Raging Heat

eith Gilbert made full eye contact when he shook her hand — something Heat always paid attention to. In her line of work, the eyes were not only the windows to the soul, they also afforded a panoramic view of its darker regions. But she registered none of the shifty tells like floor staring, sideways averting, or the dead-fixed glare. Framed by deep creases in his lean, sun-weathered face, Gilbert smiled openly and took her measure, too, making Nikki wonder if the guileless reading she got from him was as carefully masked as the one she was returning.

“This is Jameson Rook,” Nikki released his hand and the two men gripped.

“Commissioner,” Rook said as they sawed air. “It was a few years back, but we met briefly at—”

“—The Robin Hood Foundation gala, right?”

While Rook beamed at Heat, Gilbert stroked the short bristles of his goatee. “Trying to remember which year, but I do recall you were in a very serious huddle with Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams when I busted things up.”

“’Oh-nine. And you tried to strong-arm us to pony up twenty grand apiece to race Sir Richard Branson to Halifax on your sailboat.”

“It’s a ninety-foot Trimaran, and the privilege of crewing was all for charity.” Then he winked an aside to Nikki. “Never ask a journalist to pay for anything.”

While Rook and Gilbert enthused about Aretha Franklin filling the Javitz Convention Center with “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” it bought Heat time to gather herself from the Port Authority commissioner’s unexpected drop-in. She had not yet organized her questions but had no desire to postpone and risk losing him to his busy schedule or wall of handlers. Then, behind his back, she spotted the Murder Board in plain view with the ink still drying on his name in big fat letters. “You know what?” she said, already steering him to the door. “We should go someplace we can speak more privately.”

She ushered him into the conference room, much less onerous than one of the mirrored interrogation boxes. Rook followed them. To further keep things respectful, Nikki ignored the long table and indicated the trio of cloth chairs in the corner as an informal seating area. As he took one of them and set his slim briefcase on the floor, Heat said, “I’d offer you coffee, Commissioner Gilbert, but it’s kind of stale, and you caught me by surprise.”

“My chief of staff said you’d left three calls. I wanted to find out why all the urgency.”

“Not that I mind the personal visit, but it’s kind of heroic.”

“I was on the Henry Hudson anyway. Quite literally in the neighborhood, coming back from a disaster survey of the George Washington Bridge.”

Rook leaned forward. “Problem with the GWB?”

“I should have said ‘readiness survey.’ Reporters…Look, I know you work with Detective Heat from those First Press articles you wrote about her. Impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“I meant Heat,” he said as another playful aside to Nikki before he turned back to Rook. “But since you asked, as chair of Security and Operations, I am charged to make sure all bridges, tunnels, airports, seaports, rails, and other Port Authority assets are ready in the event we get hit by this Sandy.”

Nikki flashed on the GMA update she’d seen that morning. “That thing all the way down around Nicaragua?”

“The computer tracking for ‘that thing’ has put us on alert for a potential Category One or Two hurricane to make landfall somewhere in the Northeast within a week. It could strike the tri-state, if you follow the European models.”

Rook wagged a Groucho air cigar. “I followed a European model once. Until she tazed me.” He felt Commissioner Gilbert’s cool stare and let the mimed stogie fall from his fingers.

“Detective, I have a teleconference with FEMA, the Office of Emergency Management, and two nervous governors this afternoon, so perhaps you could simply tell me what you need to talk to me about.”

“Absolutely. Let’s get right to it.” She gave Rook a cautionary glance to lay back, and he acknowledged it. “You own a mansion out in the Hamptons, is that right?”

“Yes…well, I have a second home there. I’m not sure I’d call it a mansion.” His eyes narrowed in bemusement. “Did something happen to it?”

“No, not that we are aware.”

“Then, if you’ll pardon me, this doesn’t seem like getting right to it.” His demeanor remained pleasant, but he was unsubtle enough to check his wristwatch, an expensive, chunky outdoorsman’s piece with more dials than the Mercury space capsule. Respect notwithstanding, Heat was determined not to let him run her meeting. She wanted to know how the address and private phone number of a man of his stature ended up bookmarking a wad of cash hidden in the floor of a poor immigrant’s flophouse.

But she also knew she couldn’t come at it straight on. Taking as much time and cooperation as he’d give, Nikki set out to start with a wide circle, then angle her way to the central question, learning perhaps more that way than serving his impatience. Or stature.

“Do you go there often?”