the side? Maybe this was some sort of romantic triangle revenge thing.'
Detective Heat turned to Roach. 'I need you all over this, guys. That's why I'm pulling you two off this detail and sending you to get aggressive on Esteban Padilla.'
'Cool,' said Ochoa.
Raley nodded. 'On it, Detective.'
'Obviously, push the usuals: friends, family, lovers, his job,' she said, 'but what we need is the connection. That's where daylight's going to come. Find out what the hell the connection was between Cassidy Towne and a produce truck driver.'
'And The Texan, and Derek Snow,' added Raley.
'And Soleil Gray. She's still in the thick of this somehow. Make sure you flash all four of the pictures I put in your files-you never know.' Nikki kicked herself for waiting this long to let the Padilla investigation shift into this mode. Unfortunately, the reality of the job was such that as much as she tried to invest in each case to the eyeballs, at a certain point, it did become a matter of triage. It had to. Cassidy Towne was the high-profile victim, and meanwhile the Esteban Padillas of the world got nicknames like Coyote Man or, worse, slipped through the cracks anonymously. The saving grace, she thought, if there was one, was that Cassidy's murder might be a step to solving his. That kind of justice was better than none. At least that's how, if you were a detective with a conscience like Nikki Heat, you lived with it.
'Lauren give you a TOD for the concierge?' said Ochoa.
'Yes, one more wrinkle.'
Raley clutched his heart melodramatically. 'I don't know how many shocks I can take, Detective.'
'Do your best. Derek Snow's murder was the same night as Cassidy Towne's. Lauren's best window is midnight to three A.M.'
'In other words…,' said Raley.
'Right,' Heat answered. 'Roughly an hour or two before Cassidy's.'
'And just after his call to Soleil,' said Rook.
She stood and swirled the last of her coffee in the cup. 'Tell you what I'm going to do. While you get to work on Mr. Padilla, I'm going to go have another chat with Soleil Gray and challenge her on her lack of candor.'
'Yes,' said Rook, 'she has given us quite a song and dance.'
The others didn't even bother to groan. They just got up and left him sitting on the bench, alone. A Jack Russell tied to a bike rack, waiting for its owner, looked over at him. Rook said, 'Cats, huh? Can't live with 'em, can't seem to catch 'em.' Just minutes later, Heat and Rook approached Soleil Gray's apartment in a slightly more Village-y block of the East Village. To get there, they walked, passing head shops, tattoo parlors, and a vinyl music walk-down. It was that time of evening when there was just enough light left to see the pink jet contrails overhead in the teal of the gloaming. Dozens of small birds chirped as they found roosts for the night in the canopies of trees set in the sidewalk. In the morning the trees would make excellent platforms for garbage swoops. Threading through a crowd waiting on the sidewalk outside La Palapa, Rook spied some mighty inviting margaritas at the window tables and, for one, brief, impulsive flash, wished he could just lace his arm through Nikki's and steer her inside for some serious downtime.
He knew better. More to the point, he knew her better.
A housekeeper answered on the squawk box in the vestibule. 'Miss Soleil no here. You come back.' Her voice was old, and she sounded sweet and small. Rook imagined that she might even actually be inside the little aluminum panel.
Back down on the sidewalk, Nikki flipped through her notes, found a number, and called Allie, the assistant at Rad Dog Records. After a short conversation, she closed her phone and said as she started walking, 'Soleil is at a TV studio rehearsing a set for a guest appearance tonight. Let's surprise her and see what shakes loose.'
As they strode by, Rook looked longingly at a deuce that had just opened up in La Palapa. Downtime would have to wait. He hurried to catch up with Nikki, who was already at the corner getting out her car keys. His brake lights turned the weeds red as Raley backed the Roach Coach into the driveway that went nowhere but a small vacant lot between a taqueria and a three-story row house that was listed as Esteban Padilla's address. 'Careful, man, don't hit that shopping cart,' from Ochoa.
Raley gophered his neck for a better view in the mirror. 'I see it.'
When the bumper tapped the cart, his partner laughed. 'See, this is why we can't have a nice car.'
All the parking spaces on East 115th Street were taken, and there was a beer delivery truck double-parked across the loading zone. The truck couldn't unload in the space because it was occupied by a small beater with a fender made of Bond-O and a windshield full of tickets. So Raley improvised, parking nose out, bridging the sidewalk, front tires on the street, the back ones where the dirt and sparse clumps of grass met concrete.
East Harlem, El Barrio, had the highest crime rate in the borough, but that rate also had experienced a huge drop in recent years, roughly 65 to 68 percent, depending on whose figures you liked. Raley and Ochoa felt obvious, looking every inch like cops, even in plainclothes. They also felt safe. Crime rate notwithstanding, this was a community of families. They were experienced enough to know that low income didn't spell danger. Ask people with experience in both places, and you'd be surprised how many felt a lost wallet had a better chance on Marin Boulevard than on Wall Street.
The pleasant warmth of the fall day was siphoning off and the evening was cooling fast. A clank of bottles made them turn. In front of Padilla's place a man his age, about thirty-five, was stacking full black plastic garbage bags on the mound that ran along the street. He clocked the two detectives as they approached, but stayed with his work, keeping an eye on them peripherally as he went.
'Buenos noches,' said Ochoa. When the man bent to pick up his next garbage bag without acknowledging him, the detective continued in Spanish, asking him if he lived there.
The man flung the trash bag in a V he had created between his two other bags, and waited to make sure they would stay put. When he was satisfied, he turned to face them. He asked the two cops if there was some sort of trouble.
Ochoa continued in Spanish and told him no, that he was investigating the murder of Esteban Padilla. The man told him Esteban was his cousin and he had no idea who killed him or why. He said it loudly, gesturing with a large double wave of his palms to them. Raley and Ochoa had seen this many times before. Padilla's cousin was signaling that he was not a snitch, to them and, more importantly, to anyone who was watching.
He knew it was probably futile, but Detective Ochoa told him there was a killer loose who had murdered his cousin, asking if they could just talk about it, inside, in private. The cousin said there was no point; he didn't know anything and neither did anyone else in the family.
Under the harshness of the orange streetlight that hummed above them, Ochoa tried to read the man's face. What he saw there wasn't a dodge, it was theater masking fear. And not necessarily fear of the killer. This was about the eyes and ears that could be taking all this in at that moment on a street in Spanish Harlem. The Stop Snitching code was a more powerful law than any Raley and Ochoa could bring. As the man turned and walked in through the front door of Padilla's house, Ochoa knew it was even stronger than wanting justice for the death of a relative. Later On with Kirby MacAlister, a talk show in a wrestling match with Craig Ferguson and the Jimmies, Kimmel and Fallon, for the late-night after-crowd, was broadcast live out of a leased studio on West End Avenue. Its first five years on the air, the syndicated show had taped out of a former strip club in Times Square, a spit take from Letterman's shop in the Ed Sullivan Theater. But when one of the daytime dramas moved west to LA, Later On jumped at the chance to show off its success by grabbing the soap's stage and modern production offices.
In the lobby window, looking out on West End, Nikki finished her cell phone call and stepped over to join Rook by the security counter. 'What's our status?' she asked.
Rook said, 'They're sending a production assistant down to take us upstairs to the studio. What was the call?'
'Forensics. They were able to pull a couple of decent fingerprints off the cartridge of that typewriter ribbon I found in the subway.'
'Score another one for us. Although, with all the people who must have handled it, how will they know whose is whose?'
'I have a feeling these were the Texan's,' she said. 'Seeing how they were the only ones with blood on them.'
'Hey. You're the detective…'
