Naked Heat

by Richard Castle

  "Makes sense." And then she added, "But you're still kind of creeping me out."

  "Does it make you scared? . . . Or happy-scared?"

  She mulled that and said, "I'm sticking with creeped out."

  The gentrification of Times Square in the 1990s had miraculously transformed the once-dangerous and skeevy zone into a wholesome family destination. Broadway theaters got face-lifts and blockbuster musicals, good restaurants popped up, megastores flourished, and people came back, symbolizing, and maybe driving, the comeback of the Big Apple.

  But the Skeeve Factor didn't go away. It mostly got pushed west a few blocks, and that's where Heat and Rook were headed. Holly Flanders's last known address after a prostitution bust was a weekly-rate hotel off Tenth and 41st.

  The two drove in silence most of the way down Ninth Avenue, but when Heat turned onto Tenth and the streetwalkers started to show, Rook started singing a cold-cut jingle. "Oh, my hooker has a first name, it's H-O-L-L-Y . . ."

  "All right, listen," Heat said. "I can put up with your theories. I can tolerate your inflated sense of significance to this case. But if you insist on singing, I need to warn you, I am armed."

  "You know, you keep needling me about my significance in this case, but let me ask you, Detective Heat, who got you in to see Toby Mills when you were stonewalled? Who got you in with Fat Tommy so we can now be happily en route to question a woman whose very existence we didn't know of until Fat Tommy led us to Chester Ludlow, which led us here?"

  She thought a moment and said, "I should have shut up and just let you sing."

  An undercover police car is anything but undercover to most street prostitutes. A champagne-gold Crown Victoria might as well have "VICE" written in Day-Glo lettering on the doors and hood. The only thing more obvious would be to light the gumball and run the siren. Mindful of that, Heat parked around the corner from the Sophisticate Inn so she and Rook could make their approach without lighting up the radar too much. It could only help that the parking spot was behind a mound of uncollected garbage.

  In the manager's office a skeletal dude, with a nasty patch of hair missing where somebody had ripped it out, was reading the afternoon edition of the New York Ledger. Cassidy Towne's face filled the space above the fold. The headline was in giant font, the kind usually reserved for V-E Day and moonwalks. It read:

  R.I.P. = M.I.A.

  Murdered Tattler's Body Missing

  For Nikki Heat today, there was just no escape.

  The dude with the pale skin and bloody patch of scalp kept reading and asked them if they wanted it for an hour or a day. "If you get day, ice and baby oil comes with."

  Rook leaned over to Heat and whispered, "I think I know why they call this the Sophisticate."

  Nikki elbowed him and said, "Actually, we're looking for one of your guests, Holly Flanders." She watched his eyes dart up from the paper toward the ceiling above his head and then back to her.

  "Flanders," he said. "I'm trying to remember." And then, pointedly, "Maybe you can help me."

  "Sure." Nikki drew aside her blazer and flashed the tin on her belt. "That help you any?"

  The room number he gave them was down a dingy second-floor hall that smelled like disinfectant and puke. There was an outside chance Ichabod Crane was going to call the room and tip Flanders off, so Heat told Rook to stay down there to watch him. He didn't like the assignment, but agreed. Before she left, she reminded him what happened last time he didn't stay downstairs when she told him to.

  "Oh, yeah. I have a vague recollection. Something about getting taken hostage at gunpoint, right? . . ."

  Behind every door she passed, daytime television blared. It was as if people blasted TV noise to cover life noise and only succeeded in making more noise. Inside one room, a woman was crying and moaning, "It's all I had left, it's all I had left." It sounded like prison to Heat.

  She stopped outside 217 and positioned herself off-line with the door. She didn't know how much to put into Ludlow's warning about the handgun purchase, but she checked her coat clearance anyway. Always good policy if you planned to go home that night.

  She knocked and listened. A TV was on in there, too, although not as loud. Seinfeld, from the bass guitar riff after the laugh. She knocked once more and listened. Kramer was getting banned from the produce market.

  "Shut up out there," came a man's voice from somewhere across the hall.

  Heat knocked louder and announced herself. "Holly Flanders, NYPD, open this door." As soon as she said the word, the door flew open and a chubby man with braided pigtails ran past her and up the hall. He was naked and carrying his clothes.

  The door had a pneumatic closer, and before it shut, Nikki crouched low and clotheslined it open with her left arm as she put her hand on her gun butt. "Holly Flanders, show yourself." She heard Jerry himself getting thrown out of the produce market and then a window sash thrown in the room.

  She rolled in low and came up with her Sig Sauer just in time to see a woman's leg disappear out the window. Heat ran to it, pressed her back against the wall, and made a quick look out and then back. A yelp came from below, and she looked down to see a young woman, early twenties, in jeans but topless, lying on her back on a pile of trash.

  When Heat holstered her weapon and ran out into the hall, it was crowding with people, mostly women, coming out of their rooms to see what the excitement was. Nikki shouted, "NYPD, back, back, clear the way," which only brought more curiosity-seekers. Most of them were slow movers, too; drugged or dazed, what did it matter? After fighting her way through them, she bounded the stairs in twos and pushed through the glass doors to the outside. A large dent in a black trash bag marked Holly's landing spot.

  Heat stepped to the sidewalk and looked right. Saw nothing. Then left, and could not believe what she saw. Holly Flanders being led back to her by the elbow, escorted by Rook. She was wearing his sport coat but was still topless underneath.

  When they arrived, he said, "Think we could get her into the Milmar like this?"

  An hour later, wearing the clean all-purpose white blouse Nikki kept in her bull-pen file drawer to change into after all-nighters, field scrapes, or coffee mishaps, Holly Flanders waited in Interrogation. Heat and Rook stepped in and sat side by side across from her. She didn't speak. Just looked up over their heads, staring at the slip of acoustical tile that ran above the observation mirror.

  "You don't have much of a rap sheet, at least not as an adult," Nikki began, opening Holly's file. But I have to warn you that, as of today, you've taken your game to the next level."

  "Why, because I ran?" She finally brought her eyes down to them. They were bloodshot and puffy, rimmed by too much mascara. Somewhere in there, given some good living, and losing the hardness, thought Nikki, was somebody pretty. Maybe even beautiful. "I was afraid. How did I know who you were or what you were doing?"

  "I announced myself as police twice. The first time you may have been too busy with your john."

  "I saw that guy racing through the lobby," said Rook. "May I say? No man over fifty should wear pigtails." He caught Nikki's shut-up look. "I'm done."

  "That's beside the point, Holly. Your main worry isn't the flight or the hooking. In your room, we found a Ruger nine-millimeter handgun, unlicensed and loaded."

  "I need that for protection."

  "We also found a laptop computer, stolen, by the way."

  "I found it."

  "Well, just like the other charges, that's not your worry. What's on the computer is your worry. We've been looking at the hard drive and we've found a number of letters. Threatening letters and extortion demands addressed to Cassidy Towne."

  This part was getting through to her. The hard pose was crumbling as the detective slowly, quietly, and deliberately tightened the screw with each revelation. "Are those letters familiar to you, Holly?"

  Holly didn't answer. She picked at the chips of nail polish on her fingers and kept clearing her throat.

  "I have one m
ore thing to ask you about. Something that wasn't in your room. Something we found somewhere else."

  The manicure destruction stopped and a puzzled look crossed Holly's face, as if the other things were something she expected and had to cope with. Whatever this lady cop was now referring to seemed a mystery to her. "Like what?"

  Nikki slid a photocopy out of the folder. "This is your fingerprint array from your booking on a prostitution charge." She pushed it across the table to let Holly examine it. Then Detective Heat took another photocopy from the folder. "This is another set of prints, also yours. These were taken by our technicians this morning off several doorknobs at the home of Cassidy Towne."

  The young woman didn't respond. Her lower lip trembled and she slid the paper away. Then found her spot to stare at again above the Magic Mirror.

  "We took these fingerprints because Cassidy Towne was murdered last night. In that apartment. The one with your fingerprints." Nikki watched Holly's face grow pale and then still. And then Nikki continued. "What would a prostitute be doing in Cassidy Towne's apartment? Were you there for sex?"

  "No."

  Rook asked, "Were you one of her sources, maybe? A tipster?"

  The woman shook her head no.

  "I want an answer, Holly." Heat gave her the look that said this would go on until she got it. "What relationship did you have to Cassidy Towne?"

  Holly Flanders closed her eyes in a slow blink. And when she opened them, she looked at Nikki Heat and said, "She was my mother."

  Chapter Five

  Nikki searched Holly's face for a tell. The cop in her lived every waking hour on alert for one. Something to let her know more than what was being said. An indication that this was a lie. Or, if it wasn't, what the woman felt about the information she was giving. Detective Heat worked in a business where people constantly bullshitted her. Nine times out of ten, it was only a matter of how much. Looking for the tell and, especially, being able to read it, helped her figure out the degree of dishonesty.

  Hers was a beautiful world.

  The feedback on Holly Flanders came across the Interrogation Room table to Nikki from a face clouded by a storm of mixed emotions, but it felt like the truth. Or some version of it. When Holly broke eye contact to chip away at her nails some more, Heat turned beside her and gave Rook an arched brow. The writer should have no trouble reading her tell. It said, Well, Mr. Ride-along?

  "I didn't know Cassidy Towne had any children." He took a soft tone, sensitive to the girl. Or maybe because he was feeling defensive.

  "Neither did she," Holly spat back. "She got knocked up and basically disowned me."

  "Let's slow this down here, Holly," said the detective. "Walk me through this because this is pretty new and pretty big to me."

  "What's hard to understand? What are you, stupid? You're a cop, figure it out. I was her 'love child.' " She put a stink on the term as years of anger spilled out of her. "I was her bastard, her dirty little secret, and she couldn't wait to sweep me under the rug. She had me placed before my frickin' umbilical fell off practically. Well, now she doesn't need to pretend I don't exist. Or to refuse me any support because she's ashamed of me, like I'm some constant reminder of how she screwed up. Of course you didn't know. She didn't want anybody to know. How can you be the ball-busting queen of scandal when you've got a scandal of your own?"

  The young woman wanted to cry, but instead she sat back in her chair, panting off her rant as if she had run a sprint. Or gotten startled awake again from the same nightmare.

  "Holly, I know this is difficult, but I need to ask you some questions." To Heat, Holly Flanders was still a murder suspect, but she proceeded with a quiet empathy. If Cassidy Towne was indeed her mother, Nikki had a personal feeling for Holly's position as the daughter of a murder victim. Assuming, of course, she hadn't killed her.

  "Like I have a choice?"

  "Your last name is Flanders, not Towne. Is that the name of your father?"

  "It was the last name of one of my foster families. Flanders is an OK name. At least it's not Madoff. What would people think about me then?"

  Detective Heat brought Holly back to her agenda. "Do you know who your father is?" Holly just shook her head. Nikki continued. "Did your mother?"

  "She got laid a lot, I guess." Holly gestured, acknowledging herself. "Family trait, right? If she knew, she didn't ever say."

  "And you never had any inkling who?" Nikki was pressing the point because a paternity situation could point to a motive. Holly only shrugged, and the tell was a dodge.

  Rook read it, too. "You know, I didn't know who my father was, either." Nikki reacted to this disclosure. Holly canted her head to him slightly, showing her first sign of interest. "God's truth. And I know firsthand how you form your life around that missing space. It colors everything. And I can't imagine, Holly, that any normal person, especially one as ballsy as you, wouldn't have at least done some checking to see."

  Nikki felt the conversation enter a new phase. Holly Flanders spoke directly to Rook. "I did some math," she said. "You know."

  "Counting backwards nine months?" he said with a small laugh.

  "Exactly. And best I could figure, that was May of 1987. My m-- She didn't have her own column yet, but she was down in Washington, DC, for the Ledger all that month digging up stuff on a politician who got busted for banging some ho' on a boat, not his wife."

  "Gary Hart," said Rook.

  "Whoever. Anyway, my best guess is, she got knocked up with me down there during that trip. And nine months later, ta-da!" She said it with an irony that was heartbreaking.

  Heat wrote "DC, May, 1987?" on her pad. "Let's talk about now." She set her pen down to rest against the spirals at the top of her page. "How much contact did you have with your mother?"

  "I told you, it was like I didn't exist."

  "But you tried."

  "Yeah, I tried. I tried since I was a kid. I tried when I dropped out of high school and got myself emancipated and realized I screwed up. Same thing. So, I was like, Fine. F-off and die."

  "Then why did you get back in touch with her now?" Holly said nothing. "We have your threat letters on your computer. Why did you reach out again?"

  Holly hesitated. Then said, "I'm pregnant. And I need money. My letters came back, so I went to her. Know what she said?" Her lip quaked, but she held strong. "She told me to get an abortion. Like she should have."

  "Is that when you bought the gun?" If Holly was playing for emotions, Nikki would call her with business. Let her know this wasn't a jury. Sympathy wouldn't beat facts.

  "I wanted to kill her. I picked the lock to get into her apartment one night and went in there."

  "With the gun," said the detective.

  Holly nodded. "She was asleep. I stood over her bed with the thing pointed right at her. I almost did it, too." She shrugged it off. "After that, I just left." And then, for the first time, she smiled. "Glad I waited."

  As soon as the uniform led Holly off to Holding, Rook spun to Heat. "I've got it."

  "You can't."

  "I do. I've got the solve." He could barely contain himself. "Or at least a theory."

  Heat gathered up her files and notes and left the room. Rook drafted off her all the way back to the bull pen. The faster she walked, the faster he talked. "I saw that notation you made when Holly brought up the Gary Hart trip. You're with me, too, on this, am I right?"

  "Don't ask me to co-sign on your half-baked, undercooked theories, Rook. I don't do theories, remember? I do evidence."

  "Ah, but what do theories lead to?"

  "Trouble." She made a fast turn into the bull pen. He followed.

  "No," he said. "Theories are little seeds that sprout up into big trees that-- Damn, some writer, I'm dead-ending on my own metaphor. But my point is, theories are how you get to evidence. They're Point A on the treasure map."

  "Hooray for theories," she said in a flat tone and sat at her desk. He rolled a chair up and sat beside her.

>   "Follow along. Where was Cassidy Towne when she got pregnant?"

  "We haven't established--"

  He interrupted. "Washington, DC. Doing what?"

  "On assignment."

  "Covering a politician caught in a scandal. And who put us on the trail of Holly Flanders in the first place?" He smacked both hands on his thighs. "A politician caught in a scandal. Our man is Chester Ludlow!"

  "Rook, as adorable as I find that I-Solved-the-Riddle-of-the-Sphinx look on your face, I would hold on to that theory."

  He tapped a finger on her notebook. "Then why did you make the note?"

  "To check on it," she said. "If the father of Holly Flanders proves relevant, I want to be able to see who was in DC at that time, and who Cassidy Towne had relationships with."

  "I'll bet Chester Ludlow was there in DC. He wasn't in office, but a political dynasty like his, he might have been in a patronage job there."

  "He might have been, Rook, it's a big city. But even if he were Holly's father, what sense would it make for him to send us on her trail if it led back to him as a suspect?"

  Rook paused. "OK, fine. It was just a theory. Glad we could, you know . . ."

  "Dismiss it?"

  "One less to worry about," he said.

  "You're a big help, Rook. It hasn't been the same here without you." Her phone rang. It was Detective Ochoa. "What's up, Oach?"

  "Raley and I are over at the brownstone next door to Cassidy Towne's, with the neighbor. Guy called the precinct to complain that her trash was in his private trash cans." In the background, Nikki could hear the reedy voice of an elderly man speaking in a complaining tone.

  "Is that the citizen I'm hearing?"

  "Affirm. He's sharing the joy with my partner."

  "And how did he discover it was her trash?"

  "He monitors," said Ochoa.

  "One of those?"

  "One of those."

  When Detective Ochoa finished his conversation with Heat, he joined Raley, who seized on his partner's return to break away from the old man. "Excuse me, sir."