Raging Heat (13 page)

She decided it was time to fill in some blanks.

Reese Cristóbal, the so-called Gateway Lawyer that Rook mentioned, worked out of a storefront office on West Thirty-eighth near the hansom cab horse stables, not exactly a neighborhood must-see on the tourist maps. Heat found a parking spot and badged herself to the receptionist in the tiny suite with the cracked window facing the street.

After she shook the attorney’s clammy hand, she knew his peppery cologne would linger for the rest of the day—a dinnertime reminder of the visit. Cristóbal wore a short-sleeved, pink dress shirt with a harmonious tie that probably came with it in a boxed set. He returned to his place behind a stack of papers on his messy desk. Nikki took the sole guest chair and worked not to stare at the hair plugs. “I’m trying to make contact with a few of your clients. Fidel Figueroa and Charley Tosh.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “I’ll wait, if you need to check your files.”

“Correction, Detective. Former clients. And I don’t need to check my files because I remember them well, and they are so freaking gone. I got no idea where they got off to, and I don’t much care.”

“Well. That’s pretty top of mind.” Her gaze went to the transplants rimming his forehead.

“I don’t do a lot of criminal casework. Mostly, I’m assisting the huddled masses in transition, et ceter-yadda, et ceter-yadda. You know, landlord issues, securing identity docs, ICE hassles. But if a client gets in a bind, I help. These two, Tosh and Figueroa, abused the situation. I dig them out of a trespassing jam, only to find it’s a fucking scam. They’re getting paid for it as dirty tricksters for some political action assholes. Do I look like I need any trouble getting tangled up in that? No.”

“I don’t understand. What kind of trouble?”

“I am not in the business of helping undocumented cretins come to this country and throw rocks at a man who will be our next U.S. senator.”

“You’re talking about Keith Gilbert?”

“None other.”

This had gone where she hoped it would, to the anti-Gilbert PAC. The attorney’s protectiveness of the candidate intrigued her, so she stayed on that road. “Are you a supporter of Gilbert’s?”

“He’s going to be the one. Get aboard, I say.”

“Are you involved in his campaign?”

“No.”

“Do you know him? Have you ever met him?”

“Huh…I’d have to think.” He made theater of searching his water stained ceiling. “No.”

“Funny that you remembered Figueroa and Tosh, but you don’t remember whether you met your favorite political candidate.”

“Funny?” He shrugged. “Just had to think, is all.”

It wasn’t the stables Heat was smelling, but a lie. But she’d follow up on that in time. Right then, she had other things to pursue. “Do you also recall a client named Fabian Beauvais?” When he furrowed his brow, she showed him the picture.

“Oh, yeah sure. Misdemeanor trespass. Got busted with the other two. But he wasn’t ‘with them-with them.’ Good kid. Smart. But that kinda works against you when you don’t know your reality.”

Heat couldn’t let that go. “Excuse me, but doesn’t that sound a lot like knowing your place?”

“Hey, if it craps like a duck, right? Why do you want to know about him?”

“He was murdered.”

“Mm, tough break. I didn’t know him. Before the trespassing bust, I mean.”

She sniffed another dodge. “Didn’t you place him at a job?” Nikki waited then prompted him. “At a chicken slaughterhouse?”

“Huh, did I? I’d have to look it up, but glad I could help him out.” The lawyer stood up. “Hey, listen I’m late for some rent hearing up in Mott Haven. Can we do this some other day? Maybe make an appointment next time.” Whether the rent hearing was real or a fabrication, there wasn’t much she could do about it, with apologies and good-byes, he applied another dose of cologne to her hand and hustled out the door.

Out on the sidewalk, Heat watched him speed off in his silver Mercedes G-Class SUV. Nikki figured, for a storefront immigration lawyer, Reese Cristóbal was doing pretty well.

Back at the Twentieth, Heat discovered Feller had just returned from New Jersey, so she was able to gather her full squad for a late briefing. She shorthanded the release of Gilbert and skirted the captain’s banishment of Rook from the precinct. Word on that had circulated on its own, and her crew had enough compassion—or sense—not to comment on it. “I’m not suggesting the killers are cops,” she said after relaying the fiber news from OCME and Forensics. “They could be security cops, mall cops, or just buffs who bought from an army surplus. Detective Rhymer, I’d like you to show sketches of our two goons at army-navy shops. I know the clothing could have been bought online, but street-level is a good start.

Feller asked, “What about PAPD?”

“Smart. And since Port Authority is becoming your thing, why don’t you make a friend at PAPD who’ll run Beauvais and Capois through their data bank to see if there are any hits. Arrests, tickets, citizen complaints filed against a cop, basically anything. Roach, have you gotten any traction on those MetroCard swipes in Chelsea?”

“Indeed,” said Raley. “When we went through Jeanne Capois’s purse a second time, we found something on the back of a grocery receipt in her wallet. She had used it to jot down an address in Chelsea on West Sixteenth Street.”

Ochoa added, “It’s an apartment not far from the subway stop.”

“And, ironically, the Port Authority Inland Terminal Building. Before you get excited, it’s no longer owned by Port Authority, but by Google. I Googled that, increasing a seemingly infinite loop of irony.”

“Before you get pulled into a time warp, Rales, why don’t you give me that address? I’ll pay a visit tonight on my way home. I’d like you and Ochoa to go interview Beauvais’s friend Hattie Pate at the address Rook left.”

Before she released them for the night she voiced what swirled within all of them. “I don’t need to tell you this case is far from cleared. I won’t say it’s in jeopardy, but we can’t sit on what’s up here.” She indicated the Murder Board over her shoulder. “Let’s pretend this is square one and get more.”

“Higher, farther, faster,” said Rhymer.

Ochoa shook his head. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

She gave the taxi driver the address in Chelsea and settled into the seat burdened by a downer day and her own bleak thoughts. The surprise turn the case had taken and its collateral fallout was bad enough. The underpinning that kept her brain swirling had a name, and it was Jameson Rook. After the years of intimacy and happiness they had enjoyed together, not to mention the deep respect she had for his character, she had cause to believe him when he said he hadn’t shared any inside information with Gilbert’s man. Then how did this happen?

She took out her phone and opened up the text message Rook had sent her shortly after he left the Twentieth.
BTW SINCE YOU BROUGHT UP VOODOO, I ALSO DID SOME RESEARCH ON THAT EARLIER TODAY. NOT AS FRINGY-SATANIC AS PEOPLE THINK. ONE OF THEIR BELIEFS IS THAT THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS OR COINCIDENCES. EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A PURPOSE—R.

Nikki wondered what purpose she could she find in this. Not in sending the text, that was obviously a makeup ping. But what reason was there to find in Rook’s dissent and intrusion? Even if he hadn’t been the direct cause of Gilbert’s release without bail, he’d been more than a loose cannon. She couldn’t escape that recurring feeling he was working against her.

Ever since news of the task force job came out.

Heat didn’t want even to think he would be trying to undermine her chance for the task force for his personal reason of keeping her in New York.

But she couldn’t stop.

So she touched the TV screen to resume the seat-back news video she had switched off before, just to get some distraction. “Hurricane Sandy Slams Jamaica.” So much for escape. The
Eyewitness News
report said the storm had become a Category One, moving northward, pounding Jamaica with eighty-mile-per-hour winds. Footage rolled of people walking bent into the sideways force of rain. A reporter in a yellow slicker made his obligatory stand-up report, shouting against the howl of nature from the seething breakwater about dead and missing by the dozens, buildings caving, others being swept out to sea in the surge. The raging hurricane continued its track over the Caribbean, with computer models still predicting landfall in the U.S. Northeast sometime Monday or Tuesday. Like most New Yorkers, Heat looked at the gentle mist reflecting the night-scape on the sidewalks and found it all hard to believe. But a lot could happen in five days.

When the cab let her out at Eighth Avenue at Sixteenth a new unsettling wave rolled through her. After she scoped out this address, Nikki worried: should she go to her place or to Rook’s? Their issues would all need to be confronted eventually. For the moment, that meant later. Heat double-checked the address and walked on, asking herself why the hell she ever went into the trash for that Parisian jewelry bag.

If she had been paying attention to the street instead, she might have seen them coming. By the time the man in the black SWAT uniform tackled her from behind, his partner had already yanked her gun.

S
urprise delayed Heat’s reaction. A split second of “what the—?” was all it took, and she toppled face-first, toward the sidewalk. But in the blink after that split second, training kicked in. With a vengeance.

A primary rule of close combat: Don’t get pinned. Nikki spun during the fall to present her back to the ground. On her twist around she jammed a sharp elbow to the ear of the man behind her, which not only stunned him but also pushed him off-line so he would not land on top of her.

When he hit the pavement with an “Oof,” she had already continued her roll, flinging a leg behind the knees of the man beside her, the one who’d taken her weapon. He had her Sig Sauer in his hand but pointed where she had been, not where she was. The leg sweep took this guy down hard. The back of his head made a coconut smack on the concrete. Heat sprung into a crouch, ready to lunge for her pistol, but by then the other assailant had gathered himself up and he threw himself on her.

Like his partner, he was big and built like granite. But his bulk also made him slower than Nikki. Once again, she swiveled to land on her back, and when he reached out to put a hand on each shoulder to pin her, she rained a rapid-fire barrage of punches up to his undefended face, a face she then recognized from Beauvais’s SRO. He pulled back a fist to strike her, but during his wind-up, she lunged the crown of her forehead into his nose and he cried out. The punch never came.

Movement. The other man, also from the SRO hallway, was hauling himself up onto his knees, dazed, and with blood streaming from the split skin on the back of his shaved head. In the ghosty light, she saw him start to bring up the Sig Sauer. Nikki struggled to free herself from under the moaning hulk. Finally getting to a squat, she gauged there was too much distance and not enough time to jump for the pistol. She made a no-look reach and tore at the Velcro on her ankle holster. The ripping sound gave the man an instant of hesitation. Heat filled it with .25 caliber slugs from her Beretta Jetfire. The air cracked twice and his face lit up with muzzle flashes as the bullets entered just above his eyebrows.

Beside her, a whoosh of cloth. A black tactical boot kicked Nikki’s wrist and her back-up piece flew from her hand, clattering into the parking lot of the public housing complex. Without waiting, she dove for her Sig in the dead man’s hand. Inches from reaching it, two pairs of hands grabbed her from behind, snatching her up onto her feet. Another big man had joined the attack, and both of them dragged her across the sidewalk toward an idling van. She struggled mightily to free herself. Heat knew if they got her in that thing, she was as good as dead.

Another axiom from Nikki’s combat training: To unleash surprise, think in opposites. She made a point of wrestling harder the closer they brought her to the side cargo doors. No match for their brute strength, she was conditioning them to work against her resistance. Then, a yard from the open doors came their surprise. Heat reversed her struggle, unexpectedly charging in the direction they were pushing her. The flip in momentum hurled all three of them at the vehicle. But Nikki was the only one prepared for the shift.

When the two men smacked into the side of the van on either side of her, Heat broke free and ran.

At ten on a drizzly weeknight, this block was hopelessly quiet. Apartment vestibules were empty and locked; the big office building on the left slept; no cabs or cars to flag for help. Ahead, at Ninth Avenue, a pool of bright light reminded her: The hotels. The Dream and the Maritime both had a vibrant night scene. And security. But then she came to an abrupt stop.

A silhouette approached her from that direction; a dark paramilitary form. Half a block away, but coming. Walking. Taking his time, however also bringing his hand to his hip. Something about his ease made him seem even more menacing. Nikki cut a quick turn and shot across Sixteenth to get some leeway on the opposite side. She almost got killed.

The attackers’ cargo van bore down full throttle and nearly creamed her, speeding the wrong way on a one-way street. Heat took advantage of the blow-by. They were going too fast to turn around. So she reversed field and doubled back the way they came, toward Eighth. But the van didn’t bother to turn around. She heard protesting gears and the thundering of the engine. Heat glanced back as she ran, only to be blinded by white back ups as the Express 1500 raced toward her—full speed—in reverse.

The driver had skills. Even going backward at an insane clip, the tires followed the gutter line expertly, and soon the thing came beside her, pacing her. The cargo doors banged open and the attacker whose nose she had flattened hung out of the hatch, poised to either jump or simply ape snatch her as they drove by. Lungs searing, Heat calculated her chances of making the corner, determined not to go, not like this. And for a flash, she wondered if this is what it had been like for Jeanne Capois right before the torture.

At Eighth Avenue a taxi approached with its roof light burning. Nikki reached the corner shouting with her arms raised, but the driver never looked her way. She ran out into traffic but the few other cabs that came by were all taken on a misty night in New York. A frantically waving pedestrian got ignored; just a drunk or a tourist. She thought of flashing her badge for a stop but at night that was chancy. Besides, the van was still in play. The driver had backed it out into Eighth and roared toward her again, this time, headlights-first.

Heat dashed over to the sidewalk, sprinting toward Fifteenth, no plan. Just get away. Ahead at the corner a food delivery man was getting ready to chain his bicycle to a standpipe. “Hey, hey!” she hollered. “NYPD, taking this.” He mustn’t have understood, or didn’t buy it, because he gave Heat a shove to defend his ride. Just what she needed. Losing steps to the Take-A-Masala guy. She plowed past him, mounting his bike and yelling, “Call 911. Officer needs help.”

Nikki ate up sidewalk knowing full well if she took the street, she’d be roadkill under that van.

The van.

Beside her again. Running parallel, matching speed, holding steady. The passenger window opened. A pair of black sleeves came out, forearms bracing on the sill, hands clasping a Glock aimed at her. Heat jammed her brake pedal. The van continued past. A shot barked from the window. The miss sang off the stone wall beside her. Heat’s brake pop made her lose balance. Some noise ahead, a big clatter. Fighting to stay upright, she yawed wildly in the saddle. Almost good. Almost…A few yards up, the source of the racket. A night-demolition crew rolled a barrow of construction debris from a loading dock right into her path.

The impact bounced Nikki off the big gray refuse tub and she landed on the sidewalk looking up at the front bicycle wheel spinning over her head. The demo workers rushed to her, lifting dust masks off their faces, helping her up. “Whoa, lady, you all right?” A bullet ripped through the upper arm of the one closest to her.

“Down, down, down.” Heat yanked them to the deck just as two more shots hit some fractured pieces of drywall in the bin, snowing powder down on them. Her companions froze, panicked and bewildered. Nikki took charge. “NYPD. You.” She pointed to the one who wasn’t bleeding. “Push, come on.” Seconds mattered. “Come on.” She grabbed him by the coveralls and pulled him to the debris tub with her. She took one of the other man’s palms and clamped it over his wound. “Squeeze. Stay close.” She gave a three count and they rolled the container back into the loading dock, using it for cover. Three more shots hit it but didn’t penetrate. Thinking now of cover. Tactics and cover. Get inside the building, get behind that metal door. Quickly. But halfway there, the wounded man passed out and hit the ground. Heat scanned the loading dock. Time for new tactics.

Nikki sent her Officer Needs Help text and waited for them to come. A prolonged half minute that stretched all her senses. Wondering how many there were. Wishing she had a gun. She tried not to think of the odds. Only of making her stand. The voice of her training instructor echoed across more than a decade: “When met with superior force respond with shocking vigor.” Heat listened, dissecting the night, ready to do her TI proud.

She knew to expect a calculated assault. And not just because these guys liked to put on tactical wear. Their escape from Flatbush in those dual cars showed planning and training. So did the execution of her takedown tonight: the stealth; the van skills; the redundancy—like positioning that cool customer to block her escape toward the hotels. So she got into their heads, following their playbook, anticipating their way in. Which was why when the Glock eased around the corner leading to the loading dock, right where she knew it would be, she was ready for it. But Heat held back. Held back knowing the visual peek-around was still a beat-count away. More arm would show first. And it did. In fact, two arms because both hands gripped the pistol in a textbook isosceles brace.

Now.

Heat lashed out the nine-foot length of flexible metal conduit like a bullwhip. Her cast landed perfectly. The galvanized steel cable encircled both his wrists twice, strapping them together. She gripped her end with both hands and used her full body weight to yank. Her pull jerked his left forearm into the corner of the concrete wall and it snapped. He screamed as he fell forward. She pounced on him to get the Glock before the belting could loosen on his wrists, but as he crashed to the ground the gun broke free and skittered out of reach. Nikki crawled for it. But he got his good hand clear and clutched her jacket, holding her back. A shot fired from outside the loading dock, and the air beside her ear sizzled as the slug passed. The guy’s grip not only kept her from the pistol, he held her in place as a target. She reached down to her waistband for the hammer she had taken from the construction worker. With one swing Heat put the claw end into her attacker’s temple. She tried to pull it out for another blow but it was stuck. No matter. His grip slackened for good.

Four more rounds put the Glock out of reach in the kill zone. Heat rolled away, retreating to the hide she had made behind the debris bin. She signaled the conscious worker hiding with his buddy behind the tool chest near the electrical panel. He nodded, reached up, and pulled the main. The loading dock fell dark except for light-bleed from the street.

Again, Heat waited.

He came in a low crouch. She could see his reflection in the convex mirror above the service elevator. He crept closer. Cautiously. Mindful now that his task held peril. This was the one whose nose she’d broken. Nikki took only slow half-breaths, not letting any sound give her away. But he had to know where she was. And he was right. He got to the side of the bin. She could hear him swallow. Crouched in the darkness, she was lost in shadow to him, but in the mirror, backlit by the streetlights, she could see he was merely an arm’s length away. One more step. That was all she needed. He took it.

She switched on the laser level. Nikki missed his eyes at first, but she quickly adjusted her aim and blinded him with the tool. He fired wildly at the light source, but she had already moved, sprung up from her crouch with a nail gun. He couldn’t see anything but he heard her coming and swung an arm to deflect her. The pneumatic tool fired. In that light she couldn’t tell what she hit but he gasped and yelled “Fuck.” Heat had to get that gun away. He was already bringing it toward her. She slapped her free hand on it and was able to push it aside, but he held strong. He punched at her, landing a hard blow to her cheek that dazed her.

Unable to get the gun free, Nikki pressed the air nailer against his wrist and fired. Pulled back. Fired again. Nails are painful. Nails between joints are excruciating. The pistol dropped. Disarmed, he ran out moaning.

Sirens coming. Lots of them.

Armed with her attacker’s Smith & Wesson, Detective Heat switched mode, just like that, to offense. She wanted these guys. For what they did. For what they knew.

Cautiously, rapidly, she picked her way past the debris container that had shielded her and hopped over the body splayed on the concrete with the hammer lodged in its head. She flattened her back against the wall of the loading dock and braced the gun in both hands. The cargo door of the van slammed just outside, and she heard it roaring off. She swung around the corner onto the sidewalk to try for the tires but it was too long gone. Across the street, a quarter block west, a dark gray Impala idled. A man stood at the open driver’s side door. This was the cool customer who’d blocked her escape earlier. Their eyes met. In the orange tint of the streetlights, his features were passive. A living death mask.

“NYPD, freeze.” Nikki brought her weapon up to aim. With a chilling casualness, he raised an assault rifle and laid down a hail of bullets that sent her diving for cover behind the engine block of a parked car. When the firing stopped and the echoes from the G36 trailed off into the night, Heat shook the windshield glass from her hair and rose up, ready to return fire.

But the Impala was already turning the corner down on Ninth Avenue. Before disappearing around it, Heat could swear she saw an arm raise up from the driver’s side and give her the finger.