“Nope.”
Nikki said, “Mind if I ask why you’re telling me?”
“Cuz I just realized that you’re the lady cop from that magazine. I figured if I can’t trust you, pack it in.”
Rook hit the sidewalk ready to rock and roll. “We’ve got him now. I’m telling you, Nik, that German is in this up to his umlaut.”
“How can you know that?” she asked.
“Come on, Meuller fights with Graf at the strip club, Meuller leads Graf away the morning he’s murdered, Meuller runs from you... If you want to know why he hid out and quit those dancing jobs, I refer you to Mr. George Michael’s theory about guilty feet and rhythm.”
“Rook, think of our timeline and tell me this. Meuller left Podemski’s agency with Father Graf just after nine A.M. How is it then that Graf shows up at Justicia a Guarda headquarters very much alive an hour and a half later?”
Rook shifted gears like nothing had happened. “Right. Alternate thought, that’s good. Any other notions?”
“No, a question. I want to know what a male stripper could have with him that Montrose would want and that got so many people killed. I want to talk to Horst Meuller again.”
“Great, let’s go.”
“Not yet.”
“Absolutely not,” said Rook, deftly flip-flopping. “Why not?”
“Because Meuller plays too close to the vest. I want to confront him, but I want to go in there knowing more than he thinks I do,” said Heat. “So let’s be smart and use the help Montrose gave us. He led us to that agent for a reason. Since we already knew about Meuller, I think it was to point us to his lover, the videographer. Let’s see what we can find out about Alan Barclay.”
Rook hailed a cab, and on the way to Gemstar Studios in Queens, where they produced Payback Playback, Heat called Mrs. Borelli at the rectory. The housekeeper not only confirmed that Alan Barclay was a parishioner at Our Lady of the Innocents but that Father Graf said his funeral Mass and delivered the eulogy two weeks earlier. “They knew each other very well, then? Were they friends?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call them friends,” said the woman. “Alan had some moral crisis he was dealing with, and Father was counseling him. The last days of poor Mr. Barclay’s life, things got quite heated in Father Gerry’s study.”
“Did you hear what they were arguing about, Mrs. B?”
“Afraid not, Detective. I may be nosy but I’m not a snoop.”
Heat told Security she and Rook would wait in the lobby for the pro ducer, mainly so nobody would ask her to flash tin. If — as the giant poster on the studio wall said, “The Playback Is a Bitch!” — so was being a cop without a shield. The bearded man in the sport coat and jeans who came out of the double glass doors to meet them introduced himself as the line producer, which meant that Jim Steele’s purview was the show’s physical production, including hiring the camera crew. He asked if there had been some neighborhood complaint about damage or noise from their location shooting and relaxed measurably when she told him no.
“I just want to ask you a few questions about one of your former crew. Alan Barclay.”
Steele closed his eyes momentarily and told her that the whole crew was still mourning him. “If you lead a good life, if you’re fortunate enough, you get a chance to work with a guy like Alan. A lovely man. Very giving and an artist with that camera. Total pro.”
Nikki said, “His name has come up related to a case we are investigating, and I’m really looking for some background on him.”
“Not a lot to tell. He’s been with me here since I hired him freelance on Don’t Forget to Duck.”
“Great effing show,” said Rook.
The producer browsed him warily then continued, “That would have been 2005. Alan was so gifted I brought him onto Playback when we got our syndication order.”
“What about before that,” asked Heat, “had he worked another show?”
“No, in fact, he was sort of a risky hire for me because his background was news shooting.”
Rook said, “Network or local stations?”
“Neither. He’d been a rover for one of the stringer companies that provide video footage to local stations that cut back on budgets. You know, stations can’t justify the union crews to wait around on the overnight shift to shoot the occasional car accidents and robberies, so instead, they buy clips from the stringers on an as-needed basis.”
“Do you know offhand who Alan Barclay worked for?” asked Heat.
“Gotham Outsource.” Steele’s smart phone buzzed and he checked the screen. “Listen, I’ve got to get back in there. Do you have all you need?”
“Sure do. Thanks,” she said.
Before he left, the producer said, “Mind if I ask you a question? Do you guys ever compare notes?”
Nikki said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“One of your detectives was here a little over a week ago asking the same questions.”
The assignment manager of Gotham Outsource had the cranky de meanor of a taxi dispatcher. He half-swiveled from his computer monitor and, over the chatter and electronic noise of a few dozen scanners, said, “I already covered all this with your other suit a week, ten days ago, you know.”
“Captain Montrose, right?”
“Yeah, same dude who ten-eightied himself,” he said, using the police radio code for “Cancel.”
Heat wanted to slap him hard enough for his headset to embed itself in his pea brain. Rook either sensed or shared her distaste and interceded. “Cover it again, it’ll take you two minutes. How long did Alan Barclay work for you?”
“Started in 2001. We doubled our crews after 9/11, and he was part of the big hire.”
“And you were happy with him?” asked Nikki, past her anger for the moment.
“I was until I wasn’t.”
She said, “Help me out there.”
“Guy ended up being my best shooter. Great shots, hard worker, not afraid to get close to the action. Then he just flakes out on me. Adios. Doesn’t even come in to quit or say kiss my royal red hinder. Just stops showing.” He sucked his teeth. “Freelancers. These lowlifes are one rung above paparazzi.”
Heat couldn’t wait to get some distance from this goon, but she had one more thing to find out. “Do you remember the date he quit so suddenly?”
He gestured with both arms to the roomful of police radios and TV monitors. “Do I look like I’d remember the date?”
“Try,” said Rook.
The man scoffed. “You’re no cop. Not wearing a fancy watch like that. You got nothing over me.”
Rook brushed past Nikki, ripped the headset off the guy, and spun his chair so he was nose-to-nose with him. “Hey, Ed Murrow, what would it cost your business if I called in a safety tip and some city inspections of your fleet of news vans stopped you from prowling for a night or three?” He paused. “I thought so.” Then Rook wrote his phone number down and stuffed it in the man’s shirt pocket. “Start remembering.”
When Horst Meuller woke up from his nap, he gasped. Rook was lean ing over his hospital bed holding a very large syringe in the German’s face. “Don’t worry, Herr Meuller,” he said in a soft voice, “I won’t hurt you.” Yet he didn’t move away, either. “But do you see how very easy it would be for someone else to kill you while you slept?” Rook gently swung the hypodermic back and forth; Meuller’s eyes followed it, big and wide like a cat clock. “You’re in a hospital, so there are so many ways. I’ve heard of contract killers who dress like nurses and inject poison into the IV drip of their victims.” Meuller felt around for the call button, and Rook smiled and held it up with his other hand. “To live, press one now.”
Horst’s face wore a sheen of perspiration. Heat tapped Rook on the shoulder and said, “I think he got the message.”
“True. No need to beat a dead... Oh, I want to say ‘Horst’ so bad. But it would be beneath even me.”