His phone messages were routine, except the one from Sarah. She said she'd received three estimates from roofers and the lowest came in at ninety-eight hundred dollars. He found that information as irritating as the tone of her voice. He turned off the machine, stripped, looked at himself in the mirror. The marks were gone. He took a shower and lay down on his bed. Then he remembered-there would be no hot water in the morning. He went back to the bathroom and shaved. It was 4:15 A.M. At two the following afternoon he sat in Kit Kopta's office on the twenty-third floor of the Police Headquarters building at One Police Plaza. Kit, dwarfed by her huge desk, came around to embrace him. Then she gestured him to the conference area by the windows.
He presented her with his treasures-exposed roll of film, fingerprint card, audiotapes and Tania's affidavits. He stared out the window while she read the English version. People crossing Police Plaza looked like ants.
"Beautiful, Frank." Kit's dark Greek eyes sparkled. "How'd you do it?"
"It wasn't easy."
She studied him. "Something happened down there." Janek nodded.
"Want to tell me about it?"
"Not particularly."
"You had some trouble?"
"You could put it that way." She stared at him. He shrugged. "They put on a little show. I played the lead."
"That's kind of abstract."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Hey-I'm your friend. Remember?"
"It's embarrassing, Kit. Let it go now. Please."
She nodded reluctantly. Eventually, he knew, she'd get the story out of him. It still pained him to think about his three days in detention; he felt no desire to describe them to her. And perhaps there was another reason, too. Since he had gone to Cuba to please her, whatever he had suffered there, he had suffered, he believed, on her behalf.
"Actually," he said, "the way it ended up, I got to work with a terrific Cuban cop. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have brought back the goods."
Kit nodded slightly, sat back. "How do you like your new case?"
"Too soon to tell. You don't want me reporting to you?"
She shook her head. "To Deforest, as usual."
He looked at her. "Thing is, Kit, this little diversion isn't going to fool anyone. There're rumors all over the place about where I went and why. Even Sarah heard about it."
"Sarah… " Kit shrugged. "Doesn't matter, Frank. The case is legit.
And the rumors are deniable." She cleared her throat.
"Remember Netti Rampersad?" Janek smiled. "To meet her is never to forget her."
"She does come on strong, doesn't she? Well, it seems now she's taken over Mendoza's appeal. Which means "Kit stretched her arms over her head, then set her palms on the arms of her chair- "she'll want to see these affidavits right away. In fact, she called me twice to find out how you were doing. This morning she served me with an order to produce."
"Soon as she sees this stuff she'll move for a new trial. She'll claim that because Tania's statement contradicts Metaxas's note, the note should be thrown out."
Kit gazed out the window. "Yeah, that's probably what she'll do. It won't be easy for her to get a new trial. But she'll try. And maybe she'll succeed."
"Is that what you want, Kit? Are you using her as your cat's-paw in this?"
Kit shrugged again. "We're cops. Not lawyers or prosecutors. She's got her agenda. We've got ours."
"What is ours-if you don't mind my asking?"
"We want to know if someone around here did something corrupt." Kit pointed at the affidavits. "Give Rampersad the ball and let her run with it."
"Sure. And after?"
"You got a homicide case, Frank. Work it. It's what you do best."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
She stood to signal the meeting was over. He started toward the door, had just reached it when she called him back. "There is something else.
I want you to see Dakin. You know, courtesy call. Fill him in on what you found." He stared at her, outraged. "That's a pretty dirty task."
"it is," she agreed. "So-am I your cat's-paw, too?"
"We're working together on this, Frank. That's the way I see it. Any problems?" Janek nodded. "If I brief Dakin, I brief Timmy, too.
Otherwise, get someone else."
"Sure, brief Timmy. Play it down the middle. I should have thought of that myself." She turned back to the papers on her desk.
Janek worked out of two interconnected rooms on the fourth floor of the Police Property building off University Place. The outer room of the suite, which bore the words SPECIAL SQUAD on its door, contained four beaten-up desks, as many chairs and a large blackboard at one end. The smaller inner room was his office. He kept it austere, without the usual departmental certificates, clippings about his exploits and personal photographs on the walls. He liked the notion that he worked in a plain city-owned space. He wasn't interested in personalizing it or in turning it into a nest.
When he arrived, Aaron and Sue were at their desks talking into phones.
They waved as he passed through. In his office, he found the police artist's computer-generated sketch of the redhead and messages to call Lois Rappaport and Meg Chang at Channel 6. He dialed Rappaport, then examined the portrait. It showed a very attractive young woman with high cheekbones and a superbly modeled chin. She looks good, he thought.
"That you, Frank?" Lois's voice grated against his ear. He wondered if she had a husband, and, if so, how he felt about her when she smiled.
"Yeah, it's me. What's up?"
"I finished the workup on Dietz," she said. "Turns out I was right."
"About what?" "Oh, thought I told you last night. Dietz was asleep when he was killed."
Asleep! "How do you know that?"
"From the drug screen. High level of triazolam in his blood. It's a classic, Frank. KO girls, dope-'em-and-roblem girls-call ' what you like. They pick guys up, go up to their rooms, spike their drinks, take their cash. They used to use chloral hydrate, the old Mickey Finn. Now they carry triazolani. What they do is they grind up some pills, dilute the powder with vodka, then pour the mix into a vodka-based drink. No taste, no smell, puts you out in five minutes.
When you wake up you can be disoriented, depending on the dosage." She paused. "Only difference here is the girl doesn't usually shoot the boy in the head."
After Janek hung up, he studied the portrait some more. Yes, he decided, there was something very attractive about the girl, something vulnerable in her eyes. He shook his head. Why would you kill him?
What were you after? How, could you shoot a person who's asleep?
Aaron came in. Janek told him what he'd learned. Aaron picked up the portrait.
"It's looking more and more like she's the one, isn't it?"
They discussed whether to hand out the police sketch or restrict its distribution. There were arguments to be made on both sides.
"Channel Six wants an interview. That would be a chance to show the sketches. But we need a lot more before we can name the redhead as a suspect. Meantime, she sees herself on TV, she could get spooked and run."
Aaron agreed that for the time being they should keep the sketch to themselves. Then he said he was starting to wonder about Dietz. "I've been talking to his brother. I think there's something wrong there.
Like maybe the executive-recruiter story wasn't quite the truth and there was another reason Dietz came to New York."
"You following up?"
"Sue's on it now. She's talking to his company. Ray's out showing the sketch around the hotel and the neighborhood." Aaron lowered his voice.