And then came the gunfire. First a heavy round, the AR-15, and then a volley of small arms. Rook moved to the observation port, and Ochoa pulled him back. 'Stay down. You trying to get killed?' He shoved Rook down into the middle of the laundry sacks and then bailed out the back with his gun drawn, moving around the protected side of the truck.
There was another volley of fire, repeated rounds from the assault rifle, and Rook looked through the passenger-side window of the van in time to see Ochoa dive for cover in a discount smoke shop. More covering shots and next, the motorcycle fired up.
The biker revved and popped a wheelie off the curb and onto 19th. Heat and Hinesburg jammed it out of the store, bracing for shots, but were blocked by a passing taxi. The biker looked over his shoulder at them, and when he turned back, he was smirking. That was the expression Rook would always remember, right before he swung the laundry bag into the dude and knocked him clean off that hog and right onto the pavement. A half hour later, the biker was in the jail ward of Bellevue Hospital, nursing a concussion. He was a true badass, not just the AR man but probably the leader, and wouldn't break so easily. His two accomplices faced Nikki Heat in her Twentieth Precinct Interrogation Room. From the looks on them, she figured they were going to take some work. She sat across from both of them, taking her time looking over their arrest jackets. Both had done prison stretches for everything from petty theft to violent robberies and drug sales.
Detective Heat knew she would end up separating these two. But she'd first have to find a weakness in one of them; he'd be the one she cut from the herd. To do that, she had a strategy, and that required that they be together for now while she made her choice. She closed their rap sheets and began calmly. 'OK, let's have it. Who hired you for that gig yesterday?'
Both men stared with dead eyes that saw nothing and betrayed nothing. Prison eyes.
'Boyd, let's start with you.' The big one, the one with the salt-and-pepper beard, let his eyes fall on her, but said nothing. He acted bored and looked away. She addressed the other one, a ginger redhead with a spiderweb tat on his neck. 'Shawn, what about you?'
'You got nothing,' he said. 'I don't even know why I'm here.'
'Don't insult me, OK?' she said. 'Less than twenty-four hours ago you and your biker friend jacked a city vehicle, stole a corpse, brandished firearms at a police officer and a medical examiner, put a city driver in the hospital, and yet here you sit, busted and destined for long stretches in Ossining. Is that because I don't know what I'm doing, or is it, maybe, because you don't?'
Inside the Observation Room, Rook turned to Ochoa. 'Harsh.'
'These guys need more than harsh, you ask me,' said the cop.
Nikki folded her hands on the table and leaned forward toward the two men. She had made her choice, decided which of the two was the bitch. You can always break the bitch. She half turned to the glass behind her chair and nodded. The door opened and Ochoa came into the room. She studied their faces as the detective stood behind her. Boyd, the iron beard, acted like he didn't even see him, finding that no-place place to stare at again. Shawn flicked his eyes over and darted them away.
'You good, Detective?' she asked.
'Let me see the necks, left side of both.'
Heat asked the pair to turn their heads to the right, and Ochoa leaned across the table, looking at one then the other. 'Yeah,' he said when he was done. 'I'm good.' And then he left the room.
'What was that?' said Shawn, who had the spiderweb.
All Nikki said was 'Be right back,' and she left. But she kept it short, returning in less than a minute with two uniforms. 'That one there,' she said, indicating Shawn. 'Take him to Interrogation 2 and hold him until the DA guy gets here.'
'Hey, what are you doing?' said Shawn as they led him out. 'You don't have anything on me. Nothing.'
The officers held him at the door and Nikki smiled. 'Interrogation 2,' she said, and they left. Nikki let the quiet do its talking. At last she said, 'Your pal always this jumpy?'
He remained stoic, disconnected.
'It doesn't take much to see he's not as together as you, Boyd. But see, here's what you need to be thinking about. Your friend with the neck tat? He's boned. And he knows it. And know what's too bad for you? We want this. We want the name of whoever hired you. And we are in a dealing mood. And you know and I know that Shawn is going to take it. Because the deal will be sweet. And he's… well, he's Shawn, isn't he?'
Boyd sat there, a statue breathing.
'And where does that leave you, Boyd?' She flipped open his file. 'Pedigree like yours, you're looking at some long time in Ossining. But you know that can be done. Time passes. And besides, your pal Shawn will be able to visit you. Because he'll be out.'
Nikki waited. She had to be stoic herself because she was starting to think she'd cut the wrong one from the herd. She worried he was too smart to see Ochoa's tattoo ID as anything but what it was, a ruse. She worried that Boyd might just be a sociopath, and she was, therefore, the boned one in this transaction. Nikki thought about scrapping her strategy and offering him a deal. But it would mean she'd blinked. Her heart fluttered, feeling like a bird against her neck. She was so close, she hated to let it slip away. So she went the other way. Heat got tough and decided to push her game to the brink.
Without another word, she rose and closed the file. Then squared the pages by tapping it on the tabletop. She turned and took measured steps to the door, hoping to hear something on each footfall. She put her hand on the knob, paused as long as she could get away with, and pulled the door open.
Damn, nothing.
Feeling the awful sensation of her strength leeching out of her, she let the door close behind her.
In the Observation Room, she breathed a sigh and met the disappointed gazes of Rook, Raley, and Ochoa. And then she heard, 'Hey!' All four of them turned to the window. Inside, Boyd was standing at a crouch at the table, restrained by his manacles.
'Hey!' he shouted again. 'What kind of deal?'
Chapter Six
Detective Heat stood on the sidewalk getting her squad ready for their second raid of the day, hoping upon hope that her streak would extend and that, in the next few minutes, she'd claim possession of Cassidy Towne's stolen corpse.
According to Rook, it didn't seem like their suspect had much of a motive. Cassidy Towne had dragged him to Richmond Vergennes's new restaurant the week before for its soft opening. Rook said it felt at the time like it was a payback stroke, like she was getting a freebie meal from a TV celebrity chef in exchange for some mentions in her column. Rook said that while he was there he heard the two of them in a shouting match in Vergennes's office. She came out a few minutes later and told Rook to catch up with her the next day. 'It didn't stick with me,' he told Nikki, 'because she argued with everybody, so it didn't seem like a major deal.'
Now, just feet from the front door of that very Upper East Side restaurant, a small army of NYPD was deployed. Translation: It did seem like a major deal.
Heat brought up her two-way. 'Roach, you in position yet?'
'Good to go,' came back Raley's voice over the radio.
Nikki did her customary last-minute detail check. The small detachment of uniforms was doing its job holding pedestrian traffic back on both ends of the sidewalk on Lex. Detective Hinesburg stood behind her and gave her the nod as she adjusted her shield on the lanyard around her neck. Rook took two steps back to position himself, as agreed, behind the two plainclothes from Burglary who were joining the party.
The squad followed Detective Heat, streaming through the front doors of the empty restaurant in a brisk walk. Nikki had waited, timing this to come down right after the lunch service so there wouldn't be customers to deal with. Rook had sketched her the layout of the restaurant, fresh in his mind from his visit the previous week, and Nikki found Richmond Vergennes exactly where Rook said he would be at that time, presiding over the staff meeting at the big table near the showcase kitchen.
One of the busboys, an illegal, saw her first and made a fast exit to the men's room, and his flight made
