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.
He looked again at her business card and said, “Of course, Detective Heat,” once more trying to hold her look but only half making it. He made a deal of studying the card again. “There’s one thing, though,” he added.
“Go ahead,” she said, alert for the dodge or the call to the bull pen for a shyster.
“No offense, Mr. Rook.”
“Jamie, please.”
“If I have to answer police questions, that’s one thing. But if you’re going to quote me for some exposé in Vanity Fair or First Press—”
“Not to worry,” said Rook.
“—I owe it to Matthew’s memory and to his family not to air his business in the pages of some magazine.”
“I am only here on background for an article I’m doing on Detective Heat and her squad. Whatever you say about Matthew Starr’s business will be off the record. I did it for Mick Jagger, I can do it for you.”
Heat could not believe what she’d just heard. The bald ego of a celebrity journalist at work. Not only name-dropping but favor-dropping. And it sure didn’t help get Paxton in the mood.
“This is a horrible time to do this,” he said, trying her now that Rook had met his terms. He turned away to study whatever was on his flat-screen and then brought it back to her. “He hasn’t even been dead twenty-four hours. I’m in the middle of…Well, you can imagine. How about tomorrow?”
“I only have a few questions.”
“Yes, but the files are, well, I’m saying I don’t keep everything,” he snapped his fingers, “right at hand. Tell you what. Why don’t you tell me what you need, and I can have it ready when you come back?”
All right. She had tried smooth ’n’ soothe. He was still dodgy, and now he had it in his head that he could stiff-arm her out of there in lieu of an appointment at his convenience. Time, she decided, to switch tactics.
“Noah. May I call you Noah? Because I want to keep this friendly while I tell you how this is going to go. OK? This is a homicide investigation. I am not only going to ask you some questions right here and right now, I expect you to answer them. And I’m not worried about whether you have your figures,” she snapped her fingers, “right at hand. Know why? I’m going to have our forensic accountants go through your books. So you can decide right now how friendly this can be. Do we understand each other, Noah?”
After the smallest pause, the man put it right out there for her in a headline. “Matthew Starr was broke.” A calm, measured statement of fact. What else was it Nikki Heat heard behind it? Candor, for sure. He was looking her directly in the eye when he said it; there was no aversion now, only clarity. But there was something else, like he was reaching out to her, showing some other feeling, and when she struggled to grasp the word for it, Noah Paxton said it as if he were in her mind with her. “I feel so relieved.” There it was, relief. “Finally, I can talk about this.”
For the next hour Noah did more than just talk. He unfolded the story of how a personality-branded wealth machine had been flown to great heights piloted by the flamboyant Matthew Starr, amassing capital, acquiring key properties, and building iconic towers that indelibly shaped the world’s view of the New York skyline, and then had rapidly been imploded by Starr’s own hand. It was the tale of a boom-to-bust crash in a sharp downward spiral.
Paxton, who corporate records said was thirty-five, had joined the firm with his newly minted MBA near the peak of the company’s upswing. His sure handling of creative financing to green-light construction of the avant-garde StarrScraper in Times Square had cemented him as Matthew Starr’s most trusted employee. Perhaps because he was forthcoming now, Nikki looked at Noah Paxton and saw a trustworthiness about him. He was solid, capable, a man who would get you through the battle.
She didn’t have much experience with men like him. She had seen them, of course, on the Metro-North train to Darien at the end of the day, with ties loosened, sipping a can of beer from the bar car with a colleague or neighbor. Or with wives in Anne Klein at prix fixe dinners before curtain on Broadway. That might have been Nikki in the candlelight with the Absolut cosmo, filling him in on the teacher conference and planning the week at the Vineyard, if things had gone differently for her. She wondered what it must be like to have that lawn and the reliable life with a Noah.
“That trust Matthew had in me,” he continued, “was a two-edger. I got to know all the secrets. But I also got to know all the secrets.”
The ugliest secret, according to Noah Paxton, was that his Midas-touch boss was driving his company into the ground and couldn’t be stopped.
“Show me,” said the detective.
“You mean, like, now?”
“Now or in a more…,” she knew this dance and let her pause do its work, “formal setting. You choose.”
He opened a series of spreadsheets on his Mac and invited them inside the U of his workstation to view them on the big flat-screen. The figures were startling. Then came a progression of graphs chronicling the journey of a vital real estate developer who was practically laser-printing money until he plummeted off a red-ink cliff, well ahead of the mortgage meltdown and ensuing foreclosure debacle.
“So this isn’t about hard times in a bad economy?” asked Heat, pointing over his shoulder at what looked to her like an escalator to the basement painted red.
“No. And thank you for not touching my monitor. I never understood why people have to touch computer screens when they point.”
“I know. The same people who need to mime telephones with their fingers when they say call me.” When they laughed, she got a whiff of something citrus-y and clean off him. L’Occitane, she guessed.
“How did he manage to stay in business?” asked Rook when they retook their seats.
“That was my job and it wasn’t easy.” And then, with a disclosure look to Nikki, “And I promise you it was all legal.”