“Were you close?” Heat surveyed her, wondering if there was any forbidden romance lurking, but she couldn’t tell, which usually meant there wasn’t any. Nikki prided herself on having finely tuned lay-dar.
“Yes but not like that, oh, please. What the father and I had was a shared vision for doing work through the church to foster human rights and social justice.” She took a sip of whatever she had on ice on the coffee table. “Why spoil the fun with something tawdry?”
“I do see that you and Father Graf shared a bank account. An occasionally large bank account,” said Nikki.
“Of course we did. I am not only a contributor, but also the treasurer of the account we held for donations to fund a human rights organization we believed in passionately.”
Rook asked, “And that would be Justicia a Garda?”
Emma Collins perked up for the first time. “Why, yes. I’m so glad you know of them.”
“Not so well, really.” More for Heat’s benefit, he said, “We have what I believe is more of an e-mail relationship.”
Nikki ignored Rook’s suspicions about Pascual Guzman and asked Collins, “So you would do both the fund-raising and banking for this cause?”
“Well, it began that way. But more recently, I do less administration and more of the development of new donors. I don’t even use the bank account much anymore, but steer our patrons to give directly to the liaison for Justicia. They seem to enjoy the sense of hands-on funding and their capital administrator is a very charming man.”
Nikki opened her notebook. “May I ask you his name?”
“Sure. It’s Alejandro Martinez. Do you need me to spell that?”
“No,” said Heat, “I’ve got it.”
Seventeen
Rook fortified his first cup of coffee of the morning with a shot of espresso and said, “Mother, are you sure you are up for this?”
“Up for playing the role of a wealthy socialite? Up for it isn’t the phrase. Born to it would be more accurate, kiddo.”
Nikki plucked the mug shot of Alejandro Martinez from Murder Board South and said, “Think it over, Margaret, this is the man you’d be meeting. He’s a notorious drug dealer who’s done prison time. He claims he’s reformed, but he’s also funneling drug money through a church. He may even be responsible for a priest’s torture and murder.”
“Look at that noble chin, will you?” said Margaret Rook. “And if you think I’m passing up a chance to have those eyes squeeze me across a mimosa, you’re crazy.”
When Rook had come up with this notion of asking Emma Carroll to set up a fake donor brunch meeting with Martinez, Heat was all for it as a way to bait him with some cash they could track and see where it ended up. By the time she realized the sting would be played out by his mother, the momentum was too strong and Emma had already made her call. “It’s not too late to back out,” Nikki cautioned. “If you have any worries, don’t be proud.”
“My greatest worry is which wealthy socialite from my Broadway career I shall reprise. Perhaps Elsa Schraeder from Sound of Music?”
“Isn’t she the one von Trapp eighty-sixed for Maria?” said Rook.
“Oh...” Margaret made a sour face. “I’ve lost too many men to the nanny to endure that again. I know. I could bring back Vera Simpson from Pal Joey.” She examined the mug shot again. “No, he won’t spark to her, too sulky. Let’s see... Ah! I have it. Muriel Eubanks from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. She got seduced by a con artist. Perfect.”
“Whatever works for you, Mother, but you are doing the seduction.”
“You bet I am.”
“With this.” Rook placed a Vuitton epi leather Keepall on the dining table. “There’s ten thousand dollars of my movie option for the Chechnya article in here. Nikki and I spent all last night recording serial numbers, so no tipping, no dipping.”
“Jameson, you are determined to spoil Mother’s good time, aren’t you.”
They arrived in their rental car an hour early so they could claim a parking spot close to Cassis on Columbus Avenue. Heat and Rook had chosen it because it was small and the ambiance was quiet, so they could hear better from the car. “How’s this going to work?” asked Margaret from the backseat. “On TV they always wear wires.”
“Tada,” said Rook. “From my new friends at the spy store, I got you this.” He handed her a smart phone.
“That’s it? Darling, I was hoping I could wear a wire.”
“So 21 Jump Street. This baby has state-of-the-art noise canceling and sound pickup. Just set it on the seat beside you and we’ll hear everything. It also has a GPS. I had better not need to track you, but if something happens, I want to be able to.”
“I approve,” Nikki said in a British accent. “Very thorough, Q.”
“You don’t know half of it.” He handed her a cell phone. “Since my e-mail got hacked, I’ve been worried about our phones, too. So while I was there, I got us new ones. I already did a GPS sync and programmed our speed dials.”
Heat pressed a button on her new phone. Rook’s rang. “Hello?”
“Nerd,” she said. And then hung up.
From the front seat of their Camry they watched Mrs. Rook establish herself early at the window table they had told her to take. She also claimed the inside seat, as instructed by Nikki, so that from the curb they could keep an eye on Martinez and have a clear view of his hands. “I’ll tell you now,” came her voice through the speaker phone, “this blocking may work for you but it’s far too drafty for me.”
Rook made sure his phone was muted and said, “Actors.”
While they waited in silence for the drug dealer to arrive, Heat’s cell buzzed and Rook said, “You sure you still want to use your old phone instead of the new one I gave you?”
“It’s the FBI, I think I can take this.”
Her contact at the Violent Crime Unit in Quantico began with an apology for the delay. “It took me a while to get anything for you on Sergio Torres because I hit a firewall and had to get some approvals.” A tingle of adrenaline stirred in Heat. “But it’s for you, so I kept banging on it till I got clearance. Your man’s records were classified because he was deep-cover law enforcement.”
Nikki said, “Sergio Torres was a cop?” Rook stopped finger drumming the steering wheel and whipped his head to her.
“Affirm,” said the FBI analyst. “Now, his whole jacket, the jail time he served, that was all real. Part of the legend that was built to give Torres street cred.”
“What agency was he with?”
“Torres was in Narcotics, NYPD, assigned to the Forty-first Precinct. That’s in — ”
“ — The Bronx,” said Heat, “I’m familiar.” Just then she saw the dapper figure of Alejandro Martinez walking down the sidewalk toward them. Nikki quickly thanked her NCAVC contact, hung up, and grabbed Rook. “Make out with me.”
She pulled him to her and they kissed deeply, and then, just as abruptly, she pulled away. “I didn’t want Martinez to clock me.”
“No complaints here.” Then while they watched Martinez kiss Margaret’s hand as he sat, Rook said, “Did I hear the human popsicle is actually a copsicle?”
The conversation in the restaurant was introductory small talk, so Heat quickly filled him in on her Torres briefing. Then Nikki said, “Whoa, whoa, I’m not liking this.”
On the cell phone speaker, Martinez was saying he wanted to move to a table toward the back. “I am not so comfortable sitting in windows.”
Heat said, “We should get her out of there.”