Naked Heat

by Richard Castle

  "Fat Tommy? I want to know why you didn't notify the police."

  "Hello, I think I did."

  "After she died."

  "You heard Tommy. It wasn't going to happen, anyway."

  "Except it did."

  Chester Ludlow wasn't at his Park Avenue town house, or at his penthouse office above Carnegie Hall. He was where he spent most of his time these days, enjoying the snooty insulation of the Milmar Club on Fifth Avenue, across from the Central Park Zoo.

  When Heat and Rook stepped onto the marble floor of the reception area, they trod the same ground that New York's mega-wealthy and social elite had for over a century. Within those walls Mark Twain had toasted U. S. Grant at his New York welcoming gala, when the general settled on East 66th Street after his presidency. Morgans, Astors, and Rockefellers had all danced at masked balls at the Milmar. They say Theodore Roosevelt famously broke the color code there by inviting Booker T. Washington to cocktails.

  What it lacked in relevance, it made up for in grandeur and tradition. It was a hushed, opulent place where a member could be assured of privacy and a strong highball. The Milmar stood now as an idealized fortress of postwar New York, the city of John Cheever, where men wore hats and strode out into the river of light. And, as Jameson Rook discovered, they also wore ties, one of which he chose from the coat check before he and Nikki Heat were allowed into the saloon.

  The host delivered them to the corner farthest from the bar, where the large format portrait of Grace Ludlow, matriarch of the political clan, stood in grand judgment of all she surveyed. Under that portrait, the once-great hope, now the errant son, Chester, read the Financial Times by window light.

  After they greeted each other, Rook sat beside Ludlow in a wing chair. Nikki settled opposite him on a Louis XV canape sofa and thought this sure wasn't the office at the car wash.

  Chester Ludlow neatly folded the pale salmon pages of his newspaper and picked up Heat's business card from the silver plate tray on the coffee table. "Detective Nikki Heat. That has a ring of excitement."

  What do you say to that? Thank you? So, instead, she said, "And this is my associate, Jameson Rook."

  "Oh, the writer. That explains the tie."

  Rook ran the flat of his palm down the borrowed neckwear. "Wouldn't you know? The one day you don't dress for the club."

  "Funny thing about this place, you can get in without pants but not without a tie."

  Considering the disgraced politician's undoing by sex scandals, Nikki was surprised by his comment and the size of his laugh. She looked to see if any of the members were annoyed, but the few sprinkled about the spacious, vaulted room didn't seem to even notice.

  "Mr. Ludlow," she began, "I have some questions I'd like to ask you concerning an investigation we're conducting. Would you like to go someplace more private?"

  "Doesn't get any more private than the Milmar. Besides, after the fairly public year that I've just had, I don't believe I have any more secrets."

  We shall see, thought the detective. "This brings me to what I'd like to talk to you about. I suppose you've heard that Cassidy Towne has been murdered."

  "Yes. Please tell me it was painful and unpleasant."

  Rook cleared his throat. "You do realize you're talking to a cop."

  "Yes," he said, and then flipped Nikki's card to read again. "And a homicide detective." He placed the card neatly on the sterling tray. "Do I look worried?"

  "Do you have a reason to be?" she asked.

  The politician waited, more for the effect of working an audience, and then said, "No." He reclined in his chair and smiled. He was going to let her do the work.

  "You had a history with Cassidy Towne."

  "I think it's more accurate to say that she had one with me. I'm not the one with the daily muckraking column. I'm not the one who aired my sex life in public. I'm not the parasite leeching off the misfortune and misadventures of others without so much as a care for the damage I might be doing."

  Rook jumped in. "Oh, please. Do you know how many times people get caught at something and then blame the media for reporting it?" Nikki tried to catch his eye to back off, but this pushed a button on his panel and he couldn't stay out of it. "A journalist might say she just did the raking. You were the one doing the . . . mucking."

  "And what about the days when there was nothing to report, Mr. Rook? The days upon days when there was no news, nothing new to the scandal, but that bottom-feeder printed speculation and innuendo, unearthed from 'unnamed sources' and 'insiders who overheard.' And when that wasn't enough, why not rehash events to keep my pain in the public spotlight?" Now Nikki was glad for Rook's intervening. Ludlow was coming off his cool. Maybe he would get sloppy. "Yes, so I had some sexual adventures."

  "You got caught visiting S and M parlors in Dungeon Alley."

  Ludlow was dismissive. "Look around. Is this 2010, or 1910?"

  Heat did look around. In that room, it could have been either. "If I may," she said, deciding to keep the pressure on, "you were a congressman who got elected on a family values platform and were exposed for doing everything from pony play to torture games. Your nickname on Capitol Hill was the Minority Whipped. I'm sure it didn't sit so well that it was Cassidy Towne who blew the whistle on you."

  "Unrelentingly," he hissed. "And with her, it wasn't even politically motivated. How could it be? Look at the joker they put in there to succeed me when I resigned. I had a legislative agenda. He has lunches and listening tours. No, with that bitch it was all for the ink. All for selling papers and advancing her sleazy career."

  "Makes you glad she's dead, doesn't it?" said Nikki.

  "Detective, I haven't had a drink in sixty-four days, but I may open a bottle of champagne tonight." He reached for the glass of ice water on the coffee table and took a long drink, emptying it to the cubes. He replaced it, getting his feet under him again. "But as I'm sure you know from your experience, the fact that I have a strong motivation in no way implicates me in her murder."

  "Clearly, you hated her." Rook was trying to restart him, but Chester Ludlow was back in full command.

  "Past tense. It's all behind me now. I did the sex rehab. I did the alcohol rehab. I did the anger management. And so you know? I not only won't have that champagne tonight, I didn't need to satisfy my anger at that woman by acting upon it."

  "You didn't need to." Heat went for it. "Not when you can farm out your violence to other people. Like, say, taking out a mob hit on Cassidy Towne?"

  Ludlow was smooth. He reacted but not much. It was as if someone had told him his linen blazer was out of season. "I did no such thing."

  Rook said, "We have other information."

  "Oh, I see. I never figured you to be the unnamed sources type, Mr. Rook."

  "I protect them. That's how I'm sure to get credible information."

  Ludlow stared at Rook. "It's Fat Tommy, isn't it?"

  Rook only gave him a blank stare, not about to give up a source, and especially not about to throw in Fat Tommy.

  Nikki Heat reloaded. "So I take it you are admitting you contacted Tomasso Nicolosi in your solicitation for a hit?"

  "All right," Ludlow said. "OK, I did make an inquiry. It was a relapse in my therapy. I started to fantasize and toyed with what it would take, that's all. I may not write laws anymore, but I do know there isn't one against asking a question."

  "And you want me to believe that just because Fat Tommy didn't set you up, you didn't take your business to someone else?"

  Chester Ludlow smiled. "I decided there was a better way to get revenge. I hired a private investigator from a top security firm to do a little dirt digging on Cassidy Towne. Turnabout, you see?" Or hypocrisy, she wanted to say, but she thought better than to break his flow. "Look into a certain Holly Flanders." He spelled the last name for her, but Nikki didn't write it down, didn't want to take dictation from this man.

  "And why should I look into her?"

  "I'm not going to do your work for yo
u. But you will find her intriguing in light of this case. And, Detective? Be careful. She bought a handgun ten days ago. Unlicensed, of course."

  After the trust-fund politician alibied himself at home with his wife all night, Heat and Rook left him. As they crossed to the lobby, a wisp of an old woman perched on a love seat looked up from her daiquiri. "Congratulations on your lovely magazine profile, young lady." Even with her smile, Grace Ludlow looked more fearsome than she did in her painting.

  While Rook undid his borrowed tie at the coat check, he said, "Ludlow's family has so many resources and is so well connected, he could have easily made all of this happen." The tie tangled on him and Nikki stepped in to help with the knot.

  "But here's what I don't get," she said. "Say it were him. Why steal the body?" With both wrists brushing his chest, Nikki was close enough to breathe in the scent of his cologne, subtle and clean. She looked up from the knot and met his eyes, held them briefly and then stepped away. "Looks like you're going to need scissors."

  Heat called in from the front steps of the Milmar to see if anything had turned up about her missing victim. Nothing. While she was on, Nikki ordered a check on a Holly Flanders. She also retrieved a voice mail from Roach and started walking to the car. "Let's take a ride. The boys have turned something for us."

  On the drive across the park, Rook asked her, "OK, this is bugging me. How is it you know about pony play?"

  "Does that excite you, Rook?"

  "In a happy-scared way, yes. And no. Leaning to yes." He frowned. "You know?"

  "Oh, trust me, I know. I know all about happy and scared." She smiled a wicked smile but kept her eyes on the taxi in front of her. "Just like I know my lollycrops from my posture collars." She didn't have to look to know he was staring at her to see if she meant it.

  Traffic Control had to move sawhorses to let them onto West 78th. The number of news vans had doubled, with every station staking out turf for the live shots that would be coming starting on the 4 P.M. casts, still hours away. It gave Nikki's stomach a twist that the lead wouldn't be the murder but the theft of the body. They met up with Raley and Ochoa in the subbasement of Cassidy Towne's brownstone, in the office-workshop of her building superintendant.

  They introduced him to Nikki, and as Rook appeared in the door, he smiled. "Hey, Mr. Rook."

  "JJ, hi. Sorry about what happened."

  "Yeah, it's going to be a big cleanup," said the super.

  "And, also. You know."

  "Ms. Towne, right. Horrible."

  Nikki addressed her detectives. "You have something for me?"

  "First of all," said Raley, "no private trash pickup."

  "That's like the worst joke," chimed in JJ. "Owner of this building isn't going to spring for that. Can't even get budget for paint. Or to get a new rolling bucket, look at the wheel off that thing. Pitiful."

  "So you're still on the trash," she said, trying to keep things on course. "You said first. What's the second?"

  Ochoa picked it up. "JJ says that he recently had to change the locks on Cassidy Towne's apartment."

  That got her interest. She cast a glance at Rook.

  "That's right. It was a couple of days ago," said Rook.

  The super corrected him. "No, that was the second time. Had to do it twice."

  "You changed them twice?" said Heat. "Why was that, JJ?"

  "I have locksmith training, so I was able to do it myself on the side for her. You know, off the books. Works out good for the both, you understand? Saves her a little coin, puts a little jingle in my pocket. It's all good."

  "I'm sure it is," said Nikki. JJ seemed like a nice guy but a talker. To interview talkers, she had learned, you needed to keep things concrete, move in steps. "Tell me about the first time you changed the locks. When was that?"

  "Just two weeks ago. Day before my man here started." JJ indicated Rook.

  "Why? Did she lose her key or something?"

  "People are always losing things, aren't they? Heard on talk radio yesterday about cell phones. You know where most people lose their cell phones?"

  "Bathrooms?" asked Rook.

  "No more calls, please." He extended a hand and gave Rook a shake.

  "JJ?" said Heat, opening her notebook to signal a sense of importance. "Why did Cassidy want you to change her locks two weeks ago?"

  "Because she said she felt like someone had been coming into her apartment. Lady wasn't sure, but she said things were just off in there. Little things moved around where she didn't put them, stuff like that. Said it creeped her out. I thought, maybe she's just paranoid, but, hey, it's money in my pocket, so I rekeyed them for her."

  Nikki made a note to have Roach check for the exact date, just for the time line. "And what about the second time? Did she feel like somebody was still getting in?"

  The super laughed. "Didn't need a feeling. Some dude kicked the door in on her. Right in her face."

  Heat immediately turned to Rook, who said, "I knew she had the door fixed, because JJ was working on it when I came over to meet her for dinner. I asked her why, and she told me that she locked herself out and she had to break in. It seemed weird, but if Cassidy Towne was nothing else, she was full of surprises."

  "Hoo, tell me," from JJ, who shook hands again with Rook.

  Heat turned to Roach. "Is there an incident report on this?"

  "None," said Ochoa.

  "Running a double-check now," added Raley.

  "When was this, JJ?"

  He turned to his workbench, looked at some busty babe tool calendar, and pointed to a day with an orange grease pencil mark on it. Heat wrote down the date and asked, "Do you know what time of day this was?"

  "Sure do. It was one in the afternoon. I was about to have my cigarette when I heard it. I've been trying to cut back, those things are bad for you, so I put myself on a schedule."

  "You say you heard it? You mean you actually saw it happen?"

  "Saw it after it happened. I was up the sidewalk, no smoking in here, and heard the shouting and then, boom. Dude kicked that door right in."

  "And did you see who did it? Could you describe him?"

  "Sure can. You know Toby Mills, right? The baseball player?"

  "Sure do. You say he looked like Toby Mills?"

  "No," said JJ. "I'm saying it was Toby Mills."

  The Yankees were up a game in the Division Series, but without the services of starting pitcher Toby Mills, who was on the disabled list with a pulled hamstring he'd suffered in a heroic sprint to cover first base in Game One. Mills got the out for the win and a complete game, but also got the DL for an indefinite period and had to enjoy the rest of the ALDS as a spectator. On the drive back across the Central Park transverse to the pitcher's town house on the Upper East Side, Heat said, "OK, Jameson Rook, A-list magazine journalist, now I have a question for you."

  "I have a feeling this isn't going to be about the pony play, is it?"

  "I'm trying to fathom why, if you were flying in close formation with Cassidy Towne for an up close magazine profile, you didn't know about Toby Mills kicking her door down."

  "Simple. Because I wasn't around when it happened and because she didn't tell me." He shifted toward her in his seat. "No--more than that. She lied to me about it by saying she did it herself. And I'll tell you something, Nik, if you knew Cassidy, you could see her doing it. I mean she wasn't just strong, she was . . . she was a force of nature. Things like locked doors didn't stop her. I even wrote that little metaphor in my notes for the article."

  She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "I do take your point. And she not only lied to you, there was no police report."

  "An odd sock."

  "You don't get to say that, all right?"

  "Odd sock?"

  "That's ours. I don't want to hear that from you again unless you're sorting your fluff-and-fold." The light changed at Fifth Avenue and she drove out of the park, past the rows of embassies and consulates. "What sort of problem did she have
with Toby Mills or vice versa?"

  "Not much that I know of currently. She used to write about his wild-child days when he first got to the Yankees, but that was history. Last week she did run an item that he had moved to his new digs in the East Side, but that's hardly the stuff scandals are made of. Or assaults."

  "You'd be surprised, writer boy, you'd be surprised," she said with a superior grin.

  As they stood at the intercom at the front door of Toby Mills's town house, Nikki Heat's smile was a distant memory. "How long has it been?" she said to Rook.

  "Five minutes," he said. "Maybe six."

  "Seems like longer. Who the hell do they think they are? It was easier getting into the Milmar and you didn't have a tie." She mocked the voice from the little speaker: " 'We're still checking.' "

  "You know they can probably hear you."

  "Good."

  He nodded upward. "Probably see you, too."

  "Even better." She squared herself to the security camera and held up her shield. "This is official police business, I want to see a human being."

  "Seven minutes."

  "Stop that."

  And then in a low mutter he said, "Odd sock."

  "Not helping."

  A crackle of static and then the man's voice returned to the intercom. "I'm sorry, Officer, but we're referring all inquiries to Ripton and Associates, Mr. Mills's representative. Would you like that phone number?"

  Nikki pressed Talk. "First of all, it's not Officer, it's Detective. Homicide Detective Heat of the NYPD. I need to speak directly to Toby Mills regarding an investigation. You can make that happen now, or I can come back with a warrant." Satisfied with herself, she released the button and winked at Rook.

  The tinny voice came back. "If you want to get a pen, I can give you that number."

  "OK. That's it," she said. "This is officially a mission for me. Let's see about a warrant." She pivoted from the door and stormed to the sidewalk, and Rook came along. They had almost reached Madison, where they had parked across from the Carlyle, when Rook heard his name called out.