“What happened to you, Fat Tommy? You’re not fat.”
“The wife’s got me doing NutroMinder. God, has it been that long since I saw you?” He took off his tinted glasses and turned his pouchy eyes to Heat. “Jamie was doing this article a couple of years ago on ‘the life’ on Staten Island. We got to know each other, he seemed OK for a reporter, and what do you know, he ends up doing me a little favor.” Heat smiled thinly and he laughed. “Don’t worry, Detective, it was legal.”
“I just killed a couple guys is all.”
“Kidder. Have you noticed he’s a kidder?”
“Oh, Jamie? He has me going all the time,” she said.
“OK,” said Fat Tommy, “I can see this ain’t no social call, so go ahead. The two of us can catch up later.”
“This is Matthew Starr’s project, right?”
“It was until yesterday afternoon.” The wiseguy had one of those faces that was perennially balanced between menace and amusement. Heat could have read his answer as a joke or a fact.
“Mind if I ask what your role is here?”
He sat back, relaxed, a man in his element. “Labor consultation.”
“I notice there’s no labor taking place.”
“Damn straight. We shut it down a week ago. Starr stiffed us. You know, nonpayment on our, ah, agreement.”
“What sort of agreement was that, Mr. Nicolosi?” She knew full well what it was. They called it lots of things. Mostly the unofficial construction tax. The going rate was two percent. And it didn’t go to the government.
He turned to Rook. “I like your girlfriend.”
“Say that again and I’ll break your knees,” she said. He looked at her and decided she could, then smiled. “Not, huh?” Rook affirmed that with a mild shake of his head.
“Huh,” said Fat Tommy, “fooled me. Anyways, I owe Jamie a solid, so I’ll answer your question. What sort of agreement? Let’s call it the expediting fee. Yeah, that works.”
“Why did Starr stop paying, Tommy?” Rook was asking questions, but she found herself glad for his participation, tag-teaming from angles she couldn’t take. Call it good cop/no cop.
“Hey, man, the guy was strapped. He said he was and we checked. Underwater so deep he was sprouting gills.” Fat Tommy laughed at his joke and added, “We don’t care.”
“Do guys ever get killed for that?” asked Rook.
“For that? Come on. We just shut it down and let nature take its course.” He shrugged. “OK, sometimes guys get dead for that, but not this time. At least not at this early stage.” He crossed his arms and grinned. “For real. Not his girlfriend, huh?”
Over carnitas burritos at Chipotle, Heat asked Rook if he still felt like they were wheel-spinning. Before he answered, Rook slurped the ice cubes with his straw, vacuuming for more Diet Coke. “Well,” he said, finally, “I don’t think we’ve met Matthew Starr’s killer today, if that’s what you mean.” Fat Tommy drifted in and out of her mind as a possible, but she kept it to herself. He read her though, adding, “And if Fat Tommy tells me he didn’t do Matthew Starr, that’s all I need.”
“You, sir, are an investigative force unto yourself.”
“I know the guy.”
“Remember what I said before? Ask questions and see where the answers lead? For me they’ve led to a picture of Matthew Starr that doesn’t fit the image. What did he put out there?” She drew a frame in the air with both hands. “Successful, respectable, and most of all, well funded. OK, now ask yourself this. All that money and he couldn’t pay his mob tax? The spiff that kept concrete pouring and iron rising?” She balled up her wrapper and stood. “Let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“To talk to Starr’s money guy. Look at it this way, it’s another chance for you to see me at my charming best.”
Heat’s ears popped on the express elevator to the penthouse floor of Starr Pointe, Matthew Starr’s headquarters on West 57th near Carnegie Hall. When they stepped into the opulent lobby, she whispered to Rook, “Do you notice this office is one floor higher than Omar Lamb’s?”
“I think it’s safe to say that, even up to the end, Matthew Starr was acutely aware of heights.”
They announced themselves to the receptionist. As they waited, Nikki Heat perused a gallery of framed photos of Matthew Starr with presidents, royals, and celebrities. On the far wall, a flat screen soundlessly looped Starr Development’s corporate marketing video. In a glass trophy case, beneath heroic scale models of Starr office buildings and gleaming replicas of the corporate G-4 and Sikorsky-76, stretched a long row of Waterford crystal jars filled with dirt. Above each, a photograph of Matthew Starr breaking ground from the site that had filled the jar.
The carved mahogany door opened, and a man in shirtsleeves and a tie stepped out and extended his hand. “Detective Heat? Noah Paxton, I am…Rather, I was Matthew’s financial advisor.” As they shook hands, he gave her a sad smile. “We’re all still in shock.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said. “This is Jameson Rook.”
“The writer?”
“Yes,” he said.
“OK…,” said Paxton, accepting Rook’s presence as if recognizing there was a walrus on the front lawn but not understanding why. “Shall we go to my office?” He opened the mahogany door for them and they entered Matthew Starr’s world headquarters.
Heat and Rook both stopped. The entire floor was empty. Glass cubicles to the left and right were vacant of people and desks. Phone and Ethernet cables lay disconnected on floors. Plants sat dead and dying. The near wall showed the ghost of a bulletin board. The detective tried to reconcile the posh lobby she had just left with this vacant space on the other side of the threshold. “Excuse me,” she said to Paxton, “Matthew Starr just died yesterday. Have you already begun to close the business?”
“Oh this? No, not at all. We cleared this out a year ago.”
As the door closed behind them, the floor was so deserted the snap of the metal tongue latch actually echoed.
THREE
Heat and Rook trailed two steps behind Noah Paxton as he led them through the vacant offices and cubicles of Starr Real Estate Development’s headquarters. In stark contrast to the go-go opulence of its lobby, the penthouse floor of the thirty-six-story Starr Pointe tower had the hollow sound and feel of a foreclosed grand hotel after the creditors had swarmed it for everything that wasn’t nailed down. The space had an eerie, post-biodisaster feel. Not merely empty, abandoned.
Paxton gestured to an open door and they entered his office, the only functioning one Heat had seen. He was listed as the corporation’s financial officer, but his furniture was a combo plate of Staples, Office Depot, and hand-me-down Levenger. Neat and functional but not the trappings of a Manhattan corporate head, even for a midsize firm. And certainly not befitting the Starr brand of swank and swagger.
Nikki Heat heard a small chuckle from Rook and followed the reporter’s line of sight to the poster of the kitty dangling from the branch. Under its rear paws was the caption “Hang in there, baby.” Paxton didn’t offer coffee from his four-hour-old pot; they just took seats in mismatched guest chairs. He established himself in the inner curve of his horseshoe workstation.
“We came to ask for your help understanding the financial state of Matthew Starr’s business,” said the detective, making it sound light and neutral. Noah Paxton was edgy. She was used to that; people got spooked by the badge same as they were by doctors’ white coats. But this guy couldn’t hold eye contact, a basic red flag. He looked distracted, like he was worried he’d left his iron plugged in at home and wanted to get there, and right now. Play it out mellow, she decided. See what tumbles when he lets himself relax.