm French flavor stood in sharp contrast to the disturbing testimony she was offering.
The backdrop was a bookcase—very Ken Burns-style—with her eyeline a few degrees off the camera lens as she spoke to her unseen interviewer, Opal Onishi. The young woman did not smile—this was all too intense for that—but Jeanne Capois looked like a person who commonly smiled, and made others join in just for seeing hers.
Nobody in the small room spoke. Not Raley, not Rook, not Detective Heat, who took notes and jotted time codes off the digits scrolling in a corner of the monitor so that Rales could assemble a highlight reel of the most damning allegations.
When the interview ended and the screen went dark, all three sat in silence, hearing only the cooling fans of the equipment and Rook muttering a small “Fuck.”
Nikki swept aside a tear before the lights came up then tore the relevant sheets off her pad for Raley to edit by. Heat smelled that she was inches from the truth. She stood and said, “Let’s go get this guy.”
Detectives Rhymer and Feller had returned to the bull pen when Heat and Rook came back from their screening. They were particularly animated and it took some work for Nikki to adjust to their manic chatter after what she had just experienced. “Did I score something new, or did I not?” asked Feller.
“You did,” said Rhymer. “Actually both. I was there. But it was mostly him.”
“Maybe one of you could do me a favor before they try to pull the plug on this case anytime now, and just give me a report.”
“I’ll take this,” said Feller, flattening a palm on his chest. “My quadrant—the one you assigned me from the Murder Board for drilling down—included the interview we conducted with Fidel “FiFi” Figueroa. Lots to sift through there, but, skeevy as he is, the man gave us some good intel.”
“Is this you getting to the point?” heckled Ochoa from his desk.
“Remember, Detective Heat, how he used a term to describe Fabian Beauvais?”
“Astucia,” said Heat.
“Plus-ten for you. It occurred to me that you can’t go around exhibiting balls like that, bluffing your way into office buildings with a sandwich cooler to steal documents without setting off a few alarms here and there.”
“It’s an odds game,” offered Rhymer.
“Exactly. So I thought, let me take two elements.” Randall held one hand to the sky and said, “Fabian Beauvais and his astucia right here.…” And then held his other hand up. “And bad shit involving Keith Gilbert here.” He brought the hands together and interlocked his fingers. “So I got on the blower to the Real Time Crime Center and asked the detective on duty to run a computer search for incidents and complaints at the Gilbert Maritime tower on Madison, Midtown. Took a while to get back to me with the hurricane and all, but after we wrapped at Braun’s commando post in the Bronx, I get the call. A trespass complaint weeks ago. No arrest, but officers responded, so it was in the database.”
Nikki said, “I’m interested now.”
“Just wait. We paid a visit. The building’s closed like everything else today, but security’s working. I get the security chief to look at the mug shot of Fabian Beauvais. Guess what he says.”
“‘The sandwich guy,’” said Rook.
Feller made a slow rotation to him and said. “My punch line. I tell the whole friggin’ story and you steal the punch line.”
Rook shrugged contritely. “Sorry.…Inside thoughts, inside thoughts.”
Rhymer, ever earnest jumped in. “Can we not lose track of the fact that we have established that Beauvais did work Gilbert’s corporate HQ to steal documents in his cooler?”
“It’s an important piece. Thorough work, you two. After the interview Heat just watched, she certainly knew why Beauvais was targeting Gilbert. What she didn’t know was what kind of information he had gotten on him. At least she didn’t know yet.
Rook arrived at Nikki’s desk. “What’s up?”
“I’d like you to do something for me—that is, if you’re not too busy.”
“I smart with your implication. Don’t you think a small word of acknowledgment is in order for me getting Opal Onishi to give up her raw video without a First Amendment battle?” Rook searched her face, and all he got was a flat stare. “Apparently that will have to wait. What can I do?”
“You know your old girlfriend at CIA?”
He enjoyed this moment. “Hm. You’re going to have to be more specific. Which one?”
“Rook.”
“Yardley Bell, yes.”
“See if she’s reachable. I have a favor to ask her.”
“And that would be?”
“The one I will ask her when you get her on the phone for me.”
“Right.”
As he moved off to make his call, Sean Raley delivered a thumb drive to Heat. “Here’s the edit you asked for of the Capois video. I’d call it the greatest hits, but it’s more like low moments in humanity.”
“Not many lower.” As soon as the memory key left his fingers he rushed back toward his video realm. “You on a mission?” she called to him.
He turned, walking backward so he wouldn’t lose any time talking. “Got an idea from something in my quadrant that put me onto some video.”
“You look like you think you’re onto something but won’t tell. Are you onto something?”
“Could be useful, could be a bust. I need to scrub it to see if there’s anything.”
“Go to it, King.”
But Detective Raley had already hurried out in his eagerness.
Inez Aguinaldo had called to alert Heat that she was en route with evidence from her search of Alicia Delamater’s property at Beckett’s Neck. When the lead detective from Southampton Village PD arrived just after noon, Nikki couldn’t take her eyes off the brown paper forensics sack in her hand. But to show some grace for the courtesy and effort the Hamptons cop had extended, she minded her manners rather than ripping it from her like a three-year-old going for the presents at a birthday party.
After a hello to her buddy Rook—the bullet whisperer—and squad introductions, Heat thanked her for driving in. “Yeah, it was surreal, if you want to know. A ninety-minute trip that took me five hours. Thank God for all-wheel drive. Had to badge my way over the Throgs Neck Bridge just to get here. But I know you’re up against the clock, so let’s share our Sandy horror stories later, and get to the goods.”
“If you insist,” said Nikki, getting a laugh as she lunged for the property bag. Detective Aguinaldo held it open for her, and the squad tightened the circle around Heat as she reached in with a gloved hand and brought out a Sturm Ruger .38 Spl +P in a plastic Ziploc. “You get this at Alicia Delamater’s?”
She nodded. “Last night. A half hour before the lights went out and the Atlantic Ocean creeped in her front door.
“Tell me it’s his,” said Nikki.
“Make and serial number is a match for the handgun Keith Gilbert has registered with the Suffolk County sheriff. We didn’t do prints yet. I figured you’d want control of the lab process so there’s no potential inter-department contamination for his defense attorneys to plead. As for ballistics, same deal. Plus your techs can probably turn that around faster than we could.”
“You guys what, farm yours out to Korea?” said Rook.
Aguinaldo chuckled. “Might as well. The main thing is, I knew time was of the essence; want to get this in your hands right away.”
As Nikki signed the chain of evidence voucher, Feller nodded toward the Ruger and said, “So I guess it’s no longer the virtual smoking gun.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” cautioned Heat. “This is only one piece of many. And we haven’t labbed it yet.”
Detective Aguinaldo needed to hustle back to Southampton, and Nikki thanked her wholeheartedly her for all of the valuable assists all along the way. Handing Inez a thermal copy of the receipt for the revolver she asked, “Just out of curiosity, where did you find it?”
“In her home office trash can. Hidden under the plastic liner.”
“Amateurs,” said Ochoa. And the other detectives agreed.
Nikki drifted back to a week ago and said, “You never know what you’ll find in a trash can.”
Feller said, “Yeah, but she’s got the whole ocean right there. Why keep it?”
“No kidding,” said Rook. “Has no one ever heard, ‘Leave the gun, take the cannoli’?”
Heat’s e-mail chimed. She stepped to her desk, read the screen, and hung her head. “’S up?” asked Ochoa.
“From Zach Hamner at One PP. The interim precinct commander is on his way. With my orders for administrative leave. He’ll be here in less than one hour.” She typed a short reply and hit SEND. “Which means, I guess I’d better not be.”
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.