“I left the papers on the desk in the study,” said Noah Paxton. He already had his briefcase in one hand and the other on the doorknob. “I have a lot of loose ends to attend to at the office. Detective Heat, if you need me for anything, you know how to find me.” The eye roll he gave Nikki behind Kimberly’s back threw water on Heat’s trophy wife/ accountant sleeping together hypothetical, although she would still check it out.
Kimberly and the detective took their identical seats in the living room from the day of the murder. Rook avoided the toile wingchair and sat on the couch with Mrs. Starr. Probably so he wouldn’t have to look at her, thought Nikki.
The face work wasn’t the only change. She was out of her Talbots and into Ed Hardy, a black tank dress with a large tattoo print of a red rose and the legend “Dedicated To The One I Love” in biker scroll. At least the widow was in black. Kimberly came at her brusquely, like this was some intrusion on the rest of her day. “Well? You said you have something for me to look at?”
Heat didn’t personalize. Her style was to assess, not judge. Her assessment was that, personal grief modality aside, Kimberly Starr was treating her like the hired help, and she needed to reverse that power dynamic and fast. “Why did you lie to me about your whereabouts at the time of your husband’s murder, Mrs. Starr?”
The woman’s swollen face was still capable of registering some emotions, and fear was one of them. Nikki Heat liked the look. “What do you mean? Lie? Why would I lie?”
“I’ll get to that when I’m ready. First, I want to know where you were between one and two P.M. since you were not at Dino-Bites. You lied.”
“I didn’t lie. I was there.”
“You dropped your son and nanny off and left. I already have witnesses. Should I ask the nanny, also?”
“No. That’s true, I left.”
“Where were you, Mrs. Starr? And this time I’d advise you to be truthful.”
“All right. I was with a man. I was embarrassed to tell you.”
“Tell me now. What do you mean with a man?”
“God, you’re a bitch. I was sleeping with this guy, OK? Happy?”
“What’s his name?”
“You can’t be serious.”
The face Nikki gave her could still show the full range of expression. It told her she was quite serious. “And don’t say Barry Gable, he says you stood him up.” Heat watched Kimberly’s mouth go slack. “Barry Gable. You know, the man who assaulted you on the street? The one you told Detective Ochoa must have been a purse snatcher and that you didn’t know him?”
“I was having an affair. My husband just died. I was embarrassed to say.”
“So if you’re over your shyness, Kimberly, tell me about this other affair so I can verify your whereabouts. And, as I’m sure you just figured out, I will check.”
Kimberly gave her the name of a doctor, Cory Van Peldt. Yes, it was the truth, she said, and yes, it was the same doctor she had seen this morning. Heat had her spell his name and wrote it on her pad along with his number. Kimberly said she met him when she went in for a facial assessment two weeks ago, and they had this magic thing. Heat was betting the magic was in his pants and was his wallet, but she knew better than to say so. She prayed Rook had the same sense.
As long as things were in a hostile vein, Nikki decided to press on. In a few minutes she would need Kimberly’s cooperation with the photos and wanted her to think twice about lying, or be so rattled she’d do it poorly if she did. “A lot of things can’t be taken at face value with you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You tell me, Laldomina.”
“Excuse me?”
“And Samantha.”
“Hey, don’t you start with that, nuh-uh.”
“Wow, that’s cool. You sounded pure Long Island.” She turned to Rook. “See what stress does? All that preppy posing falls away.”
“First of all, my legal name is Kimberly Starr. There’s no crime in changing a name.”
“Help me out: Why Samantha? I’m picturing you with your natural color and see you more as a Tiffany or Crystal.”
“You cops, you always loved to give us girls a hard time for getting by any way we could. People do what they gotta do, ya know?”
“That’s why we’re having this conversation. To find out who did what.”
“If that means did I kill my husband…God, I can’t believe I just said that…The answer is no.” She waited for some response from Heat, and Nikki didn’t give it. Let her wonder, she thought.
“My husband changed his name, too, did you know that? In the eighties. He took a branding seminar and decided what was holding him back was his name. Bruce DeLay. He said the words construction and DeLay weren’t the best selling tool, so he researched names that would be brand-positive. You know, upbeat and inspiring confidence. He made a list, names like Champion and Best. He picked Star and added the extra r so it wouldn’t sound fake.”
Much as she had the day before, when she’d crossed from his opulent lobby into his ghost-town offices, Heat watched another chunk of Matthew Starr’s public image crack and drop off. “How did he end up with Matthew?”
“Research. He did focus groups to see what name people trusted that went with his looks. So what if I changed mine, too? BFD, ya know?”
Detective Heat decided she had gotten as much as she was going to get out of this line of questions and was happy at least to have a fresh alibi to check. She took out her photo array. As she began to lay down the pictures and tell her to take her time, Kimberly interrupted her on the third shot.
“This man here. I know him. That’s Miric.”
Nikki felt the tingle she got when a domino was tipping, ready to fall. “And how do you know him?”
“He was Matt’s bookie.”
“Is Miric a first or last name?”
“You’re all about names today, aren’t you?”
“Kimberly, he might have killed your husband.”
“I don’t know which name. He was just Miric. Polish dude, I think. Not sure.”
Nikki had her examine the rest of the array, without any other hits. “And you’re positive your husband placed bets with this man.”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be sure of that?”
“When Noah Paxton looked at these pictures, he didn’t recognize him. If he’s paying the bills, wouldn’t he know him?”
“Noah? He refused to deal with the bookmaking. He had to give Matthew the cash but looked the other way.” Kimberly said she didn’t know Miric’s address or phone number. “No, I only saw him when he came to the door or showed up at a restaurant.”
The detective would double-check Starr’s desk and personal diary or his BlackBerry for some coded entry or recent call list. But a name and face and occupation was a good start.
As she squared her stack of photos to put away, she told Kimberly she had thought she didn’t know about her husband’s gambling.
“Come on, a wife knows. Just like I knew about his women. Do you want to know how much Flagyl I took in the last six years?”
No, Nikki did not care to know. But she did ask her for any names she recalled of her husband’s past lovers. Kimberly said most of them seemed casual, a few one-nighters and weekends at casinos, and she didn’t know their names. Only one got serious, and that was with a young marketing executive on his staff, an affair that lasted six months and ended about three years ago, after which the executive left the company. Kimberly gave Nikki the woman’s name and got her address off a love letter she had intercepted. “You can keep that if you want. I only held onto it in case we got divorced and I needed to squeeze his balls.” With that, Nikki left her to grieve.
They found Roach waiting for them in the lobby. Both had their coats off, and Raley’s shirt was soaked through again. “You’ve got to start wearing undershirts, Raley,” said Heat as she walked up.
“And how about switching to an Oxford?” added Ochoa. “Those polyester thing
s you’re wearing go see-through when you sweat.”
“Turning you on, Ochoa?” asked Raley.
His partner jabbed back. “Much like your shirt, you see right through me.”
Roach reported the same hit off the photo array when they showed it to the doorman. “We had to sort of pry it out of him,” said Ochoa. “Doorman was a little embarrassed Miric slipped into the building. These guys always call up to the apartment before letting anybody in. He said he was taking a leak in the alley and must have missed him. But he did catch him coming out.” Quoting from notes, the doorman described Miric as a “scrawny little ferret” who came by to see Mr. Starr from time to time but whose visits had become more frequent over the past two weeks.
“Plus we scored a bonus,” said Raley. “This gentleman was coming out with ferret dude that day.” He peeled off another shot from the array and held it up. “Looks like Miric brought some muscle.”
Of course, Nikki’s instincts had already been crackling about this other guy, the brooder, when she screened the lobby video that morning. He was in a loose shirt, but she could tell he was a bodybuilder or at least spent a lot of his day at the weight rack. Under any other circumstances, she wouldn’t have thought twice and would have assumed he was delivering air conditioners, probably one under each arm, from the looks of him. But the serene lobby of the Guilford wasn’t the service entrance, and a grown man had been tossed off his balcony there that day. “Did the doorman give a name for this guy?”
Ochoa looked at his notes again. “Only the nickname he gave him. Iron Man.”
While the precinct ran Miric and Iron Man Doe through the computer, digitals of the pair were blast-sent to detectives and patrols. It was impossible for Heat’s small unit to canvass every known bookie in Manhattan, even assuming Miric was a known, and wasn’t from one of the other boroughs, or even Jersey. Plus a man like Matthew Starr might even use an exclusive betting service or the Internet—both of which he probably did—but if he was the volatile mix of desperation and invincibility Noah Paxton painted him to be, chances were he’d hit the street, as well.
So they spilt up to concentrate on known bookmakers in two zones. The Roach Coach got the tour of the Upper West Side in a radius around the Guilford, while Heat and Rook covered Midtown near the Starr Pointe headquarters, roughly Central Park South to Times Square.
“This is exasperating,” said Rook after their fourth stop, a street vendor who suddenly decided he didn’t speak English when Heat showed him her shield. He was one of several runners for the major bookies whose mobile food carts were a convenient one-stop for bets and kabobs. They were treated to eye-stinging smoke that swirled off his grill and found them wherever they moved, while the vendor furrowed his brow at the photos and ultimately shrugged.
“Welcome to police work, Rook. This is what I call the Street Google. We are the search engine; it’s how it gets done.”
As they drove to the next address, a discount electronics store on 51st, a front specializing more in bets than boom boxes, Rook said, “Have to tell you, a week ago, if you told me I’d be hitting the sha-warma carts looking for Matthew Starr’s bookie, I never would have believed it.”
“You mean it doesn’t fit the image? This is where you and I come from different places. You write these magazine pieces, you’re all about selling the image. I’m all about looking behind it. I’m frequently disappointed but seldom wrong. Behind every picture hides the true story. You just have to be willing to look.”
“Yeah, but this guy was big. Maybe not elite-elite, but he was at least the bus and truck Donald Trump.”
“I always thought Donald Trump was the bus and truck Donald Trump,” she said.
“And who’s Kimberly Starr, the truckstop Tara Reid? If she’s the poor little rich girl, what’s she doing blowing ten grand on that face?”
“If I had to guess, she bought it with Barry Gable’s money.”
“Or she took it in trade with her new doctor boyfriend.”
“Trust me, I’ll find out. But a woman like Kimberly’s not going to start clipping supermarket coupons and eating ramen one night a week. She’s all about prepping her face for her next season of The Bachelor.”
“If they’re holding it on The Island of Doctor Moreau.” She didn’t like herself for it but she laughed. It only encouraged him. “Or if she’s doing a remake of Elephant Man.” Rook took guttural breaths and slurred, “I am not a suspect, I am a human being.”
The radio call came when they were getting in the car after the discount electronics store dead end. Roach had spotted Miric in front of the Off Track Betting facility on West 72nd and was making a move, calling for back-up.
Heat slapped the gumball on the roof and told Rook to buckle up and hang on.
He beamed and actually said, “Can I work the siren?”
FIVE
There is very little chance of a high-speed pursuit on any street in Midtown Manhattan. Detective Heat accelerated, then braked, eased forward, jerked the wheel hard right, and accelerated again, until she was forced to brake again in a matter of yards. As she continued like that, working the avenue uptown, her face was set in concentration, eyes darting to all mirrors, then to the sidewalk, then to the crosswalk, then to the double-parked delivery guy who swung his van door open and almost became roadkill but for her experience and skill at the wheel. The siren and light meant nothing in this traffic. Maybe to the pedestrians, but the traffic lanes were so packed even the drivers who cared enough to pull aside and make a hole had scant room to maneuver.
“Jeez, c’mon, move it,” shouted Rook from the passenger seat, at another taxi trunk sitting there in front of their windshield. His voice was dry from adrenaline, his words punctuated by air squeezed out against his seat belt with each sudden braking, which broke his syllables in two.
Heat maintained her tense composure. This was the live-action video game cops played every day in this borough, a race against the clock through an obstacle course of construction, stalls, jams, daredevils, idiots, sons-of-bitches, and the unaware. She knew Eighth would be all-stop south of Columbus Circle. Then, for once, gridlock worked in her favor. A stretch Hummer, also heading uptown, was blocking the cross-flow at 55th. Nikki gunned it through the sliver of daylight it created and pulled a sharp left. Taking advantage of the lighter traffic the Hummer block created, she sped crosstown to Tenth with Rook’s expletives and Ochoa’s radio chatter filling her ears.
Things improved, as she had projected, when she squealed around the corner at Tenth. After a game of dodge ’em through the two-way intersection at West 57th, Tenth became Amsterdam Avenue and grew wider shoulders and a nice emergency lane up the middle that some drivers even respected. She was ripping it north with a little more speed, past the back of Lincoln Center, when the call came from Raley. He had custody of Miric. Ochoa was in pursuit of suspect two, on the run west on 72nd. “That would be Iron Man,” she said, her first words since her instructions to Rook back in Times Square, to buckle up and hang on.
Ochoa was gasping into his walkie when she shot through 70th where Amsterdam and Broadway crossed at an X. “Sus…pect…running…west…approa…Now at Broadway…”
“He’s heading for the subway station,” Heat said to Rook, but more talking out loud.
“Crossing…” A loud car horn, and then…“Suspect crossing Broadway…to subway…station.”
She keyed her radio. “Suspect description.”
“Copy…white, male, two-twenty-five…red shirt over cammy…pants…black shoes…”
To complicate things there were two station houses at the 72nd and Broadway subway: the old stone historic building on the south side and the newer glass-and-metal atrium station house just across the street to the north. Nikki pulled up to the old stone building. She knew the OTB sat mid-block on the north side of 72nd, so a fleeing Iron Man would likely duck into the closest station—the newer one—and Ochoa would be following there. Her idea was to cut off him off from e
scaping up the tunnel of this one.
“Stay in the car, I mean it,” she called over her shoulder to Rook as she bailed out of the driver’s side, hanging her shield around her neck. The MTA tunnels ran ten degrees warmer than street temps, and the air that rose up the from underground to greet her as she sprinted past the MetroCard machines toward the turnstiles was a mix of garbage funk and oven blast. Heat vaulted a turnstile with a sweaty hand that slipped on the stainless steel. She recovered her balance but landed in a low crouch and found herself looking up at the hulk in the red tank top and cammies as he crested the stairs.
“Police, freeze,” she said.
Ochoa was coming up the steps behind him. Cut off from retreat, the big man broke around Heat for the turnstiles. She blocked him and he clawed her shoulder. She brought one hand up to break his grip at the wrist and, with the other, grabbed his tricep and pulled his back across the front of her body, so he couldn’t reach her to land a punch. Then she grabbed his belt, hooked his ankle with hers, and dropped him on his back. He hit hard. As Heat heard the air come out of him, she scissored a leg over his neck and yanked his wrist toward her in what a certain ex–Navy Seal called an arm bar. He struggled to rise up but found himself staring into her gun.
“Go ahead,” she said.
Iron Man laid his head back on the grimy tiles, and that was that.
“Not very quotable,” said Rook on the drive back to the precinct.
“I told you to wait in the car. You never wait in the car.”
“I thought you might need help.”
“From you?” she scoffed. “Wouldn’t do to reinjure those tender ribs.”
“You do need help. Writer help. You take down a character like that, and the best you can you do is ‘Go ahead’?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Sorry, Detective, but I’m left sort of hanging. Like ‘shave and a haircut’ minus the all-important ‘two bits.’” He glanced over his shoulder into the backseat, at the manacled Iron Man staring out the side window at a Flash Dancers ad on a cab top. “Although, plus ten for not saying, ‘Make my day.’”
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