“Will do,” he said.
“And Miguel? This is all because of the job you and Rales did today double-checking his weapon and ammo. If we prove homicide instead of suicide, you’ve done this man a great service.”
“Hey, I’ll put on a mask and flippers myself, if I have to.” And as she looked up at the CNN JumboTron above Columbus Circle and saw it was minus-three degrees, Nikki knew that was exactly what he would do if it came down to it.
Rook was hungry, but she was too amped to eat, so he zapped the scar pariello that was left over from the night before while she pulled a dining room chair up to face Murder Board South and took a seat for her contemplation. “How was it?” she said when he ate his last bite.
“Even better as a leftover,” he said. “And how did you know I was done, do you have eyes in the back of your head?”
“No, I have ears. You stopped moaning in ecstasy.”
“Ah. So that’s how you know when I’m done.”
She turned to him wearing a sly smile. “I know when you’re done, mister. You’re done when I’m done.”
“It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. She turned her attention back to the board, then rose with a red marker and drew circles around Rook’s notation: “Montrose-What was he doing??” He said, “Guess we got the answer to that today, thanks to Eddie.”
“No, we got half of it. We know what he was trying to do, but we don’t know what investigative course he was following. And he kept it from me. Either because he had some pride thing about cracking it himself or he didn’t want to admit it if he failed.”
“Or…,” said Rook. “More likely, he knew it was dangerous and was trying to keep you out of it. Even at the expense of pissing you off.”
She mulled that, then said, “Or any of the above. But what were his leads? Where was he going?”
“You could have Roach check his files, but, according to you, Internal Affairs beamed them up to the mother ship.”
“I knew Montrose, and if he wanted secrecy he wouldn’t have kept anything at the office. Especially with IA all over him.” Heat tapped the barrel of the marker against her lip and then tossed it on the tray, a decision made. “I want to break into his apartment.”
It was nine-thirty, still early enough not to freak out Captain Mon trose’s next-door neighbor, although Penny the dachshund went on high alert on the other side of the door after they knocked. As the multiple locks snapped open, they heard Corrine Flaherty shushing and saying, “Relax, Pen, it’s Nikki, you know Nikki.” She opened the door and the two women hugged. Corrine, dowdy and late fifties, primped her hair and said, “I’m glad you called, it gave me a chance to chase the men out.”
The long-haired mini dachshund turned absolutely inside out over Rook. She rolled onto her back in the living room, and he knelt on the carpet to administer a tummy rub while she melted, her caramel tail waving like a flag. “I’m next,” said Corrine, followed by a smoker’s laugh.
When she excused herself from the room, Rook stood and said to Heat, “So how are we going to do this, use her balcony to jump to Montrose’s like Spider-Man? I mean the movie, not the musical; it’s six floors down and I don’t have my health insurance card on me.”
“How would we get in the sliding door on his balcony if it’s locked, which you know it must be?”
“Hmm,” he said, “does Corrine have a hammer? I could break the glass with a mighty blow.”
“Here ya go, Nikki,” said Corrine as she came back from the kitchen with a key ring. “This one’s the knob, this is the deadbolt.”
Rook frowned as if deep in thought and said, “Spare keys. Very crafty.”
At Montrose’s front door Rook stepped in front of Heat, blocking her. “I’ll do this part.” He tore the police tape seals off the door and stepped back. “Wouldn’t want you getting in any trouble with the cops, ha ha.”
Once they were inside, Nikki felt a chill that had nothing to do with the low thermostat. They kicked up the temp and turned on all the lights, but it still felt like a place that would never be warm for her again. She kept her coat on and stood in the middle of the living room, turning a slow rotation, trying to put aside memories of the dinners she had enjoyed with the skip and Pauletta or the Super Bowl party the captain had invited her squad to three years before, after they got their citation for top case clearances. She shut those things out as best she could and simply observed.
On the way over the bridge to Queens, she had told Rook not to expect much, that Internal Affairs would have been over the apartment just like his office. She said to expect furniture but no files or anything like that. Those items would have been boxed and inventoried and shipped off for examination. When he asked her what she was looking for then, she told him whatever IA might have missed that she wouldn’t. “They were only investigating him. I’m clearing him.”
They worked together methodically, Rook following her lead and her instructions. The bathrooms were the first stops. Cops knew that’s where most people hid their valuables because there was so much to look through. But when they opened the cabinets, they saw that clearly IA had had the same thought, because the shelves were bare in the medicine chests and under the sinks of both bathrooms. The kitchen was much the same. Although a few items were left on the pantry shelves, most items had been cleared out and were no doubt gone over by downtown.
The second bedroom, which had been converted to a study, had been picked clean, as Heat had predicted. They could see the gaps on the shelves where books and videos had been removed. The desk drawers were empty, and there were compression lines on the rug from the footprints of absent filing cabinets. The master bedroom was an easy search. The bed had been stripped and the frame was empty; the mattress and box spring were leaning neatly against a wall. “Not looking so promising,” said Rook.
“It never does until it is.” But she was feeling the futility as well. “Tell you what, I’ll take the closet, you do the dresser, then let’s call it a night.”
Nikki was sliding suits on hangers along the wooden pole when Rook said, “Oh, Detective Heat?” When she stepped out of the walk-in, he was at the dresser. The top drawer was open.
“I’m not sure if this will be anything, but if it is, I figured you deserved the honors.” She slowly crossed the room to join him, then followed his gaze down into the open drawer.
Captain Montrose’s sock drawer. In it were about a dozen pairs of black and navy dress socks, folded and balled to marry the pairs. And toward the back of the drawer, a lone beige sock without a mate. Nikki looked up at Rook. Both were thinking it, but neither was saying it.
An odd sock.
Heat picked it up. Her heart raced when she did. “There’s something in it.”
“Come on, I’m gonna pee myself.”
Nikki opened the sock and reached inside. “It’s cardboard.” She pulled it out. It was a business card. For a talent representative. “This is for Horst Meuller’s agent.”
When she turned it over her throat contracted and she stifled an involuntary wail. She covered her face with one hand and turned away as she handed the card to Rook. He flipped it over. The ballpoint handwriting read, “Nikki, just be careful.”
SIXTEEN
At nine the next morning, when Heat and Rook climbed the subway steps up to 18th Street, a frozen mist was descending on Chelsea, wrapping the neighborhood in a harsh, woolen chill. They crossed Seventh, heading west, toward the agent’s office, joining an eclectic sidewalk mix of tortured young artists and upstart dancers who might have been cast in a music-video salute to brooding. By the time they reached Eighth, Rook said he had stopped counting navy berets.
When they entered the third-floor walk-up office of the Step This Way Talent Agency, Phil Podemski was eating take-out oatmeal at his desk. As he swept old trade magazines and newspapers from his couch onto the floor so they could sit, the agent eyeballed Nikki and said he could really do something with her, considering her figure and looks. “You have to strip, of course. Not for me, I don’t go for any funny business, I mean in the
