words, not because of them. But the Bulldog was all about living up to the nickname, so to argue the point would only feed the beast.
In his own form of defiance, Rook grabbed two folding chairs that faced the big screen showing a cable poker tournament and swung them around for him and Nikki. “Whatever,” said Miksit.
“Mr. Barrett, I’m here to ask you some questions about the time that my mother, Cynthia Heat, was your daughter’s music tutor.”
The Bulldog crossed her legs and sat back. “Ask away, Detective. I’ve advised my client not to answer anything.”
“Why not, Mr. Barrett? Do you have something to hide?” Heat decided to press. With this attorney in the mix, niceties would be ignored and/or crushed.
He sat up in his chair. “No!”
“Algernon,” said Miksit. When he turned to her, she just shook her head. He sat back again. “Detective, if you want to know about Mr. Barrett’s top shelf line of Caribbean-inspired jerk rubs and marinades, great. If you want to inquire about franchising one of his Do The Jerk gourmet trucks, I can see you get an application.”
“That’s right,” he said. “See, I operate a profitable company and mind my own business, yeah.”
“Then why the expensive lawyer?” asked Heat. “You need protection for some reason?”
“Yes, he does. My client is a new citizen and wants the protection afforded every American from undue pressure by zealous police. We ‘bout done here?”
“My questions,” said Nikki, “are part of a homicide investigation. Would your client prefer to conduct this interview down at the precinct?”
“Your call, Heat. My meter runs the same wherever I am.”
Nikki sensed Barrett was hiding behind counsel because he had a volatile emotional side, and she tried to get a rise. “Mr. Barrett. I see you’ve been arrested for domestic violence.”
Barrett whipped off his glasses and sat bolt upright. “That was long ago.”
“Algernon,” said the Bulldog.
Heat pressed on. “You assaulted your live-in girlfriend.”
“That’s all been cleared up!” He tossed his glasses on the desk.
“Detective, do not harass my-”
“With a knife,” said Heat. “A kitchen knife.”
“Don’t say anything, Mr. Barrett.”
But he didn’t back down. “I did my anger management. I paid for her doctor. Got that bitch a new car.”
“Algernon, please,” said the lawyer.
“My mother was stabbed with a knife.”
“Come on. Things get crazy in the kitchen!”
“My mother was stabbed in her kitchen.”
Helen Miksit stood, towering over her client. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
Algernon Barrett froze with his jaw gaping and sat back in the chair, pulling on his shades. The Bulldog sat, too, and crossed her arms. “Unless you want to charge my client formally, this interview has concluded.”
Back in the car, they had to wait out the long convoy of Barrett’s gourmet trucks clearing the lot as they deployed for the streets of New York. Rook said, “Damn lawyer. That guy was going to be a talker.”
“Which is exactly why the lawyer. The too-bad part is that I wanted to try to pull some information out of him before I got to the knife, but she made me change it up.” With only one name remaining on the list of her mother’s clients, the elation Nikki had felt at scoring these leads began to feel like an unfulfilled promise.
“Well, it wasn’t a total loss,” said Rook. “During all the drama, I pocketed this jar of Do The Jerk Chicken Rub.” He pulled out the spice bottle and showed it off.
“That’s theft, you know.”
“Which will only make the chicken taste better.”
A half hour later, they’d just pulled off the Saw Mill Parkway on their way to Hastings-on-Hudson to visit the last person on the list when Heat got an excited call from Detective Rhymer. “It may not be anything, but it’s at least something.” He said it with just enough of his Southern roots coming through to make him indeed sound like Opie. “Remember sending me to IT to chase down whether Nicole Bernardin used Internet cloud storage?”
“Are you seriously asking if I’d forget having to autograph my magazine cover photo to, um… inspire them?”
“Well, it worked. They haven’t found a storage server yet, but one of my geeks had the idea of using the electronic fingerprint of her cell phone to track her mobile Internet searches through location services. Even though we never found her physical phone, they were able to backtrack her billing and dig out the address of her account. Don’t ask me how they do all this, but I’m sure it’s why they enjoy sitting alone in rooms day and night, touching themselves.”
“Rhymer.”
“Sorry. They managed to score one hit for a HopStop search she made.”
“What’s HopStop?”
“A website that gives you directions when you tell it where you want to go. It gives you subway, bus, taxi, and walking info, including distances and times. Am I making sense?”
“You could star on Big Bang Theory. What was she searching?”
“Directions to a restaurant on the Upper West Side.”
“When?”
“The night she was murdered.”
“Drop whatever you’re doing, Opie. Go now to that restaurant. Go right now and show her picture, learn everything you can.”
“Feller and I are en route as we speak.”
“If this pans out, I suppose I’ll owe IT, big time.”
Rhymer said, “Maybe a lipstick smooch to go under the autograph.”
“OK, now you’re creeping me out,” she said, then hung up.
As Heat turned off the rural two-lane, her tires crunched the long pebble drive leading to Vaja Nikoladze’s Victorian country house, and the sound of barking dogs rose from a kennel behind a stand of rhododendrons in the side pasture. She parked beside the blue hybrid, nosing up to the split-rail fence that separated the driveway from the back field. When they got out, Heat and Rook paused to admire the green sweep of meadow leading down toward the line of hardwoods whose foliage shimmered under the midday sun. They couldn’t see it, but between those trees and the cliffs of the Palisades just beyond, the Hudson River flowed.
Rook said, “Look out there where the field ends. Is that the most realistic scarecrow you’ve ever seen, or what?”
“I’m going with ‘or what?’ That’s no scarecrow. That’s a man.”
And, just as she said it, the stock-still figure in the distance began walking toward them. He moved steadily through the meadow, with a dancer’s grace and economy, in spite of his trail boots and heavy Carhartt jeans. The man never looked behind him or to the side. But they never had a sense he was looking at them, either, even though a broad smile cut across his face when he drew near. His hands, which he had been holding cupped in front of his belt buckle, as if in casual prayer, rose up to his chin and a single forefinger extended. He was signaling them to remain quiet.
When he was one yard away, Vaja Nikoladze stopped and whispered in an accent that sounded Russian to their ears. “One moment, if you please. I have her on a sit-stay.” Then he rotated. Turning his back to them to face the meadow, he raised one arm straight out to the side, held it there for five seconds, and then swung his palm swiftly to his chest.
The instant he did, a very large dog began bounding across the pasture to him at full speed. He held his place as the Georgian Shepherd, about the size and color of a small bear, charged at him. At the last moment, and without so much as a hand signal to command it, the dog stopped and dropped to an alert sit, her front paws aligned with the toes of his boots. “Good girl, Duda.” He bent to pet her broad face and scratch under her ears as her tail wagged. “Now, go to place.” Duda stood, turned, and trotted, cutting a straight line for the kennel, and went inside.
“How awesome is that?” said Nikki.
