“It’s something we professionals in the world of detection call detecting.” Heat picked the file out of her driver’s door pocket and passed it to him. “Somebody wanted Matthew Starr dead. A few you’ll see in there made actual threats. Others just found him inconvenient.”
“So this is about eliminating them?”
“This is about asking questions and seeing where the answers lead. Sometimes you flush out a suspect, sometimes you’re getting information you didn’t have that takes you somewhere else. Was that another member of the Jameson Rook fan club back there?”
Rook chuckled. “Bree? Oh, hell, no.”
They rode another block in silence. “Because she seemed like a big fan.”
“Bree Flax is a big fan, all right. Of Bree Flax. She’s a freelancer for the local glossy mags, always on the prowl for the true crime piece she can up-sell into an instant book. You know, ripped from the headlines. That operetta back there was all about getting me to cough up some inside stuff on Matthew Starr.”
“She seemed…focused.”
Rook smiled. “By the way, that’s F-l-a-x, just in case you want to run a check.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Rook didn’t answer. He just gave her a smile that made her blush. She turned away and pretended to watch cross traffic out her side window, worried about what he saw on her face.
Up on the top floor of the Marlowe Building there was no heat wave. In the enveloping coolness of his corner office, Omar Lamb listened to the recording of his threatening phone call to Matthew Starr. He was placid, his palms rested flat and relaxed on his leather blotter as the tiny speaker on the digital recorder vibrated with an enraged version of him spouting expletives and graphic descriptions of what he would do to Starr, including where on his body he would insert an assortment of weapons, tools, and firearms. When it was over, he turned it off and said nothing. Nikki Heat studied the real estate developer, his gym-rat body, sunken cheeks, and you’re-dead-to-me eyes. A surplus of refrigerated air whispered from unseen vents to fill the silence. She was chilly for the first time in four days. It was a lot like the morgue.
“He actually recorded me saying that?”
“Mr. Starr’s attorney provided it when he put the complaint on the record.”
“Come on, Detective, people say they’re going to kill people all the time.”
“And sometimes they do it.”
Rook observed from a perch on the windowsill, where he divided his attention between Omar Lamb and the lone blader braving the heat in the Trump Skating Rink in Central Park thirty-five stories below. So far, Heat thought, thank God he seemed content to follow her instructions not to butt in.
“Matthew Starr was a titan of this industry who will be missed. I respected him and deeply regret that phone call I made. His death was a loss to us all.”
Heat had known on sight that this guy was going to take some work. He didn’t even look at her shield when she walked in, didn’t ask for his lawyer. Said he had nothing to hide, and if he did, she sensed he was too smart to say anything stupid. This was not a man to fall for the ol’ Zoo Lockup routine. So she danced with him, looking for her opening. “Why all the bile?” she asked. “What got you so lathered up about a business rival?”
“My rival? Matthew Starr didn’t have the skill set to qualify as my rival. Matthew Starr needed a stepladder just to kiss my ass.”
There it was. She’d found an open sore on Omar Lamb’s tough hide. His ego. Heat picked at it. She laughed at him. “Bull.”
“Bull? Did you just say ‘bull’ to me?” Lamb jerked to his feet and hero-strode from behind the fortress of his desk to face her. This was definitely not going to be a perfume ad.
She didn’t flinch. “Starr had title to more property than anyone in the city. A lot more than you, right?”
“Garbage addresses, environmental restrictions, limited air rights…What does more mean when it’s more crap?”
“Sounds like rival talk to me. Must have felt bad to unzip and flop ’em on the table and come up short.”
“Hey, you want to measure something?” This was good. She loved it when she rattled the tough boys into talking. “Measure all the properties Matthew Starr stole from under my nose.” With a manicured finger, he poked her shoulder to punctuate each item on his list: “He fudged permits, he bribed inspectors, he underbid, he oversold, he underdelivered.”
“Gee,” said Heat, “it’s almost enough to make you want to kill him.”
Now the developer laughed. “Nice try. Listen. Yeah, I made threats to the guy in the past. Operative word: past. Years ago. Look at his numbers now. Even without the recession Starr was a spent force. I didn’t need to kill him. He was a dead man walking.”
“So says his rival.”
“Don’t believe me? Go to any of his job sites.”
“And see what?”
“Hey, you expect me to do all your work?”
At the door, as they were leaving, Lamb said, “One thing. I read in the Post he fell six stories.”
“That’s right, six,” said Rook. The first thing he said and it was a shot at her.
“Did he suffer?”
“No,” said Heat, “he died instantly.”
Lamb grinned, showing a row of laminates. “Well, maybe in hell, then.”
Their gold Crown Victoria rolled south on the West Side Highway, the AC blasting and humidity condensing into wisps of fog around the dashboard vents. “So what’s your take?” asked Rook. “Think Omar offed him?”
“Could have. I’ve got him on my list, but that’s not what that was about.”
“Glad to hear it, Detective. No rush, there’s only, what, three million more people to meet and greet in New York. Not that you aren’t a charming interviewer.”
“God, you’re impatient. Did you tell Bono you were tired of relief stations in Ethiopia? Did you push the Chechen warlords to pick up the pace? ‘Come on, Ivan, let’s see a little warlord action?’ ”
“I just like to cut through, is all.”
She was glad for this sea change. It got her off his personal radar, so she ran with it. “You want to actually learn something on this ride-along project of yours? Try listening. This is police work. Killers don’t walk around with bloody knives on them, and the home invasion crews don’t dress like the Hamburglar. You talk to people. You listen. You see if they’re hiding something. Or sometimes, if you pay attention, you get insight; information you didn’t have before.”
“Like what?”
“Like this.”
As they pulled up, the Starr construction site on Eleventh Avenue on the lower west side was dead. Almost noon, and no sign of work. No sign of workers. It was a ghost site. She parked off the street, on the dirt strip between the curb and the plywood construction fence. When they got out, Nikki said, “You hear what I hear?”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly.”
“Yo, miss, this is a closed site, you gotta go.” A guy in a hard hat and no shirt kicked up dust on his way to meet them as they squeezed in the chain-link gate. With that swagger and that gut, Heat could picture whooping New Jersey housewives sticking dollar bills in his Speedo. “You, too, buddy,” he said to Rook. “Adios.” Heat flashed tin and Shirtless mouthed the F-bomb.
“Bueno,” said Rook.
Nikki Heat squared herself to the guy. “I want to talk to your foreman.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
She cupped a hand to her ear. “Did you hear me ask? No, I definitely don’t think it was a question.”
“Oh, my God. Jamie?” The voice came from across the yard. A skinny man in sunglasses and blue satin warm-ups stood in the open door of the site trailer.
“Heyyy,” called Rook. “Fat Tommy!”
The man waved them over. “Come on, hurry up, I’m not air-conditioning the Tri-State Area, you know.”
Inside the double-wide, Heat sat with Rook and his pal, but she didn’t take the chair she was offered. Although there were no current warrants on him, Tomasso “Fat Tommy” Nicolosi ran enforcement for one of the New York families, and caution dictated she not get wedged in between the table and the Masonite wall. She took the outside seat and angled it so her back wasn’t to the door. Through his smile, the look she got from Fat Tommy said he knew exactly what she was doing.