Heat Rises nh-3
Page 28
There were no feet under the stalls in the gents’. Rook hurried to his business, achieving blessed relief as he read the sampler hung above the urinal: “ ‘Write drunk; edit sober.’ -Ernest Hemingway.”
Then he heard the voice he had been listening to at brunch that morning. Alejandro Martinez was laughing and joking with someone. He zipped but didn’t flush, instead roamed the restroom to hear which wall the voices were coming through. But they weren’t coming through the wall.
They were coming through the floor.
Easing out the men’s room door, Rook scoped the bar and saw a Jameson at his place, but nobody seemed interested in his whereabouts. He backed his way into the hall, and past the manager’s office, coming to a brick wall. He had read the legends-what writer worth his or her hangover hadn’t? He squared himself to that wall, scanning it, his fingers fluttering before him like a safecracker’s. Sure enough, one of the bricks had a slight discoloration, a patina of finger grime on its edging.
He thought about calling Nikki, but someone was coming. Maybe to use the restroom, or perhaps the manager. Rook pinched the brick between his thumb and forefinger and pulled. The wall opened; its brickwork was just facing over a door. The air coming out was cool and smelled of must and stale beer. He slipped through the doorway and pushed the wall closed. In the murky light he could barely make out a flight of exposed wooden stairs. He tiptoed down, keeping his feet close to the side to minimize the chance of the steps creaking. At the bottom he paused to listen. Then his eyes were blinded by flashlights. He was grabbed by his jacket front and spun against a wall.
“You lost, buddy?” It was Martinez. And he could smell his mother’s Chloe on him.
“Totally.” Rook tried to laugh it off. “Were you looking for the men’s room, too?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” came the voice of someone beside Martinez who Rook figured to be Guzman.
Rook squinted. “Think you could cool the high beams? They’re killing me.”
“Turn them off,” said a third voice. The flashlights lowered from his eyes. He heard a switch thrown and the overheads came on. Rook was still blinking to adjust when the third man came into view like an apparition. Rook recognized him from the news and from his books.
There before him, standing in the middle of a makeshift apartment in the secret basement, among old kegs and cartons, was the exiled Colombian author Faustino Velez Arango.
“You know who I am; I can tell by the way you look at me,” said Velez Arango.
“Nope, sorry. I’m just getting my vision back after your friends gave me the eye exam.” Then he started backing toward the stairs. “I’m obviously the buzz killer at your little party, so don’t let me intrude.”
Guzman braced him by the shoulders against an old refrigerator and frisked him. “No weapons,” he said.
Alejandro Martinez asked, “Who are you and why did you come here?”
“The truth? OK, at brunch this morning my mother gave you ten thousand dollars of my money in that black case over there and I want it back.”
“Alejandro, he followed you?” Pascual Guzman’s agitation manifested in scanning the basement as if their intruder had arrived with a platoon of ninjas.
It could have been a grave tactical error, but Rook gauged the author as the most powerful in the group and keyed off him for cues. He took a chance and said, “Relax. There’s nobody else, I came alone.”
Guzman took Rook’s wallet and opened it to his license. “Jameson A. Rook.”
“The A is for Alexander,” he said, eyeing Alejandro Martinez, hoping that would lend credibility to his story about following the money. “Nice name.” But Rook’s attention was drawn to Faustino Velez Arango, whose thick brow had lowered over a glare fixed on him. As he approached, working his jaw, Rook braced for a blow.
The exile stopped inches from him and said, “You are Jameson Rook, the writer?” Rook nodded tentatively. Faustino Velez Arango’s hands came up at him, both suddenly clutching his right hand and shaking it with delight. “I have read everything you ever wrote.” He turned to his companions and said, “This is one of the best living nonfiction writers in print today.” Then back to Rook, he said, “An honor.”
“Thanks. Coming from you, that’s-well, I especially like the part about ‘living’ because, I plan to do a bit more of it.”
There was an immediate sea change. Velez Arango gestured for Rook to sit in the easy chair, and he pulled up a wicker seat beside him. The other two were not yet aboard but seemed to relax a bit as they stood by. “I must say, Mr. Rook, that it takes courage not only to gain the access to a story as you do from all sides but then to overcome dangerous obstacles to get the hard truth into mainstream media.”
“You’re talking about my piece on Mick Jagger’s birthday, right?”
Velez Arango laughed and said, “I was thinking more of the ones on Chechnya and also the Appalachian coal miners, but yes, Mick in Portofino was brilliant. Excuse me one moment.” From the end table the novelist took a vial beside the white bag from the farmacia and shook out a pill. While he washed it back with some water, Rook noted the prescription label. Adefovir dipivoxil, the same drug unaccountably found in Father Graf’s medicine chest. So now it was accountable. Graf was bearding for Velez Arango’s meds. “Another bonus of being a guest of the government in prison,” he said as he screwed the cap back on the bottle. “An inmate cut me with a blade and I contracted hepatitis-B.”
“It must be hell to live the life of Salman Rushdie.”
“I hope to write as well and live so long,” he replied.
“How did you end up here?”
Pascual Guzman cleared his throat in an obvious manner. “Faustino, if he’s a reporter…”
“Mr. Rook is more than that. A journalist. Which means he can be trusted. May I trust you not to reveal my secrets if I tell you about them, how is it said, off the record?”
Rook thought it over. “Sure, not for publication.”
“Pascual and his heroic group at Justicia a Garda saved me from certain death. I was the target of a contract killer in prison-that was the man with the blade-and more were being recruited. As you know a rescue like mine was logistically complicated and quite expensive. Senor Martinez, who is a man of sincere reform, raised funds here in New York to mount human rights legal efforts in Colombia, as well as to gain safe passage for me here to my glorious exile.” He chuckled and gestured to the basement he was living in.
“When did you get here?”
“Three weeks ago. I arrived in New Jersey after departing in a wooden cargo crate on a ship from Buenaventura, you know the place?” Rook nodded and thought of his tip from T-Rex in Colombia about the secret shipment sent to Guzman from there. But the secret shipment wasn’t C4, after all-it was Faustino Velez Arango! “As confining and dismal as my basement life appears, it is a paradise compared to what I left. And I have been much helped by openhearted New Yorkers, especially the pastor and parishioners of one of your churches.”
He reached into his shirt collar and pulled out a large religious medal on a thin metal chain. “This is St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. Just last Monday a wonderful man, a priest who championed our cause, came here just to give this to me.” The author became drawn, creases appeared on his forehead. “I understand the poor man has since died, but what a kind gesture, don’t you think?”
“Father Graf gave that to you Monday?” Rook knew it had to be soon after the priest met Horst Meuller at his agent’s.
“ Si. The padre, he said to me, ‘It is the perfect medal for hiding.’ ”
Rook didn’t speak. He just repeated those words in his head as he watched the medal swing on its chain. His cell phone buzzed, startling him. It was Heat. “May I take this? It’s my girlfriend and I know it’s important… Look, I won’t say where I am.”
Martinez and Guzman shook no, but Velez Arango overruled them. “All right, but use the speakerphone.”
Rook answered just before she dropped to voice mail. “Hi, you,” he said.
Nikki said, “Took you long enough. Where are you?”
Martinez moved a step closer. “You first,” said Rook, and Martinez backed off a hair.
“Back at Grand Central trying to get a cab. Ossining was big, Rook. Huge.” He was afraid to say the wrong thing in such a pressure situation, and as he thought, she said, “Rook, are you OK?”
“Yeah, just eager to talk to you. But let’s do it in person.”
“Truly, this is going to blow you away. Shall I come to you? Are you still following your money?” There was a rustling sound and she groaned. “Hey, what are you-?” Nikki started to scream.
And then her phone went dead.
EIGHTEEN
Rook bolted to his feet and finger stabbed the face of his phone, desperate to launch a callback. Heat’s cell rang and rang as he took a step toward the stairs. Guzman blocked him. “Don’t,” said Rook, “I have to go.” By then he was getting voice mail, “Nikki, it’s me, call back, OK? Let me know what’s happening. Soon as you can.”
“Nikki…” Pascual Guzman sampled the name aloud and turned to Martinez. “I thought I knew her voice. That was the police detective who called me in.”
“Me, too,” Martinez said as he shouldered up to Guzman. Rook tried to slide around the pair, but Martinez pressed the palm of his wide, manicured hand flat on his chest and stopped him.
“Guys, I need to go help her, come on.”
“And what’s this about Ossining?” asked Martinez, who had done time there.
From moments before, when he discovered that his money trail surprisingly led to the exiled human rights novelist, Rook had been watching his narcotics bribe laundering theory come unstitched before his eyes. Combining that with the fact that nobody in that basement had drawn a weapon on him-not even Martinez-he took a chance out of urgency. “OK, here it is,” he said, directing himself mainly to Faustino Velez Arango, who watched quietly from his chair. “My girlfriend is a cop who’s working a murder case that I don’t believe has anything to do with any of you.”
“This is still the murder of Father Graf?” asked Guzman.
Rook thought it over and nodded. Guzman pulled at his thick beard and spoke to Velez Arango in Spanish. Rook couldn’t understand all the words, but the tone was emotional. The exiled author nodded solemnly a few times. When they were done, Rook pleaded. “A life may be in danger. I can’t believe you, of all people, Senor Velez Arango, would hold a writer captive against his will.”
The man stood and crossed over to Rook. “I know that Father Graf did more than give me this holy medal. Pascual tells me that whoever killed the padre took away a saint on earth, devoted to our cause.” Then a trace of a smile eased some of his gravity. “And, of course, I have read your profile of this Nikki Heat.” He gestured to the steps. “Go. Do what you can to save her.”
Rook started off, but Martinez blocked him again. “Faustino, he will give you up.”
The novelist took his measure of the journalist and said, “No, he won’t.”
Rook dashed to the stairs and then, as an afterthought, said to Velez Arango, “One more favor?”
“ Que? ”
“I’ll need all the help I can get. Any chance I could carry that St. Christopher?”
Velez Arango folded his hand around the medal. “It is valuable to me.”
Rook said, “Tell you what. Keep my ten grand, we’ll call it even.”
Nikki Heat ran up Vanderbilt Avenue, threading herself upstream be tween the tight flow of pedestrians making their way to Grand Central. She glanced over her shoulder and could see him coming, his black ski mask astonishing the late afternoon business commuters who stopped and turned to look at the man who rushed through them. Those who weren’t stunned looked around, either for cops or to see if somebody was making a movie.
It had happened so quickly. Eager for a cab, Nikki had deployed her secret weapon in that neighborhood, which was to skip the organized taxi cue on Forty-second Street, a great place to make friends because the line is slow. Instead, she waited on Vanderbilt near the Yale Club, a favored drop-off spot and, therefore, an equally favored spot to snag a ride on the fly.
As she was on the phone to Rook, waiting out a suburbanite counting coins for the driver’s tip, the guy came up behind her. Heat didn’t notice where he came from. She only saw motion behind her reflected through the haze of road salt on the cab window. Before she could turn, one hand was stripping her of her cell phone while the other pulled her shoulder. The surprise of it took her off her game a beat, but Heat’s combat sense kicked in, and she spun, going with the momentum of the grab and then using her shoulder to ram her assailant backward into the green light pole near the entrance of the club. Down on his ass on the sidewalk, her attacker started his hand toward the inside of his coat, and Nikki ran.
Half a block north now, he was closing in. Heat bolted across Vanderbilt, risking exposure in the open road, so she wove and dodged to present a poor target. Her goal was to turn the corner at 45th and get inside the lobby of the Met Life, where security guards could help. Beyond that, Grand Central was replete with cops and Homeland Security.
But then, the best of all worlds-an NYPD cruiser pulled up to the stop sign at 45th. “Hey!” she called. “Ten-thirteen!” Assist police officer.
The uniform at the wheel had his window open, and when she was ten yards from the car and closing, he turned to face Nikki. “Heat, get in.” It was The Discourager. At first she wondered if Harvey still had her back-unlikely. Or if this was just luck-less likely; this wasn’t his precinct. She started putting her brakes on as she reached the car and saw the gun on his lap, pointed out the window at her. “Get in,” he said once more.
Heat was calculating the odds of outmaneuvering his aim by bolting to the rear of his blue-and-white when a gloved hand came from behind her and clamped a rag over her mouth and nose.
Nikki tasted sweetness and then blacked out.
Raley came back on the line and told Rook that he checked, and sure enough, there had already been several 911s about a female being chased by a man in a ski mask outside Grand Central Terminal. Ochoa was getting it out on the air that the female was Nikki Heat. Raley expected the surrounding streets would be swarmed by units by the time Rook got there.
Translation: There wasn’t much for Rook to accomplish there, but since it was the last place he had heard from her, he continued down Broadway. Waiting for the light at Columbus Circle, his heart raced as Rook drew the parallel to her pursuer in the ski mask and the crew that had tuned up Horst Meuller in his apartment. He relived Nikki’s interrupted phone call: her excitement at what she had discovered upstate, then the suddenness of the assault, her cell probably taken or smashed.
Rook opened the Recents screen on his phone. Out of habit or spite, Nikki had used her old phone to call him. Which meant that, possibly, she still had the spy store phone he gave her to call for help. Rook wondered if she had it and, if so, whether she had it turned on. He got out his own new phone and began to figure out how the hell to enable the GPS.
Her temples were throbbing when she came out of it. Nikki was en gulfed by a fog thick enough to make her feel underwater. Her head seemed too heavy for her neck, and she couldn’t move her arms or legs. “Coming to,” said the voice that seemed to drift in from another dimension. Heat tried to open her eyes, and the light, coming from unforgiving white-blue fluorescents in overhead tubes, pierced her so harshly that she closed them right away.
What had she seen in that little glimpse? She was somewhere industrial. A definite workshop or warehouse. Unfinished walls with exposed studs and metal storage racks full of boxes, and… tools and parts of some kind. Another look, that would tell her more, but not if she had to stare into those lamps again. She tried to turn over but couldn’t and so lolled her head and peeked once more. Harvey, still in his uniform, leaned with his arms folded agains
t a workbench, watching her. He was wearing blue plastic gloves. That disconcerting view pumped enough adrenaline to lift some of the haze. She rested her lids, chastising herself for not seeing the possibility before that The Discourager hadn’t been tailing her for protection but to keep tabs on her. Harvey had been hiding in plain sight. Nikki remembered bringing him the pizzelles and felt an ache in her gut.
Someone else was moving around the room. With great effort, she rolled her eyes and recognized the jacket of the guy who had grabbed for her on Vanderbilt. He was wearing blue gloves, too, but not his ski mask anymore, which was even more distressing because it meant he was no longer concerned about Nikki’s ability to ID him later. The other man turned and walked up to her and leaned his face into hers. Dutch Van Meter said, “Hey, Heat. Rise and shine.”
She tried to turn away from him but couldn’t, and then realized why. It wasn’t from the chloroform hangover. She was lashed down. Both wrists and ankles were handcuffed. Heat struggled to lift her head. They had affixed her to a pair of wooden crossbeams, their own improvised St. Andrew’s Cross. Van Meter must have seen the realization dawn on her. “That’s right, cover girl. And you’re such a hotshot detective, I’ll bet you even know what comes next.”
A switch clicked and there was a low electronic hum. She spun her head toward him. Dutch was holding up a stainless steel wand the size and shape of a dildo. It had an insulated grip with two corded jacks-one black and the other red-plugged into the handle. “Want to talk irony? These things were developed as a means to relieve pain. See?”
Heat flinched and turned away, bracing for the shock as he touched the TENS to her forearm. At contact, her skin buzzed slightly and the muscle underneath contracted only mildly. “Guess I don’t need to tell you what else this can do.” He removed it and switched the unit off. “So. Which way does this go, hard or easy?” Nikki was still turned from him. “OK, let’s find out. First, easy. Where is the video?”