Raging Heat

by Richard Castle

  “Know it? Hell, I worked it.” He checked himself in the observation mirror and said, “This may get me busted, but what I’ve seen? Whoo. Mind-boggling.”

  “I can be boggled,” said Rook. He asked the others, “Anybody else?”

  “I worked on a team for an organization that sent hundreds of us out in the field, day and night, to harvest the good stuff out of the trash.”

  Nikki shrugged. “Help me here. The good stuff?”

  “ID stuff. Bank stuff. Credit card stuff. God, are you people dense?” Of course not, but playing it sure kept him rolling. “Any piece of paper that goes out in the trash with a name, an address, a birth date, a social, a club or union membership, Christmas card with momma’s maiden on it, preapproved credit lines, computer passwords—I shit you not, people throw away papers with their fucking passwords on it.” He laughed to himself. “We’d go out in the city like a little army every night and find all kinds of stuff.”

  Feller asked, “And do what with it?”

  “Turn it in, of course. For money.”

  “Where?” Heat hoped for an address.

  “Different places every time. A box truck would come. We’d trade, they paid.” He laughed again, so smart about life, this one. “They hauled it off to some place to process it, don’t know where.” He read her skepticism. “Honest, I don’t. All I know is it got sorted and used for, you know, fake IDs, credit card fraud, the whole buffet. They bought everything off us. Even shreds.”

  Rook asked, “What good are shredded documents?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Idiots think they’re safe just ’cause they shred. Guess what? Most machines people use are strip cutters. And then what do they do? Put the neatly cut strips in a handy plastic bag for us to pick up and deliver.”

  “But they’re shredded,” he persisted.

  “In strips. Clean slices—no security. They’ve got tons of people, you know, illegals and such? Sit in a big room and put that stuff together like jigsaw puzzles for pennies an hour. Worth it, too, because why shred it in the first place if it’s not valuable?” He gave a knowing nod and rocked back in his chair with his arms folded.

  Nikki now had a direction forming and followed the path to it. “And that’s where you met Fabian Beauvais?” FiFi gave her a you-bet grin. “And what about him was special, this, this…?”

  “…Astucia? The man was a genius. Example. One day he shows up with a cooler on wheels. I say what are you doing, you bring some Bud Lights for the crew? No. It’s empty. He goes into an office building pretending he’s doing sandwich delivery. Every fucking office building in Manhattan has these guys walking the halls, so who notices another immigrant hawking turkey wraps? Nobody. He’d go in with the empty cooler in broad daylight, bust the padlock on the blue recycling bins in the copy room, or wherever, put the papers into his cooler, roll it out the front door, thank you very much, and sort it all out later.”

  “That’s bold,” said Feller.

  “Worked great, too. Until the bulls caught him boosting some of the docs, you know, keeping a stash for himself. They were ripshit, man. After they moved him up the chain, let him work ATM skims with them, and all.”

  After she and Rook and Feller mind-melded over this bit of news, Heat said. “What do you mean, bulls?”

  “You know, the ballbusters. The enforcers for the enterprise that kept us pissing our pants if we got greedy. Or talky.”

  The door from the observation room opened quietly over Heat’s shoulder and Raley stepped in, handed her some head shots, and left. “FiFi, I am very impressed with how much you know. Really blown away.” She slid the two pictures of Beauvais’s ATM street playahs across the table toward him. He started working his head up and down before they reached him.

  “That’s them.”

  “The bulls?”

  “Yeah. This one’s Mayshon something. And that bad boy’s Earl. Earl Sliney. That dude’s a freak. Laughing one second, and bam, turns on a dime…Scary shit.” He pushed Sliney’s picture away like it carried a curse. “When it went bad with him and Fabby, it got ugly. Said he was going to kill him. Meant it, too.”

  “Do you know what documents Fabby—Fabian Beauvais stole?” Nikki held her breath after she asked. So much rode on this.

  “No idea.” She tried again, had to. But he still said no.

  One more thing and we’re done. “Do you know if Earl Sliney killed Beauvais?”

  “Don’t know who killed him. Only what.” He arched a brow. “Astucia.”

  Something about Keith Gilbert loved a front page. Heat found his smiling picture filling the bulldog edition of the Ledger on the rack at Andy’s when she waited for her turkey sandwich and bought a copy of the rag to read on her walk back to the precinct. The headline read: KING ME, and the Ledger exclusive announced that the powerful New York ex-governor and former UN ambassador known as “The Kingmaker” was giving his endorsement to Gilbert’s senatorial bid.

  Even though the nod virtually ensured him a party nomination and a fat war chest of election funds, the candidate-to-be took the PR high road. “‘This approval means more than anyone can know’ commented Commissioner Gilbert in a written statement. ‘But the time for politics will have to come some other time. Right now I have a job to do keeping the citizens of this region safe from a storm of historic proportions, and that shall be my sole focus.’”

  Passing through the precinct lobby Heat tossed the tabloid on the visitor chair beside the hooker waiting for her pimp to be released. Maybe she’d swallow that.

  Lunch talk in the bull pen centered on guessing what documents Beauvais took that cost him his life. “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” said Rhymer. “Maybe just the fact that he ripped off the ID theft network was enough. I mean, come on, we’ve all seen how heads of crime families mete out punishment to keep the soldiers in line.”

  “Did you just say ‘mete’?” asked Ochoa.

  “It’s a legitimate word. Ask our writer.”

  Rook hung up the phone at his desk and kick-rolled his chair over to the group, spinning a circle on his trip. “Mete, as taken from the Latin meta, meaning boundary or goal. Plus-ten for Opie.” He scooted over beside Heat. “This just in. Remember Hattie? My new bestest friend from the poultry slaughterhouse?”

  “So much for my turkey sandwich.” Nikki wrapped the remainder and set it on her desk.

  “I just talked to her.”

  “How’d you manage that?” asked Raley. “We’ve been calling and calling, and dropping by her apartment and work, and she’s been MIA.”

  “Count the Pulitzers. I’m just sayin’.” Raley gave him two middle fingers to count. Rook continued. “Since they were friends, I wanted to find out from Hattie if Fabian Beauvais ever mentioned any documents. Guess what? He did ask if she could hide something for him. Hattie said yes, but Beauvais never said what it was or gave anything to her. And right after that, he got shot at in Queensboro Plaza. End of conversation.”

  “Hang on, though,” said Nikki. “The slaughterhouse manager told us Beauvais showed up at work, injured. Meaning after he’d been shot. Where was Hattie?”

  “Away helping her niece through a home detox. She never saw him.”

  “So we still don’t know what he was holding, or where it is now,” said Ochoa.

  “Without rekindling a squad conflict here,” said Heat, “can I at least throw out the most no-brainer of possibilities? That Beauvais got some goods on Keith Gilbert?”

  To her surprise, it was Rook who first jumped in. “Just to keep that ball in the air, it sure gives a reason for some sort of payoff scenario at Conscience Point.”

  “But what about Sliney then?” Ochoa’s question had an air of protest.

  His partner said, “Could be parallel tracks, Miguel.” Raley held his arms out like train rails. “Beauvais rips off Sliney’s people, Sliney goes af
ter him, track one. Beauvais shakes down Gilbert, Gilbert goes after him, track two.”

  “If that’s true,” said Detective Feller, what do you suppose the Haitian had on him? A love letter from a mistress? Evidence of a love child? Some medical secret that would harm his candidacy?”

  “Kenyan birth certificate.” said Rook. “Aw, come on, don’t say you weren’t thinking it, too.”

  On the walk to her car to drive to the ballistics lab, Heat did what most New Yorkers were doing that day. She made a sky check and found it difficult to believe that in twenty-four hours those hazy, mundane skies would darken with the leading edge of a hurricane. Even with her attention drawn upward, she heard the crunch of sidewalk grit under a shoe, a little too close. She palmed the butt of her weapon and spun.

  Heat found her own image reflecting back in Lawrence Hays’s aviators as he stood before her, grinning. “You know, even with your hand on that Sig I could still draw and shoot you before you cleared leather. If I wanted to.”

  “I might surprise you.”

  “You’d have to.”

  She assessed him and felt no threat. He even took a step back and kept his hands visible. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  The CEO of Lancer Standard seemed to be enjoying himself. He held up the first two fingers of his right hand, a plain-view sign of nonlethal intent, and dipped them into his front-jacket pocket. He came out with a slip of paper and offered it. When she opened it, she saw a Bronx address written there. “How recent?” Nikki asked.

  “You’re welcome” was all he said. Then Hays strode off toward Amsterdam Avenue. She noticed the slight limp, verification that this was personal.

  Heat put the assault plan together quickly, first dispatching Roach, Feller, and Rhymer up to the Bronx neighborhood to stake out the address in case Zarek Braun left. While they positioned themselves to observe, Nikki coordinated with the Emergency Services Unit to rustle up a SWAT team, then contacted the Forty-eighth Precinct about setting up traffic control. The idea was to keep people out and create choke points to keep her suspect in. None of this was new; Nikki had organized these raids more times than she could count.

  But this one carried an extra crackle. “No room for mistakes,” she told the incursion team—and herself—as they armored-up in the staging area around the corner from the house. She envisioned Braun’s calm expression emptying the HK at her. Played back the mental picture of the scars and burns on the torso of Lawrence Hays. “Always think cover. Always just think.”

  ESU had already taken survey photos of the building before she got up there, and she spread them on the hood of her Interceptor to familiarize herself with the ways in and of the exposure hazards. Next Heat knelt behind a junker refrigerator on a corner patch of lawn to scan the block with binoculars. This was an economically depressed area with a mix of abandoned duplexes and run-down saltbox cottages. In the growing dark she could make out Halloween decorations on some of the graffiti-tagged neighborhood doors. “You’ve cleared the surrounding houses?” she confirmed with the ESU commander.

  “Affirm.”

  “Don’t want any kids walking into this.” Satisfied all was ready, she said, “We’ll go in five.” Heat rose up from her hide and saw the worst possible thing she could see at that moment. Captain Wallace Irons, who must have bought his body armor at a big and tall came waddling up the street tugging Velcro and checking his sidearm.

  When he reached her, Wally said, “What the hell is he doing here?” Rook finger waved from where he was standing off to the side in his personal bulletproof vest that read JOURNALIST instead of NYPD.

  “Observing.”

  “This is a police-only, restricted area.”

  “Yes, sir, I know, but I have everything in hand. Rook is going to lag back with you while I go in.”

  “Change of plan,” said Wally. “I am leading this incursion.”

  “Sir, with all due respect—”

  “Then you will respect a direct order from your commander, Detective.” He took in the staging area looking to Heat more like a cloddy equipment manager hanging with the jocks. “Don’t you think I hear all the talk? How I’m an armchair cop? Well, that gets put to rest here and now.” He swiveled his head. Protruding from his flak vest he could have been a turtle poking out of his shell. “Where’s my ESU CO?”

  “Here, sir.” The commander of ESS-3 stepped forward.

  “You boys in position?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That the house?”

  “It is.”

  “Show me your position map.” Wally bodychecked Heat aside and the ESU leader performed his show-and-tell using the chart Heat had marked up. Irons asked no questions. After the briefing he turned to Heat. “You’re backup.”

  “Sir, may I ask you to reconsider?”

  The captain persisted, talking right over her. “Stay here. Make your move when I go in.” He turned back to the ESU commander. “Follow me.” And just that rapidly, just that recklessly, just that narcissistically, the Iron Man hustled across the street where he crouched behind a parked car, paused, and led the Go Team to the front door of the cottage.

  “What the hell is he doing?” asked Feller.

  “Wally being Wally,” said Rook. “I wonder if he’ll wear the body armor to his press conference.”

  “Get ready to move,” said Heat into her walkie. “He’s at the door.”

  Captain Irons’s voice echoed across the empty street. “NYPD, open up!” An instant later, the ESU battering ram popped the door and Wally led the charge inside. Heat and her detectives trotted to cover and made the parked car. That’s as far as they got.

  A bright flash filled all the windows of the house and was instantly followed by a deafening boom.

  While Nikki Heat sat on the curb the next morning waiting for the bomb squad to give the all-clear to go inside the house, she watched the sun rise grimly through wood smolder and thickening clouds. Rook found a spot beside her and handed over a coffee from the bodega that had just opened outside the restricted zone. Although he had remained on scene all night, they had not spoken since the blast. She had immediately kicked into emergency leadership mode—fire-walling her personal feelings about the close call so she could manage the crisis and its aftermath. In this interval before the next phase, they sat in silence, sipping their drinks, awaiting the magic of caffeine.

  At last, Rook said, “So I can assume when you said you’d handle Wally Irons for me, this isn’t what you meant.”

  She paused. “Dark.” Then, turning to him, said, “You may be more cop than I knew.”

  “Hey, you said I could only ride along again if I could be me. Here I am.”

  Captain Irons had been the only fatality. The ESU team that entered with him heard the telltale metallic click when he rushed over to read the message written on the strip of duct tape on the wall, and took cover. Two made it out the door, the other dove into the empty fireplace. The SWAT officer said he yelled to the captain to stay put, not to move, but in his inexperience and panic, Irons tried to get out, too. Human-flight instinct sealed his fate. The instant he took his foot off the pressure plate that was rigged to an explosive device under the floor, he was cooked.

  Heedless of their own safety, the pair of officers who’d bailed out the front door heroically reentered through the flames and hauled their wounded comrade out. Kevlar and his leap into the hearth saved his life. Surgeons spent an hour extracting nasty shards of glass and pieces of wood from his calves, but he’d probably be released from Bronx-Lebanon by lunchtime.

  NYPD Counterterror had joined in the sweep of the small box of a house. Commander McMains made the trip there from the OEM hurricane HQ in Brooklyn along with the mayor and the chief. A bomb and a dead precinct captain became top priority, and the Counterterrorism boss needed to assess the degree and scope of the threat. There woul
d be no conversation about the task force that morning. When the site had been declared safe, Cooper McMains came out of it and rested a hand on Heat’s shoulder. “You sure you want to go in there?”

  When Nikki got inside, stepping on glass and plaster and nails, holding a handkerchief over her face in a useless attempt to filter the fumes, she understood what he meant. The duct tape that had been on the wall above the gaping hole in the floor had been recovered way across the room. A CSU tech had sealed the charred and disfigured specimen in a plastic evidence bag. She held it in her hands and concentrated on not letting them tremble as the other detectives and Rook watched. There were two words written in black Sharpie on the tape: BYE HEAT.

  For Nikki, this was just chilling confirmation of what she already knew and had tried to avoid thinking about until later. But for the hubris of Wallace Irons, that could have been the last thing she saw before she died. Heat passed the specimen around, and nobody said a word. Until Rook broke the charged silence. “He left out the comma.”

  The duct tape went off to Forensics for prints. Nobody disputed whose they would find. “Thing I want to know,” said Ochoa, “is if this Zarek Braun knew you were coming, or if he just thought maybe you might come.”

  “A lot of bang for a maybe,” said Detective Feller. “I’m thinking setup.”

  Of course Heat had already made the triangulation between getting the address and the detonation. When Hays gave her that paper, was he priming the fuse? Or did Zarek Braun know it was only a matter of time before she tracked him and set the booby trap for that inevitability?

  Commander McMains came to her when she stepped outside. “Nobody will think less if you decide to stand down. It’s been a hell of a night for you, Heat.” She didn’t answer, just squared her gaze to his. “I didn’t think so,” he said. “Obviously, this is still your case, but let me assure you that we’re heightening the APB for this Zarek Braun and all available resources will be on this.”