Driving Heat

  “Just one more thing for now. Do you recognize any of these men?”

  She showed him a headshot of Timothy Maloney. Levy shook his head no. Same for Joseph Barsotti. When she offered Sampson Stallings’s drawing of his apartment intruder, he said, “A cartoon? What? The Syrians hack the memory out of your camera, too?”

  “Just yes or no is fine. Does he look familiar?”

  “No.”

  To wrap it up, she flashed him a screen grab of Tangier Swift from his corporate website. “You’re kidding, right? That’s Swift, the fucker killing everyone with his shitty software.” Levy fixed Rook with a glare, as if he should have known that, but said nothing more.

  “Has he approached you, directly or indirectly, with any threat or intimidation?”

  “The asshole breathes intimidation, that would be nothing.”

  “What about threats then?” continued Nikki. “We know about your Forenetics Splinter Group.”

  Levy’s head snapped toward Rook again. “I see. You interview me, then go to the police. Fuck you.”

  “It’s a murder case now,” said Rook.

  “Fuck you sideways.”

  Heat tried to reel in Levy with questions. “Do you think today’s attack was linked to your whistle-blowing?”

  Levy seemed about to go on, but turned aside dismissively. “I never should have gotten into this.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m done talking about it, OK?”

  Rook said, “Your hands are shaking.”

  “Wouldn’t yours be? Look what the hell’s happening. Look what they did to Fred Lobbrecht. And I heard from Abigail they tried to get Backhouse, too. With a goddamn drone.” He handed Heat’s cell phone back. “Today I got lucky. I know from driving cars, luck only gets you so far.”

  “Mr. Levy,” said Heat, “you’re not being totally open with me about something, and if you’re really worried, I advise you to start sharing, so I can help.”

  Levy said nothing, only watched a dot over the water that turned out to be a seagull, not a drone. Heat wasn’t sure if this evasiveness was the man’s panic response to getting shot at—completely understandable—or if there was something he was trying to keep hidden, something bigger that might have taken on a life of its own. For now, all she could do was wonder, and keep pushing to get her own answers. Nikki handed Levy her card and said, “Whenever you’re ready to talk, here’s how to reach me.”

  As they started to go, they caught a flash of white as Levy tossed her card on the ground. “Nice fella,” said Rook, which actually made Heat laugh.

  The blue-and-whites had departed, the neighbors had gone back to call each other to gossip, and Heat pulled away, leaving the dour victim of a near miss watching her go from his driveway. “I’m surprised you two aren’t tighter. Aren’t you a beer-for-breakfast dude?”

  “Sure, if I wake up at five P.M. in the tropics. But in the tropics I’d have fresh oranges to squeeze, so I think the whole Jameson Rook–Nathan Levy buddy film will never get ma—Turn around!”

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  “Not you,” he said. “The car. Stop the car. Turn it around, hurry.” Heat braked and, as she paused, waiting to make a U-turn in the middle of Tremont Avenue, Rook added, “That car that passed us going the other way, toward Levy’s…The guy in the sketch was at the wheel.”

  At that, Nikki made the U-ey, running one front tire over the curb before she sped off in pursuit.

  East Tremont is a nice, fat, wide, old-fashioned four-lane, which made quick work of putting pavement behind Heat. She wove at a decent clip around a slowpoke who was texting and a plumber’s box truck, coming up in no time to Nathan Levy’s street at the T intersection. Unfortunately, a food service van idled at the stop sign.

  “What the hell’s he doing?” said Rook.

  Nikki spotted the rolling gate begin to open at the catering business across the intersection. “He’s blocking the lane waiting here to get in that driveway there. Simpleton.”

  “You do realize we are one Muppet Show opera box from becoming Statler and Waldorf,” he said.

  Heat lit up her LEDs and gave her siren a short, guttural burst. The driver’s arm emerged from the van’s front window and windmilled to tell her to go around him. She pulled up to a fast stop beside him and made her turn toward Levy’s house.

  Rook pointed to the Impala two blocks ahead. “Dark-blue Chevy.”

  “Got him.” Heat keyed her microphone. “One Lincoln Forty, in pursuit of blue late-model Chevrolet sedan, southbound on Schurz Avenue, cross street, East Tremont.” Dispatch came back and asked for the plate. She was close enough now see it and read it off. “Driver is wanted for possible ten-thirty-one, request backup.”

  “Ten-four, One Lincoln Forty.”

  She dropped the mic in her lap and said, “Watch for peeps. Don’t want to be on the Eyewitness News tonight for mowing down any citizens.” Then, something unusual ahead. The Impala showed brake lights. It was Nikki’s turn to ask, “What the hell’s he doing?”

  The car slowed, its right blinker came on, and their prey pulled over to the curb, parked, and shut off the engine.

  Rook turned to her. “To state the obvious? Worst car chase ever.”

  Heat’s attention was too focused on the job at hand to even hear what Rook had said. She called in her location and popped her door, approaching the vehicle from the driver’s blind spot with her hand on her holster and alert for sudden moves. But the first thing she saw was both of his hands gripping the steering wheel at the classic ten and two o’clock positions—keeping them right where she could see them. Nikki surveyed the backseat to make sure he was alone, also saw that there were no weapons around him. She didn’t notice any drones, either. When Heat looked at his face, he was smiling. She was struck by how much he looked just like his sketch.

  Eric Vreeland seemed quite at ease seated with his hands loosely clasped on the table in Interrogation One. He wore a well-cut off-the-rack suit and one of those French-blue shirts that you still saw around but which had been more standard issue for the MBAs who had been released to roam lower Manhattan about ten years before. His hair was the shadow of another time as well, and the way Heat handicapped it, she figured he was about a year from either plugs or a shave, with a possible intermediate stop for Julius Caesar bangs before a confrontation with denial forced the Big Decision.

  “Are we just going to sit here like this?” he said at last. “I’m not getting any younger.”

  It’s like your reading my mind, Nikki thought, noticing the horizontal line above his gut, a dent made by the male shapewear she had felt when she frisked him back in Throggs Neck. “Ball’s in your court, Mr. Vreeland. All you have to do is start answering some of my questions, and we can move this right along.”

  His response was to scope himself briefly in the magic mirror, then study his hands. Nikki made out the ghost of an absent wedding band, completing her midlife assessment of one Eric Vreeland.

  One the other side of the mirror, in the Observation Room, Rook stepped in to find Raley and Ochoa watching the interview through the glass. “Aw, hell, she started without me.”

  “Snooze, you lose, homes,” said Ochoa.

  “For your information, home-away-from-home skillet, I was anything but snoozing. I made a call to one of my contacts to see what I could scare up about Timothy Maloney.”

  “Whadja get?” asked Raley.

  “Time will tell. Just laying my groundwork.” The lull in Interrogation One matched the uncomfortable silence between the partners in the Ob room. Rook turreted his head back and forth from Raley to Ochoa, who had mutually created a gulf between them by standing at opposite ends of the window. “Anything I can do to help you guys?”

  Ochoa said, “Just keep turning over rocks with your contacts like you are. Maybe one will pay off.”

  “I don’t mean help you with the case. I mean help you with this.” He held his hands apart as if to measure the di
stance between them. “You think nobody notices the tension? Maybe you two need to go out and get drunk. Or go to a movie. Or get drunk at a movie, I’ve done that—although, it was at a porn theater, purely for research on an article. I mean, why else would I pay money to see Lord of the Cock Rings? That’s not even subtle, is it?” He paused. “I seem to have lost you.”

  “It’s not that you lost me,” said Raley. “I just don’t want to talk about it. Some things are not for open conversation. For instance, you don’t see us commenting on whatever’s going on between you and Heat.”

  That took Rook plenty aback. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Raley smirked. “There you go. That’s how you keep people from getting into your shit. Deny and clam up.”

  Eric Vreeland’s voice came on the speakers, and they turned their attention back to the box. Rook, however, did so with his attention suddenly divided by Raley’s remark.

  “My lawyer’s on the way. You think I’m going to say anything about anything without her here?”

  In fact, as patient as she was playing it, hoping the man would feel uncomfortable with the silences, Heat was quite aware of the ticking clock, and of the need to move things forward before the attorney showed. She transitioned to impatience. “That’s how it works for you scumbags. Do what you please, create your own morality, even break the law because you have something bigger on your side: money and the lawyers it buys.”

  “What the hell?” Finally some reaction. He put his hands in his lap and dried his palms on his thighs. “I am a licensed private investigator.”

  “On record as being on retainer to SwiftRageous, LLC.”

  “So? Just one of many clients. And what’s with ‘scumbag’? I have no problem with what I do.”

  “Let’s talk about what you do.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “We’ll see. What is your interest in Lon King?”

  “Who?”

  “Sampson Stallings?”

  “Who?”

  “Nathan Levy.”

  “I’m lost here.”

  “Nathan Levy. I just followed you on his street.”

  Vreeland’s face was all innocence. “Did I even know that? I was going for a drive. Nice day, thought I’d check out that new Jack Nicklaus course The Donald is building. I saw you following me—an obvious cop, come on—so I pulled over. Now, for reasons I don’t understand, here I am. Waiting for my very, very good lawyer.”

  Conversation wasn’t going where she wanted it to, but at least he was talking. Heat kept pounding. “What did you do with the materials you stole from that apartment on Roosevelt Island?”

  “Whose apartment? What materials?”

  Before she could press more, the door opened and Helen Miksit tromped in. She didn’t bother to sit. The blockily built lawyer had accessorized her tweed St. John with a matching frown, and it was all Nikki’s. “Heat, I thought I trained you better than this. Hey, Eric. Don’t get too comfortable.” As a former hardball prosecutor and now as one of the city’s top criminal defense attorneys, Miksit was a badger in court, and in Nikki’s unhappy personal experience, bare knuckles in the station house. “This interview is over.”

  “Not your call, counselor.” Heat remained seated facing Vreeland, signaling a delicate operation that could not be interrupted. Nobody told the lawyer.

  “Bullshit. You have charges?”

  “Not yet. But a man who encountered your client in his apartment is coming down to ID him.”

  Miksit brought out her crass sarcasm. “Oh, so you’ve got him tried and convicted already. Why don’t we just hook him up to Old Sparky and fry him for the Lindbergh kidnapping?”

  This time, Heat rose and turned to face the hard-ass squarely. “He’s not going anywhere, Helen. Not until I place him in a lineup for my eyewitness.”

  “That’s fine.” Miksit plunked her giant briefcase on the table and took a seat. “We’ll just wait out your little process so we can bail him.”

  Heat sat back down. “I want to talk to him first.”

  “You already did. Thank you for your interest.” The lawyer reclined in her seat with a smug grin that made Heat hate all lawyers. For now, this one would do.

  Heat told Raley and Ochoa to set up a lineup to include Eric Vreeland, PI for Sampson Stallings, then went to her office to put in a call that begged to be made.

  “Will Mr. Swift know what this call is about, Captain?” asked the assistant.

  “You writing this down?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Tell Mr. Swift I just arrested his private investigator for breaking into the home of a homicide victim and I want to know why he sent him there.” There was a gap of dead air and Nikki thought she heard a click. “Hello, did you get that?” Heat assumed she’d been hung up on, but then there was a sudden rush of street bustle followed by the voice of Tangier Swift.

  “Nikki Heat, you should work for me in sales. You sure know how to get your foot in a door.”

  “So does Eric Vreeland,” she said, neither flattered nor charmed. “And since he does work for you, we need to talk again. And soon.”

  On Heat’s drive to Tribeca for her second meeting with Tangier Swift, she mulled the notion of Eric Vreeland as a possible killer. On one level, it felt so right. High-level men like Swift relied on lowlife cockroaches like Vreelend to do the heavy lifting. So the PI—or operative, or fixer, or whatever the polite designation was for the scummy art of “making it so”—had instantly become the shortest distance between the combative software magnate and the inconvenient whistle-blowers who were threatening to shut him down.

  But what seemed initially such a good fit raised doubts on examination. Eric Vreeland was unarmed at his capture. His hands and clothing tested negative for gunshot residue. He claimed he knew nothing about drones other than seeing on TV that they might be delivering pizza someday. Whether that was a lie or not, there was no drone or drone controller in his car. Plus, he was apprehended heading to Levy’s home after the attack. Was Vreeland going back to finish the job, or was he simply planning surveillance or light break-in work on his boss’s behalf?

  Heat couldn’t recall a case with so many moving parts, so many orbiting elements begging to connect without hinting at their apparent relationships. The whistle-blowers going after Swift—the alleged auto-safety violator—was clear enough, of course. But why would a high-stratum billionaire bother killing his accusers when he employed lawyers to handle such problems as a matter of course? And how did a mobster like Tomasso Nicolosi figure in? He was plenty lethal, for sure. But murder to collect a gambling debt could be ruled out by his own logic. Even if he were brought in to arrange a contract killing by Swift or someone else, both the drone and the proving ground car crash seemed well above Fat Tommy’s beer-fart level of sophistication. What Heat did know was that the only way to find the links she needed was to keep asking questions and continue observing. And keeping her head in the swirl of everything else going on during the first week of her new job.

  Which would break first, she wondered, the case or her?

  Heat skipped the valet, slid her NYPD dash talker under the windshield, and left her car curbside at The Greenwich. Robert DeNiro’s upscale hotel was an easy walk from Rook’s loft and, over the past year, the two of them had eaten their weight in papardelle with lamb ragù at the embedded restaurant, Locanda Verde.

  The Drawing Room at The Greenwich lived up to its name: quiet, tastefully decorated, and for guests only. Tangier Swift must have had a room there, or just booked one for the day so he could have the meeting where his whim took him. The concierge ushered Heat in, and she found the tycoon in the corner nook by the fireplace speed-swiping his iPad screen. He set it aside when she approached. “Don’t mean to put it in your face. Unlike New York City’s, my technology still works. Let me know if I can Google anything for you.”

  Nikki didn’t miss a beat. “Sure thing. Why don’t you run a search for pri
vate eyes who do B&E work for dot-com billionaires? See if you get any hits.”

  “You won’t be deterred, will you?”

  She sat down and looked at him with a level gaze. “Count on it.”

  “I’m surprised you came alone. Is Jameson Rook out beating the bushes and/or cesspools for new targets of his ‘journalism’?” Swift actually made air quotes around the word with his fingers. Heat didn’t need to spend her interview capital defending her fiancé, and stayed on point.

  “The next time we meet, Mr. Swift, we may not be in such an agreeable setting. The way I see it going, you may not even be wearing a belt or shoelaces.”

  “Oh, man, that’s hilarious. Are you really trying to intimidate me? Really?” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “What world do you live in, Captain?” He didn’t form air quotes around her rank, but it sure sounded like it. “Do you even think this is your meeting? That I wanted to sit down and let you browbeat me with your fantasy probes and conspiracy theories?”

  That made Nikki wonder why he had agreed to meet. She turned to see if she had been set up for something. They had the room to themselves…and rough stuff at The Greenwich? Not likely.

  “Here is how I will enlighten you. When you dare to walk the global stage as I do—And yes, I began as a dot-com billionaire, what can I do?—You build it, they come, they pay. Oh, mama, do they pay. Anyhow, when you have a profile like mine you are a constant target for unrelenting bottom-feeders out to suck up a chunk of your hard-won fortune. It comes in many ways, and it is nonstop. Patent trolls, intellectual-rights theft, class action lawsuits, and yes, spurious claims about wrongful injury and death caused by one of my myriad products. Key word here: spurious. So what do I do? I write a lot of checks. My lawyers call it go-away money, to make the bottom-feeders do what? Go away.

  “But some claims are so egregious that I need to take extra steps to protect myself, and I do that in a number of ways, one of which is to engage the services of what is called a fixer. You might say ‘an operative.’ You might say ‘private detective.’ I say, prudent. So let us leave it there with the understanding that I am not going to yield to you—and certainly not to the litigation trolls—and apologize for taking prudent action against bogus attacks by employing an interventionist.”