Raging Heat

“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.”