Raging Heat (11 page)

She made another run. “Captain, come on, he shot the man. And I believe the gunshot was a first attempt. When that failed, Gilbert found some other way. Or had somebody do it.” Irons kept shaking his head. “I want a warrant for his arrest and search warrant for that gun.”

“No sale,” he said when she had finished. “Not with my neck on that cold marble.” Behind his back, the squad pelted the skipper with a barrage of disparaging looks. Heat put her own scorn aside and focused on rescuing the warrant.

“Maybe I can go back over some of these points, if I didn’t make it all clear, sir.”

“Oh, I get your points, just fine. But from where I sit? This is one jumbo button to push. And no way I’m pushing it without the one thing you’re missing.” He made a sweeping gesture to the Murder Board, which had a dismissive feel. “I see no hard link connecting this Beauvais character to Commissioner Gilbert. What I do see is a lot of circumstantials and conjecture.”

“Captain Irons, this is solid. I have arrested and gotten righteous convictions on less.”

“Not this time.” He knuckle rapped the board, smearing some of her notations. “Show me a link from the dead guy to Gilbert. Then we’ll green light your warrant.”

The first thing Heat did when Irons closed his office door was to tell her detectives to stow their harsh remarks and keep their eyes on the ball. “Have your pity party later over brews at Plug Uglies. Right now we need to find a work-around for this roadblock.”

“We need a Wally Work-around,” said Feller.

Heat quelled the laughs with, “I said later, Randall.” Thinking and thinking, she tapped her pen on her lips then said, “OK. We dig deeper into what we’ve got. Detective Rhymer. Run Alicia Delamater through your contacts at Customs to see if she used her passport yesterday or today. Her lawyer says she left the country, and I want to talk to her.”

“On it.”

And then an afterthought came to her. “And, say, Opie. Just in case she hasn’t gone yet, run a list of cruises operated by Gilbert Maritime leaving New York or Jersey and put out a Watch and Advise for her.” If Keith Gilbert was making moves to disrupt Heat’s investigation, he might provide the transport for one of her witnesses.

“Detective Feller. Pay a visit to Port Authority motor pool. Use your personal charm to get them to show you the requisitions for names of employees who checked out that Impala. I want those two dudes sweating in our box, and soon.” She noticed Rhymer still hanging around. Polite to a fault, he waited until she’d finished and raised a finger to be called on.

“Something just jumped in my head.” His Virginia hills accent made it sound like a question. “It’s the phone link. Beauvais had Gilbert’s home number, that’s what started all this.”

Showing some impatience, Ochoa said, “Yeah, but Irons hit us with a catch-22 by not letting us get a warrant for Gilbert’s phone records. Plus we never found a phone of Beauvais’s, so that’s pretty much a dry hole.”

“Understood,” said Rhymer. “But that phone in Jeanne Capois’s purse. She had a text from Beauvais, right?”

Nikki got right there with him. “Brilliant. If we can trace that text to Beauvais’s phone, we’ll have his number and can run that without a warrant. Now that’s a work-around.”

Ochoa turned to his partner. “Why the hell didn’t you think of that?”

Raley shrugged. “Just giving these other men their chance to shine.”

Fifteen minutes later, Detective Heat stood Captain Irons back in front of the Murder Board and pointed to her latest posting. “We have come up with your link, sir. A phone call was made from Fabian Beauvais to Keith Gilbert’s home number on this date.”

Wally interrupted. “Hang on; who the hell authorized a warrant for you to search Keith Gilbert’s phone records?”

“We didn’t search Gilbert’s records. We searched the deceased’s—after tracking Fabian Beauvais to his pay-as-you-go cell phone.”

“He had a burner?” Irons made it sound like a criminal accessory.

“It’s not at all uncommon for low-income people to use short-term cell phones, Captain. Nor is it a crime.”

“Fine. But he called the home number. Once. You call that a link?”

“Which is why,” said Heat, “the series of other calls that ensued over the next few days—including calls originating from Keith Gilbert’s personal cell phone to Fabian Beauvais are so…persuasive. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Wally Irons was a survivor. True, he played checkers instead of chess with his career strategies, but even a blundering donkey found its feed bucket eventually.

“You’re dead sure he’s your man?”

“I am, sir. And beyond that, I am already losing potential witnesses, both to homicide and to flight.” She faced him squarely, hoping to deliver the argument that hit him where he lived. “So to delay action risks calling our leadership into question, if there’s an inquiry.”

All he needed to hear. “Let’s do this.”

The same plainclothes team from PAPD that had shut out Heat and Roach earlier that morning bypassed the strategically vulnerable revolving doors and came out the wider sliding-glass exit that baggage valets used at the Widmark. The security detail made instant note of Detective Heat, who stood by their commissioner’s Suburban. Gilbert followed them through and was slower to register her presence, but when he did, his face flashed with anger. Then a realization by the candidate-to-be that media was photographing and videoing all this caused him to relax his presentation. He actually smiled at Nikki as he drew near, but with his weathered facial crags and goatee, it struck her to be a pirate’s grin.

“You are fucking relentless,” he said, appearing casual for the photo op, but white strings of saliva on his tongue belied all that. “What the hell are you up to?”

“Doing you a favor.” He furrowed his brow at that and she continued. “I will give you an opportunity to come with me quietly or…” She nodded to both ends of the circular driveway where Detectives Raley, Ochoa, Feller, and Rhymer stood beside their unmarked cars, which were blocking the exits. With each stood a half dozen uniformed patrol officers. “…Things could get very awkward.”

“I don’t understand this. Haven’t you asked me all your questions already?”

“I’m not here to ask you questions, Commissioner Gilbert. I’m here with a warrant to arrest you for the murder of Fabian Beauvais.”

Keith Gilbert had gauzed the fingerprint ink off his hands with alcohol swabs and sat in a private holding cell awaiting his attorney before he would be questioned formally. Even though Heat had deftly leveraged his arrest to avoid an ugly scene in front of the press line at the Widmark, news spread quickly, and now a nightmare swarm of media vans and spectators jammed West Eighty-second Street outside the precinct.

So many requests for interviews, both on and off the record, flooded in that Heat stopped taking press calls and began ignoring texts and e-mails, only scrolling through them every ten minutes or so in case one was from Rook. She had left him a brief voice mail, just to let him know of the arrest, making sure not to end by urging him to call. Nikki did not want to appear needy, although she ached for him to make contact. Especially after their uneasy moments that morning about the task force job.

When she saw Wally Irons stride out of the men’s’ room smoothing the button line of the clean white uniform shirt he’d brought on a hanger in that morning, Heat was not surprised. For all his blind spots, the captain constantly had his finger to the wind and now he had cannily reckoned that the most advantageous direction for his future was well away from a murder suspect. Also, the man could not resist the brightness of TV lights. It was like he was part moth. Legend had it that years before, he had knocked over a child in his hurry to a press podium. Heat appeared at his office door while he tied his tie in a mirror and asked him if he was sure he wanted to deal with the media so soon. As he always did, he wrapped his answer in the flag of duty. To the mirror, he said, “Somebody has to stand up and let the people of the city know their NYPD is acting without fear or favor.”

“I wouldn’t use that catchphrase, sir.”

“I got it from you.”

“I got it from the
New York Times
.”

“Even better,” he said. Heat only hoped the briefing she gave him had taken hold half as well as the slogan. She had her doubts.

Ten minutes later, Nikki stood way off to the side as the Iron Man chinned the bundle of microphones set up at the front door of the station house. “Good afternoon. I am Captain Wallace Irons, commander of the Twentieth Precinct.” He paused while photo shutters whirred and clicked. “For the record, that’s W-A-L-L-A-C-E and then I-R-O-N-S. I have a brief statement to make, which is that following an investigation into the death of a Fabian Beauvais—”

“Can you spell that for us?” asked a woman from Eyewitness News.

Momentarily thrown, the captain said, “I’ll provide all that detail after my statement. Now. Following our investigation into the death of Mr. Beauvais, we have made an arrest of our prime suspect, Keith Gilbert.” Although the reporters already knew this, a murmur of energy ran through the crowd accompanied by an even larger flurry of shutter clicks. “I will not be discussing evidence we have against the suspect, but, as you all know quite well who Commissioner Gilbert is, I am here to personally assure you that your NYPD acts without regard.” Realizing his gaffe, he amended, “This is to say, without regard to stature.”

A stringer for the
Ledger
asked, “How will this affect the Port Authority’s ability to get ready for Hurricane Sandy? Wasn’t he pretty much it?”

“Mm, I would ask Port Authority about that one.”

“When and where did you arrest him?” called out a reporter for 1010WINS.

“Commissioner Gilbert was taken into custody without incident today after a speaking engagement…” As the Iron Man detailed the arrest, Heat allowed herself to relax a bit, pleased that, as agreed, he would limit his comments to the nuts and bolts of the arrest and procedural aspects, rather than revealing evidence and holdbacks.

A hand rested gently on her shoulder and she turned to see Rook. There was something unsettling in his expression. Then he leaned to her ear and whispered, “Nikki, don’t hate me, all right?”

“Hate you? Come on.…” The weight he seemed to be carrying concerned her, but she smiled and discreetly leaned her body against his. “Why would I hate you?”

“Because I have something to tell you.” She turned to face him, and Rook whispered again in her ear. “You’ve arrested the wrong man.”

N
ikki studied Rook’s face anew, waiting for the gotcha smile or the way he playfully narrowed his eyes when he was pulling her leg. She got neither. All he said was, “Seriously.”

And he looked it.

“Well, you can’t be. Or, if you are, you’re mistaken.”

“I’m telling you, Gilbert’s not the killer.”

Heat noticed a tabloid freelancer edging toward them, trying to surf their conversation and said to Rook, “Not here.” She took his hand and led him inside, past the Hall of Heroes memorial in the vestibule, and into the precinct lobby, which was all theirs but for the duty sergeant behind the bulletproof reception glass and the ever-present odor of a disinfecting cleaning agent. The row of orange molded plastic chairs was empty, and they took seats beneath the big
STOP
sign, commandeered from the traffic division, that demarcated the boundary between visitors and cops.

“I know you’ve had all day to dream up some alternate scenario,” she began, still holding his hand as they sat there, thighs touching, “but you’ve missed a whole lot in your absence.” Heat didn’t need notes. Sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse, she carried a nearly eidetic mental picture of the Murder Board, and quickly recapped the day, pretty much as she had earlier for Wally Irons on her warrant quest. Nikki ran it all down for him, in order: The discovery that their two infamous goons were searching for Beauvais in a Port Authority Impala; finding the body of Jeanne Capois behind the trash cans, the home-invasion housekeeper victim tortured and horribly abused; her purse, probably stashed in a hurry on the run, yielding the warning text from Fabian Beauvais about “KG.” She let go of his hand and placed hers on his knee. “I swear, Rook, after I saw that, I kept thinking, if you were with me, you’d have Gilbert in Sing Sing by now.” Surprised that he hadn’t interrupted, but merely nodded as if waiting her out, she continued, filling him in on bracing the commissioner in the empty banquet hall at the Widmark Hotel, and, finally, “what really brought this home—are you ready?—the smoking gun of multiple phone calls between Beauvais and Gilbert, who claimed he never knew the man.”

Heat didn’t get the reaction she’d expected. Rook was elsewhere. Deep in some rumination, his eyes roamed the vending machine across the lobby, and not like he was deciding on which Snapple.

“I tried to call you,” she said.

He came back to her. “Yeah, well, I’d gone full immersion.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nik, don’t get me wrong, I love my ride-alongs with you, but at a certain point, I have to break away, throw out the orange cone, and be the journalist I am.” She caught her hand gripping into his knee and brought it back to rest on her lap. He didn’t seem to notice. “I am officially on assignment with this story, you know. That’s a core deal—home plate for me—and I have to protect it. When I’m rolling with you, I benefit, for sure. I get a ton of insights and observations. But it’s too easy to lose my objectivity. If I lose that, I’m not a journalist anymore. I need to keep my independent eye.”

What was going on here? she wondered. Rook spoke so calmly and clearly about this, but the effect of what he was saying—about independence and breaking away—planted a kernel of anxiety deep inside her that took root fast and grew with every sentence he spoke. More comfortable (or, at least, safer) with facts, Nikki shifted the direction this had taken. “All right. Writers’ solitude. I’ve seen you work, I get that. But what could you possibly conjure up that makes you think I don’t have a case?”

“Just to mention, when you say ‘conjure,’ you make me sound, I don’t know, like some conspiracy whack job.”

She was trying to keep this from descending into an argument, but that one deserved a pushback. “Come on, Rook, do you need me to make a list of all the wild speculations you’ve spouted?”

“Only to get outside the proverbial box. To stimulate you to new thinking. It’s not like I went all Area Fifty-one.”

“The other day at the planetarium you suggested the unknown body fell from outer space. The next day you were pitching voodoo.”

“Well, let’s not get anecdotal. This is different. I have some solid, rather eye-opening facts, if you’ll hear them.”

“Of course I will. Glad to.” No she wasn’t. She wanted to run away. To anywhere but this moment.

He fished a notebook out of his sport coat. She couldn’t help notice he’d switched from his usual black Moleskine to a bright orange Rhodia from France. One more
différance
to absorb. She made an irrational decision to pitch the Clairefontaine pad he gave her. “Let’s start at the slaughterhouse,” he said. “People like Fabian Beauvais don’t just show up out of the blue to choke chickens.”

“Nice,” she said. “No, I’m sure there’s word of mouth in his community.”

“Agreed. But. There are also referrals. What’s one thing every immigrant needs, especially if he’s illegal? Someone to get him through the maze. Red tape, housing, jobs. And discreetly. Under the radar.” He opened the notebook to one of the early pages. “The slang is Gateway Lawyer. Now these are not your Park Avenue barristers. They’re not even up there with the
Accidentes
personal injury guys you see on bus ads. These are bottom-feeders, for sure, but they serve a role helping the margin class.”

Outside, the urgency of reporters vying to get called on caught her eye through the window and told her the press conference was winding down. “Is this going to be a civics lesson?”

“Getting there. The whole coincidence of the slaughterhouse manager pointing us to the Hamptons never went down easy for me.”

“Why not? It’s what happened.”

Rook continued without acknowledgment. “So I did some research. Our friend Jerry, the GM of the chicken plant, has a job-referral arrangement, which sounds suspiciously like a kickback deal, with a Gateway Lawyer by the name of Reese Cristóbal. Remember Fabian Beauvais had a rap sheet for a trespassing arrest? I’m going to let you guess what attorney handled his case. Reese Cristóbal. I guessed for you.”

“So far, this is all good background but—”

“Reese Cristóbal is a very busy man. He not only has strong ties to the illegal immigrant community—the night Fabian Beauvais got arrested for trespassing for his Dumpster dive, a couple of other guys got busted with him. Also immigrants. Also repped by our Gateway Lawyer.”

“Which would only follow if he’s handling a lot of these cases,” she said.

“Correct. But this was a first offense for Fabian. I found out the pair he was consorting with had more interesting records.”

Nikki cocked her head. “How did you get information on them?”

Rook grinned. “Please. Do I have to carry my Pulitzers for investigative journalism around with me?” Already chiding herself for not checking on Beauvais’s fellow arrestees, Heat urged him to continue. He referred to notes again. “Bachelor Number-One, Fidel ‘FiFi’ Figueroa had a disorderly conduct reduced to malicious mischief for lobbing a stink bomb into a crowd. Oh, and the crowd? It was in Washington Square. At a campaign rally for Keith Gilbert.”

“Go on,” she said.

“Ah, the sweet sound of your undivided attention. Bachelor Number-Two, Charley Tosh, was arrested for B and E and vandalism. To wit: In the middle of the night, he broke into, and thoroughly trashed, a storefront at Sixty-third and Lex. The Keith Gilbert campaign headquarters. Are we recognizing a pattern here? From your expression, I’d say so. And know why? This was not random stuff. They were paid for their pranks by a very active political action committee. This PAC has very benign initials. It’s registered as the CBP. Want to know what CBP stands for? The Committee to Block the PATHole.”

He glanced up from his notes. “Don’t blame me, these political wonks can be very snarky. Ever watch Bill Maher?”

In spite of herself, Heat’s curiosity piqued. “Is that ‘PATH,’ as in Port Authority?”

“Indeed, but not the train. The PATHole in question would be a certain commissioner from the Port Authority planning to run for the U.S. Senate.”

“Rook, so what? Those two did dirty work for a PAC with a sketchy name—”

“—Specifically, against Keith Gilbert’s campaign.”

“But that wasn’t Beauvais. He was only Dumpster diving.”

“With those two characters. You lie down with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas. And if you ask me, the ransack of Gilbert’s campaign HQ seems awfully reminiscent of the job we saw on West End Avenue. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Well, at the campaign office, somebody left a grumpy on the fund-raising chairman’s desk.”

She made a sour face. “You read the police report?”

“No, I got that from Keith Gilbert’s public information officer today.”

“Wait. You talked with Gilbert’s press aide?”

Rook gave a no-biggie shrug. “I knew Dennis when he was dean of the J-school at Hudson University. We met up this afternoon. That’s why I had my phone off.”

“Rook. I can’t believe this. You talked to one of my prime suspect’s staff? About this case?”

“I did. It’s called getting both sides.”

“What did you tell him about the case? Because you have to know it’s going straight to Gilbert and his Dream Team.”

“Are we getting paranoid?”

“No, we are getting annoyed.” Completely floored, Nikki fixed him with a look of indignation that unnerved him.

He got busy flipping ahead in his notebook and said, “I sense resistance, so let me get to my closer.” He came to a dog-eared page. “Remember at the slaughterhouse how some of the workers seemed a tad shy of the police, and slipped out the rear?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I went back there today and made friends in the alley.”

“You paid them?”

“Please. That would be insulting. I handed out Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards. And worth it, too, because one of them opened up to me.” He tapped a name in his book. “Hattie Pate. Hattie was friends with Fabian Beauvais. Guess you kill a few hundred chickens, you get to know somebody. Anyway, she said Fabby came in all freaked one day. She asked what’s wrong, and he told her someone was out to kill him.” He paused. “Shall I repeat that?”

“Go on.”

“Beauvais told Hattie he’d been doing some freelance work for a bunch of guys. Some sort of ATM theft ring. They turned on him all of a sudden and said they were going to—quoting now, ‘fuck him up and kill him dead.’ They knew where he lived, so it was Hattie who turned him on to the SRO where he moved and we found his hidden ten grand. Gee, is it possible money’s why they were after him?” He stared at her, nodding and grinning while she processed his information. “I’ll say it again, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

She was so absorbed chewing over Rook’s story—and his indiscretion with the press flak—that she hadn’t noticed the news conference had broken up and that Wally Irons now stood a few feet away. “What’s this?”

“Nothing,” said Nikki, jumping in ahead of Rook. “I’m just bringing him up to speed on the case.” The captain didn’t totally appear to buy that, but his cell phone lit up and he moved on into the precinct.

When Irons was gone, Heat shifted in the god-awful molded seat to face Rook. “I’ll grant that you raise a lot of interesting points. But I hear nothing that changes the case I have against Gilbert.”

“You call a death threat nothing?”

“No, and you damn well know I’ll check it out.” She patted his notebook. “I want Hattie’s contact info so I can get on this. But for now, that’s hearsay, and hearsay doesn’t trump the evidence I’ve got on Gilbert.”

“Take a step back like I did, Nikki. Can you really call it evidence?”

“You bet I can.”

“Because I can recontextualize everything you’ve got.” It struck her that, up to that morning when Rook got blindsided by the news of the task force, he would have said, “We’ve got” instead of “you’ve.” He mimed tracing a square in the space between them with both hands and said, “I could reframe everything in a scenario that shows that the only connection Gilbert had to Beauvais was coping with a political dirty trickster who was harassing him and his campaign.”

“Wow, you could be Keith Gilbert’s press aide now, Rook,” she said with no small amount of sarcasm. “Spinning the whole thing to make the poor commissioner look like the victim.”

“Maybe not a victim, but clearly he was victimized.”

“Then riddle me this. Why did Gilbert deny knowing Beauvais?”

“Who knows? Maybe it had nothing to do with the killing. Or maybe he got pissed at being harassed by the Haitian. Maybe Beauvais was going to blow the whistle on the mistress. Or Keith and Alicia had a love child; another John Edwards situation. So Gilbert threatens him—just shooting off his mouth in the heat of passion—and then that ATM theft gang ends up killing him for stealing their ten grand. That would sure make me a little circumspect.”

He closed his notebook and slapped the palm of his hand with it a few times while he mulled an idea. “I think you need to look harder at the two brutes from that SRO. You know, just because Beauvais got himself killed doesn’t mean he was a good guy.”

Valid point. Nikki often caught herself falling into the natural trap of sanctifying murder victims.

“I’m just saying, step back. Maybe things look one way, but mean another. Isn’t it possible that Keith Gilbert had nothing to do with Fabian Beauvais’s death but was merely orbiting the periphery?”