Raging Heat
Page 19
A line of cocktail napkins led across the floor like paper stepping-stones from the hallway, through the living room, to the open window. When she stuck her head out to look up, The fire escape was lit by votive candles to the roof. Nikki thought, this day could turn around yet, and started climbing.
Rook took her by the hand when she reached the upper rung and held it in a courtly manner that began playfully but became genuine as she stepped onto the flat of the rooftop. “Looks like you had no trouble finding me. Talk about a paper trail, huh?”
“I seem to recall you using that method once before.”
“Hold that thought,” he said. “It’s the theme of the evening.”
“It’s Thursday. Since when does Thursday have a theme?”
“You’re the fancy-ass detective. You figure it out.” He stepped aside so she could take in the alfresco dining spot he had created for them. Two chairs at a table covered by a white linen cloth reflecting pools of dancing candlelight had been grouped in the center of the roof. To the side, a card table with more candles was set with covered dishes and the makings of a bar.
“I don’t exactly know.” She took a stab. “Romantic, open-air dinner?”
“Congratulations.” He held her in both his arms and smoothed her hair. “You win. You are the worst detective ever. Our theme tonight is Beginner’s Eyes.” As he led her over, Rook said, “Tonight, we are going back to our beginnings, Nikki Heat. Remember our first time? Of course you do, I was magnificent, a stallion. I digress.” He gestured to the bar, which amounted simply to a bottle of tequila, a shot glass, lime wedges, and a salt shaker. “Our first drink ‘that night’?”
“Oh my God, yes. We had margaritas.”
“Hand margaritas, to be precise. The heat wave caused a power outage, and we sat by candlelight much like this, getting liquored up the old-fashioned way.”
She laughed, “I needed that so bad.”
“And the drink, too.” He flicked his brows. “And what night of beginnings would be complete without the first meal we had up here on this very roof? Which is basically why I wanted to do this here.”
Nikki rested a hand on each stainless cover and guessed, “Quesadillas and smoked salmon.” She raised the lids and laughed again, seeing she was correct. “Rook, what a great idea.”
“Oh, I’ve got an endless supply of them. Here’s one.” He drew her to him for a kiss. But Nikki started getting ideas of her own and thrust forward, meeting his mouth with an eagerness that took him by surprise. Rook didn’t seem to object, and they held each other in the night, ignoring the food and the drink and the candles, exploring each other. They kissed with the passion that still attracted them over years together—and something else.
“Mm. Beginner’s mouth,” he said with a grin when they parted at last, making her laugh once more. This is what she missed; this is what she needed. She stared at his face—yes, his ruggedly handsome face, as he liked to point out—and thought about the art of his laughter. Rook’s laughter may have been his greatest gift to her, keeping her sane by banishing earnestness and lightening her up when she needed it most. Which was most of the time.
He held her chair and she sat. While he busied himself laying out the makings for the hand margaritas she surveyed the squarish form, the size and shape of a jewelry box, in his side-coat pocket, and the flutter she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for days tingled within her. Rook sat beside her, took her hand, and with unself-conscious intimacy licked the web between her thumb and forefinger before he shook salt onto it. He poured her a shot of Patron, which she hoisted to him. Then Nikki licked the salt, downed the tequila, and bit the lime wedge he held out to her.
“Your turn,” she said, and set him up the same way. Licked him, salted him, poured for him, and then teased him with the lime before putting it in his mouth while he sucked the juice from it.
After their second round, he said, “You going to tell me what the hell happened with Gilbert, or make me suffer?”
“I hadn’t planned on mixing business with all this.”
“Bullshit. It’s in our DNA, Nik. Spill, so we can move on to more pleasant topics.”
“OK, fine, but I’d like another one of these.” As he obliged with another shot for them Heat downloaded it all. No doubt the reposado had something to do with the ease she felt unburdening her cares. Of all the items, he seemed most interested in the missing Ruger from Gilbert’s study.
“That is Grade A weird,” he said. “Combined with his lawyer offering cooperation finding it…? If he knew the .38 wasn’t in that drawer, then why?”
“A mask of innocence. Wake up, Rook, you’ve been around.” His interest grew when she told him about Conscience Point, and she paused there to let the cogs of his conspiratorial wheels engage without interruption. Who knows? Maybe he’d leave the dark side and put his efforts in support of her case, after all. Nikki thought she’d nudge him along. “There is now an official nexus between those guys who came after me last night and Jeanne Capois.”
“DNA come in?”
“That’s still cooking in the lab.” She told him about the index card with the home invasion address. Seeing the impact of that, she added the detail of the surveillance information they had gathered on her. When he started to look over his shoulder, Heat said, “Does that bother you?”
“Hell, no. A squadron of crypto-SWAT, black ops, rogue commandos stalking us? Just my thing. As long as they don’t waterboard. I have very small nases.”
“Not to worry. There’s a radio car out front.”
“What if there’s a sniper?”
“Come on, Rook. Who goes around worrying about a sniper?” He checked the higher rooftops anyway. She said, “I am not going to run scared and I am not going to give up on finding out how Gilbert pulled this off.”
“You always love a high degree of difficulty.”
“Just because something’s difficult doesn’t make it impossible.”
“True,” he said. “For instance, did you know a French author published an entire novel—two hundred thirty-three pages—using no verbs?”
“Snapple cap?”
“Snapple cap. An education inside every lid. More tequila?”
“We should maybe pace ourselves,” she said. “Speaking of difficult, but not impossible, are you done publishing blogs and articles that make my life miserable?”
“Are you calling me difficult?”
“But not impossible.” She leaned in to kiss him again. “OK, one more.”
“Kiss or shot?”
“Surprise me.” Rook kissed her, then poured. Before she drank it, her cell phone rang. “Ochoa. I’d better.…”
He agreed and threw back her ounce while she answered.
“Sorry to call you so late,” said Ochoa.
“You kidding? You guys can call me anytime.” She tried to sound bright and, yes, conciliatory but didn’t get a response. “Where’s your partner?”
“I’m on, too,” said Raley.”
“Hey, Sean. Good. Got the full Roach.” Nikki heard herself pushing too hard. Whether it was from the tequila or trying to rekindle lost camaraderie, she decided to dial it back to business mode. “Going to put you on speaker because I’m with Rook.” She pressed the button. “What’s up?”
“Just got off my conference call with the state BCI inspector handling the fugitive warrant for Earl Sliney.” By reflex, Heat reached for her notebook the way ex-smokers go for phantom packs, but she’d left it downstairs. Rook pulled out his and handed it to her with a pen. “Sliney’s been off the grid, but they caught a break because, apparently, he’s traveling with the other guy from the Queensboro Plaza video cam.”
“Mayshon Franklin?”
“Right. Well, Mayshon screwed up day before yesterday and shoplifted some beer at a package store up the Hudson in Rhinebeck.”
Ochoa dovetailed right in to the narrative. “Database spit him out as a known associate of Sliney’s, who has a brother living in that area, a small town called Pine Plains up in Dutchess County. State and county vanned up and raided the brother’s place. They’d missed nabbing these dirtbags by six hours.”
Nikki asked, “Did Sliney’s brother say where they went?”
“Nah, either he doesn’t know or he’s throwing up a wall. But that’s not the reason we called.”
“It’s about what we learned about the brother,” said Raley with some weight attached.
“Yeah…?”
Ochoa said, “Earl Sliney’s brother works at a farm up there. His job is he flies the crop duster.” After the shortest pause, he continued, “So what we’re saying is that Earl Sliney’s brother had access to an airplane.”
Even slowed half a step by the tequila, Heat quickly calculated the math of Roach’s intel: Fabian Beauvais worked the ATM theft crew with Franklin and Sliney; Sliney was already known and wanted as a murderer; security video depicted Sliney popping off three rounds at Beauvais, who was on the run from him; Beauvais had a gunshot wound; Sliney’s brother had a plane; Beauvais fell from the sky.
A familiar claw grabbed hold of Nikki’s gut. She wasn’t liking at all where this was going. Not liking the bright, shiny, and new probabilities of Earl Sliney versus Keith Gilbert as the killer.
“It’s food for thought,” she said and found out what it sounds like when a Roach sighs on a conference call. “I’m not saying it’s not viable stuff. It’s just—”
“—It’s big,” said Ochoa, jumping on hard.
Heat bobbed her head. “Agreed. So what we do is put it with all the other pieces and see how it shakes out.”
“What needs to shake out?” Raley’s question was as valid as it was tersely delivered.
“Look, I’m not shutting your theory down, fellas. You know that, don’t you?”
After an interval of whooshing street noise rising on their end, Ochoa said, “What are we doing, then?” His voice carried the subdued consternation of both partners.
Because she needed to be open to the possibility that they could be on to something, and because she wanted to reconnect with this pair that she liked and admired so much, she said, “Here’s what you’re doing. Set your alarms for early-early and be in Pine Plains by sunup. Go to that farm and brace Sliney’s brother, Roach style. Check out his whereabouts on the morning of the planetarium fall. Get his story and get corroboration. Check out the plane. What condition is it in? How many seats? See if there’s logs or flight plans. I don’t know the rules for rural aviation, but you may get lucky. What I’m saying, boys, is work this. Follow the hot lead, right?”
Only slightly mollified, they said that was all they wanted to hear and said good-night.
“So,” said Rook after Nikki plopped her phone on the table. “Sounds to me like they’re still hacked off from this morning when you bitch-slapped them on the sidewalk in Chelsea.” He caught her reaction and froze to backpedal before he bit into the lime wedge. “Perhaps I should explain. It’s true that I spoke to Detectives Raley and Ochoa on another matter today and that incident came up. But in a purely informational way. The inference that your interaction constituted a bitch-slap was purely mine.”
Nikki set aside her annoyance about being gossiped about and went for the money. “What other matter did you discuss with my detectives?”
“See, I should never do the reposado and talk murder. It’s a bad combination.”
“Don’t try to joke your way out of this, Rook, tell me.”
He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair to consider. “All right. I was going to let this go until tomorrow, not wanting to add another log to the pyre of your case, but I heard that Keith Gilbert had filed a restraining order last month against—wait for it—Alicia Delamater.”
“And this was from a good source?”
“Yes, but I always verify. Hence the call to Roach. And it checks. So things may not be so cozy around Beckett’s Neck. Not like that puffed-up, hack mystery novelist neighbor says.”
“You’re pissed because he said you should stick to magazines.”
“I don’t think it’s ignoble that I found his judgment harsh.”
Nikki didn’t hear that. She’d slumped in her chair and raised her face to the sky conducting some secret dialogue with herself.
“Heat, I know it’s not good news. It blows the mistress theory right out of the sky—meaning no disrespect to the late Mr. Beauvais.” He leaned forward and put his hand on her knee. “Hey?” She lowered her chin and stared at him. “Can we just put this whole business on hold and enjoy the rest of our night?”
Nikki shivered, wishing she’d brought up a sweater. Or maybe never come up. “You mean like talk more about our day?”
“You want something to eat?” He started to reach out with a fork. “The smoked salmon is from Citarella.”
“Maybe talk about how my case is unraveling before my eyes?” He put the fork down and gave her his attention. “Or how my squad is whispering and giving me the buffalo eye when I walk in the room? Or how about the meat grinder I walked into with One Police Plaza?”
“They’ll get over it. Zach Hamner has no feelings. He isn’t even human. Probably hangs his suit of human skin over the shower rod at night.” When she didn’t crack a smile he said, “Are you worried he’ll kill your shot at the task force?”
There it was again. The elephant had joined them on her Gramercy Park rooftop. In a small voice she spoke her reality. “I think I can kiss off my chances with that task force.”
He shrugged. “Could be a blessing in disguise.”
A fuse lit deep in the back of her skull. “Rook. Are you saying that blowing a promotion is a good thing? Or good for you?”
“No, for us. —Hey, I’m not saying I want that.” He raised his brows in thought. “Although…”
“What.”
“That job would mean gi-lossal lifestyle challenges. But all open to discussion, right?” Trying to keep it casual, he poured her a shot. “Think I got your last one.”
Nikki didn’t want another drink. Adrenaline and bile had made her suddenly sober. “This doesn’t feel like it’s about lifestyle challenges, not anymore.”
“I know what you’re going to say. Fair’s fair, and that I travel, too.”
“Fuck logistics.”
“Huh. So not what you were going to say.”
Heat smacked her palm down on the table. “Will you stop? Just stop being cute for once and deal with me?” He corked the bottle. She had his attention. “Tell me how this is all open to discussion? It never got there. You’ve seen to that.”
There. It was out. Nikki had held it down for days. Denied it. Avoided it. Ate it. At last she’d given voice to the beast, and there was no reining it in.
“You’re going to have to explain that to me.”
“Rook, please. The moment you found out about my offer to be on that task force you started picking away at my evidence.”
“I did not.”
“What do you call it?”
“Investigative journalism. Kinda what I do.”
“Know what I call it? Sabotaging my case. Either because you’re pissed that I didn’t tell you about the promotion—”
“—That’s ridiculous—”
“—Or so you could keep me from getting it. Or both.”
“You know, Nikki that is so not me.”
“What else can I conclude? That’s when it started. You didn’t just get contrary. Contrary, I can deal with. You dug in. You got destructive.”
“By looking at other possibilities in the case?”
“By undermining me. First by cozying up to Gilbert’s aide; then you poach my limited resources—Raley and Ochoa, even Rhymer—to act as your personal research assistants. Which planted doubts with them, and now look. You heard Roach. They’re pulling the opposite way now because of you.” Nikki had lost all restraint. She knew she should count to three or walk it off, but the fuse sizzled and burned toward the powder keg. “Even tonight, you can’t stop. You have to keep grinding with the restraining order against his mistress.”
“I’m sharing my discovery. I’m collaborating.”
“What did you call my case, a burning pyre?”
“I’m sharing evidence. Which you choose to ignore. Like the airplane Roach called about.”
“Do you expect me to believe some crop duster flew into Manhattan and dropped Beauvais over the Upper West Side without showing up on radar?”
Rook said, “Radar isn’t perfect.”
“I want to believe in perfect radar.”
“Just for argument’s sake, let’s rule out Sliney’s brother and his plane. How then did Keith Gilbert manage to drop the Haitian from the sky without detection?”
Nikki’s beast fed off anger; Rook’s from sarcasm. “Oh, I know. Gilbert is sailing pals with Sir Richard Branson. Maybe he asked Richie to cruise Fabian Beauvais up to the Kármán Line on his Virgin Galactic spacecraft and launch him from under a wing.”
Heat’s hand found the shot glass in front of her and flung the tequila in his face. “Go.”
Liquor dripped off his nose and chin and onto his shirt. He made no move to wipe it. Rook stared at her, speechless, astonished, hurt. Nikki already felt a tide of shame begin to rise, but her anger remained stronger. Before the balance could shift, she repeated more quietly but still firmly, “Go.”