'Morris Granville?' Hinesburg said, scanning the sheet.
'He took a powder. Just let me know if he surfaces. I have some pics coming in later. I'll shoot them to you.'
Detective Hinesburg took the sheet to her desk and began reading it. Heat took the file out of the interoffice and gave it a quick scan. 'Yesss.'
Rook sipped his double espresso and said, 'Your winning lottery numbers?'
'Better. A lead on Holly Flanders.'
'F-L-A-N-D-E-R-S, as in the Chester Ludlow 'Flanders'?'
'Uh huh…,' she said as she turned a page in the file. 'A sheet, but not much of one. Twenty-two years old, a few petty this's and misdemeanor that's. Recreational drugs, shoplifting, a little street grifting, now graduated to low-echelon hooking.'
'And they say all the good ones are taken. She doesn't seem like much. Here's my theory.'
'Oh, God, I forgot. The theories.'
'Young woman, nefarious hooker over here.' He cupped his left hand and held it up. 'Ageing boomer S and M demolished politico over here.' He held up his cupped right. 'I think she's the tipster who took him down and now he wants payback for her.'
'Your theory is interesting, except for one flaw.'
'Which is?'
'I wasn't listening.' She stood and put the file in her bag. 'Let's go meet Holly F-L-A-N-D-E-R-S.'
'What about your latte?'
'Oh, right.' Heat returned to her desk, scooped up the latte, and then gave it to Detective Hinesburg on her way out.
But Heat's route to the parking lot included a detour. She made her usual side scan of Captain Montrose's office window as she went by. Typically, he was on a call, at his computer, or out making surprise appearances to his officers and detectives in the field. This time, he was hanging up his phone and gave Detective Heat a beckon with his forefinger that stopped her. She knew what it would be about. Rook waited until they pulled out onto Columbus Avenue before he asked how it went. 'With the Cap, it always goes fine,' said Nikki. 'He knows I'm doing everything to find the corpse. And clear the case. And make the planet safe for a better future. One of the things I like about him is that he knows he doesn't have to hold my feet to the fire.'
'But…?'
'But.' Out of nowhere a wave of gratitude washed over her for having Rook beside her. She wasn't accustomed to having an ear. No, more than that, a sympathetic ear. The self-sufficiency she prized so much worked, but it never smiled back or cared how she felt. She looked over at him in the shotgun seat, watching her, and an unexpected warmth filled her. What was this?
'But what?'
'He's under pressure. Cap's review is coming up for his promotion to deputy inspector and this isn't the best timing. He was in the middle of phone calls from downtown and from press. People want answers and he just wanted to ask me the most current status.'
Rook chuckled. 'No pressure on you, or anything.'
'Right, well it's always the elephant in the room. This time it was just sitting in his lap.'
'You know, Nikki, while I was waiting for you, I was thinking how much Cassidy Towne would be enjoying this. Not the being dead part-that would pretty much suck-but what's happened since.'
'You're creeping me out now, you do know that, don't you?'
'Hey, I'm just sharing,' he said. 'One thing I got to know about her for sure is that she loved having impact. See, that's the discovery for me about what kind of person writes a column like hers. At first, I thought it was all about the salacious parts. The spying, the gotchas, all that. For Cassidy, both the column and her life were all about the power. Who else leaves abusive parents and an abusive husband to go into a business that isn't any kinder?'
'So you're saying her column was her revenge on the world?'
'I'm not sure it's that simple. I think it was more a tool. Just one other way for her to wield power.'
'Isn't that the same thing?'
'Similar, agreed, but what I'm getting at-what I looked for in my profile-is her as a person. To me, her story was about someone who survived a life of getting the crap kicked out of her and was determined to control situations. That's why she sent perfectly cooked steaks back to be redone. Because she could. Or screwed actors because they needed her more than she needed them. Or made guys like me show up to work at the crack of dawn and then mosey off to get a bagel. Know what I think? I think Cassidy loved the fact that she was able to get so into Toby Mills's head that he came to her place and kicked down her door. It validated her power, her relevance. Cassidy Towne thrived on making things happen her way. Or when she was at the center.'
'Couldn't be much more at the center than now.'
'My point exactly, ma'am.' He rolled down his window and looked up like a little kid at the cotton-ball clouds reflecting on the towers at Time Warner Center as they rounded Columbus Circle. As they came out of the rotary onto Broadway, he continued. 'All things considered, she'd rather be alive, I'm fairly sure, but if you've got to go and you're Cassidy Towne, what's a better legacy than having half the city looking for you while the other half is talking about you?'
'Makes sense.' And then she added, 'But you're still kind of creeping me out.'
'Does it make you scared?… Or happy-scared?'
She mulled that and said, 'I'm sticking with creeped out.' The gentrification of Times Square in the 1990s had miraculously transformed the once-dangerous and skeevy zone into a wholesome family destination. Broadway theaters got face-lifts and blockbuster musicals, good restaurants popped up, megastores flourished, and people came back, symbolizing, and maybe driving, the comeback of the Big Apple.
But the Skeeve Factor didn't go away. It mostly got pushed west a few blocks, and that's where Heat and Rook were headed. Holly Flanders's last known address after a prostitution bust was a weekly-rate hotel off Tenth and 41st.
The two drove in silence most of the way down Ninth Avenue, but when Heat turned onto Tenth and the streetwalkers started to show, Rook started singing a cold-cut jingle. 'Oh, my hooker has a first name, it's H-O-L– L-Y…'
'All right, listen,' Heat said. 'I can put up with your theories. I can tolerate your inflated sense of significance to this case. But if you insist on singing, I need to warn you, I am armed.'
'You know, you keep needling me about my significance in this case, but let me ask you, Detective Heat, who got you in to see Toby Mills when you were stonewalled? Who got you in with Fat Tommy so we can now be happily en route to question a woman whose very existence we didn't know of until Fat Tommy led us to Chester Ludlow, which led us here?'
She thought a moment and said, 'I should have shut up and just let you sing.'
An undercover police car is anything but undercover to most street prostitutes. A champagne-gold Crown Victoria might as well have 'VICE' written in Day-Glo lettering on the doors and hood. The only thing more obvious would be to light the gumball and run the siren. Mindful of that, Heat parked around the corner from the Sophisticate Inn so she and Rook could make their approach without lighting up the radar too much. It could only help that the parking spot was behind a mound of uncollected garbage.
In the manager's office a skeletal dude, with a nasty patch of hair missing where somebody had ripped it out, was reading the afternoon edition of the New York Ledger. Cassidy Towne's face filled the space above the fold. The headline was in giant font, the kind usually reserved for V-E Day and moonwalks. It read: R.I.P. = M.I.A
Murdered Tattler's Body Missing
For Nikki Heat today, there was just no escape.
The dude with the pale skin and bloody patch of scalp kept reading and asked them if they wanted it for an hour or a day. 'If you get day, ice and baby oil comes with.'
Rook leaned over to Heat and whispered, 'I think I know why they call this the Sophisticate.'
Nikki elbowed him and said, 'Actually, we're looking for one of your guests, Holly Flanders.' She watched his eyes dart up from the paper toward the ceiling above his head and then back to her.
'Flanders,' he said. 'I'm trying to remember.' And then, pointedly, 'Maybe you can help me.'
