“Hey, babe. Long time,” she answered easily, as if the last time they had seen each other hadn’t been in the eastern Sahara, where she had abandoned him in a huff over their differing interpretations of a mission’s objectives.
“Too long in some ways, and yet not long enough in others,” Storm said. “Isn’t that always how it is with us?”
“I guess that’s fair. But don’t tell me you’re still pissed about Egypt. Egypt was . . . Well, I think it was pretty spectacular at first, if I do say so myself. And, yeah, it got a little messy in the middle. But then the good guys won, so all’s well that ends well, right?”
“Because the ends always justify the means, Miss Machiavelli?”
“Cute,” she said. “Look, is this just a poorly executed booty call? Or did you really just call me up to pick at old scabs?”
“No. Where are you right now?”
“The Cubby.”
The Cubby was the nickname the operatives had given Jones’s headquarters, a secret subterranean CIA lair whose precise location remained a mystery to Storm, even after all the years and all the contracts he had fulfilled for Jones.
“Can you talk?” Storm asked.
“It depends. About what?”
“What I mean is: Is Jones around? Can he hear you right now?”
“Probably. I always tell you, Jones is like a really skinny Santa Claus. He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. I’ve found it’s best to live my life as if he can always hear me. It’s safer that way.”
“But is he in the room?”
“No. I’m in my office and now . . .” Strike paused, and Storm heard a soft thunk. “There, the door is closed. What’s up?”
“I was just spending some quality time at the massage parlor with your friend, Mason Wood.”
“Jeez, Storm, why didn’t you just tell me you were that hard up? Even if you are still pissed at me about Egypt, I’ve got to be a better option than Mimi.”
Storm ignored the jab. Strike knew Storm’s intentions toward women were far too virtuous for him to ever contribute to an economy he felt demeaned them.
“Why did you blackmail Wood into signing an order to transfer a cretin like Bart Callan to a medium security prison?” Storm asked.
“Uh . . . because Jones told me to and I was following orders?”
“That’s always a good enough answer for you, isn’t it?”
Strike sighed audibly. That was an old fight for them, one they had engaged in many times.
“Look, if you have a question for Jones, just come in and ask him. He’ll deal with you straight.”
“Yeah, straight from the bottom of the deck,” Storm said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I keep telling you, Jones may not be a Boy Scout like you all the time, but he’s ultimately on the right side. In a strange way, I’ve never met anyone more dedicated to his country. I’m sure he had a perfectly good reason for wanting Callan transferred.”
“I’m just as sure he didn’t.”
“Yeah, yeah. Because Derrick Storm is the only white-hat cowboy out there. Sorry that the rest of us recognize the world has other colors in it.”
Rather than come up with one last retort, Storm hung up. It was pointless. If the past was any guide, the more angelic Strike insisted Jones was being, the closer he was to the demons.
With his phone still out, Storm composed a quick text to Nikki Heat, explaining what he had learned.
SO BE CAREFUL, it finished. IT SEEMS MY PEOPLE ARE WORKING AGAINST US.
SEVEN
HEAT
Nikki Heat set her phone down on her desk. She had, for the last two hours or so, pretended that she could bury herself in paperwork, even as she picked at the details of Mason Wood’s life.
She had yearned to do more than that, of course. She wanted to kick down the front door of his house and demand answers. She wanted to threaten to toss him into a nearby incinerator if he didn’t cooperate.
But now it seemed Mason Wood was an investigational dead end, in addition to being a dead end as a human being.
And Heat could no longer shuffle through requisition and overtime requests. She picked up the phone again and reread Storm’s text.
His people were working against them. Who were Storm’s people, exactly? And what did that mean for Nikki’s mother?
Certainly, it explained why Cynthia had stayed in the shadows for so long. To have made enemies with seven rich, crooked Chinese businessmen and a top secret division within the CIA was like winning some kind of perverse Powerball lottery where the reward was a big pile of malevolence.
But why would some counterfeit bills matter so much? Was the CIA involved in the counterfeiting somehow? Even thinking it was absurd, and yet . . . Well, anyone who knew the history of the CIA knew the agency was capable of just about anything.
Still, Heat did her best to banish those kinds of imponderable, high-level thoughts from her mind. If her years as a detective had taught her one thing, it was that an excessive focus on the big picture could be detrimental in certain cases. Sometimes you just needed to keep filling out one small corner of the frame until it helped the whole thing make sense.
Much of what she knew about the time period around her mother’s death was old—and old news. But there was that one new piece of evidence.
Cynthia’s conversation with Nicole Bernardin. Nikki had played it several more times the previous night, enough that she had some of its key revelations more or less memorized. She played it back in her mind.
I’ve dealt with those phony bills. I found a place to hide them. . . .
They definitely have fingerprints on them. I dusted them. They’re faint, but they’re there. . . .
Let me put it this way: I’d not only trust this spot with my life, I’d trust it with my best Scotch. . . .
Counterfeit bills with fingerprints on them, a key piece of evidence, hidden in a spot where—
Of course.
There was only one place where Cynthia Heat kept her best Scotch. And it wasn’t in their apartment. It was a few blocks away, at her favorite hangout.
The Players Club was one of the most venerable and elegant social clubs in New York. Mark Twain had been a member. So had William Tecumseh Sherman. And Helen Hayes. And Cynthia Heat.
But for all its reputation and history, Cynthia had never treated it like some kind of exclusive, elitist enclave. And so Nikki never thought of it that way. If anything, it was like her mother’s second living room, filled with interesting, affable, approachable people. Like a low-key dinner party with friends that was there five days a week, whenever you felt like a little company. Nikki had her first drink there, as a sixteen-and-a-half-year-old celebrating a successful piano recital. It was that kind of place.
If Cynthia was going to keep her best Scotch anywhere, it would be there. And the man who would be called on to safeguard it was George The Bartender, who had been working at The Players since Nikki first started being allowed to join her mother there as a little girl.
George’s hair had been dark then. It was shock white now. His shift— which for all Nikki knew had been the same since Jack Lemmon had been a regular there—started at four o’clock and went until midnight.
Heat took a precinct pool car down to Gramercy Park. She locked her weapon in the trunk—no guns allowed inside, per club policy— then walked inside. It was a little after three o’clock. But, of course, George was already there, just as he often stayed after midnight when duty called.
“Ms. Heat. Lovely to see you,” he greeted her as he wiped down the slab of lacquered mahogany in front him, even though it was already spotless. George’s bow tie was just as crisply knotted as ever.
“Hi, George,” she said, selecting a stool at the otherwise empty bar. “Good to see you, too.”
Upon her demise—as falsely constructed as it now appeared to be— Cynthia Heat’s membership had transferred to Nikki, who wished she had the time to use it more ofte
n. She and Rook used to make it a point to make a pilgrimage over there around the anniversary of Cynthia’s death. Otherwise, Nikki’s visits were few and far between.
“What can I get you?”
“How about a sidecar?”
“Of course,” he said.
George disappeared into the back, to retrieve the necessary booze from her mother’s liquor cabinet—or, well, technically, Nikki’s. Every member at The Players Club had one. They were not alphabetized, and there was no discernible system as to how they were organized. Yet George knew where each was as surely as he knew where to find his own fingers.
The brass nameplate on Nikki’s still read CYNTHIA HEAT. No one could bring themselves to change it.
Years before, Nikki had discovered a bottle of Durdles’ Finest Pale Ale in there. It was one of the clues that had led her to Carey Maggs, who owned the Durdles brand, and then ultimately to Bart Callan.
George reappeared and, with a practiced hand, mixed Nikki’s sidecar. Heat could spend every night for the rest of her life in her apartment practicing how to make one. It would never taste as good as George’s.
She took her first sip. Perfect as ever.
“So George,” she said.
“Yes, Ms. Heat?”
The bar was still empty. She was thankful it was so early. She didn’t need anyone hearing what she was about to say. She took a deep breath and plunged in:
“Before my mother’s . . . passing . . . did she ever give you something? Something to hide?”
Heat studied George intently. His face was blank. But as he returned to wiping down the bar, which was no less immaculate than it had been before, she thought she saw a glimmer of a memory dancing in his eyes.
“No. Can’t say anything like that ever happened,” he said, without looking up.
“Can’t say or won’t say?”
George stopped wiping and raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ms. Heat.”
But he did know. Heat could see it in the way his skillful hands, which held a bottle so steadily, now had a slight shake to them.
Heat knew she was treading on sacred ground for a man in George’s profession. A bad bartender kept your secrets only until you left the bar. A good one kept them until you died. A great one, like George, took them to his own grave.
“I think you do, George,” Heat said softly.
George looked down, staring at his own reflection in the lacquer’s high shine, almost like he was trying to look at himself in a mirror. The turmoil in his head was plain. Ms. Heat is a trusted friend. . . . You’ve known her family since she was a girl. . . . She’s asking about her own mother, who has been dead for many years now. . . . There’s no harm in telling her now. But what kind of man are you if you betray a confidence?
Heat knew why George had never pursued life as a professional poker player. He had tells all over the place. His breathing had grown rapid. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. His suddenly sweaty palms were leaving little steam marks on the bar top.
She reached out and grabbed him by the wrist. He looked up, surprised. But at least he was now making eye contact. This was her chance.
“George, there’s something I need to tell you. And I know I can trust you with this, because I see how careful you’ve been with my mother’s privacy. But what’s happening now is . . . Well, I hope you can see it supersedes whatever promises you made to her seventeen years ago. My mother is alive, George. It seems she faked her own death. I had no idea until I saw her on the street the other day. Then she sent me a letter this morning. She’s alive and she’s in trouble. Very, very serious trouble. And what she asked you to hide might be able to help me get her out of trouble. Please, George, I need your help.”
Heat pulled the letter out of her jacket pocket. “This is her handwriting,” she said, unfolding the letter. “I don’t know if you recognize it like I do. But it’s hers. No doubt. And the ink is fresh.”
George took a glance at it and nodded.
“She’s alive, George.”
George pulled his arm away and turned his back. Heat was losing him to shock. Heat knew, from hard experience, this was a lot to process.
“Let’s start with what I already know,” she said, like the seasoned interrogator she was. “My mother gave you something to hide right before she died, didn’t she?”
George was studying some spot on the counter behind the bar. But Heat saw him nod.
“Was it some money? Some bills?” Heat asked.
“It was an envelope,” he said grimly.
“Could it have contained some twenty-dollar bills?”
“That sounds about right.”
“When did she give it to you?”
“Three days before she . . .”
“Before you thought she died?”
George nodded again.
“And she told you to hide it where no one would find it. She told you not to even tell her where it was—that way no one could torture the location out of her or use some advanced truth serum on her or anything like that. Is that right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“She even told you this directive had to survive her death. She told you no matter what happened, you had to keep that envelope hidden.”
His head bobbed.
“But she also told you if she ever contacted you sometime in the future and asked for them, you were to give them to her. Unless she was under some kind of obvious duress—like next to a man who had a big bulge in his jacket pocket—you’d hand them over, am I right?”
“Yes,” he said again. “She even made me put a codicil in my will. There’s a letter in my safety-deposit box that will be mailed to the executor of my estate upon my death. Cynthia insisted on it.”
Of course she would have. Cynthia Heat thought of everything.
“Okay, George. This right here? This is her contacting you. This is that future moment she was waiting for. Just hand that envelope over to me and you’ll probably have Cynthia back here asking for a vodka martini by Friday. You’d like that, right?”
“Of course I would, but . . .” George began. Then he turned back to Nikki. The old man had tears in his eyes. “But if Mrs. Heat is alive, why isn’t she contacting me herself, like she said she would?”
It was a question Nikki couldn’t answer. Not to George’s satisfaction.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Heat. I truly am,” George said. “But I made a promise to your mother long ago. And I aim to keep it now.”
“Even if it means she’ll never be able to come out of hiding?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Maybe she’ll come to me soon. Maybe the time isn’t quite right yet. Your mother was a brilliant, brilliant woman, Ms. Heat. Sorry—is a brilliant woman. I have to believe she knows what’s best.”
George’s biorhythms seemed to have steadied. Heat could see he wasn’t going to change his mind.
“But if you do find a way to write a letter back to her,” George said, “tell her I’d very much like to see her again.”
“So would I,” Heat said. “So would I.”
Heat wanted to leave and would have done so if she felt she could do it without hurting George’s feelings.
Instead, she just sat there and sipped her sidecar, which suddenly didn’t taste very good.
* * *
Having finished the drink, Heat made excuses about having places to go and police work to accomplish. George was gracious about letting her go with sincere wishes that she come back soon.
She stepped out onto Gramercy Park South, blinking in the afternoon sunshine, which suddenly seemed perversely bright. Across the way, Gramercy Park itself, that tiny sylvan sanctuary on the hard streets of Manhattan, hid in the gloom.
Heat didn’t want to go back to the precinct. There was nothing there except paperwork that wouldn’t get her one inch closer to her mother. And closer to her mother was the only place she felt like being.
Maybe she should
call John Null and tell him she would be pleased to accept soon-to-be-President Gardner’s invitation to head up Homeland Security. She could resign from the NYPD, effectively immediately, spending unused vacation time as her two weeks’ notice. That would allow her to focus all her attention on her mother’s case. Surely by the time the Gardner administration began their new jobs, Nikki would have brought things to a conclusion.
And if not, her new job title—director of Homeland Security— would be a heck of a club to wield against her mother’s enemies.
Her phone bleeped to notify her of an incoming text message. Heat looked down at it with disinterest until she saw who it was from.
That 646 area code.
The Serpent.
YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME, AND IT’S MAKING ME ANGRY. FOR THE LAST TIME: DO NOT INVESTIGATE YOUR MOTHER’S DISAPPEARANCE. IT WILL ONLY LEAD TO PAIN. DROP IT. NOW. OR DO I HAVE TO PROVE TO YOU HOW POWERFUL I AM? DO YOU NEED TO SEE A MANIFESTATION OF MY WRATH?
Heat read it twice, feeling the frown weighing on her forehead. It was hard to know what to do with this. Dismiss it as a prank? Take it seriously? Demand The Serpent show himself?
She knew one thing for sure: She wasn’t going to listen to him. There was no way she was going to stop this investigation. Not for The Serpent. Not for anyone.
Heat jotted down the 646 number in a notepad, then called the number for the detective’s bull pen.
“Yo,” Ochoa answered. “What’s up, Captain?”
“I need a quick favor. What’s Roach up to right now?”
“We’re sick and tired of filing reports, that’s what. I think we’re happy to do anything that doesn’t involve more typing.”
“Good. Can you run down this number for me?” Heat asked, then read off the 646 number. Ochoa read it back.
“That’s it,” Heat said. “Tell me anything you can about that number. Who owns it. Who it’s been calling. If it’s a cell, what towers has it been pinging off of. The usual.”
“You got it, Cap. Is this something from Legs Kline or . . .”
“No,” Heat said. “It’s personal.”
Heat Storm (Castle) Page 7
