made a dent.'
'Well, I got started, and then got on the computer and got caught up working on my Cassidy Towne piece.'
Nikki looked at his monitor, where the Big Lebowski screen saver was engaged-a floating image of the Dude's head on a bowling ball. Then her gaze drifted to the radio-controlled toy helicopter on the desk. She put her hand on the fuselage. 'Still warm,' she said.
'The bad guys don't stand a chance with you, Nikki Heat.'
They had a half hour before they had to leave for the publisher, so Nikki began collecting loose papers off the floor. Rook found a home for the helicopter on the windowsill and said, as casually as he could make it sound for a man who was fishing, 'Must have been bizarre seeing your old boyfriend like that.'
'Blew me away, is what it did. Of all the gin joints, you know?' And then she said, 'So you think he was one of Cassidy's conquests, do you?'
'What? Huh, I hadn't thought of it.' He turned away quickly to scoop pens back into his souvenir mug from the Mark Twain Museum. 'Is that what you think?'
'Don't really know. Sometimes it's nice to take someone at face value.' She looked at him, and he turned away again, this time on paper clip patrol. 'It was a different side to hear about Cassidy, helping someone out like she did for Pet.'
Pet. Rook concentrated so he wouldn't roll his eyes. 'Well, from what I saw of Cassidy, she was tough but she wasn't a monster. But I wouldn't say she was altruistic, either. I'm sure by helping Pete learn the ropes she was also building a relationship with a TV insider on a solid foundation of 'IOU.' '
'Did she have anybody who you would call a close friend?'
'From what I saw, no. She was wired to be a loner. That's not to say lonely. But her downtime was spent with her flowers, not people. Did you see the porcelain plaque screwed into her wall by the French doors? 'When life disappoints, there's always the garden.' '
'Sounds like Cassidy spent a lot of her time coping with disappointment.'
'Still,' he said, 'you can't fault a person whose passion is for helping living things. Albeit vegetation.'
Nikki hefted a pile of recovered papers and evened the corners by tapping them against her tummy. 'I don't know where you want these filed, so I'll just make stacks on your credenza. At least you'll be able to walk around in here while you play with your toy chopper.'
He worked alongside her, chucking anything that was broken into the kitchen trash can he had put in service. 'You know, I like this little bit of shared domestic activity.'
'Don't get any ideas,' she said. 'Although, mm-mm-mm. What says turn-on to a police gal more than cleaning up a crime scene?' The credenza was full, so Nikki set an armful of files on the desktop, and when she did, her arm grazed the space bar on Rook's keyboard, causing the screen saver to vanish. The Dude disappeared, exposing the Google search results for 'Petar Matic Nikki Heat.'
Rook wasn't sure she saw it, and he closed his laptop, muttering something about getting it out of her way. If she had seen it, she didn't let on. Rook forced himself to wait a few moments, working in silence. After a decent interval, he transitioned to shelving books, then casually dropped in a 'Hey, I tried calling you last night but you didn't answer.'
'I know' was all she said.
When they left the Later On studios the night before, Rook had pushed for a dinner date but she wasn't up for it, telling him that she was exhausted from the evening before.
'You mean our sex?' he had asked.
'Oh, yes, Rook, you wore me out.'
'Really?'
'Feel good about you. If you recall, I had an altercation with the Texan right before our night of bliss. Followed by a pretty full day of trooping around on this investigation.'
'I did all those things, too.'
She crinkled her brow. 'Pardon me, but did you actually fight with Tex? I thought it was more like sitting down in a chair and tipping over.'
'You wound me, Nikki. You lash me with your mockery.'
'No,' she had said with undisguised lust, 'that was the sash from my robe.' It only made him ache all the more to share another night with her. But, as ever, Nikki Heat was protective of her independence. He'd taken a sulking cab ride back to Tribeca, his writer's imagination filling his head with possible consequences of reunited college sweethearts exchanging phone numbers.
He slid a volume of his Oxford English Dictionary into its home and said, 'I almost didn't call. I was afraid I'd wake you up.' He put another blue OED next to its companion before he added, 'Because you said you were going to sleep.'
'Are you checking up on me?'
'Me? Get real.'
'I'll tell you if you want to know.'
'Nik, I don't need to know.'
'Because I wasn't home asleep when you called. I was out.' For an avid poker player, he was masking his tells about as well as Roger Rabbit after a swig of whiskey. At last, she said, 'I couldn't sleep so I went to the precinct. I wanted to run a check through an FBI database searching specific weapons and duct tape and persons with a history of torture. Sometimes an MO will jump out. I got nowhere last night, but I connected with an agent at the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico who's going to stay on it and see what kicks. I also got them the fingerprint partials we pulled off the typewriter ribbon.'
'So all that time you were working?'
'Not all that time,' she said.
So there it was. She had seen the Google screen. Or maybe she hadn't and she actually had connected with Petar. 'Are you trying to torture me, Detective Heat?'
'Is that what you want, Jameson? Do you want me to torture you?' And with that, she finished her coffee and took her cup back to the kitchen. 'It's the code, man,' said Ochoa. 'It's that stupid code that keeps people from helping us.' He and his partner Raley sat in the front seat of their unmarked across the street from the Moreno Funeral Parlor at 127th and Lex.
The door to the funeral home was still idle, so Raley let his gaze wander up the block to watch a MetroNorth train on the elevated tracks slowing for the Harlem station, last stop before depositing its freight of morning commuters from Fairfield County at Grand Central. 'It makes no sense. Especially when it's family. I mean, they must know we're trying to find whoever killed their own kin.'
'Doesn't have to make sense, Rales. The code says you don't snitch, no matter what.'
'But whose code? Padilla's family doesn't show any banger ties.'
'Don't have to. It's in the culture. It's in the music, it's on the street. Even if snitching doesn't get you whacked, it makes you the lowest. Nobody wants to be that. That's the rule.'
'So what can we hope to do then?'
Ochoa shrugged. 'I dunno. Maybe find the exception?'
A black van pulled up to the receiving door of the mortuary and honked twice. Both detectives looked at their watches. They knew OCME had released Esteban Padilla's body at 8 A.M. It was now a quarter to nine, and they watched silently as the rolling metal door rose and two attendants emerged to offload the gurney and the dark vinyl bag containing the victim's remains.
Just after nine a white '98 Honda pulled up and parked. 'Here we go,' said Raley. But he cursed when the driver got out and the uncooperative cousin from the night before went inside the building. 'So much for finding our exception.'
They waited ten minutes without talking, and when nobody else arrived, Raley started the car. 'I was thinking the same thing,' said his partner as the Roach Coach pulled away from the curb.
Nobody answered their knock at Padilla's row house on East 115th. The detectives were just about to leave when a voice came through the door, asking who it was, in Spanish. Ochoa identified himself and asked if they could have a word. There was a long pause before a security chain slid, a deadbolt shot, and the door opened a crack. A teenage boy asked if he could see badges.
