Raging Heat

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?