Rhymer, Gallagher, Hinesburg-you’ll be canvassing the clubs and known Doms, masters, mistresses.”
“Yes, sir.” Hinesburg saluted, but she didn’t get any laughs. The others were already on their feet, heading to work.
Minutes later, Nikki hung up her phone and called across the bull pen. “Ochoa, change of plan.” She crossed over to his desk, where he was going over a printout of clubs in Manhattan’s infamous Dungeon Alley. “ECU called in from the rectory. The housekeeper is saying it looks to her like things have been moved around and items are missing. I’ve got the manager of Pleasure Bound and her lawyer waiting for me in Interrogation, so why don’t you head on up there and see what’s what.”
Hinesburg caught Heat’s eye. “If I ask nicely, any chance I can forgo the kink circuit and handle the rectory?”
Since Hinesburg seemed to be back-door apologizing for her snarky episode, Nikki weighed the benefit of responding in kind and siphoning off some of the tension. “You have a problem with that, Oach?”
“Let me see…,” Ochoa held up his palms as if balancing a scale, “… church or sex dungeon, church or sex dungeon.” He dropped his arms. “Light a candle for me while you’re there, Sharon.”
“Thanks for that,” said Hinesburg. “And I apologize I busted you for sounding all bitchy. I didn’t realize you were dealing with… ,” she tilted her head conspiratorially at Heat and said, “… other issues.” When Nikki gave her a puzzled look, the detective held up the morning edition of the Ledger, folded open to “Buzz Rush,” the celebrity gossip section. “You mean you haven’t seen this?”
Heat’s eyes actually blinked at the picture. Right under a photo of Anderson Cooper at a charity function was a quarter-page candid shot of Rook and a stunning woman coming out of Le Cirque. The caption read, “Happy client? Eligible superstar journalist Jameson Rook and his lit agent Jeanne Callow are all smiles after a swank tete- a-tete at Le Cirque last night.”
Ever the sensitive one, Hinesburg said, “Thought you said Rook was off doing an article on arms dealers.” Nikki heard the words but couldn’t take her eyes off the photograph. “Coldest winter since 1906, and she’s sleeveless. When he said he was going to be chasing guns, betcha didn’t think they’d be like those.”
They needed her in Interrogation. Nikki walked there on autopilot, still reeling from the knockdown punch. She couldn’t grasp it, didn’t want to believe it. Rook was not only back but out on the town while she waited for him like some Gloucester sea captain’s wife pacing the widow’s walk, searching the horizon for a mast. No beard, no sweat moons, he was scrubbed, shaved, and had his Hugo Boss sleeve laced through the elbow of his hot gym-rat agent.
Detective Raley caught up with her at the door to the Observation Room as she was preparing to go in, and Heat shoved Rook out of her head, even though she still felt brittle from the shock. “Not so good news on the security cam,” said Raley. He was holding a banker’s box with a Chain of Evidence form taped to the side.
“I assume that’s the tape, right?”
“Tapes, yes. The tape, no. When I unlocked the cabinet, the one in the deck had run itself out and the label was dated two weeks ago.”
“Lovely,” said Heat. “And nothing from last night?”
“These tapes haven’t recorded anything for several weeks. I’ll check, but we’ll be lucky if we see anything.”
Nikki pondered briefly. “Screen what you have here anyway and pull faces. You never know, we may see Graf there and connect him with someone.”
Raley disappeared up the hall with his box of tapes. Nikki continued into Interrogation.
“You already asked my client that question,” said the old man. Simmy Paltz poked a finger bent from arthritis on the legal pad on the table in front of him. He looked to be a hundred, all skin and bones, withered and leathery. He wore a 1970s Wemlon tie in a big knot, but Nikki could have fit a hand right down to her wrist in the gap created between Simmy’s pilled collar and his rooster neck. He seemed sharp enough though, and certainly a hard-line advocate. Heat guessed one way to keep your costs down in a small business was to retain your grandfather or great uncle as counsel.
“I wanted to give her time to rethink her answer, let her memory do its work,” replied the detective. Then Nikki directed herself to Roxanne, who was still wearing the same vinyl and contempt as she had in her office at six that morning. “You’re absolutely certain you had no dealings with Father Graf?”
“Like what, in church? Don’t make me laugh.” She sat back and nodded in satisfaction to the old dude. “He wasn’t a client.”
“Did anyone else have access to the locker with your security tapes?”
“Ha,” from the lawyer. “Fat lot of good your warrant did.” His eyes looked huge to Nikki behind the smudged eyeglasses that covered half his face.
“Ms. Paltz, who had keys?”
Roxanne looked to her attorney, who gave the go-ahead nod, and she answered, “Just me. The one set.”
“And there are no other tapes, Roxanne?”
“Who is she,” said the lawyer, “the Homeland Security?”
Roxanne continued, “Truth is, that plastic bubble in the ceiling does the job of keeping everyone in line anyway. Far as the clients know, it’s on and they behave. Sort of the way when you call customer service and they say, ‘This call may be monitored.’ Their way of saying watch your mouth, asshole.”
Heat turned a page of her notepad. “I’d like the names of anyone who was there last night, say from six o’clock on. Dommes, doms, clients.”
“Bet you would,” said the lawyer. “Pleasure Bound is a discreet business protected by rights of privacy and client privilege.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Paltz, but last I heard, client privilege may protect lawyers and doctors, but not people who dress up and play doctor.” Heat turned again to the manager. “Roxanne, a death took place on your property. Are you going to cooperate, or shall we close you down while we assess the public safety and health concerns at Pleasure Bound?” Nikki was only sort of bluffing. A shutdown, if she got it, would only be brief, but her assessment of the state of the business-old paint, cheap furniture, shopworn fixtures, neglected security surveillance-told her Roxanne operated on a thin margin and that even a week without clients would put a hurt on her. She was right.
“All right. I’ll give you her name,” she said after another nod from the lawyer. “Fact is, I only have one dominatrix at present. I lost my other two a couple of months ago to the higher-end places Midtown.” Roxanne Paltz made an audible shrug with her vinyls. “I tell you, the bondage business is a struggle.” Nikki instinctively waited for Rook’s wisecrack. Same as she had so many times during his absence. What would he blurt? Knowing him, something like “That would make a catchy ad slogan.” She pictured a match turning Rook’s Le Cirque photo to ashes.
After Roxanne gave her the name and contact number of the domme, Heat asked about clients. “That’s all on her,” answered the manager. “She pays me to use the space, sort of like a hairdresser. The client bookings are her deal.”
“For the record, Roxanne, can you account for your whereabouts last night between six and eleven?” Nikki widened the time frame since she hadn’t gotten the official from Lauren Parry yet.
“Yes, I can. I was at dinner and then the movies with my husband.”
After Heat wrote down the name of the restaurant and the movie, she asked, “And your husband can vouch for this?”
Simmy Paltz nodded. “You bet I can.”
Nikki Heat looked from the old coot to Roxanne and made another note, this one mental. A reminder not to assume. Not in New York City.
Hadn’t she just learned that painful lesson from Rook?
She called Detective Ochoa to find the domme while Roxanne and her husband were still in Interrogation, so they wouldn’t have a chance to tip her off. Heat had given them some mug arrays of violent sex offenders to pore over, knowing it was busywork but the kind of busy that would keep them out of her way. Ochoa was only a few blocks from Andrea Boam’s address in Chelsea, and just fifteen minutes later he rang back to report that her roommate said Ms. Boam had been away on vacation since the weekend. Nikki asked, “Did the roommate say where?”
