suspicious parked cars, ever mindful of the Crossroads of the World, the New Normal, and life on orange alert. By the time they reached the other side of the street, Rook had finished his first dog.
'Man, I don't know if I can eat two. What the hell, yes, I can.' He started in on the other, filling his cheeks like a squirrel, making her laugh as they walked north, weaving between the tourists. Except for the gun on her hip, thought Nikki, they could be a suburban couple themselves.
Between swallows, Rook asked, 'Why are we checking Soleil's other alibi? Let's suppose maybe she hired the Texan to stab Cassidy Towne. What's her whereabouts going to tell us?'
'It gives us a chance to talk to people in her life. We follow the leads we have, not the ones we wish we had. Besides, look what the last alibi check gave us.'
'We learned Soleil lied to us?'
'Exactly. So let's talk to some more people who might tell us the truth.'
Waiting for the cross signal on 45th, Rook followed her gaze to the newsstand where a dozen Nikki Heats hung from clothespins along the roof of the kiosk.
'How many weeks till November?' she said. And then the light changed and they crossed the street to enter the lobby of the Marriott Marquis.
They found Soleil's old keyboardist Zane Taft exactly where his agent had told Nikki he would be, in the Marquis Ballroom on the ninth floor. Nikki had also gotten the musician's cell phone number, but she didn't call ahead. Soleil could have already texted him, as she did Allie, but if she hadn't yet, no reason to give him a heads-up and a chance to call his former lead singer to line up their alibi stories.
He was alone in the ballroom, on a riser overlooking the empty dance floor, doing a sound check on his keyboard. The first thing Nikki noticed about him was his smile, big and open and crammed with perfect teeth. He fished out Diet Cokes from the ice bucket the hotel had left for him, a man glad for the company.
'Got a gig here tonight, a Sweet Sixty.'
'Birthday party?' asked Rook.
Zane shrugged. 'Life, huh? Four years ago today I'm at the Hollywood Bowl in Shades, playing our second encore, looking out at Sir Paul in the front row and making eye contact with Jessica Alba. And now?' He popped the tab on his aluminum can and Coke fizzed over. 'I should have had a business manager. Anyway, tonight I'm getting duked an extra three hundred because birthday boy likes Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and I know all the songs from Jersey Boys.' He slurped the overflow from around the rim of the can. 'Fact is, Soleil was the band. She gets the fat contract, I get to play 'Do You Like Pina Coladas?' for boomers who are recession-proof enough to afford parties for themselves.'
Nikki said, 'You don't sound bitter.'
'What's that going to get you? And, hey, Soleil's still a pal. She checks on me from time to time, or when she hears about a studio gig, she'll make a call for me. It's cool.' He smiled and all those teeth reminded Heat of the keyboard on his Yamaha.
'Have you been in touch with her recently?' Nikki phrased it openly, seeing how he played it.
'Yeah, she called about half an hour ago, telling me to expect a visit from the famous detective, what's-her- name. That's her saying that, not me.'
'No problem,' she said. 'Did Soleil tell you why we're here?'
He nodded and took another hit off his soda. 'Here's the truth. Yes, she was with me the other night. You know, when the lady got killed. But not for long. She met up with me at the Brooklyn Diner on Fifty-seventh about midnight. I was only on the first bite of my Fifteen Bite Hot Dog when she got a call and freaked and said she had to go. That's Soleil, though.'
'I can never finish those,' said Rook. 'And I'm a dog eater.'
Nikki ignored Rook. 'So she was only with you for how long?'
'Ten minutes, if.'
'Did she say who the call was from?'
'No, but I heard her say his first name when she answered. Derek. I remember it because I started thinking… and the Dominos. You know as in,' and then he started riffing the iconic piano solo from 'Layla,' the coda sounding as authentic as if the band were in the room. Later that night, he'd be playing 'Big Girls Don't Cry' for a landscape contractor from Massapequa, Long Island.
As soon as the doors closed to the ballroom, Rook said to Heat, 'Know how you've been kidding me, always saying my insider knowledge ain't crap?'
'Who says I was kidding?'
'Well, stop. Because I know who Derek is.'
Nikki U-turned herself in the hallway and stepped in front of him. 'Seriously? You know who Derek is?'
'I do.'
'Who?'
'I don't know.' When she moaned and strode to the elevator, he caught up with her. 'Hang on, I mean I've never met him. But hear me out-I was with Cassidy Towne when she got a call from a Derek, and I heard his last name when her assistant said he was on the line.'
Multiple synapses started firing in Heat's brain at once. 'Rook… If there's a connection between Soleil and this Derek and Cassidy Towne… I don't want to say what it means yet, but I have an idea.'
'Me, too,' he said. 'You first.'
'Well, for one, what if he is the Texan?'
'Sure,' said Rook. 'Timing of the call to Soleil, her reaction… Derek could be our killer. Maybe he and Soleil were both involved in that big story Cassidy wouldn't tell me about. And they wanted it and her killed.'
'Fine, fine, fine. What's the last name?'
'I forget.' She shoved him and he stumbled back into a potted plant. 'Hang on, hang on now.' He took out his black Moleskine notebook and flipped to some early pages. 'Here. It's Snow. Derek Snow.' The address trace didn't take long. A half hour later, Heat was parking the Crown Victoria in front of Derek Snow's fifth-floor walk-up on 8th Street a few blocks east of Astor Place.
She and Rook made the climb of five flights with a squad of heavily armed uniformed cops borrowed from the Ninth Precinct. There was another contingent on the fire escape, both high and low. Their reward for the hike was to knock and get no answer. 'It is just past one,' said Rook. 'He could be at work.'
'I suppose I could maybe knock on a few doors to see if anybody knows where he works.'
'I don't think that's going to help you.'
Nikki gave him a puzzled look. 'Why not?'
Rook leaned toward the door and touched his nose. She leaned in and sniffed.
They had a battering ram, but the super was there to unlock the door to the apartment. Nikki entered with one hand over her nose and the other resting on the grip of her service weapon. The uniforms rolled in behind her, then Rook.
The first thing she recognized when she saw Derek Snow's body was that it wasn't the Texan. The young African-American sat slumped forward at the kitchen table with his face down on a place mat. The dried pool of blood on the linoleum underneath him came from a puncture in his white shirt, just below his heart. Heat turned to get the OK signal from the cops who had cleared the other rooms of the apartment, and then she turned back to find Rook on one knee doing what she was about to do, checking out his forearms.
Rook turned to her and said the word just as she was thinking it. 'Adhesive.'
Chapter Nine
Jameson Rook sat off to the side of the bull pen with his back against his squatter's desk while the rest of the detectives from Homicide plus a few familiar faces from Robbery-Burglary and a pair from Vice drew up chairs around the whiteboard. Behind them, through the glass wall, he could see Nikki rising from her meeting with Captain Montrose.
Just as cop humor is laced with dark understatement, cop tension is also between the lines. The veteran reporter in him could hear it in the silence-the way the room fell quiet when Detective Heat came into the pen and
