'What was his relationship like with Derek Snow?' When the two managers reacted, Nikki said, 'I'm sorry. I know this is a difficult time, but these questions need to be asked.'
'I understand,' said the manager. 'The fact is, Derek was quite popular with all our guests. He was so well suited to the job and had a passion for it. He was naturally friendly, discreet, and masterful at bookings for theater or impossible restaurants.'
Nikki asked again, 'And was he also popular with Reed Wakefield?'
The night manager, a thin young man with pale skin and a British accent, said, 'Truth be told, I don't think Mr. Wakefield availed himself extensively of Derek's services during his stay. That's not to say they didn't pass the greetings of the day, but that might be the extent of it.'
'Did Soleil Gray ever visit him?' asked Heat.
'Mr. Wakefield?' The manager looked at the night man, and both shook no.
'Not during that period, as far as we recall,' said the night manager.
'Did Soleil Gray ever come to this hotel at all?'
'Oh, yes,' said the manager. 'She was a frequent visitor to this lounge in particular and for certain parties, as well as being a guest of the hotel from time to time.'
'Even though she could almost walk here from her apartment?' said Rook.
'Mr. Rook, the Dragonfly is a destination experience for travelers no matter how far they come.' The manager smiled. That wasn't the first time he had said that. Probably not the first time that day.
Heat asked, 'What was her relationship like with Derek Snow?'
'Same as everyone's, I suppose,' said the manager. He turned to the night manager. 'Colin?'
'Absolutely. Quite. Nothing out of the ordinary.'
His certainty and exuberance seemed a little heavy-handed for Nikki's taste. So she just went for it. 'Were they lovers?'
'No, of course not,' said the manager. 'That would be a breach of policy. Why do you ask that?'
Nikki directed herself to the night manager. 'Because you are hiding something.' She paused for effect and watched pink splotches surface on his cheeks. 'What is it, then, did they fight? Deal in drugs? Arrange cockfights in her room? You can tell me here, or you can tell me Uptown in a more official setting.'
The manager looked at his colleague, whose scalp was showing beads of perspiration through his thinning blond hair. 'Colin?'
Colin hesitated and said, 'We had a bit of… an incident… involving Miss Gray. You have to understand crossing this line of discretion is very difficult for me.'
'We're here for ya, Colly,' said Rook. 'Let her rip.'
Colin withered under his manager's look. 'One evening last winter,' he began, 'Miss Gray was a guest of the hotel and had a lapse in her sobriety. At two-thirty A.M., on my shift, as it happens, she, ah… had to be subdued in the lobby. Derek Snow was still about, and I asked him to help me escort her into her room. In the process, a firearm she had in her handbag discharged, and the bullet grazed Derek's thigh.'
'Colin?' said the manager, obviously unhappy.
'I admit, we did not adhere to procedure and report this, but the plea was made by Derek not to make a fuss, and, well…'
'She paid you guys off,' said Heat. Not a question.
'In a word, yes.'
'And there's no police report of this.' Again, Heat didn't have to ask. When Colin shook his head, she said, 'How bad was his wound? Doctors are required to report those to the department.'
'It was a graze but enough for several stitches. Miss Gray was acquainted with a physician who gave cast physicals for the film industry, and an arrangement was made.'
Now that Detective Heat understood the connection between Soleil Gray and Derek Snow, she asked a few more questions, details that satisfied her and allowed her to check later, and ended the meeting. After she got the contact information for Colin, she showed the police rendering of the Texan. 'Have you ever seen this man here?'
They both said no. She asked them to think of him in a different context than as a guest, perhaps on someone's security detail. The answer was still no, although the manager kept the picture.
'That's all for now,' said Heat, 'except a question about one more person. Has Cassidy Towne ever come here?'
'Please,' said the manager. 'This is the Dragonfly.' On the walk back to the car, Rook laughed and said, 'Or we can talk to you in a… 'more official setting.' That goes on my list of Heatisms, along with Zoo Lockup and blast matrix.'
'I was showing some refinement. After all, it was the Dragonfly.'
Rook said, 'So the question for me remains, why was Derek calling Soleil Gray the night of Cassidy's murder?'
'Right there with you,' said Heat. 'And the freak-out reaction from her.'
'I don't suppose that's because the concierge couldn't get her the table she wanted at Per Se.'
'Not being a fan of coincidences, I'd say a call with that timing, two bodies with stab wounds, duct-taped to chairs… Derek Snow has to be related to Cassidy Towne, but how? And if Soleil wasn't complicit in her murder, is she feeling in some kind of danger herself?'
'Here's a nutty idea. Ask her.'
'Yeah, and she'll be straight with me, too.' And then she said, 'But you know I will.'
As Nikki headed north on First Avenue toward the OCME, Rook said, 'With or without the lobby gunplay, I'm still going with the premise that Derek was a Cassidy tipster.'
'Well, we're pulling his phone records, let's see if you're right.' She blew air out between her teeth. 'Sordid, isn't it? Thinking people are spying on you for cash. What you ate, what you drank, who you're sleeping with, all so Cassidy Towne can put it out to people in the Ledger.'
'Most of it was true, though. She told me she got something wrong early on, right after she started her column, about Woody Allen having an affair with Meryl Streep. Her source said he was obsessed with her ever since Manhattan. Not true, totally blew it. The other papers pounced on it and called her the Towne Liar. From then on, she said if it wasn't true and verifiable-from two sources-she'd rather let someone else scoop her.'
'Noble. For a scumbag.'
'Yes, and none of us ever read those columns, do we? Come on, Nikki, the problem is if you take them seriously. They're like the sports section for peeping Toms, which is just about everybody.'
'Not I,' she said.
'Look, I agree with you that it's scummy. And not just because I am intimidated by your impeccable command of grammar. But, at the same time, she was only covering what people were doing. Nobody made Spitzer mount a call girl in over-the-calf socks. Or Russell Crowe toss a telephone at a hotel night manager. Or Soleil Gray blow a hole in a concierge's pants with a handgun.'
'Right. But who says we have to know all that?'
'Then don't read it. But it doesn't make the secrets go away. You know, my mom's been putting together a night of Chekhov readings at the Westport Playhouse. She was rehearsing one last weekend, 'The Lady with the Little Dog.' There's a passage about this guy Gurov that I'm going to excerpt in my article about Cassidy. It goes something like 'He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all… full of relative truth… and another life running its course in secret.' '
'And your point?'
'My point, Detective, is that everybody's got a secret, and if you're in the public eye, you're fair game.'
They stopped at the light and Nikki turned to him. He could see that for her this was more than just an abstract topic. 'But what if you're not used to being in the public eye, or didn't choose to be there? I ended up with the world reading about my mother's murder. That's not a scandal, but it was private. You write stories about Bono, and Sarkozy, and Sir Richard Branson, right? They're equipped for all this intrusion, but does it make it any better that they need to be? Shouldn't some things be allowed to be kept private?'
He nodded. 'I agree.' And then he couldn't resist. 'Which is why I will never again even write the word 'pineapples.' ' 'Going to give you plenty to reflect on here today, Detective Heat.' Lauren Parry's formality with Nikki was only invoked when Heat's BFF was pulling her leg or prepping her for news beyond her workaday coroner
