“Let’s go to an art show,” she said and hit the gas.
Nikki felt her diaphragm cinch when she turned the corner and sped up the block. Long ago she had learned that you could calm-talk your brain all you want, your adrenal glands pretty much had charge of the control panel. One conscious deep breath compensated for the shallow ones she had been taking, and after she took it, Nikki found that sweet spot between nerves and focus.
Ahead, a formation of cop cars rolled down the street toward her, Marr’s pincer movement in action. Coming up fast on her right, the auto body shop. Its nearest rolling garage door was still wide open. Heat braked and cranked the wheel. The Crown Vic took a hard bounce on the steep slope of the driveway and was still rocking on its suspension when she roared into the middle of the garage and screeched to a stop. The flashing of her gum ball reflected on the startled faces of the handful of men in the shop.
Nikki had already done her count by the time she was yanking the door handle. “Clock five,” she said.
“Roger five,” answered Roach in tandem.
“Police, nobody move, hands where I can see them,” she shouted, coming around her car door. She heard the backup arriving behind her but didn’t turn.
On her right, two laborers in dusty coveralls and white painter’s masks dropped the belt sanders they were using on an old LeBaron and raised their hands. Across the garage to her left, at a patio table just outside the storage room, three men rose from a card game. They looked anything but submissive.
“Watch the card players,” she said low to Roach. Then loudly, to the group, “I said hands. Now.”
It was as if her “Now” were a starting pistol. All three men scattered in different directions. In her periphery, Heat could see uniforms already patting down the two sanders. Free of that pair, she started off toward the biker dude who was running along the wall toward the front office. As she took off after him, Nikki called out, “Ochoa,” and pointed to the one breaking for the exit to the rear yard.
“On the green shirt,” said Raley, chasing the man booking it for the side door. By the time Raley finished his sentence, the guy had pulled the side door open. Heat was past the point where she could see it, but she heard a ragged chorus of “Police, freeze!” from the uniforms in Marr’s flank group who were waiting in the alley.
The biker she was chasing was all muscle and beer gut. Fast as Nikki was, he had the clear path; she had to dodge rolling tool lockers and a crushed fender. Ten feet from the office his swaying gray ponytail was the last thing she saw before the door slammed. She tried the knob but it wouldn’t turn. She heard a deadbolt thrown.
“Stand aside, Detective.” Marr, cool as can be, was behind her with two uniforms in helmets and goggles holding a battering ram.
The detective slid out of their way and the two cops swung the head of the Stinger into the lock. The ram hit with the shudder of a small explosion and the door popped wide.
“Cover,” said Heat. She started into the office with her piece drawn. Two gunshots cracked the air in the small room and a bullet embedded low in the door frame opposite her. She rotated out again, putting her back prone against the brick wall.
“You hit?” asked Marr. She shook no and closed her eyes to study her eidetic image of that brief instant. Muzzle flashes from high up. Window along the wall. But biker dude was standing on the desk. Reaching up high with his other arm. Dark square in the ceiling above him.
“He’s going for the roof,” she said and ran through the garage to the rear yard, where Ochoa had his man down and cuffed. “Eyes high, Detective,” she said. “We’ve got a monkey.”
Heat walked the perimeter of the building, her head tilted up as she went. In the gap between the body shop and the auto glass place next door, she stopped. A small piece of torn cloth waved from the razor wire on the rooftop. Nikki stood on the concrete directly under the flag of cloth and looked down. Between her shoes were two bright red spatters of blood.
She turned and caught Raley’s eye from the yard, then hand signaled the arc of the biker’s jump to the next-door roof before she trotted out the gate to the corner of the building. Heat peeked around it and pulled back. The sidewalk was clear. She figured her dude would not exit down the front but would stay up there as far as he could get before coming down.
As she ran along the façade of the auto glass shop, she told herself to be grateful that this was an industrial area and that there was a heat wave, both of which made it so she didn’t have to deal with pedestrians. The end of the building marked the corner of the side street. She flattened her back against the concrete and felt it warm the back of her neck above her vest. Nikki peeked around the building’s edge. Halfway up the block, the biker was climbing down a gutter drain. Her backup was coming but was a building’s length away. Biker dude was using both hands to shimmy. If she waited, he’d be on the sidewalk with a free gun hand.
Heat pivoted around the corner, gun up. “Police, freeze!” She couldn’t believe it. Rook was strolling up the sidewalk between her and the biker.
“Whoa, it’s me,” he said.
“Move,” she yelled, and waved him to the side. Rook turned behind him. For the first time, he saw the man climbing down the pipe and dashed out of the way behind a parked oil delivery truck. But by then the biker was holding onto the pipe with only one hand and drew. Heat pivoted behind the wall and his shot went wide, punching into a stack of wooden pallets at the curb.
Then she heard boots landing hard on pavement, a loud curse, and the clatter of something metal on concrete. The gun.
Heat fast-peeked again. The biker was standing on the sidewalk, ass to her, bending to pick up his fallen gun. She stepped out, Sig braced. “Freeze!”
And that was when Rook flew in from the side and blind-tackled him. Nikki lost her clear shot as the two struggled on the ground. She ran to them with Raley and the rest of her backup following close behind. Just as she arrived, Rook flipped on top of the guy and held the gun to his face.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I need the practice.”
After they loaded the biker into the rear of a patrol car for transport to the precinct in Manhattan, Heat, Raley, Rook, and the backup officers herded around the corner toward the auto body shop. On the walk, Rook tried to speak to Nikki, but she was still fuming about his interference and strode to the head of the group, showing him her back.
Lieutenant Marr was making notes for his report when they entered the garage. “Hope you don’t mind me using your vehicle as a desk,” he said.
“It’s been used for lots worse. Everybody tucked in?” she asked.
“You bet. Our two rabbits are cuffed and loaded. These other two,” he said with a side nod to the pair who had been working on the LeBaron, “they seem all right. I think their biggest problem is no job here tomorrow. Congrats on nailing your biker.”
“Thanks. And thanks for the setup. I owe you one.”
He shrugged it off. “What makes me happy is the good guys are all going home safe for supper tonight.” He set his clipboard on the car hood. “Now, Detective, I don’t know about you, but I want a look inside that truck.”
Marr and Heat led the others out to the side yard, where the sun-bounce off the truck came at them like a pizza oven. The lieutenant gave the word, and one of his patrol officers mounted the rear bumper and opened the double doors. When the doors parted, Nikki’s heart sank.
Except for a pile of quilted mover’s blankets, there was nothing in the truck.
THIRTEEN
In the precinct interrogation room, the biker, Brian Daniels, seemed more interested in the gauze on the back of his upper arm than in Detective Heat. “I’m waiting,” she said. But he ignored her, contorting himself by hooking his chin on his shoulder and twisting himself to see the bandage under the ripped sleeve on the back of his T-shirt.
“This sucker still bleeding?” he asked. He shifted his angle to get a look at it in the mirror, but it was too far away to work fo
r him and he gave up, flopping back in the plastic chair.
“What happened to the paintings, Brian?”
“Doc.” He shook his iron gray hair. When they processed him, they’d taken the elastic off of his ponytail, and his hair hung like a polluted waterfall down his back. “Brian’s for the IRS and the DMV, call me Doc.”
She wondered when the last time was this piece of shit paid any taxes or a driver’s license fee. But Nikki held the thought and stayed on message. “After you left the Guilford last night, where did you move that art collection?”
“I have no idea what the hell you are talking about, lady.”
“I’m talking about what was in that truck.”
“What, blankets? All yours.” He snorted a laugh and pretzeled his body to look at his razor-wire cut again.
“Where were you last night between midnight and four?”
“Damn, this was my favorite shirt.”
“Know something, Doc? You’re not only a lousy shot, you’re stupid, too. After your little circus act this morning, you have enough charges against you to make your stretch up in Sing Sing feel like a weekend at the Four Seasons.”
“And?”
“And…you want to see this prosecuted to the max? Keep acting like an asshole.” The detective rose. “I’ll give you some time to think about that.” She hefted his file. “Judging from this, you know what time is.” Then she left the room so he could sit there and contemplate his future.
Rook was alone in the bull pen when she came in, and he wasn’t happy. “Hey, thanks for ditching me in picturesque Long Island City.”
“Not now, Rook.” She brushed past him to her desk.
“I had to ride all the way over here sitting in the backseat of a blue-and-white. Do you know what that’s like? People in other cars kept looking in at me like I was in custody. A couple of times I waved just to show I wasn’t in handcuffs.”
“I did it for your own protection.”
“From what?”
“From me.”
“Why?”
“Let’s start with not listening.”
“I got tired of standing around by myself. I figured you’d be done, so I came to see how it was going.”
“And interfered with my suspect.”
“You bet your ass I interfered. That guy was trying to shoot you.”
“I’m the police. People shoot at us.” She found the file she was looking for and slammed the drawer. “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot.”
“I had a vest. And by the way, how can you stand those things? Very confining, especially in this humidity.”
Ochoa came in, tapping his notebook on his upper lip. “We’re not catching a single break anywhere. I ran alibis on our majors. They’re all checking out.”
“Kimberly Starr, too?” asked Heat.
“That was a two-fer. She was in Connecticut with her doctor of love at his beach cottage, so they both clear.” He closed his notebook and turned to Rook. “Hey, man, Raley told me what you said when you got the drop on that biker.”
Rook eyed Nikki and said, “We don’t need to talk about that.”
But Ochoa continued in a hoarse whisper, “‘Go ahead. I need the practice.’ Is that cool, or what?”
“Oh yeah,” said Heat. “Rook is like our very own Dirty Jamie.” Her desk phone rang and she picked up. “Heat.”
“It’s me, Raley. He’s here.”
“On my way,” she said.
The old doorman stood with Nikki, Rook, and Roach in the observation booth, looking through the glass at the men in the lineup. “Take your time, Henry,” said Nikki.
He walked a step closer to the window and took off his glasses to clean them. “It’s hard. Like I said, it was dark and they wore hats.” In the next room, six men stood facing a mirror. Among them, Brian “Doc” Daniels, plus the two other men from that morning’s body shop raid.
“No hurry. Just let us know if anyone clicks for you. Or doesn’t.”
Henry slid his glasses back on. Moments passed. “I think I recognize one of them.”
“You think, or you know for sure?” Nikki had seen it many times where the urge to help or to take revenge forced good people to make bad choices. She cautioned Henry again. “Be certain.”
“Uh-huh, yes.”
“Which one?”
“You see the scruffy guy with the arm bandage and the long gray hair?”
“Yes?”
“It’s the one to the right of him.”
Behind him, the detectives shook their heads. He had identified one of the three cops who were shills in the lineup.
“Thank you, Henry,” said Heat. “Appreciate you coming down.”
Back in the bull pen, the detectives and Rook sat with their backs to their desks, tossing a Koosh Ball around the horn at a lazy pace. This is what they did when they were stuck.
“It’s not as if this biker is going to go anywhere,” said Rook. “Can’t you hold him for assault on Detective Heat alone?”
Raley put his hand up and Ochoa lobbed the Koosh into his palm. “It’s not about holding the biker.”
“It’s getting him to give up the paintings.” Ochoa held up his hand and Raley returned the Koosh to it. They had this down so well, Ochoa didn’t have to move.
“And who hired him,” added Heat.
Rook held his hand up and Ochoa tossed it to him. “So how do you get a guy like that to talk when he doesn’t want to?”
Heat held up her hand and Rook lobbed it over for an easy catch. “That’s always the question. It’s finding the spot where can you apply pressure.” She jostled the Koosh in her palm. “I may have an idea.”
“Never fails. It’s the power of Koosh,” said Raley.
Ochoa echoed that, “Power of Koosh,” and held up his hand. Nikki threw the ball and it smacked Rook in the face.
“Huh,” she said. “Never did that before.”
Nikki Heat had a new customer in the interrogation room, Gerald Buckley. “Mr. Buckley, do you know why we asked you to come in to talk with us?”
Buckley’s hands were folded together in a tight lace on the table in front of him. “No idea at all,” he said with a look of hard study. Heat noticed he dyed his eyebrows black.
“Did you know there was a burglary at the Guilford last night?”
“No shit.” He licked his lips and ran a knuckle backhand across his drinker’s nose. “Probably the blackout, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I dunno. You know. Not politically correct to say it, so I’ll just say ‘certain types’ like to run wild the minute the fences come down.” He felt her eyes on him and couldn’t come up with a safe place to look, so he concentrated on picking at an old scab in the back of his hand.
“How come you called in off your shift at the Guilford last night?”
His eyes rose slowly and met hers. “I don’t understand the question.”
“It’s a simple question. You’re a doorman at the Guilford, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Last night you called in to the doorman on duty, Henry, and said you wouldn’t be in for your overnight shift. Why did you do that?”
“What do you mean why?”
“I mean just that. Why?”
“I already told you, there was a blackout. You know how this city turns into a friggin’ insane asylum when the lights go out. You think I was going out in that? No way. So I called in off my shift. Why are you making such big deal?”
“Because there was a major burglary, and whenever things happen out of the ordinary like routines getting broken, like employees who work on the inside not showing up, I get very interested. That, Gerald, is the big deal.” She stared at him and waited. “Prove your whereabouts last night and I’ll shake your hand and open that door for you.”
Gerald Buckley pinched his nostrils twice and snapped in air the way she had seen so many coke users do it. He closed his eyes a full five seconds, and when he
opened them he said, “I want my lawyer.”
“Of course.” She had an obligation to acknowledge his request, but she wanted him to talk some more. “Do you have something you feel you need a lawyer for?” This guy was stupid and a cokehead. If he would just keep talking, she knew she could get him to box himself in. “Why did you beg off the shift? Were you on the truck with the burglary crew, or were you too scared that if it came down on your shift you couldn’t playact your innocence the next morning?”
“I’m not saying anything more.” Damn, so close. “I want my attorney.” At that, he crossed his arms and sat back.
But Nikki Heat had a Plan B. Ah, the power of Koosh.
Five minutes later she was in the observation booth with Ochoa. “Where did you and Raley put him?” she asked.
“You know the bench by the Community Affairs desk near the staircase?”
“Perfect,” she said. “I’ll do this in two minutes.”
Ochoa left the booth to take his position while Nikki returned to Gerald Buckley inside Interrogation.
“You get me my lawyer?”
“You’re free to go.” He looked at her suspiciously. “Really,” she said.
He got up and she held the door for him.
When Nikki emerged with Buckley into the outer office of the precinct, she didn’t look at the Community Affairs desk but could make out the forms of Ochoa and Raley blocking Gerald Buckley’s view of Doc the biker, who was sitting on the bench there. The idea was for Doc to see Buckley, not the other way around. At the head of the stairs, Nikki positioned the doorman so that his back was to Doc and then stopped. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Buckley,” she said, just loudly enough. Over Buckley’s shoulder came the parting of the Roach. She pretended not to notice the biker’s head crane to see if she was talking to the Gerald Buckley.
As soon as Heat saw alarm on the biker’s face, she took Buckley by the elbow and led him down the steps out of sight. As he continued on to the bottom of the stairs, Nikki stepped back up onto the landing and called off to him, “And thank you for your cooperation. I know it’s difficult, but you did the right thing.”
Heat Wave Page 15
