Heat Rises (32 page)

“I’m not sure if this will be anything, but if it is, I figured you deserved the honors.” She slowly crossed the room to join him, then followed his gaze down into the open drawer.

Captain Montrose’s sock drawer. In it were about a dozen pairs of black and navy dress socks, folded and balled to marry the pairs. And toward the back of the drawer, a lone beige sock without a mate. Nikki looked up at Rook. Both were thinking it, but neither was saying it.

An odd sock.

Heat picked it up. Her heart raced when she did. “There’s something in it.”

“Come on, I’m gonna pee myself.”

Nikki opened the sock and reached inside. “It’s cardboard.” She pulled it out. It was a business card. For a talent representative. “This is for Horst Meuller’s agent.”

When she turned it over her throat contracted and she stifled an involuntary wail. She covered her face with one hand and turned away as she handed the card to Rook. He flipped it over. The ballpoint handwriting read, “Nikki, just be careful.”

At nine the next morning, when Heat and Rook climbed the subway steps up to 18th Street, a frozen mist was descending on Chelsea, wrapping the neighborhood in a harsh, woolen chill. They crossed Seventh, heading west, toward the agent’s office, joining an eclectic sidewalk mix of tortured young artists and upstart dancers who might have been cast in a music-video salute to brooding. By the time they reached Eighth, Rook said he had stopped counting navy berets.

When they entered the third-floor walk-up office of the Step This Way Talent Agency, Phil Podemski was eating take-out oatmeal at his desk. As he swept old trade magazines and newspapers from his couch onto the floor so they could sit, the agent eyeballed Nikki and said he could really do something with her, considering her figure and looks. “You have to strip, of course. Not for me, I don’t go for any funny business, I mean in the act.”

“Much as I appreciate the offer,” she said, “that’s not why we’re here.”

“Oh . . .” Podemski sized up Rook and tugged at his orange Yosemite Sam mustache. “Sure, guess I could give you a bullwhip and a fedora. We’d market you as Indiana Bones. Or maybe go sci-fi. You sorta look like that guy who roamed outer space everybody’s so crazy about.”

“Malcolm Reynolds?” asked Rook.

“Who? . . . No, I’m thinking we give you a space helmet and some assless chaps and call you . . . Butt Rogers.”

When Nikki jumped in and told him they were there to talk about Horst Meuller, Podemski stuck the plastic spoon back in the wide-mouthed deli cup and frowned while he finished chewing. “You cops?”

Nikki dodged telling an outright lie by saying, “You already spoke to one of my squad members, a Detective Rhymer?” When that seemed enough of an answer, she pressed forward. Heat wasn’t sure what she was looking for yet, but Captain Montrose had gone to great effort to leave her a posthumous clue leading to Podemski’s agency. He had also told her to be careful, although her assessment of the agent himself was that he was more colorful than dangerous, a lovable schemer straight out of
Broadway Danny Rose
.

Nikki told Podemski she was with his client the day he got shot but that Horst had been uncooperative. “Do you have any idea why he won’t speak to us?”

“That kid, I dunno. Since the boyfriend passed on, he hasn’t been the same. His act as Hans Alloffur is my big draw. But he ducked out on me after his pal Alan died, didn’t even tell me where he moved.”

Nikki remembered that from Rhymer’s report, which was why her plan with Phil Podemski was to drill down more on the dead lover, since that was driving Meuller’s actions. She flipped up the cover of her notebook. “Tell me about the boyfriend. Alan who?”

“Barclay. Nice guy. Older than Horst, maybe fifty. In good shape but had one of those gray complexions with the hollow eyes and dark circles like you see on people in nursing homes.”

Rook said, “And health food stores.” Nikki shot him a look. “OK, tell me I’m wrong.”

She turned back to Podemski. “He had some cardiac problems, right?”

“Yeah, that’s how he kicked. Tragedy.” The agent stirred his cold oatmeal and shook his head. “I never got that demo reel he said he’d make for my agency.”

“Was he in advertising?”

“Nuh-uh. Cameraman.” Phil held up both hands. “Videographer, pardon me.”

“What sort of video, Mr. Podemski?”

“Reality TV. You ever watch that show
Payback Playback
?”

Rook sat upright. “I love that show.” Nikki shrugged, unfamiliar with it. “You haven’t seen it? It’s great. Every week they have a different victim who has been screwed by someone—personal relationship, car mechanic, whatever—and they devise a hidden camera payback for the creep and play it back with him sitting right there in front of a nasty studio audience that yells, ‘Playback’s a bitch!’ ”

“My loss,” she said. “So did this Alan Barclay do any other kind of video work? Anything like porn or maybe bondage videos?” It was a long shot, but she had to ask, given where the case started.

“Porn? No way. I’d bet the farm against that.”

Nikki asked, “How come?”

“He was too religious. Strict Catholic. Alan was always trying to get Horst to give up the strip clubs and go legit. Maybe try out for Alvin Ailey or Juilliard. Messing with my income, that guy, may he rest in peace. Even tried to get his pastor to convert him.”

Rook blurted the question before Nikki could. “Do you know who Alan Barclay’s pastor was?”

“Sure I do. He’s the one who got murdered. It was on the news the day after I met him.”

Heat exchanged a glance with Rook and asked, “Where did you meet him?”

“Right here. The morning before he was killed. He was camped out in the hall when I came to open up. Said Horst Meuller told him to meet him here at nine sharp, so I let him in. All the while, I’m wondering how the hell do I entertain a priest? But Horst shows up pretty quick. Naturally, I ask him where he’s been, and he says never mind—he’s very nervous, freaked even. Then he and the priest take a walk. Last time I saw Horst till I heard he got shot.”

Heat quickly ran the events of the the past week through her memory and asked, “How come you didn’t tell any of this to Detective Rhymer when he interviewed you?”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me, I was only doing what that other cop told me to do, which was not to tell anyone.”

Heat felt her pulse flutter. “What other cop said that to you, Mr. Podemski?”

“He was a detective, too. The one who killed himself.”

Heat said, “Captain Montrose?”

“Montrose, that’s right.” Podemski fished the captain’s business card out of the slush pile atop his desk. “He showed up here a couple hours after Horst took off with that priest. Said he wanted to know where they went or if they left anything behind, you know, for me to hold or stash.”

“Did he say what it was? Money, an object?” asked Rook.

Podemski shook no. “Just told me to call him if anybody else came looking and to tell nobody about any of it. Not even other cops.”

“Has anybody else come by looking for whatever this is?” asked Rook.

“Nope.”

Nikki said, “Mind if I ask why you’re telling me?”

“Cuz I just realized that you’re the lady cop from that magazine. I figured if I can’t trust you, pack it in.”

Rook hit the sidewalk ready to rock and roll. “We’ve got him now. I’m telling you, Nik, that German is in this up to his umlaut.”

“How can you know that?” she asked.

“Come on, Meuller fights with Graf at the strip club, Meuller leads Graf away the morning he’s murdered, Meuller runs from you . . . If you want to know why he hid out and quit those dancing jobs, I refer you to Mr. George Michael’s theory about guilty feet and rhythm.”

“Rook, think of our timeline and tell me this. Meuller left Podemski’s agency with Father Graf just after nine &A.M.& How is it then that Graf shows up at
Justicia a Guarda
headquarters very much alive an hour and a half later?”

Rook shifted gears like nothing had happened. “Right. Alternate thought, that’s good. Any other notions?”

“No, a question. I want to know what a male stripper could have with him that Montrose would want and that got so many people killed. I want to talk to Horst Meuller again.”

“Great, let’s go.”

“Not yet.”

“Absolutely not,” said Rook, deftly flip-flopping. “Why not?”

“Because Meuller plays too close to the vest. I want to confront him, but I want to go in there knowing more than he thinks I do,” said Heat. “So let’s be smart and use the help Montrose gave us. He led us to that agent for a reason. Since we already knew about Meuller, I think it was to point us to his lover, the videographer. Let’s see what we can find out about Alan Barclay.”

Rook hailed a cab, and on the way to Gemstar Studios in Queens, where they produced
Payback Playback
, Heat called Mrs. Borelli at the rectory. The housekeeper not only confirmed that Alan Barclay was a parishioner at Our Lady of the Innocents but that Father Graf said his funeral Mass and delivered the eulogy two weeks earlier. “They knew each other very well, then? Were they friends?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call them friends,” said the woman. “Alan had some moral crisis he was dealing with, and Father was counseling him. The last days of poor Mr. Barclay’s life, things got quite heated in Father Gerry’s study.”

“Did you hear what they were arguing about, Mrs. B?”

“Afraid not, Detective. I may be nosy but I’m not a snoop.”

Heat told Security she and Rook would wait in the lobby for the pro ducer, mainly so nobody would ask her to flash tin. If—as the giant poster on the studio wall said, “The Playback Is a Bitch!”—so was being a cop without a shield. The bearded man in the sport coat and jeans who came out of the double glass doors to meet them introduced himself as the line producer, which meant that Jim Steele’s purview was the show’s physical production, including hiring the camera crew. He asked if there had been some neighborhood complaint about damage or noise from their location shooting and relaxed measurably when she told him no.

“I just want to ask you a few questions about one of your former crew. Alan Barclay.”

Steele closed his eyes momentarily and told her that the whole crew was still mourning him. “If you lead a good life, if you’re fortunate enough, you get a chance to work with a guy like Alan. A lovely man. Very giving and an artist with that camera. Total pro.”

Nikki said, “His name has come up related to a case we are investigating, and I’m really looking for some background on him.”

“Not a lot to tell. He’s been with me here since I hired him freelance on
Don’t Forget to Duck
.”

“Great effing show,” said Rook.

The producer browsed him warily then continued, “That would have been 2005. Alan was so gifted I brought him onto
Playback
when we got our syndication order.”

“What about before that,” asked Heat, “had he worked another show?”

“No, in fact, he was sort of a risky hire for me because his background was news shooting.”

Rook said, “Network or local stations?”

“Neither. He’d been a rover for one of the stringer companies that provide video footage to local stations that cut back on budgets. You know, stations can’t justify the union crews to wait around on the overnight shift to shoot the occasional car accidents and robberies, so instead, they buy clips from the stringers on an as-needed basis.”

“Do you know offhand who Alan Barclay worked for?” asked Heat.

“Gotham Outsource.” Steele’s smart phone buzzed and he checked the screen. “Listen, I’ve got to get back in there. Do you have all you need?”

“Sure do. Thanks,” she said.

Before he left, the producer said, “Mind if I ask you a question? Do you guys ever compare notes?”

Nikki said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“One of your detectives was here a little over a week ago asking the same questions.”

The assignment manager of Gotham Outsource had the cranky de meanor of a taxi dispatcher. He half-swiveled from his computer monitor and, over the chatter and electronic noise of a few dozen scanners, said, “I already covered all this with your other suit a week, ten days ago, you know.”

“Captain Montrose, right?”

“Yeah, same dude who ten-eightied himself,” he said, using the police radio code for “Cancel.”

Heat wanted to slap him hard enough for his headset to embed itself in his pea brain. Rook either sensed or shared her distaste and interceded. “Cover it again, it’ll take you two minutes. How long did Alan Barclay work for you?”

“Started in 2001. We doubled our crews after 9/11, and he was part of the big hire.”

“And you were happy with him?” asked Nikki, past her anger for the moment.

“I was until I wasn’t.”

She said, “Help me out there.”

“Guy ended up being my best shooter. Great shots, hard worker, not afraid to get close to the action. Then he just flakes out on me.
Adios
. Doesn’t even come in to quit or say kiss my royal red hinder. Just stops showing.” He sucked his teeth. “Freelancers. These lowlifes are one rung above paparazzi.”

Heat couldn’t wait to get some distance from this goon, but she had one more thing to find out. “Do you remember the date he quit so suddenly?”

He gestured with both arms to the roomful of police radios and TV monitors. “Do I look like I’d remember the date?”

“Try,” said Rook.

The man scoffed. “You’re no cop. Not wearing a fancy watch like that. You got nothing over me.”

Rook brushed past Nikki, ripped the headset off the guy, and spun his chair so he was nose-to-nose with him. “Hey, Ed Murrow, what would it cost your business if I called in a safety tip and some city inspections of your fleet of news vans stopped you from prowling for a night or three?” He paused. “I thought so.” Then Rook wrote his phone number down and stuffed it in the man’s shirt pocket. “Start remembering.”

When Horst Meuller woke up from his nap, he gasped. Rook was lean ing over his hospital bed holding a very large syringe in the German’s face. “Don’t worry, Herr Meuller,” he said in a soft voice, “I won’t hurt you.” Yet he didn’t move away, either. “But do you see how very easy it would be for someone else to kill you while you slept?” Rook gently swung the hypodermic back and forth; Meuller’s eyes followed it, big and wide like a cat clock. “You’re in a hospital, so there are so many ways. I’ve heard of contract killers who dress like nurses and inject poison into the IV drip of their victims.” Meuller felt around for the call button, and Rook smiled and held it up with his other hand. “To live, press one now.”