Driving Heat

  Heat needed to move the needle, or at least to try. She quit her laptop, rose from the dining table, and discovered yesterday’s celebration bottle of the Sancerre in the fridge. After pouring a generous glass, she folded herself onto the couch in the library, a cozy alcove Rook had defined with freestanding bookcases, and stared out over the Tribeca rooftops. Between her and Battery Park, almost close enough to touch, the new One World Trade Center’s upper floors illuminated an engulfing cloud, making it look like an angel’s halo.

  Nikki set her wineglass down untouched and admired the spire of steel and light, a gleaming, necessary statement about resiliency, bravery, and pride. Heat’s impromptu pause to consider its significance didn’t solve her problems, but it sure put them in perspective. At the very least, she decided, she would not end her first day as commander of the Twentieth Precinct in a self-manufactured funk. With a new understanding of the burdens that weighed upon the shoulders of the PCs she had served under, Wally Irons and her mentor, Captain Charles Montrose, Nikki raised her glass. Her silent toast took her back to a time when Montrose had broken out a bottle of Cutty from his desk drawer and they clinked coffee mugs at the end of a shift. She recalled his words then as if he were there to remind her of them now: “No mystery to this job, Heat. Embrace every problem. Because they are the job.”

  Easier said…The pressures of command relentlessly carved out chunks of her beloved skipper’s soul, and it also didn’t escape Heat that she was filling the shoes of two men who had both died on said job. So there was one thing to avoid.

  Maybe Nikki couldn’t exactly embrace the Rook problem, but she would have to live with it. Raley had nailed it: Their careers were bound to make them smack heads sometimes. And that gave Heat a choice. Live in constant inner hell or accept the fact of an occasionally conflicted life.

  OK, fine, she thought. But why today, my first day?

  With a sense of renewed balance, if not of buoyancy, she drank her wine standing in the great window, taking a quiet moment to watch the streets reflect neon candy colors as a soft shower passed through Lower Manhattan. Nikki brought her glass up to drain it and, when she brought it down, caught sight of a man in a baseball cap standing on the near corner, staring up at her. She couldn’t make out his features, which were cast in silhouette against the shimmer from the wet streets. She wondered if Detective Feller had begun his assignment of tailing Rook early. But Heat couldn’t be sure that the figure had Randall’s physique, even though there was something familiar about him.

  Maloney?

  Heat retreated one step back into the shadows and observed the man. In that light, she couldn’t be certain, but he seemed to be still watching her. Nikki picked up her BlackBerry from the coffee table and texted Roach, asking whether they had Maloney under surveillance. Raley and Ochoa immediately group-texted that he hadn’t returned to his apartment. Apparently he had slipped his leash. By the time Heat looked up from the screen, the man was gone.

  The next morning, Rook was already in the kitchen when Nikki came out from her shower, dressed for work. “You’re not fooling me, you know,” he said as he leaned across the counter and poured a cup of French roast into the mug beside his. Nikki tensed a little, wondering if he had overheard her call to Feller giving him a heads-up that she and Rook would be leaving separately, and that Rook would probably hail a cab or hitch a Hitch! But then he came around to her beaming a self-satisfied grin. “I pay attention. No uniform today. How good am I?”

  “Plus-ten for you, Rook.” Heat slipped her Sig onto the waistband of her jeans and gave the holster a security tug.

  “What’s the matter? Didn’t like the way the kids made fun of you at school yesterday?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “One mobster says you look like you’re in the St. Paddy’s Parade, and you change everything? I thought you were made of stouter stuff, Ms. Heat. Or is it still Captain Heat? With all the denim and cashmere you have going on there, it’s, frankly, fried out a few of my circuits.”

  “It’s a choice I made.”

  “And you’re allowed to just do that? Aren’t there regulations about what you folks wear?”

  “Sure, but there’s room for discretion.” She added some Equal to her coffee; he stirred it. “Spending another day doing detective work in full regalia isn’t something I’m going to do.”

  “So it was Fat Tommy’s smack talk.”

  “Fat Tommy can bite my ass.”

  He gave his eyebrows a Groucho flicker, and bent for a salacious look-see. “And in those jeans, who wouldn’t want to?”

  “Rook.”

  “Fat Tommy’d have to take a number. And who’d be first? Me. Doing an Ickey shuffle like the big man himself at the cold cuts counter. ‘Whoo! I’m next. I am gonna bite Nikki’s ass.’”

  Heat laughed so hard she had to set her mug down. And while she caught her breath, the thought surfaced again about calling off the tail. A short-lived waver, as it turned out.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m going to have to split off from you today. Don’t ask why, OK? I’m not answering.”

  “Are you shopping for a wedding venue?”

  “No.” He slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Dang. Got me. I said I wasn’t answering.” But Rook’s impishness faded when he saw her all-business stare.

  “You do what you have to do, Rook. And I will do what I have to.”

  “Ooh. Chilly in here.”

  “Just giving you fair warning. This cuts two ways. You’re holding. I’m digging. Someone put a bullet in a member of the police family. My shrink. And your…?” She left the thought hanging there, giving him ample chance to Mad Lib the blank. But he didn’t, so she pulled a go cup from the cabinet and poured her coffee into it.

  “You’re not staying for breakfast?” he asked.

  “I have a breakfast meeting with a business leader from the precinct.” She slid on her blazer and gave him a kiss. “Guess I’ll see you when I see you.”

  “I like it better when we do this together.”

  “Me too,” she said. And meant it.

  On her way out the door, her BlackBerry chimed with a text. She read it and popped her head back in. “If you’re interested, Lon King’s partner just came home from a run and found someone inside their apartment.”

  “Interested,” he said, and pulled down another go cup.

  The sidewalks were fresh smelling and still damp from the overnight rain as they walked from his building, both working their devices. He was moving his mystery meeting to later; she was calling off her breakfast and getting ready to text Randy Feller about the change of plans.

  “Nothing like an April shower to wash that urine-y fragrance away, huh?” he said as he pocketed his cell. But then Rook stopped short. Nikki jerked to a halt beside him. Both stood astonished by what they saw.

  Around the corner on Reade, where they had left it parked after dinner, someone had key-etched the paint on Heat’s new Malibu and flattened all four tires. She recovered quickly and checked the doors, which were still locked, and found that nothing inside had been disturbed. Heat turned around in a circle, first to see if any other cars had been vandalized (none had been) and second, to see if the perpetrator had hung around to enjoy the impact of his work (nobody took any notice except passers-by).

  Heat was mainly interested in one person. And she would personally brace ex-Detective Timothy James Maloney about this later.

  “Want me to hitch a Hitch!?” asked Rook.

  “Yeah, maybe we should. Or just hail a cab.”

  “Never mind. Look,” he said then whistled and waved both arms. “There’s Randall Feller. How fucking lucky is that?”

  Heat tried to act surprised as Detective Feller—totally made—responded to the street hail and pulled up beside them in his undercover Taurus. Jameson Rook, the conspiracy theorist’s conspiracy theorist, said it must be Kismet—as he called shotgun.

  The only one who seemed to be enjoying t
he ride was Rook. Nikki hid under the radar in the backseat, finding it easier there to mask her tells—to avoid inadvertently revealing by her expression that it was in fact no coincidence that, with 508 linear miles of road in Manhattan, one of her detectives had just happened to be happening by the spot where they had been standing. Feller worked his jaw muscles behind the wheel, no doubt calculating how long it would take to live down getting eyeballed on a stakeout by the journalist everyone knew he had written off as a dilettante showboater.

  When Rook asked what had brought Randy to Tribeca, Nikki jumped in like a rodeo clown. “I’m going to have to call in the ten-thirty-nine on my vehicle.”

  “Yeah, and who fucks with a cop’s ride?” asked Feller, continuing the redirect.

  Rook, now on their track, speculated. “Maybe he or she didn’t know it was a police car.”

  “First of all, bro,” said Feller, “let me explain something to you. They call these undercover? But get real. Every miscreant on the street knows what they are a block away.”

  “Plus I had my courtesy plaque on the dash,” Heat said, adding, “I think I know who it was.” The two up front listened intently as Heat described her sighting from the window the night before.

  “You should have called it in,” said Feller.

  “I did. At least I know Roach did right after I texted them to see if Maloney was buttoned down or not. Before I went to bed I saw three cruisers from the First Precinct gridding the neighborhood.”

  Rook said, “He must have done your car beforehand.”

  “Or after,” countered Feller. “Maloney’s a sick fuck, but he’s got skills. I heard from the Spliff about how he outplayed you in the park uptown. A guy with a head like that probably saw the blue-and-whites and figured he’d leave his mark, and fuck you.”

  “The Spliff?” asked Rook.

  “Roach,” explained the detective with a sneer of condescension.

  “Ah…a nickname for a nickname.” Rook nodded and smiled. But then he twisted around to one side of his headrest to address Nikki. “But why do this to you?”

  “I think it’s kinda in the diagnosis,” she said. “Paranoid personality disorder?”

  “But wait a minute. It was my loft he was outside of in the middle of the night. You don’t suppose he’s got some fixation on me because I took him down, do you?” When Feller cackled, Rook shot back, “That’s right, Randall, I took him down. And now, he’s put me on his crazy payback list.”

  “But it was her car.”

  “Let’s all be clear, I’m not sure it was Maloney I saw. And whether it’s me or Rook or both of us he wants to hassle, I say, bring it on.”

  Roosevelt Island takes some work to get to, which is part of its appeal. The needle of land in the middle of the East River has one F train subway stop and an aerial tramway hoisting passengers across the river from 2nd Avenue. But if you want to arrive by car, the only option is to drive over the bridge from 36th Avenue out of Long Island City. Detective Feller’s Taurus came off that span and made the turn north on Main for the quarter-mile ride to Blackwell’s Landing, a luxury apartment tower on the island’s north end.

  They found a spot beside the pair of patrol cars in the parking lot and walked a flagstone path lined by daffodils and tulips toward the lobby. “Definitely a two-income building,” said Feller, taking in the neatly groomed lawn, the blossoming trees, and the whisper-quiet grounds that surrounded the high-rise of tinted glass and modular concrete panels. Like most of the residential complexes on the island, this one felt like a suburban college campus or an Olympic Village.

  The concierge regarded their badges gravely as they entered and escorted them across parchment-colored terrazzo tiles to the elevator, saying only “Tenth floor,” in a tone of profound sadness that could only have come from hospitality training.

  When Heat and Rook stepped into the elevator, Feller palmed the door open from the outside. “Listen, you got it from here, right?” He punctuated the remark with a glance toward Heat and added, “I got a thing I gotta do.”

  “Yes, the thing,” she said. “Go to. We’ll find our own way back to the precinct.”

  “Oh, but I’m not going to the precinct after,” said Rook. “I, too, have a thing.” The buzzer started to protest their holding the door open. “Never mind, I’ll work it out. See you, Randy.”

  As the elevator door closed, they heard Feller mutter, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  A sergeant from the Public Safety Department let them into the apartment. Because the city leased Roosevelt Island to the State of New York, the crime scene fell under its jurisdiction, and Heat was there as a guest. After she had badged and logged in, a Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department detective led her and Rook from the foyer to the living room, where they found Sampson Stallings hunched forward on the couch with his back to them. The room was a sunlit and airy showplace with a high vaulted ceiling and broad windows that looked onto a breathtaking panorama of the river and the Upper East Side to the west and the landmark Octagon to the north. Both views were lost on Lon King’s partner, whose head hung in grief.

  Stallings rose to shake their hands and invited them to sit. Heat, who had her own connection to violent loss, expressed her condolences, which only caused his bloodshot eyes to glisten anew. He smiled bravely, but his lips, framed by the tight salt-and-pepper curls of his goatee, quivered, betraying the miserable imprint of heartbreak.

  Rook stayed out of the conversation, letting Nikki lead Stallings to share reminiscences about his life partner of a decade. Business would come soon enough; she understood that every investigation had a heart, too. “Thank you for listening to me go on,” he said, plucking a tissue from the box on the coffee table, which caused Nikki to observe that Lon King had set up his living room a lot like his practice, right down to the Kleenex placement. “It feels better to talk.”

  “A page out of the Lon King playbook.”

  He gave her an appraisal. “You knew him?”

  She smiled. “Probably more accurate to say he knew me. Dr. King didn’t give up a lot.”

  “You should have tried living with him.” Stallings let out a laugh, then retreated from it as if in shame.

  “So he never mentioned me?” When he shook his head no, she said, “What about other patients, clients…”

  “No, as I mentioned to the detective yesterday…”

  “Detective Aguinaldo?”

  “Yes, nice woman. As I told her, Lonnie was very discreet. Oh, once in a while, he’d share a story—a doozer, he’d call them, usually funny—but never a name. It wouldn’t have meant anything to me, anyway.”

  “He never mentioned them, even if they threatened him?”

  “Lon kept it all locked down, you understand?” He made a tamping gesture with his slender artist’s hands.

  Rook joined in with a question that seemed to Heat more than just something out of left field. “Sampson, did Lon ever mention someone offering him money to talk about his clients or cases?”

  “Well, he had some serious debt issues, we know that. From his gambling. But he would never, never cross an ethical line and sell out his patients.”

  “I believe that,” said Rook. “But my question is, did anyone ever try to induce him to?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Rook nodded to Heat, signaling that was all he wanted to ask. His question gave her pause. Why the hell was he sniffing around a potential bribe? Was this related to some critical piece of information he was holding back on? Her anger started to rekindle, but she set it aside. Something to deal with later. Nikki brought the conversation back to her own agenda.” Do you mind going over what happened this morning again?” Stallings shook his head no and sipped some water from a CamelBak bottle. Heat gestured to the RIPSD man sitting on the bar-stool near the kitchen. “I know you already told the detective.”

  “That’s fine, I understand.”

  “The report I got was that you confronted an intruder here?” br />
  Stallings nodded and gestured to the running clothes he was wearing. “This morning, I got up and laced up my New Balances.” As if to excuse this self-indulgence, he explained, “We all handle our shit differently. When he got stressed, Lonnie paddled. Me, I pound pavement. He used to call it my cleansing run. So I went out, did my route—well, as much as I could.” His lip trembled again. He diverted their attention by gesturing across the river. “I do a circuit from here to the tram to warm up, then along the East River Walk over there just past Gracie Mansion, and back. It all came crashing down on me on the tram and I couldn’t stop weeping. I got off and hopped on the next one back. When I went to put my key in the door, it was ajar.” He measured a quarter inch with his thumb and forefinger. “I thought, maybe I got distracted from the trauma and all, and got careless, but when I pushed the door, some guy’s right there. He trips me and shoves me to the floor and books it down the stairwell. I’m pretty fast, but by the time I got it together to chase him, he was gone.”

  “And nothing’s missing?” she asked.

  Stallings shook his head no. “Before you arrived, the detective and I did a walk-through of the whole place. I don’t see anything disturbed, and the burglar didn’t have anything in his hands.”

  Nikki asked him for the beginning and end times of his run and, after she made a note, asked, “You called it your circuit. Was it your routine every day?”

  “Yeah, five days a week. I’m sort of compulsive about it.”

  “So, it’s possible,” said Rook, “that someone was watching this place to get to know your routines and thought he had time to get in and out. But you surprised him by cutting it short, and he didn’t have time to get what he wanted.”

  “Or he got it, and it was in his pocket,” added Heat. “Do you know where Lon kept his flash drives?”