Heat Rises

  “I don’t know what he had in that cabinet. I cleaned in there, but personal is personal, and it doesn’t get any more so than a medicine chest.”

  Nikki nibbled a pizzelle. It was extraordinary. If heaven were made of vanilla, that is what it would taste like. For Nikki, this was lunch. She finished it off and said, “I wanted to ask if perhaps the adefovir was yours.”

  “No. And trust me, last thing I need is another pill to swallow.”

  “Fine then. As long as I’m here,” said Heat, suddenly feeling like her last name should be Columbo—why not? she was certainly wearing the coat—“I want to ask if you had any new thoughts about the pictures I showed you.” When the woman shook no, Nikki handed her the photos again and asked her to give them a second look. She cleaned her glasses on her sweater and surveyed them. This time she went through the stack with no reaction to the one she had hesitated over before.

  “Sorry,” she said and handed the array back across the table. Nikki was trying to figure an approach that wouldn’t traumatize her even more, when Mrs. Borelli said, “Oh. I did have one other thing to mention to you. I thought of it this morning and was going to call you, but here you are.” She seemed overwhelmed by circumstances. “You asked if Father Gerry had any trouble with anyone.”

  “Please, go ahead.” Nikki flipped to a clean page.

  “We had a priest here a while back. There were accusations that he had been . . . improper with two of the altar boys on a weekend field trip. Now, I don’t know what happened, and neither did Father Graf, but as the pastor, soon as he heard about it, he did the right thing and reported it immediately to the archdiocese. They transferred Father Shea and started an investigation. But one of the boys’ parents, Mr. Hays, filed a lawsuit—which was fine, who wouldn’t? But he also harassed Father Graf.”

  “Harassed how?”

  “Phone calls at first, and then showing up here at the rectory, unannounced. He kept getting more and more irate.”

  “Did he ever get violent or threaten Father Graf?”

  Mrs. Borelli tilted her head side to side. “He got loud. Shouted a lot, blaming him for letting it go on, and then accused him of trying to whitewash it. But he never threatened, until about three months ago.”

  “What did he say, Mrs. Borelli? Did you hear his exact words?”

  “I did. It was the one time he didn’t shout. He was calm, you know? Scary calm. He said . . . ,” the old housekeeper tilted her head back as if reading the words on the ceiling, “ ‘. . . I’m done talking. Your church may protect you but not from me.’ Oh, and he also said, ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with.’ ” She watched Heat writing the quotes down then continued. “I apologize for not thinking of it yesterday. Part was because Mr. Hays hasn’t been around since then, so I let it go. And also yesterday I was a little, you know . . .” She said it with a shrug and played with the crucifix around her neck. The poor woman looked drained. Nikki decided to let her rest.

  But first she got the name and address of the irate man from the parish registry, as well as the name of the accused priest. At the front door she reassured the housekeeper that she had done the right thing in sharing the information and added pointedly, “It’s always helpful to speak up no matter when your memory brings a detail to mind.” Then she handed the photo array back to Mrs. Borelli and left.

  The blue-and-white that had followed her to the rectory was waiting with its engine idling when she came out. Heat walked over to the driver, a mean-looking career uniform whose nickname around the Two-oh was The Discourager because when they posted him at the entrance to crime scenes nobody dared cross the line. “Harvey, don’t you have something better to do?” she asked when he powered his window down.

  “Captain’s orders,” he said with a voice accented by sandpaper and gravel.

  “I’m heading to the precinct. I’ll be taking West End instead of Broadway.”

  “Don’t you worry, Detective, you won’t lose me.” He said it casually, but the fact was The Discourager was exactly the pit bull you wanted to have your back. She handed him the small bag of pizzelles Mrs. Borelli had given her. When he looked inside it he damn near smiled.

  Later that afternoon, back in the bull pen, Detective Heat wheeled her chair over from her desk and stared at the Murder Board hoping it would speak to her. It didn’t happen in every investigation, but with uncanny frequency, if she was focused enough, quiet enough inside, and alert to the right questions to ask herself, all the disconnected facts—the squiggled notes, the timeline, the victim and suspect photos—they wove together in a harmonious voice that spoke to her of the solution. But they did it on their schedule, not hers.

  They weren’t ready yet.

  “Detective Hinesburg,” she said, still facing the board. When she heard the footfalls draw up behind her, Heat stood and pointed to the blue printing that said, “Graf Phone Records.” There was no check mark beside the notation. “Wasn’t that your assignment?”

  “Yeah, well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got a number of assignments to clear.”

  “When?” was all Nikki said. It was all she had to. Hinesburg saluted in a way that irritated the piss out of Heat and returned to her desk. Heat turned back to the board, this time not seeing anything on it, just needing someplace to look while she let her temper subside.

  Raley hung up his phone and crossed over with the cap of his pen in his teeth and a notepad in his hand. “Got some info on the Mad Dad,” he said, referring to the altar boy’s irate parent. “Lawrence Joseph Hays. One aggravated assault in ’07 against a neighbor with a barking dog, in his neighbor’s apartment building. Charges suddenly dropped at the request of the complainant. Doesn’t say why.”

  “That’s his only prior?”

  “Affirm.”

  Heat said, “We should pay him a visit this afternoon.”

  “That’ll be tough. I already called his office to set a meet—didn’t say why, of course. He’s in Ely, Nevada, on business.” Before Nikki could ask, he said, “I was wondering where it was, too. Ely’s like this teensy dot on the map in the middle of the desert.”

  “What kind of business is he in?” she asked.

  “He’s the CEO of Lancer Standard.”

  “The CIA contractors in Afghanistan?”

  “The one and only,” said Raley. “Black helicopters, freelance commandos, and saboteurs for hire.”

  Heat said, “Ely must be their training center.”

  “I’d tell you you’re right, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “Hilarious, Rales. Find out when Hays gets back. I want to talk with him myself.”

  Ochoa called in to report that his visit to the domme’s roommate was fruitless. “Got here, and she’d cleared out. Building super said she rolled out a couple of suitcases last night.”

  “Did she leave a forwarding?” asked Heat.

  “Not that lucky, I’m afraid. I did call the hotel in Amsterdam her roommate listed with Customs, just in case she knew where she was headed. Front desk says Andrea Boam is still checked in but hasn’t been around for two days. He thinks she and some guy hooked up.” He chuckled. “Interesting choice of words, considering she’s in bondage.”

  “Nice to know if we don’t clear this case, Miguel, at least you’ve got some material for the Christmas talent show.” Heat saw the lights flicker on in Captain Montrose’s office and a small butterfly beat its wings in her chest. “Look, I have to go. But Forensics is done with Graf’s computer. When you get back, see what you can find on it.”

  Detective Heat kept herself at a discreet distance but saw that Montrose was back but he wasn’t alone. He was behind closed doors with two serious suits she didn’t recognize. It did not look like a happy gathering.

  Later, after they had spent some time going through Father Graf’s com puter, Roach came over to Heat’s desk in tandem. “So what do you make of the suits?” said Ochoa. “Internal Affairs?”

  Raley said, “My
money’s on Men in Black. If there’s a big flash of light, put on your sunglasses.”

  To Nikki, the look and the soberness screamed IA. But there was enough gossip floating around the Twentieth without adding to it, so she kept it on point and asked what they’d learned from the computer. Roach led her to the timeline on the Murder Board. “First thing we learned,” said Ochoa, “was that priest needed a new computer. That fossil took ten minutes just to boot. First we opened up his History and Bookmarks.”

  “Always telling,” Raley added.

  “Nothing shocking there. A few Catholic sites, Public Television, online booksellers—all mainstream, no erotica. According to his recommendations and recent purchases, he was nuts for mysteries . . .”

  “. . . Cannell, Connelly, Lehane, Patterson . . .”

  “There were other favorite sites,” Ochoa continued. “A number of charities and human rights organizations. One Chinese, most Latin American.”

  Raley said, “That’s where we might have some traction. We opened up his Outlook to check his calendar.”

  “He never used it,” Ochoa chimed in.

  Raley picked it up with “So we checked out e-mails. He had a message about an urgent meeting from an activist group he was involved with, Justicia a Guarda.” Nikki’s gaze went to the picture at the top of the board, of Graf at the protest rally.

  “Literally, ‘Justice to Guard,’ ” translated Ochoa. He pointed to the timeline. “The meeting was ten-thirty the morning he disappeared.”

  “Right,” said Nikki. “The housekeeper said the last time she saw him, Father Graf broke routine and left right after breakfast for somewhere unknown.”

  “I think now we know,” said Raley.

  “It took him two hours to get to a meeting? That’s another time gap,” she said. “Either way, the folks at Justicia a Guarda may have been the last to see Father Graf alive. Boys, take the Roach Coach and go see what they know.”

  Just after 6 p.m., Rook breezed into the bull pen and turned in a circle. “My God, I have been away too long. It’s like coming back to visit my old grammar school. Everything looks smaller.”

  Nikki rose from her desk and made a quick check of Montrose’s office, but he had shut the blinds for his IA meeting long before. “Rook, do you even own a phone?”

  “You know, there’s a pattern here. Nikki Heat is a woman who doesn’t love surprises. Duly noted. Remember that on your thirtieth birthday, OK?”

  He held out a garment bag to her. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “At the risk of offense, another surprise. On the news it looked like you might need a change of clothes. Something a little less, shall we say, Type-A Positive?” He handed her the garment bag by the hanger loop. “There’s a Theory store down Columbus. This may be a little stylish for taking down cold-blooded killers, but they’ll just have to adjust.”

  She wanted to hug him but let her grin say it. Then, what the hell, she kissed his cheek. “Thanks. I love surprises.”

  “Woman, you have my head spinning.” He took a seat in his old chair from his ride-along days. “We don’t have to go now if you’re busy.”

  “Busy hardly describes it.” She looked around to make sure she wasn’t broadcasting. “Things are even tougher between me and Montrose.” She drew closer and whispered, “He’s got Internal Affairs in there for some reason. Plus, I had one of my borrowed detectives from Burglary transfer out today. In a huff.”

  “Let me guess. Rhymer. What a weasel. I never bought that whole Opie act.”

  “No, Rhymer’s solid. His partner, Gallagher, quit.”

  “In a snit?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Or I’ll get hit?”

  “Count on it.”

  “No . . . kidding?” While they chuckled, his cell phone rang. He made a puzzled look at his caller ID. “Don’t let me hold you up, I’ll take this.” As he left the room, she heard him exclaim, “Oh my God. Is this Tam Svejda, the Czech who loves to bounce?”

  He took Nikki to Bouley in Tribeca, still one of the greatest meals in a city of great meals. Roach phoned just as they were entering, and Heat and Rook stopped while she took their call in the vestibule—not the worst place to wait, surrounded by walls that were decorated by shelves of aromatic fresh apples.

  Between drink orders and bread selection she briefed Rook on the main points of the Graf investigation, including some of the problems she was having with Captain Montrose. She left out his link to the old Huddleston case, since even she didn’t quite know what to make of it. Plus she was in public. They had an alcove to themselves, but you never knew. He listened intently, and she enjoyed watching him suppress his urge to blurt premature theories based on his writer’s imagination instead of facts. He did interrupt when she told him Raley and Ochoa had just left the headquarters of Justicia a Guarda.

  “Those are militant Marxists,” he said. “Not your warm and fuzzy Kumbaya demonstrators at all. A few of them are ex-Colombian FARC rebels who’d be happier with rifles instead of picket signs.”

  “I’ll have to look into that part,” and Heat got out her notepad. “Roach says, according to the office staff there, Father Graf was a staunch supporter of their cause, and they’re mourning him. Even though one of the leaders threw him out of the meeting the other morning when he showed up drunk.” She pondered a Graf connection with armed rebels. “How violent are they, I mean here in New York?”

  “Probably no more than, say, the IRA back in The Troubles.” He tore off a piece of raisin bread. “They’re fresh on my mind because I witnessed some assault rifles and grenade launchers being delivered to them in Colombia.”

  “Rook, you were in Colombia?”

  “You’d know that if you ever asked me how my month was.” He dabbed a fake tear from his eye with his napkin. Then he grew pensive. “Do you know Faustino Velez Arango?”

  “Sure, the dissident writer who disappeared.”

  “Justicia a Guarda are the dudes whose small army broke him out of his political prison and snuck him underground last fall. If your priest was mixed up with those guys, I’d start taking a hard look at them.”

  Nikki finished her cosmo. “You had me worried, Rook. I thought we were going to go the whole night without a wild, half-baked theory.”

  On their walk back to his loft it had warmed just enough for rain to mix with the ice pellets. The cruiser that was following them pulled alongside, and The Discourager lowered the passenger window. “You two sure you won’t take a ride?” She thanked him and waved it off. Heat could accept protection, but not a chauffeur.

  She opened a bottle of wine while he flipped on the eleven o’clock news. The reporter live on the scene of a manhole explosion in the East Village said, “When the rain came down, it washed road salt away and it corroded a junction box, causing the blowout.”

  “And the itsy bitsy spider went up in about a gazillion pieces,” said Rook. Nikki handed him his glass, then killed the TV during the teaser for the shooting in Brooklyn Heights. “I can’t believe you don’t want to see it. Do you know what some people do just to get on the news?”

  “I lived it all day,” she said, slipping off her shoes. “I don’t need to see it at night.” He opened his arms wide, and Nikki nestled herself into him on the sofa, burying her nose into the open throat of his shirt, breathing him in.

  “How are you going to work things out with Montrose?”

  “Hell if I know.” She sat up, cross-legged on the cushion beside him, taking a sip of her wine and resting her palm on his thigh. “I don’t even know what to make of him, he’s so not Montrose to me. The attitude, and the behavior—that’s the tough thing. Searching the rectory, roadblocking my case. I don’t get it.”

  “Or is it that you do get it and you’re afraid of what it might mean?”

  She nodded, more to herself than to him, and said, “I thought I knew him.”

  “That’s not the issue. Do you trust him? That’s what’s important.” He to
ok a sip, and when she didn’t answer, he said, “It’s like I said last night. You never really know someone. I mean really, do I know you? How well do you know me?”

  Tam Svejda, the bouncing Czech, came to her mind. Again. “Right. I guess you can’t know everything about someone. How can you?”

  “You’re a cop. You could interrogate me.”

  She laughed. “Is that what you want, Rook? For me to grill you? Break out the rubber hose?”

  He jumped to his feet. “Stay right there. You gave me an idea.” He went to his reading nook to the side of the living room. From behind the bookcases, she heard keystrokes and then a printer fire up. He returned with some pages. “Ever read Vanity Fair?”

  “Yeah. Mostly for the ads.”

  “On the back page each month they interview a celebrity using a standard questionnaire they call The Proust Interview. It comes from a parlor game that was all the rage back in Marcel Proust’s era as a way for party guests to get to know each other. I guess this was pre–Dance Dance Revolution. Proust didn’t invent it, he was just the most famous one to play it. This is a version floating on the Internet.” He held up his pages with a sly grin. “Wanna play?”

  “I’m not so sure. What kind of questions are they?”

  “Revealing, Nikki Heat. Revealing of who you truly are.” She reached for the pages but he pulled them back. “No previews.”

  “What if I don’t want to answer some of them?” she asked.

  “Hmm.” He tapped the rolled pages against his chin. “Tell you what. You can skip answering any question if . . . you take off an article of clothing.”