Much as she had the day before, when she’d crossed from his opulent lobby into his ghost-town offices, Heat watched another chunk of Matthew Starr’s public image crack and drop off. “How did he end up with Matthew?”
“Research. He did focus groups to see what name people trusted that went with his looks. So what if I changed mine, too? BFD, ya know?”
Detective Heat decided she had gotten as much as she was going to get out of this line of questions and was happy at least to have a fresh alibi to check. She took out her photo array. As she began to lay down the pictures and tell her to take her time, Kimberly interrupted her on the third shot.
“This man here. I know him. That’s Miric.”
Nikki felt the tingle she got when a domino was tipping, ready to fall. “And how do you know him?”
“He was Matt’s bookie.”
“Is Miric a first or last name?”
“You’re all about names today, aren’t you?”
“Kimberly, he might have killed your husband.”
“I don’t know which name. He was just Miric. Polish dude, I think. Not sure.”
Nikki had her examine the rest of the array, without any other hits. “And you’re positive your husband placed bets with this man.”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be sure of that?”
“When Noah Paxton looked at these pictures, he didn’t recognize him. If he’s paying the bills, wouldn’t he know him?”
“Noah? He refused to deal with the bookmaking. He had to give Matthew the cash but looked the other way.” Kimberly said she didn’t know Miric’s address or phone number. “No, I only saw him when he came to the door or showed up at a restaurant.”
The detective would double-check Starr’s desk and personal diary or his BlackBerry for some coded entry or recent call list. But a name and face and occupation was a good start.
As she squared her stack of photos to put away, she told Kimberly she had thought she didn’t know about her husband’s gambling.
“Come on, a wife knows. Just like I knew about his women. Do you want to know how much Flagyl I took in the last six years?”
No, Nikki did not care to know. But she did ask her for any names she recalled of her husband’s past lovers. Kimberly said most of them seemed casual, a few one-nighters and weekends at casinos, and she didn’t know their names. Only one got serious, and that was with a young marketing executive on his staff, an affair that lasted six months and ended about three years ago, after which the executive left the company. Kimberly gave Nikki the woman’s name and got her address off a love letter she had intercepted. “You can keep that if you want. I only held onto it in case we got divorced and I needed to squeeze his balls.” With that, Nikki left her to grieve.
They found Roach waiting for them in the lobby. Both had their coats off, and Raley’s shirt was soaked through again. “You’ve got to start wearing undershirts, Raley,” said Heat as she walked up.
“And how about switching to an Oxford?” added Ochoa. “Those polyester things you’re wearing go see-through when you sweat.”
“Turning you on, Ochoa?” asked Raley.
His partner jabbed back. “Much like your shirt, you see right through me.”
Roach reported the same hit off the photo array when they showed it to the doorman. “We had to sort of pry it out of him,” said Ochoa. “Doorman was a little embarrassed Miric slipped into the building. These guys always call up to the apartment before letting anybody in. He said he was taking a leak in the alley and must have missed him. But he did catch him coming out.” Quoting from notes, the doorman described Miric as a “scrawny little ferret” who came by to see Mr. Starr from time to time but whose visits had become more frequent over the past two weeks.
“Plus we scored a bonus,” said Raley. “This gentleman was coming out with ferret dude that day.” He peeled off another shot from the array and held it up. “Looks like Miric brought some muscle.”
Of course, Nikki’s instincts had already been crackling about this other guy, the brooder, when she screened the lobby video that morning. He was in a loose shirt, but she could tell he was a bodybuilder or at least spent a lot of his day at the weight rack. Under any other circumstances, she wouldn’t have thought twice and would have assumed he was delivering air conditioners, probably one under each arm, from the looks of him. But the serene lobby of the Guilford wasn’t the service entrance, and a grown man had been tossed off his balcony there that day. “Did the doorman give a name for this guy?”
Ochoa looked at his notes again. “Only the nickname he gave him. Iron Man.”
While the precinct ran Miric and Iron Man Doe through the computer, digitals of the pair were blast-sent to detectives and patrols. It was impossible for Heat’s small unit to canvass every known bookie in Manhattan, even assuming Miric was a known, and wasn’t from one of the other boroughs, or even Jersey. Plus a man like Matthew Starr might even use an exclusive betting service or the Internet—both of which he probably did—but if he was the volatile mix of desperation and invincibility Noah Paxton painted him to be, chances were he’d hit the street, as well.
So they spilt up to concentrate on known bookmakers in two zones. The Roach Coach got the tour of the Upper West Side in a radius around the Guilford, while Heat and Rook covered Midtown near the Starr Pointe headquarters, roughly Central Park South to Times Square.
“This is exasperating,” said Rook after their fourth stop, a street vendor who suddenly decided he didn’t speak English when Heat showed him her shield. He was one of several runners for the major bookies whose mobile food carts were a convenient one-stop for bets and kabobs. They were treated to eye-stinging smoke that swirled off his grill and found them wherever they moved, while the vendor furrowed his brow at the photos and ultimately shrugged.
“Welcome to police work, Rook. This is what I call the Street Google. We are the search engine; it’s how it gets done.”
As they drove to the next address, a discount electronics store on 51st, a front specializing more in bets than boom boxes, Rook said, “Have to tell you, a week ago, if you told me I’d be hitting the sha-warma carts looking for Matthew Starr’s bookie, I never would have believed it.”
“You mean it doesn’t fit the image? This is where you and I come from different places. You write these magazine pieces, you’re all about selling the image. I’m all about looking behind it. I’m frequently disappointed but seldom wrong. Behind every picture hides the true story. You just have to be willing to look.”
“Yeah, but this guy was big. Maybe not elite-elite, but he was at least the bus and truck Donald Trump.”
“I always thought Donald Trump was the bus and truck Donald Trump,” she said.
“And who’s Kimberly Starr, the truckstop Tara Reid? If she’s the poor little rich girl, what’s she doing blowing ten grand on that face?”
“If I had to guess, she bought it with Barry Gable’s money.”
“Or she took it in trade with her new doctor boyfriend.”
“Trust me, I’ll find out. But a woman like Kimberly’s not going to start clipping supermarket coupons and eating ramen one night a week. She’s all about prepping her face for her next season of The Bachelor.”
“If they’re holding it on The Island of Doctor Moreau.” She didn’t like herself for it but she laughed. It only encouraged him. “Or if she’s doing a remake of Elephant Man.” Rook took guttural breaths and slurred, “I am not a suspect, I am a human being.”