Naked Heat (5 page)

Nikki felt a skip in her chest. She was going to write it down, but she thought she could remember the name of an ex-congressman.

“We good?” asked Fat Tommy as he rose.

“We’re good,” said Rook, who also stood.

“Almost good,” said the detective, who remained seated. “I want something more from you.”

“She’s got balls, this one.”

Rook’s turn to head bobble.

Nikki rose. “This morning a crew, three shooters and a driver, jacked the coroner’s van and stole the body of Cassidy Towne.”

Fat Tommy slapped his thigh. “Holy crap, somebody ripped off the meat wagon? What a town.”

“I want them. Two of my friends were on that van and the driver is in the hospital. Not to mention a body was stolen.”

Fat Tommy opened up his poor-me hands. “I already made it clear, I don’t do that kind of work.”

“I know. But like you said, you know guys who know guys.” She stepped close to him and put a finger point on his chest for each word. “Know some guys.” Then she smiled. “I’d appreciate it. And it’ll make it nicer when we see each other next time, Tommy. Hey, and congrats on the weight loss.”

He turned to Rook. “You gotta love the balls.”

Out in the lobby they shook hands again. Rook said, “By the way, Tommy, I didn’t know you owned this place.”

“I don’t,” he said. “I’m just here getting mine washed.”

Heat called the precinct for an address on Chester Ludlow as soon as they got back in the Crown Victoria. When she hung up, she said, “What’s Chester Ludlow’s beef with Cassidy Towne?”

“She was the reason he’s not a congressman anymore.”

“I thought that was his doing, given the scandal.”

“Right, but guess who broke the story that started it all caving in on him?” She pulled out of the car wash parking lot, and Rook said, “I want to know how you like my sources now.”

“Fat Tommy? I want to know why you didn’t notify the police.”

“Hello, I think I did.”

“After she died.”

“You heard Tommy. It wasn’t going to happen, anyway.”

“Except it did.”

Chester Ludlow wasn’t at his Park Avenue town house, or at his penthouse office above Carnegie Hall. He was where he spent most of his time these days, enjoying the snooty insulation of the Milmar Club on Fifth Avenue, across from the Central Park Zoo.

When Heat and Rook stepped onto the marble floor of the reception area, they trod the same ground that New York’s mega-wealthy and social elite had for over a century. Within those walls Mark Twain had toasted U. S. Grant at his New York welcoming gala, when the general settled on East 66th Street after his presidency. Morgans, Astors, and Rockefellers had all danced at masked balls at the Milmar. They say Theodore Roosevelt famously broke the color code there by inviting Booker T. Washington to cocktails.

What it lacked in relevance, it made up for in grandeur and tradition. It was a hushed, opulent place where a member could be assured of privacy and a strong highball. The Milmar stood now as an idealized fortress of postwar New York, the city of John Cheever, where men wore hats and strode out into the river of light. And, as Jameson Rook discovered, they also wore ties, one of which he chose from the coat check before he and Nikki Heat were allowed into the saloon.

The host delivered them to the corner farthest from the bar, where the large format portrait of Grace Ludlow, matriarch of the political clan, stood in grand judgment of all she surveyed. Under that portrait, the once-great hope, now the errant son, Chester, read the
Financial Times
by window light.

After they greeted each other, Rook sat beside Ludlow in a wing chair. Nikki settled opposite him on a Louis XV canapé sofa and thought this sure wasn’t the office at the car wash.

Chester Ludlow neatly folded the pale salmon pages of his newspaper and picked up Heat’s business card from the silver plate tray on the coffee table. “Detective Nikki Heat. That has a ring of excitement.”

What do you say to that? Thank you? So, instead, she said, “And this is my associate, Jameson Rook.”

“Oh, the writer. That explains the tie.”

Rook ran the flat of his palm down the borrowed neckwear. “Wouldn’t you know? The one day you don’t dress for the club.”

“Funny thing about this place, you can get in without pants but not without a tie.”

Considering the disgraced politician’s undoing by sex scandals, Nikki was surprised by his comment and the size of his laugh. She looked to see if any of the members were annoyed, but the few sprinkled about the spacious, vaulted room didn’t seem to even notice.

“Mr. Ludlow,” she began, “I have some questions I’d like to ask you concerning an investigation we’re conducting. Would you like to go someplace more private?”

“Doesn’t get any more private than the Milmar. Besides, after the fairly public year that I’ve just had, I don’t believe I have any more secrets.”

We shall see, thought the detective. “This brings me to what I’d like to talk to you about. I suppose you’ve heard that Cassidy Towne has been murdered.”

“Yes. Please tell me it was painful and unpleasant.”

Rook cleared his throat. “You do realize you’re talking to a cop.”

“Yes,” he said, and then flipped Nikki’s card to read again. “And a homicide detective.” He placed the card neatly on the sterling tray. “Do I look worried?”

“Do you have a reason to be?” she asked.

The politician waited, more for the effect of working an audience, and then said, “No.” He reclined in his chair and smiled. He was going to let her do the work.

“You had a history with Cassidy Towne.”

“I think it’s more accurate to say that she had one with me. I’m not the one with the daily muckraking column. I’m not the one who aired my sex life in public. I’m not the parasite leeching off the misfortune and misadventures of others without so much as a care for the damage I might be doing.”

Rook jumped in. “Oh, please. Do you know how many times people get caught at something and then blame the media for reporting it?” Nikki tried to catch his eye to back off, but this pushed a button on his panel and he couldn’t stay out of it. “A journalist might say she just did the raking. You were the one doing the . . . mucking.”

“And what about the days when there was nothing to report, Mr. Rook? The days upon days when there was no news, nothing new to the scandal, but that bottom-feeder printed speculation and innuendo, unearthed from ‘unnamed sources’ and ‘insiders who overheard.’ And when that wasn’t enough, why not rehash events to keep my pain in the public spotlight?” Now Nikki was glad for Rook’s intervening. Ludlow was coming off his cool. Maybe he would get sloppy. “Yes, so I had some sexual adventures.”

“You got caught visiting S and M parlors in Dungeon Alley.”

Ludlow was dismissive. “Look around. Is this 2010, or 1910?”

Heat did look around. In that room, it could have been either. “If I may,” she said, deciding to keep the pressure on, “you were a congressman who got elected on a family values platform and were exposed for doing everything from pony play to torture games. Your nickname on Capitol Hill was the Minority Whipped. I’m sure it didn’t sit so well that it was Cassidy Towne who blew the whistle on you.”

“Unrelentingly,” he hissed. “And with her, it wasn’t even politically motivated. How could it be? Look at the joker they put in there to succeed me when I resigned. I had a legislative agenda. He has lunches and listening tours. No, with that bitch it was all for the ink. All for selling papers and advancing her sleazy career.”

“Makes you glad she’s dead, doesn’t it?” said Nikki.

“Detective, I haven’t had a drink in sixty-four days, but I may open a bottle of champagne tonight.” He reached for the glass of ice water on the coffee table and took a long drink, emptying it to the cubes. He replaced it, getting his feet under him again. “But as I’m sure you know from your experience, the fact that I have a strong motivation in no way implicates me in her murder.”

“Clearly, you hated her.” Rook was trying to restart him, but Chester Ludlow was back in full command.

“Past tense. It’s all behind me now. I did the sex rehab. I did the alcohol rehab. I did the anger management. And so you know? I not only won’t have that champagne tonight, I didn’t need to satisfy my anger at that woman by acting upon it.”

“You didn’t need to.” Heat went for it. “Not when you can farm out your violence to other people. Like, say, taking out a mob hit on Cassidy Towne?”

Ludlow was smooth. He reacted but not much. It was as if someone had told him his linen blazer was out of season. “I did no such thing.”

Rook said, “We have other information.”

“Oh, I see. I never figured you to be the unnamed sources type, Mr. Rook.”

“I protect them. That’s how I’m sure to get credible information.”

Ludlow stared at Rook. “It’s Fat Tommy, isn’t it?”

Rook only gave him a blank stare, not about to give up a source, and especially not about to throw in Fat Tommy.

Nikki Heat reloaded. “So I take it you are admitting you contacted Tomasso Nicolosi in your solicitation for a hit?”

“All right,” Ludlow said. “OK, I did make an inquiry. It was a relapse in my therapy. I started to fantasize and toyed with what it would take, that’s all. I may not write laws anymore, but I do know there isn’t one against asking a question.”

“And you want me to believe that just because Fat Tommy didn’t set you up, you didn’t take your business to someone else?”

Chester Ludlow smiled. “I decided there was a better way to get revenge. I hired a private investigator from a top security firm to do a little dirt digging on Cassidy Towne. Turnabout, you see?” Or hypocrisy, she wanted to say, but she thought better than to break his flow. “Look into a certain Holly Flanders.” He spelled the last name for her, but Nikki didn’t write it down, didn’t want to take dictation from this man.

“And why should I look into her?”

“I’m not going to do your work for you. But you will find her intriguing in light of this case. And, Detective? Be careful. She bought a handgun ten days ago. Unlicensed, of course.”

After the trust-fund politician alibied himself at home with his wife all night, Heat and Rook left him. As they crossed to the lobby, a wisp of an old woman perched on a love seat looked up from her daiquiri. “Congratulations on your lovely magazine profile, young lady.” Even with her smile, Grace Ludlow looked more fearsome than she did in her painting.

While Rook undid his borrowed tie at the coat check, he said, “Ludlow’s family has so many resources and is so well connected, he could have easily made all of this happen.” The tie tangled on him and Nikki stepped in to help with the knot.

“But here’s what I don’t get,” she said. “Say it were him. Why steal the body?” With both wrists brushing his chest, Nikki was close enough to breathe in the scent of his cologne, subtle and clean. She looked up from the knot and met his eyes, held them briefly and then stepped away. “Looks like you’re going to need scissors.”

Heat called in from the front steps of the Milmar to see if anything had turned up about her missing victim. Nothing. While she was on, Nikki ordered a check on a Holly Flanders. She also retrieved a voice mail from Roach and started walking to the car. “Let’s take a ride. The boys have turned something for us.”

On the drive across the park, Rook asked her, “OK, this is bugging me. How is it you know about pony play?”

“Does that excite you, Rook?”

“In a happy-scared way, yes. And no. Leaning to yes.” He frowned. “You know?”

“Oh, trust me, I know. I know all about happy and scared.” She smiled a wicked smile but kept her eyes on the taxi in front of her. “Just like I know my lollycrops from my posture collars.” She didn’t have to look to know he was staring at her to see if she meant it.

Traffic Control had to move sawhorses to let them onto West 78th. The number of news vans had doubled, with every station staking out turf for the live shots that would be coming starting on the 4
P.M.
casts, still hours away. It gave Nikki’s stomach a twist that the lead wouldn’t be the murder but the theft of the body. They met up with Raley and Ochoa in the subbasement of Cassidy Towne’s brownstone, in the office-workshop of her building superintendant.

They introduced him to Nikki, and as Rook appeared in the door, he smiled. “Hey, Mr. Rook.”

“JJ, hi. Sorry about what happened.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be a big cleanup,” said the super.

“And, also. You know.”

“Ms. Towne, right. Horrible.”

Nikki addressed her detectives. “You have something for me?”

“First of all,” said Raley, “no private trash pickup.”

“That’s like the worst joke,” chimed in JJ. “Owner of this building isn’t going to spring for that. Can’t even get budget for paint. Or to get a new rolling bucket, look at the wheel off that thing. Pitiful.”

“So you’re still on the trash,” she said, trying to keep things on course. “You said first. What’s the second?”

Ochoa picked it up. “JJ says that he recently had to change the locks on Cassidy Towne’s apartment.”

That got her interest. She cast a glance at Rook.

“That’s right. It was a couple of days ago,” said Rook.

The super corrected him. “No, that was the second time. Had to do it twice.”

“You changed them twice?” said Heat. “Why was that, JJ?”

“I have locksmith training, so I was able to do it myself on the side for her. You know, off the books. Works out good for the both, you understand? Saves her a little coin, puts a little jingle in my pocket. It’s all good.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Nikki. JJ seemed like a nice guy but a talker. To interview talkers, she had learned, you needed to keep things concrete, move in steps. “Tell me about the first time you changed the locks. When was that?”

“Just two weeks ago. Day before my man here started.” JJ indicated Rook.

“Why? Did she lose her key or something?”

“People are always losing things, aren’t they? Heard on talk radio yesterday about cell phones. You know where most people lose their cell phones?”

“Bathrooms?” asked Rook.