Driving Heat

by Richard Castle

  “I am not jealous of her.”

  “Good. Then what is this tension? The promotion?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’ve seen how the pressure of the new job has been working on you.”

  “Don’t do that. Minimize me by saying I’m not up for my own job now.”

  “It’s only human. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and all that. It has to go somewhere. I can take it.”

  And with that came ignition. “Well, aren’t you the noble martyr. Rook, this isn’t bimbo jealousy, or work stress. You know what it is? Me, sick of you acting out like a sophomoric prince, feeling no accountability and taking no responsibility. As usual, it’s all about you.”

  He held up a palm. “Hey, now—”

  “What, coming a bit too close to home?” Nikki still could have stopped, but dry acreage was being consumed and she had crossed the firebreak. “If all this crap you’re pulling is the death rattle of your bachelorhood, I don’t want to have to stand by and watch it. Let me know when you’re done, or let’s ask ourselves where this relationship is really going.”

  Heat left Rook slack-jawed and speechless on the corner while she stormed back toward the police station, the sting of regret already spreading in her heart. Halfway there, she slowed and almost turned back. She thought about running to him for a reset, to start the conversation again and work this out. But Nikki couldn’t bear to have him see her tears.

  When Heat stepped out of the women’s room from washing her face and composing herself, raucous laughter drew her to the homicide bull pen. It sounded as if Detective Feller was being taunted by the squad. But when she entered, he was the one laughing the loudest as Ochoa pinched his nose theatrically and Raley and Rhymer fanned the air around Randall with open manila files, calling him “Sasquatch” and “stink ape” and chuckling like frat boys on keg night.

  Glad to see some tension getting siphoned off, Nikki eased into the squad room so she wouldn’t quell the fun with the shadow of her authority. But watching Feller’s pals needle him over his grubby beard, ripe clothes, and greasy hat-hair from his extended stakeout only brought more weight to Nikki’s sadness over her blowup with Rook. Things settled, either because they were all laughed out or had caught sight of their captain. “Don’t let me interrupt the horseplay,” she said.

  “Horse is right,” called Detective Rhymer. “You getting a good whiff of Secretariat here?” Which kicked off another volley of name-calling and guffaws.

  When that had died down, Feller told Heat that his lack of grooming came with a payoff. “I got me my man,” he said with some pride. “Fat Tommy’s persuader.”

  “You nabbed Joseph Barsotti? Good for you,” she said. “He finally show up at Fortuna’s Wheel?”

  “I gave up on that place after the first night with no action. I figured Fat Tommy had probably let it be known there’d be some attention after Lon King got killed.” He paused. “I really do stink, don’t I?”

  Heat took a half step back. “You’re…fine.”

  “With RTCC and the other databases down I couldn’t check on vice harassment complaints, so I went old-school and started making a surveillance circuit of some of the skin clubs Fat Tommy has a hand in. This afternoon, broad daylight, during the generously titled Gentlemen’s Fashion Lunch at one of the titty bars in East Harlem, I spot Barsotti in the parking lot kicking the snot out of some showgirl in a bathrobe. The dancer’s up at Metropolitan getting stitches. Barsotti’s in Interrogation Two.”

  Through the glass of the observation room Joseph Barsotti projected the calm you only see in the conscience-free. Dead eyes, a dead stare, and a mind that had parked its body and gone elsewhere because whatever had to be endured would simply be endured as the bargain made with life and the capo. “How’d you like that to be your collection agency?” asked Feller. It wasn’t likely that the enforcer could hear through the mirror, but Barsotti rotated his chin toward them and, with those vacant eyes, it felt like he took an X-ray through the glass to add targets to his list. Randall shivered. “Whoa, chilly.”

  Heat felt her iPhone vibrate. To her relief, Rook had replied to her previous text message suggesting that they meet for dinner. “To continue the conversation,” as Nikki had put it. Her torment easing slightly, she set aside her cell and said, “Randy, I want you to have the honors.”

  “Truly?”

  “You bagged him, you work him.”

  This gesture by the captain, stepping aside to let the detective handle his own interrogation, added an inch to Feller’s height. “Thank you. He’s only going to keep it shut, you know.”

  “You never know. Maybe he’ll buckle under the stink.” She left for her office to return calls and make a dent in the mountain of forms she had to complete on the typewriter that had been resurrected from the basement. At least it was electric.

  As a professional courtesy, the USPS cop watching the postal truck garage on the north side of Roosevelt Station waved Captain Heat into the driveway and pointed her to a safe spot to park beside one of the idle loading docks. Nikki didn’t like to call in PCs, but relentless administrative grappling hooks had snagged her on her way out of the precinct, and she didn’t want to keep Rook waiting while she hunted for a public space. Or, to be more honest, she wanted to get there first so she could settle herself down. Shame had started to shuffle into her emotional mix, as if sadness and regret about her outburst weren’t enough.

  A chilly fog had settled over Manhattan, and Nikki waited for the cone-shaped beam of headlights to pass before she jaywalked from the Midtown East mail center across 55th Street to the restaurant. P. J. Clarke’s, a landmark Irish pub frequented over the years by everyone from Sinatra to Hedy Lamarr to Buddy Holly, occupied the ground floor of a two-story brick building squatting between modern high-rises on 3rd Avenue. Less known, and in Heat’s view, the better for it, a sister restaurant, a warm, clubby steakhouse named the Sidecar, lived on the second floor at P. J. Clarke’s. Part of its mystique was the speakeasy entrance on the sidewalk near the back marked by a small, unassuming sign jutting out above a black door. It gave Nikki a Gotham-throwback feel every time she approached the nondescript entrance, pressed the silent door buzzer, and presented her face to the lipstick camera until the hostess upstairs buzzed her in.

  Nikki climbed the double flight of stairs past the curated memorabilia adorning the walls beside vintage Yankees team photos and framed newspaper pages of Mayor LaGuardia, big-band crooners, and last-century prizefighters. Nikki pushed open the door from the stairwell into the festive, muted bustle of the restaurant. The hostess greeted her warmly, but Heat looked past her, surveying the dark wooden bar and the banquettes for Rook. Both disappointed and relieved, Heat said she’d wait to be seated until her other party arrived. The woman moved off to retrieve coats, and Nikki reflexively checked her watch. Somehow, she’d gotten there a minute early. She heard the nearly inaudible purr of the door buzzer and craned over the podium at the surveillance monitor, and there he was, Jameson Rook, smiling up at the lipstick camera, from Heat’s perspective, directly at her. It beat the look she’d gotten from Barsotti thorough the interrogation glass. It beat a lot of things.

  Then everything changed. And in a hurry.

  On the monitor, Rook swiveled casually to look back over his shoulder, as if making room for other diners, who were out of the frame of the picture. But, as he turned back, two pairs of hands reached in to the frame and grabbed him. The whole thing startled Nikki for an instant, as if the speakeasy monitor had flipped channels to some primetime cop show. But the image was both real and in real time. As Rook struggled and was dragged out of the picture, Heat shouted, “NYPD, call 911!” and yanked open the door.

  Hopping down the stairs two at a time, Nikki raced down the first flight but missed a step on the turn and stumbled onto the floor of the landing. Without bothering to stand up, she let the momentum of the fall carry her on a roll down the lower flight, regaining her footing
on the fly halfway down, and was quickly out the door and on the sidewalk.

  Her first glance was to the left, in the direction where she had seen Rook being dragged away. But there was no sign of him there, and no reason to think that was the right direction to go—unless they had taken Rook into the lobby of the office building next door, which seemed unlikely. When she swung her view right, she heard yelling and a woman screaming just as she saw the backs of two large men struggling to drag Rook around the corner of 3rd Avenue.

  She sprinted after them, calling behind her, “NYPD! Officer needs help!” in hopes that the postal policeman would hear and respond. But city buses were parked along that block, and she couldn’t count on being heard—or seen—over them.

  Heat came upon the two men, working to get a hard-fighting Rook into the back of a family-style van. He had the sense to spread his arms and legs to make it more difficult for them to get him inside, even though the big men would eventually surely prevail. Heat drew her Sig Sauer and, just as she was about to call for a freeze, a pro wrestler–sized guy standing beside her, one she hadn’t counted, spun, executing an arm bar that clotheslined her to the pavement and sent her pistol clacking into the gutter. She went for the man’s legs instead of her weapon, but her angle of leverage sucked. It felt like slamming into a tree trunk. He slipped free and brought a leg back to deliver a kick, but she log-rolled to one side and his shoe only grazed the meat of her upper arm.

  The blur of feet and pants legs at ground level told Nikki they had gotten Rook inside the vehicle. She lunged for her gun and took a soccer kick behind her ear. Heat’s vision faded out. Her head came down on concrete, and in her swirl of nausea and blindness all she could hear was running footsteps, a door sliding and slamming, and the squeal of tires disappearing up 3rd Avenue with Rook inside going God knows where.

  Nikki Heat burst through the door of the homicide bull pen full bore, calling out assignments even before she had cleared the threshold. Even though it was after 10:00 P.M., Raley and Ochoa had mustered the entire crew and the squad was operating at full capacity. Rhymer and Aguinaldo had canceled their evening plans to rally for the captain. Even Detective Feller, bleary, unshaven, but in fresh clothes, had zombied in and was already working the phones. Nikki would take him on his worst day. Or, in this case, hers.

  “Roach. The BOLO on our silver minivan hasn’t turned up crap. Call in an extra shift of blue-and-whites to get out there and supplement existing patrols. Screw the overtime, I want eyeballs on the streets. Now.” Raley rushed to his desk to make the call. Heat turned to Ochoa. “Miguel, air support. Verify how many copters they have working this. If there is even one chopper sitting on the ground, let me know, and I’ll call the chief personally. We’ve already got two bodies, we are not going to let this man be a third.”

  As Heat continued barking out assignments, everyone sprang to action; no one was bothered by the hard edge she had brought into the station house with her. Rook had been violently abducted. Rook. One of their own. Their friend. Her damn fiancé. Every detective knew this was no time for niceties; these were the critical hours to beat the bushes for leads. Everything else was wasted energy that could cost him his life.

  “FBI for you, Captain,” said the night switchboard op from the hall. “I put it through to your office phone.”

  She lunged across her desk to grab the phone. “This is Heat, who have I got?”

  “Captain, it’s Special Agent Jordan Delaney, FBI.”

  “I called you people twice.”

  “I’m in my car now heading to Federal Plaza to meet my task force. I just got the case. And I’m with you. We don’t want to burn any time.”

  “Then let’s not.” Nikki was redlining at top rpm’s and wasn’t about to slow for anyone, not even the FBI. She bulleted Delaney through the event as it had gone down, detailing the before, during, and after of the 3rd Avenue street grab along with all the descriptions she had, including two of the abductors and the partial plate she had been able to spot from the gutter. “Detective Raley from my precinct is en route to the restaurant at this very moment to secure their speakeasy cam video.”

  “I want it, too,” said the agent.

  “Done. You’ll have a copy within the hour.” She then filled Delaney in on the measures they had taken so far: the BOLO, the canvassing for eyewitnesses near the intersection where the grab had gone down, the extra manpower on the streets, plus the frequent calls they kept making to Rook’s cell phone. “I’ve assigned a detective to go to his loft to get his laptop so we can activate the Find My iPhone feature.”

  “Save him the trip. We’ve already pulled Jameson Rook’s cell number and run our own ping on the StingRay network,” said the FBI agent. “Nothing. Apparently his SIM card’s been disabled or removed from the device.” The implications of that shot a lightning bolt of fresh panic through Nikki. She nearly had to sit down but clamped a lid on that shit and kept it together. “Captain, are you there?”

  “What about street cams?” She came back with extra bite in her voice—trying not to see the mental picture of those goons wrestling Rook’s cell phone from him. “The cyber attack has rendered our cams NG. Do you feds have any visual tracking capability?”

  “No.”

  “Or aren’t you cleared to tell me?”

  “I understand your frustration.”

  “Like hell you do.”

  Either this guy Delaney was an experienced agent or he had no pulse. He paused to absorb her rebuke, then continued evenly. “It’s put us in a box, too. I understand you have a close relationship with Mr. Rook, am I right?”

  “He’s my fiancé.”

  “Damn. Then let me assure you, Captain Heat, you have my word—this is family—I’m not going to hold anything back.”

  “Thank you, Agent Delaney.” Her conciliatory tone barely masked the flames of urgency blazing underneath.

  “You got it.” He paused, and she could hear his turn signal before he continued. “Your fiancé is quite well known and, unfortunately, journalists are big targets these days, and not just on foreign soil.”

  Heat’s patience for a what-if dance of potential scenarios was zero, so she interrupted. “Let me save us both some time here and get to it. This was not some symbolic jihadi grab of a reporter. I know exactly what triggered this.”

  “Go,” said Delaney.

  Nikki told him about the case her team was working, and especially encouraged the agent to make a hard run at Tangier Swift, who topped her list for motive and means. As a longshot number two, she included Timothy Maloney, who had been stalking her and had motive to harm Rook as a means of personal retribution, crazy as that would be.

  “Let me do some seat-of-the-pants profiling,” said Delaney. “You’re talking about a lone wolf ex-cop with psych issues. Paranoia, for starters.”

  Heat nodded to herself. “I’m right there with you. I’m not seeing Maloney with the organizational chops to pull off an operation like the one I witnessed.”

  “But he’s viable as a number-two. Got it.” Nikki heard the turn signal again. “Listen, I’m about to hit the parking garage downtown. Get me that speakeasy video. My crew specializes in missing persons and abductions, and we’re going to put a monitor on your phones in case contact gets made—hopefully by Mr. Rook—otherwise, anyone asking for ransom. Oh. Do you need a sketch artist to work up your kidnappers?”

  “Ours just got here.”

  “Shoot me the pics. And Heat—fly close.”

  Minutes after she hung up, her landline rang again and, as always when the incoming was from Zachary Hamner’s number at One Police Plaza, she hesitated before answering. But, whether she liked the political survivor–slash–hatchet man or not, he was high up in the department, so Heat answered. And when she did, Nikki heard something she had never before heard from The Hammer: compassion. “I’m reaching out to tell you how sorry I am about Rook. But beyond that, I want to give you my pledge that we are all over this. I’ve
reached out to the FBI, but I hear you’ve already engaged—good. Keep doing what you do, we’ll do the same. And if I hear anything at all about him, you’re my first call. And if you hit any departmental obstacles, any at all, make me your first.”

  She thanked him and, as she replaced the phone on its cradle, she thought Zach had sounded almost human.

  Sitting with the police sketch artist tortured Heat with a double dose of agony. First, it forced her to sit idle for twenty minutes—excruciating, even though she knew the importance of getting the faces of those kidnappers out there. But the interval also gave her too much time to grapple with the thoughts she’d been able to avoid by keeping busy. Was he still alive? Was he suffering? Would she ever see him again? And through it all ran the deep anguish she felt over her last conversation with Rook having been a bitter argument. Out there on Columbus and 82nd, Nikki had slipped her emotional chain and gone off on him. Losing Rook would be unbearable enough. Living with a harsh quarrel as their last words would be a crushing weight borne eternally.

  She had to make sure that didn’t happen.

  As soon as the sketches were finished, Nikki bolted into the squad room, only to encounter a surprise. Raley was back from his video errand at P. J. Clarke’s, and he and Ochoa had transformed the bull pen into a Rook-abduction war room. They had called in extra detectives from Robbery-Burglary plus an extra shift of uniforms and administrative aides to facilitate logistics, make calls, and act as runners. In tandem, Roach brought Heat up to speed on status and assignments.

  “We’re going at this with a dual strategy,” began Detective Ochoa.

  Detective Raley took the handoff. “We decided our best shot to break this is to break it down. So we’re operating on two fronts: First is the immediate search for Rook. Here’s where we are with that.” He indicated a list they had posted on a new whiteboard they had rolled in. “An aide is calling his cell every ten minutes. Even though you said the SIM is inactive, it’s an easy base to cover—so why not? Next, we’ve contacted his credit card companies to monitor any usage and get us an instant alert of where and when.”