Frozen Heat (2012)

by Richard Castle

  Nikki pointed out that flowers seemed to have gotten things off on the right foot the day before with the Bernardins, so they stopped at the small shop off the lobby. Minutes later, armed with some peonies in cellophane, they bypassed the front desk and rode the elevator to the second floor. On the way up, she said, “Not that I’m complaining, but I’m surprised they didn’t ask us to sign in.”

  “It’s the peonies. In my experience as an investigative journalist, I’ve learned you can get by almost any security situation unchallenged by carrying something. Flowers, clipboard … And it’s a breeze if you’re eating something, especially off a paper plate.”

  “Room two-oh-three,” she said, consulting the note she’d made at the hotel. They turned a corner, and outside the door of 203, a uniformed policier rose up from his folding chair to face them. Heat elbowed Rook. “You don’t have a plate of baked beans on you, do ya?”

  In French, the policeman told them no visitors. Nikki replied, also in French, that she had spoken to M. Wynn’s housekeeper, who assured her that it would be all right to see him. “We’ve come a long way,” said Rook. “And we love your country.”

  The cop gave him a disdainful look and said, “Allez,” looking like he’d enjoy a bit of exercise to break the monotony, if it came to that. Heat held up her NYPD identification, a tone changer. The homegrown officer from the suburban prefecture studied the foreign credentials carefully, looking from her photo to her and back, his eyes darting under the short brim of his cap. Speaking rapidly and flawlessly like a native, Nikki explained that her mother, Cynthia Heat, had been very close to “Oncle Tyler,” and that his shooting might be connected to a homicide case she was working on back home. The gendarme seemed intrigued but immovable. Until he heard the old man’s weak voice coming from the open door of the room.

  “Did you say … you were Cindy Heat’s daughter?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wynn,” she called toward the pale yellow privacy drape. “I’m Nikki Heat, and I came here to see you.”

  After a pause, then a prolific hawking of phlegm, the disembodied voice said, “Let her in.” The policeman’s eyes flicked side to side, unprepared for this scenario. At last he regarded Nikki’s ID once more, handed it to her, and stood back to let them pass. As she and Rook entered the room, they could hear the policier making a call on his walkie-talkie to cover himself.

  For Nikki the scene behind the curtain took her right back to February in St. Luke’s Roosevelt, where Rook had been clinging to life after his shooting. Tyler Wynn, frail and propped up on one side to keep the left half of his back elevated off the mattress, watched her through dazed, half-mast eyelids. Then he managed to bring a weak smile to his dry, cracked lips. “My God,” he said. “Look at you. It’s like I died and went to heaven and met up with dear Cindy.” And then a rascally twinkle shined through. “I am still alive, aren’t I?” He laughed, but that brought on deep, painful coughing. He held up his palm to signal them not to worry, and when it subsided, he drew in some oxygen from the clear tube under his nose. “Sit, please.”

  There was only one chair, and Rook pulled it up bedside for Nikki, carefully avoiding the batch of cables snaking from under Tyler’s sheets to the array of monitors. She briefly introduced Rook as he found a path around to the foot of the bed and the windowsill where he perched. “The magazine writer,” he said. “Right. Pardon me for not getting up.” He briefly lifted both arms, which were connected to multiple IV drips. “Bad combination, three gunshots and a bad heart.”

  “You’ll tell us when you need us to go, promise?” she asked.

  Tyler Wynn just smiled and said, “Look at all these machines. The French sure like to make a grand spectacle of everything, don’t they? Cooking, cinema, sex scandals, les hopitaux. This country perfected modern medicine, but before that, I’m told, they used to operate without anesthetic. Didn’t even wash their hands. So I guess, all in all, I’m lucky.” He rolled his head her way on the pillow and stared. “Everybody tell you how much you look like your mom?”

  “All the time. It’s a compliment.”

  “You know it.” He took her in some more and then said, “I heard you tell my personal gendarme you were investigating a homicide.”

  “Yes, I’m with the NYPD.”

  “I read that article.” He cocked an eyebrow at Rook. “Looks like you got more than a byline, young man.”

  “No complaints,” he said.

  There was so much Nikki wanted to talk over with him; so many questions she wanted to get answers to in order to fill those gaps in her connection to her own mother. And there were some questions she was afraid to ask. But one look at the old man told her this wouldn’t be a long visit. She made a decision to prioritize and start with the case essentials. Crude as that might be, first and foremost, she had an investigation to conduct. Heat knew all about putting her personal needs to the side. They would have to wait for later or the next visit.

  “Mr. Wynn,” she began, but he interrupted.

  “Tyler. Or Uncle Tyler. Your mom called me that.”

  “OK, Tyler. I’m assuming from the guard you’ve been assigned that they didn’t catch whoever did this to you. Do you have any idea who it was?”

  “It’s a crazy world. Even Europe is getting gun happy.”

  “Were you robbed?”

  “Nope. Still got my gold Rolex. At least if the night orderly didn’t steal it.”

  “Did you see who did it?”

  He shook no. Then he told her, “That look on your face is the same one the police inspector had when he interviewed me. Sorry.”

  From his perch, Rook asked, “When did this happen?”

  The old man’s eyes found the ceiling. “Give me a minute. I was under a few days, so time is a little fuzzy, know what I mean?” Rook understood. “Tuesday night last week, late. How come?”

  Heat and Rook registered the significance of that with a glance. Time zones notwithstanding, that would have been the night before Nicole Bernardin had been killed. “Gathering my facts,” she said, leaving it there for now. “How did it happen?”

  “Not much to describe. I’d just come back to my apartment from the late show of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at the Gaumont Pathe. I got out of my car in the underground garage, and next thing, I hear three shots behind me and someone running away while I’m down on the pavement. I woke up here.”

  Nikki had slipped out her reporter’s-cut spiral as unobtrusively as she could manage and made some notes. She asked him the questions she had asked so often in these circumstances over the years. About recent threats. No. Bad business deals. No. Romantic jealousies. “Oh, what I would give,” he said. Having exhausted the usual possibilities, she sat, tapping the cap of her pen to her lip.

  “I did have a few drinks after the cinema. It’s possible that I drove poorly and this was some sort of road rage.” It sounded flimsy. Not only was neither of them buying, it had an odor of misdirection, as if he threw it out there to try to close the subject.

  “What about a hit?” asked Rook. At first, Heat objected to the baldness of his question, but she gave her reservations a second thought when she saw the animation rise in Tyler Wynn.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “A contract killing. That’s what it sounds like to me. Why would somebody have a reason to buy a termination? With extreme prejudice?” He used the jargon of clandestine operatives for effect. Nikki had to hand it to Rook, he walked the line beautifully, holding his ground without badgering the man. Letting innuendo do the heavy lifting. Saying, I know and you know, without speaking the words.

  “That would be extraordinary, Mr. Rook,” Tyler said, not denying it.

  “For an international investment banker, it would be,” he countered. Wynn had joined him, also playing the middle ground, so that’s where Rook stayed, for the moment, and said, “It would be quite extraordinary to target a mere investment banker.” The two men held a long look, the equivalent of a handshake crunch game to see w
ho gave first. It was Tyler Wynn who blinked.

  “Corporal Bergeron,” he said. When the officer appeared around the yellow drape, he said, “I would like to speak privately with my friends. Would you please find some water for these flowers and close the door when you step out?” The policeman hesitated and then did as instructed.

  Tyler Wynn closed his eyes to ponder for so long in the quiet, with no sound other than the soft, rhythmic beeping of his heart monitor, that they both wondered if he had fallen asleep. But then he cleared some more chest congestion and began his story. “I am going to share this with you because it doesn’t just concern me, it concerns your mother.” When he said those words, Nikki felt her heart jump. She dared not interrupt, only nod, encouraging him onward. “And not only can I tell from these few minutes with you, Nikki, that you would be discreet, but at this hour of my life, alone and clearly with no … infrastructure … to protect me, I have no reason to be naive about misplaced loyalty.”

  Prompted by his comment about discretion, Heat capped her pen and folded her hands across her notebook. Rook remained still, arms crossed. Waiting out the beeps.

  “For many years, back when I was younger and more useful …” He paused. Then he made the leap. “I was engaged in helping my country through covert means. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was a spy. For CIA.” Rook sniffed and shifted, crossing his feet at the ankles where he leaned. Wynn tilted his head to him and said, “You had that figured out, of course. Another reason not to maintain the fiction. That’s what spying is all about, you know, fiction. It’s more cloak than dagger. We made up stories and lived them. And you’re right, sending me to Europe as an investment banker for my legend provided me excellent camouflage. More than that, it gave me access to places I needed to gather intel. There’s nothing like making people rich to open a few doors and not have anybody ask too many questions about you.”

  He turned back to Nikki. “I ran what headquarters in Langley nicknamed my Nanny Network. They called it that because I began with an ingenious idea. With so many influential contacts I had developed through my cover business, I began to recruit and place nannies in the homes of diplomats and other select subjects of interest, to spy on them and report back to me. The simplicity of the notion was exceeded only by the results. These nannies had incredible access to the home lives of my subjects. Once they penetrated, they not only listened, they planted bugs and, occasionally, took photographs, either for intelligence gathering or, yes, leverage. Blackmail.” He smiled at Nikki. “I can see you are ahead of me. You’re there, already, aren’t you?”

  She could feel light beads of perspiration on her chest and where the small of her back met the molded plastic chair. “I think so.” Her voice sounded like someone else’s.

  “The director himself was so pleased by the secrets I was mining, my orders were to generate more. Remember, we’re talking the seventies. The Cold War was still on. You had Vietnam. The IRA. The Berlin Wall. Carlos the Jackal was kidnapping OPEC ministers in Vienna. SALT treaty talks were on in Moscow. The Greek monarchy got overthrown. Red Chinese sleeper cells started assimilating into the U.S. And most of the players, sooner or later, came through Paris.

  “The genius of the Nanny Network was that I could expand it by plugging in more than just nannies and au pairs. I added a butler, then some cooks, and then English tutors, and, yes, Nikki Heat—music tutors. One of your mother’s classmates, Nicole Bernardin, had worked out very well spying for me, and she helped me to recruit Cynthia on a summer visit.”

  Heat and Rook made a slow turn to each other. Neither wanted to break the thread by speaking, and they both brought their attention back to the old man. Nikki heard voices passing in the hall and hoped to learn more before the French version of Nurse Ratched came in and gave them the toss.

  “Your mother’s first assignment was an important one, and she excelled. In the summer of 1971 movement began behind the scenes to negotiate an end to the Vietnam conflict.”

  “The Paris Peace Talks,” Rook said, unable to contain himself.

  “That’s right. I learned that the ambassador to a certain Soviet Bloc nation, a fair-weather Communist I had secretly invested some cash for, was going to host the family of one of the North Vietnamese negotiators in his home. The North Viets had a young son who wanted to keep up his piano studies.” Nikki’s memory raced back to the toile keepsake box and the photo of her mother with the Asian family outside the Bolshoi. “I placed Cindy in the ambassador’s home as the boy’s summer tutor. The kid had a great recital, and your mom passed along vital information that helped Kissinger keep a leg up at the negotiating table. You should be proud.”

  “I am,” said, Nikki. “And it helps me understand the change that came over her when she visited here.”

  “You mean giving up her concert career? After a few placements there was no stopping her. She not only took tutor-in-residence assignments here in Paris, she traveled all over Europe for years, listening and reporting, listening and reporting,” he repeated. “Whether it was pure patriotism or just the thrill of the work, she was one hell of a spy. She told me the sense of mission it gave her fulfilled her like nothing else could. Not even her music.”

  After processing that, Nikki said, “She had to be in danger a lot.”

  “Sometimes, yes. She thrived on that part, too. Cynthia had courage, but it was more. A focus. A singularity of purpose that saw her through everything. Preparation, contingency, execution. She covered all the bases and left nothing to chance.”

  He fumbled for his water cup. Nikki got up and helped him sip from his straw. “Thanks.” He waited for her to sit back down. “Of course, all good things come to an end. She met your dad, got married, and quit to go back to the U.S. and raise you.” His lips, moist from the water, drew into a sly grin.

  “What?” asked Nikki.

  “Of course, you never do retire from this business. The world was no less volatile in the mid-eighties. Just like Paris, New York City was definitely a fertile ground for intelligence-gathering. I came to Manhattan and re-recruited her in 1985.”

  “1985 …” Nikki turned her head at an angle and studied him, reaching for the same familiar connection she had tried to make but couldn’t when she first saw his photograph the day before.

  Tyler Wynn smiled again, but it wasn’t sly this time. It was purely nostalgic. “I remember you, too, Nikki. You were five when I visited your mother, and you played the allegro from Mozart’s Fifteenth Sonata for me. I even videotaped it.”

  “We just watched that video the other night,” said Rook. Heat nodded, her affirmation not so much to agree with Rook as to acknowledge to herself the comfort she felt at being able to draw yet another line to her past.

  “I can still see it now,” said the old man.

  “So you’re saying you re-upped her mom to infiltrate people’s homes in New York?”

  “And thereabouts, yes.”

  “But you were CIA,” he said. “Isn’t domestic spying illegal?”

  “It is if you do it right.” Tyler Wynn enjoyed his own joke until his laughter made him wince. He reached on the covers beside him for the morphine button that connected to an IV bag, and thumb-pressed it twice. “Don’t know if it even works on me anymore.” He concentrated on deep breathing and, once he settled, finished his thought. “I have to say, your mother was just as effective in her second go-round.”

  Heat, at last delivered to the point she had been so eager to reach, asked him, “Tyler, was she spying for you up to the end? I mean, at the time of her murder?”

  His face sobered at the memory. “She was.”

  “Can you tell me specifics? Anything at all that would help me find out who killed her?”

  “Cindy had several projects she had been working on at that time.” He raised an arm, dragging along his drip lines, tapped his temple with a forefinger, and grinned mischievously. “I still have them all right here. I’ve been out of the game a lot of years, but I hav
en’t forgotten a thing. I shouldn’t tell you what she had going, but I will. First of all, because time is slipping by and I may be one of the few who could help you. Or would. A lot’s changed, and not for the better. The trade’s lost its human factor. Nobody wants the talents of men like me, not when you have drone aircraft.

  “But mostly, I’ll tell you because we’re talking about my Cynthia. I don’t know who the son-of-a-bitch is, but I want you to fucking nail him.” The surge of emotion animated him but took its toll. He pressed the oxygen tube closer to his nostrils and sucked it in while Heat and Rook waited, full of anticipation.

  “I think what happened is that your mother found something sensitive and someone burned her before she could report it.”

  “Something like what?” Nikki asked.

  “That, I don’t know. Did you notice if she acted differently? Changed daily routines or patterns, like have meetings at unusual hours?”

  “Right before, I can’t say. I had been away at college. But she had meetings at unusual hours a lot. It became kind of a sore subject in our home.”

  “Occupational hazard, I’m afraid.” He looked thoughtful and asked, “Did you see her try to hide something, or did you come across a key that didn’t fit anything, did she get a new storage locker, anything like that?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t notice.”

  Rook joined in. “When you say someone burned her, do you mean one of her patrons, a family she was spying on, or another spy who wanted what she had?”

  “All of the above. When things turn, anyone can come at you from any direction.”

  The potential connection Heat had been brooding over could wait no longer. “You mentioned Nicole Bernardin. Is it possible she turned on her and did this?”

  He shook his head emphatically. “No. Absolutely out of the question. Nicole loved Cindy. They were like sisters. Nicole Bernardin would die for your mother. Talk to her yourself, you’ll see.” And then he read something on their faces. “What?”