Nikki Heat: Deadly Heat Part 4

"Ah, memories," said Rook. "Don't you wish you'd come?"

"So you know, Rook, I don't consider it a Michelin Tour just because my nose is pushed against one of their radials in the trunk of a car."

They hopped off the line with the promise to catch up later that night so Heat could grab a call from OCME. Lauren Parry's prelim on Maxine Berkowitz bore out the COD as asphyxia by strangulation. "The killer took her from behind with a cord. And Forensics is committing to that coaxial cable found in the park. The makeup residue on the insulation is an exact match to the victim's."

"Save me a call to geekland, Lauren. Any prints on the cable?"

"None," said the ME. "And no sign of struggle. He chloroformed her and strangled her when she was out."

Nikki jotted that down then riffled pages in her spiral until she came to notes on her other case. "OK to switch gears?"

"Detective Heat, you have got more corpses to ask about than anyone I know."

"You should give me a rewards card."

"Cold, girl."

"As ice. What about my poison vic from the Starbucks?"

"Same as what Salena Kaye used to kill Petar. A fast-acting c.o.c.ktail of strychnine and cyanide, plus a few additives, including a lab-modified derivative of bis.m.u.th subsalicylate, which is what turned the tongue black. It's not a poison, it's mainly for show."

"You'll forgive me if I don't applaud."

"Nikki," said Dr. Parry, "this is potent stuff. She knows her chemistry. You watch yourself."

Heat awoke with a start on her couch at six-fifteen the next morning to the Norwegian duo Royksopp singing "Remind Me"-the ringtone Rook had installed to ID him on her cell. It took Nikki so long to orient herself and find the phone, she was afraid he'd dump to voice mail, but she caught it in time. "You were going to call me last night," she said.

"And bonjour to you, too. Things got very busy over here. You won't be sorry." Rook's voice sounded clear, next-room clear. And there was something in it. Exhilaration, maybe.

She moved aside the sheet music she had fallen asleep studying, another futile attempt to break her mother's code. "Tell me." Wired to be a note taker, Heat reached for the pen and spiral pad she kept on her coffee table, clearing the night from her throat.

"I made contact with Anatoly Kije."

"Did his goons slip a bag over your head and drop you at Deux Magots?"

"Even better. He met me alone on the banks of the Seine. Just me and an old KGB warhorse. Isn't that cool? Like walking into a le Carre novel."

Nikki drew the picture in her mind and smiled. "I'm warming up to this."

"Just wait. First off, Anatoly ID'd the doctor in Joe Flynn's old photos. Francois Sisson. Turns out Sisson was a real doctor over here until he became one of the operatives in Tyler Wynn's old CIA network. Ready for this? Francois Sisson turned up on a slab in a Paris morgue the day after helping Wynn play his death scene for us."

"Poison?"

"Let's call it lead poisoning. One slug behind his ear."

"I'm still waiting for the good news," she said. "Sounds to me like you got your George Smiley jollies then hit a dead end."

"In Paris, yes. But things are a bit different down here in Nice."

Heat looked at her watch; it would be just past noon in France. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing in Nice?"

"Talking to you from my room at the Hotel Negresco. Want to know why? Because I just came from a meeting at a beach club called Castel Plage. It's up the Promenade des Anglais between here and Le Chateau. By the way, that's French for-"

"Rook, I know what chateau is French for. Spit it out."

"OK, you ready for this? I just had brunch with none other than your elusive Syrian security attache, Fariq Kuzbari."

Nikki set her pen down and just listened. Rook explained that, after his meeting by the Seine, he hopped the overnight high-speed train to Nice, where the Syrian security man had agreed to meet him. He dropped his bag at the Negresco and then walked the promenade along the bay to the Castel Plage, where Kuzbari waited for him at a secluded table on the beachside patio. "You know, Fariq's a lot nicer guy when his men aren't holding guns on you."

"Rook."

"Sorry." He paused and, in the background, she heard the outdoor sounds of Nice: seabirds; motor bikes; a cruise s.h.i.+p's horn. She wished she were there. "Kuzbari told me that your mother was not spying on him while she was tutoring his kids."

"And you just believe that?"

"I'm only telling you what the man said, and the man said if anyone would know he was being spied on, it would be he. But Kuzbari did tell me something, and it's big. Remember that week the PI said your mom spent at that conference center in the Berks.h.i.+res with Kuzbari and his family?"

Nikki remembered it very well from Joe Flynn's 1999 surveillance report. And recently, when the Syrian and his security goons accosted her on the street in SoHo, she made sure to ask him about it. "I remember Kuzbari was more concerned about denying any hanky-panky. What did he tell you?"

"He said he went to the Berks.h.i.+res for a symposium on limiting weapons of ma.s.s destruction, and that when your mom wasn't giving his kids piano lessons, she was spending an inordinate amount of time with another attendee."

Heat picked up her pen again. "Who?"

"Dr. Ari Weiss."

A jolt of adrenaline shot through Heat. Wide awake now, she paced her living room floor. "Remember that name?" asked Rook. She did. Of course it lived in her notes from a few weeks ago, but like most things she took down, the facts were burnished in her memory, and the movement of pen across paper only helped her memorialize them.

Right before her murder, Ari Weiss had been the houseguest of another prominent family her mother tutored. Nikki had a.s.sumed her mom was spying on them, but Rook's information cast things in an entirely different light. It's possible her mother had worked her way into that home so she could snoop on the houseguest, Ari. "This is big," she said.

"Yeah. Just too bad you can't talk to him."

When his name came up three weeks ago, Heat and Rook had discovered that Dr. Ari Weiss had died of a blood disorder. But Nikki felt energized now and wasn't giving up. There still might be a way to get more information about the dead doctor. Even while she paced, she was looking through her notes for the number of the person whose family Ari had stayed with. Maybe he would know if Weiss had any connection to Tyler Wynn or his accomplices. Then, to make sure the sound of her grat.i.tude for the new lead carried across the Atlantic, she repeated, "Hey, Rook? This is very big."

"Thanks. It's kind of a whirlwind. I haven't even been to bed since I left New York, but I feel so pumped."

"Well ya done good. This Kuzbari stuff is a coup. He's so hard to pin down, how did you manage to make contact?"

"Professional courtesy, I guess. You know, the spy quid pro quo. Like most Mideast governments, Syria's heading for the rocks, and I think he's trying to make nice with our intelligence in case he needs an escape hatch."

Nikki stopped pacing. "Don't you mean Russian intelligence? I thought Kije set this up." Sounds of traffic and a distinctly European siren rose up and filled Rook's long pause. "Who set this up for you?... You there?"

During his hesitation she heard a female voice she recognized in the background. "Rook, come out here and see, it's a car fire."

Heat said, "Really? She's there with you?-in Nice?"

FOUR.

Nikki fought the urge to hang up on Rook and instead listened to him squirm. He hemmed. He hawed. He backed. He filled. And then had the nerve at the end of her silence to ask, "Is everything OK?" She told him she had to get to work and left him to hold a dead phone in his stupid hotel room overlooking the stupid Mediterranean. Then she cranked the shower as hot as she could stand it and stood under the jet. "f.u.c.king Nice," she said to the steam. "f.u.c.king stupid."

Shouldering the gla.s.s door of the bodega open, Heat burst out onto the sidewalk on Pearl Street ripping at the orange Reese's wrapper with extreme prejudice. She stood by a trash can near the curb, shook one of the two peanut b.u.t.ter cups out, tore away the brown paper enfolding it, and popped the entire disk into her mouth. She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the sky while she chewed, feeling the tiny sharp ridges of the chocolate coating sc.r.a.pe the roof of her mouth while the salty, grainy succulence of the peanut b.u.t.ter center mixed with the melting sugars on her tongue. b.a.s.t.a.r.d, she thought. Stupid boy. Her breath whistled through her nostrils as she munched, eating not for pleasure but as an act of aggression. That part done, she swallowed, feeling the delicious indulgence tamp out the fires of her rage.

She looked at the package. Still one peanut b.u.t.ter cup left. Nikki decided to save it and shoved it in the side pocket of her blazer. She might need it later, if the idiot called again.

Heat elbowed aside her anger at Rook for going to France with his ex-girlfriend and walked on. She had better things to dwell on. For the first time in weeks Nikki felt like she found a real trail that could lead her to Tyler Wynn, and as she strode along, she started rolling everything she knew. If Fariq Kuzbari's version of events were true, was it possible that her mother used the Syrian as cover to get into that symposium in the Berks.h.i.+res to spy on Ari Weiss? Following that premise, could that be the same reason her mom got herself a tutoring gig later in the home of the brewing magnate Carey Maggs-to keep tabs on Weiss while he stayed with his former Oxford cla.s.smate and his family? She hoped to find out in a few minutes when she met with Maggs.

The last time she'd seen the beer tyc.o.o.n and social activist, Heat was thras.h.i.+ng around looking for clues in her mother's murder. Now she hoped for another crumb-any connection, however slight-that could link Weiss to the fugitive Tyler Wynn and warm up the trail to his capture.

When she reached the cobblestones of the South Street Seaport, Nikki stopped. Survival instinct took over and she made a survey of the area. The pedestrian walks and courtyards were empty. It was way too early for the tourists who would pack the place later. She saw only a soda delivery truck and a solitary cleaner hosing off a cafe patio. Feeling suddenly alone and exposed, Heat made a back check behind her then scanned the rooftops of the old buildings. Somewhere a killer waited for her. Despite that fact, she pressed on toward the nineteenth-century brick warehouse that housed Brewery Boz. Nikki knew she was a target. She also knew this could be the next stop on the road to staying alive.

At the loading dock behind the microbrewery, Nikki climbed four concrete steps off the alley and heard a high-pitched whine on the other side of a metal door. Carey Maggs had told her to knock loudly so he could hear her over the power tools. She rapped with a key and the whirring stopped. Hinges squeaked, and a filthy man who looked more like a day laborer than a multimillionaire stood grinning. "You still look just like yer mum." That's what he'd told Nikki on her visit three weeks before. He would know. Cynthia Heat had also been his piano tutor in London back in 1976, when Maggs was just a boy.

"I'd say pardon the mess, but you didn't give me much notice, and I'm in the middle of a restoration. Behold, an authentic relic of the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade, circa 1870." Behind him, surrounded by giant stainless steel vats filled with Durdles' Finest lager, stout, and pale ale, stood a vintage fire wagon-a carriage that once got pulled by horses and probably was why London burned.

"Looks new."

"b.l.o.o.d.y better. Been slaving on it morning and night to get it ready in time for the march." She gave him a puzzled look and he explained, "The Walk Against Global Oppression. I committed Brewery Boz as corporate sponsor. What can I say? Bleeding heart, bleeding checkbook." He set aside his electric buffer and followed Heat around as she admired the wagon. Its red paint gleamed from the wax he'd applied, and the copper chimney of the steam pump's giant boiler s.h.i.+ned like a mirror. "But I get promo out of it, too." She noticed the gold leaf stencil on the side. " 'Boz Brigade,' " he said, reading with her. "I mean, what better mascot for a Charles d.i.c.kensthemed beer than a Victorian artifact like this?"

Niceties having been observed, Detective Heat said, "Let's talk."

The gastropub adjacent to the brewery wouldn't open for hours, but Maggs led her inside to the bar and made them each a latte.

"Delicious," she said. "But latte in a pub?"

"I know, scandalous." Maggs's British accent had a playfully challenging tone that reminded her of someone she couldn't quite place. "But we can be true to our d.i.c.kens leitmotif without confining ourselves to blood pudding and spotted d.i.c.k, right?" Then she put her finger on it. Christopher Hitchens. "Yeah, I get that a lot. He's Portsmouth, not London, but it's the Oxonian thing. We're a bunch of know-it-alls, petrified that we don't."

Since he'd brought up his college, Nikki snagged it. "Oxford is kind of why I'm here," she said. "I need to ask you about your old cla.s.smate."

"Ari." He grew serious and slid his coffee aside.

"When we talked a few weeks ago, you said Dr. Weiss was a houseguest of yours around Thanksgiving 1999." Nikki didn't need to, but she glanced at her notes from the prior interview, a technique that kept interviewees honest. "You said his stay overlapped the week my mother was tutoring your son."

He paused to reflect. "Yes, but as I told you before, I can't believe Ari had anything to do with your mother's murder."

"And-as I told you before, Mr. Maggs-this works better if you simply answer the questions." He nodded. "Can you tell me any of the activities Dr. Weiss was involved in during his visit?"

"Let me think. We're going back over a decade." He wagged his head slightly. "Sorry. I guess mostly sightseeing and clubs, maybe a Broadway show."

"Did he have any diplomatic or foreign service acquaintances in New York?"

Maggs furrowed his brow. "Ari? Doubt it. Ari was a science geek, pretty much just a lab rat. Rarely left the maze, if you know what I mean." That didn't square with what Fariq Kuzbari had said about his attendance at the symposium on WMDs. She made a note and went at it another way. "Was he political? I mean, you donate significant profits from your company to radical organizations like," she referred to notes, "Mercator Watch. What was your nickname for it?"

"GreedPeace," he chuckled, but his eyes flashed with a sudden and visceral anger. "The world is f.u.c.ked up by top-down greed, Detective. It's why we have so much war. The wealthy use their power against the powerless. It's got to stop. It will stop." He gestured through the showcase window to the copper and stainless vats hulking in his production area. "This beer business is just my springboard. I plan to rival Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in their philanthropy-but in my own way. These days I spend more time with my broker than my brewmeister for one reason: I am completely committed to using my business and investments to create a war chest for peace." He laughed and finger-combed his hair back. "And, yes, I hear the irony. I went to Oxford, you know."

"Didn't any of your political pa.s.sion rub off on Ari Weiss?"

Maggs came off his mini-tirade and relaxed again. "For Ari, rest his soul, if it wasn't under a microscope, it didn't exist. The only thing radical he gave a rat's a.r.s.e about was free radicals with unpaired electrons."

"Did Ari ever mention the name Tyler Wynn?"

He thought and said, "Mm, no."

"Does this help?" She tapped her iPhone and brought up Wynn's picture. He shook no. Then she showed Maggs Joe Flynn's old surveillance shot of the two men in the front seat of the parked car. The driver was the French doctor; she didn't know the other. "Do you recognize either of these two men?"

"You're kidding, right?" Maggs pointed to the man on the pa.s.senger side. "That's my friend. That's Ari Weiss."

There it was. Carey Maggs had made a connection between Tyler Wynn and Ari Weiss, and the link was the French doctor who helped the CIA man fake his heart attack. But what did it all mean? On the subway uptown, while she scrutinized the lethal potential of everyone who got on and off her car, Nikki tried to do the math and couldn't get there. What she needed was to bounce it off Rook, whose nutty speculation both annoyed her and freed her from linear thinking at the same time.

Rook.

A b.u.t.terfly rose, stirring dark sediment. She pushed it down and concentrated on the case.

Before she even got to her desk, Detective Heat called across the squad room for Roach to start digging on Weiss. At her computer, she opened the Web page Rook had bookmarked weeks before and reread the obit of Ari Weiss, MD. The brief article said the medical researcher had been a graduate of the Yale School of Medicine and a Rhodes Scholar, which was how he would have met his friend Carey Maggs at Oxford. He had died in 2000 of a rare blood disease called babesiosis. Heat clicked that hyperlink and the Wikipedia page described babesiosis as a malaria-like parasitic disorder. Like Lyme disease, it was generally tick-borne, but it could also come from a contaminated transfusion.

Loose thoughts started to ping, but Heat didn't like hunches. Facts were her friend, and she could have used some. She thought a long moment. Then she steeled herself and picked up the phone.

When Bart Callan answered, he seemed surprisingly cool to her. At prior meetings, including the visit she'd just made to the Department of Homeland Security, the agent had not only pressed her-relentlessly-to join his investigation team, he'd wrapped his outreach in something more. The vibe Heat got was personal. She believed Special Agent Callan wouldn't have minded getting intimate. So when he said he was kind of busy, Nikki felt taken aback. And what else? Maybe a little disappointed? But then he fell into form. "I'm in the swamp and up to my a.s.s in alligators, but I could meet you later. Want to hook up for a c.o.c.ktail?"

She said yes. And then felt guilty. And then wondered why.

Heat wanted to meet someplace packed and noisy, but Callan had an interview on the Upper East Side and chose Bemelmans in the Carlyle, to her chagrin, a softly quiet bar with leather upholstery, dreamy lighting, and worst of all, intimacy. She gave him the long arm when they shook and let him take the banquette. Normally she liked a view of the door, but a chair made her feel less trapped. She ordered a wine spritzer, a drink Nikki despised, but she needed a clear head and didn't want to send a false cue with a gateway c.o.c.ktail. He surprised her, going for a mineral water. His second surprise was getting right to business.

"You'll be happy to know we scored some surveillance pics of Salena Kaye following her escape from that chopper."

"That was quick," she said, remembering the check-in she'd made on her way out of the precinct house, of poor Raley still poring over miles of security video.

"Facial recognition software. I'll zap you copies."

"Great. Where did you pick her up?"

"Coming off the Q train in Coney Island. Speculation is she either operates out of there or had a meet. We're checking car services and other resources we have. If I told you more, I'd have to, well, you know the rest." He smiled and she felt uneasy. After the waiter came with the drinks and left, he said, "Kaye must have put up quite a fight to get away from you."

"Please, I feel guilty enough. My combat skills have gotten a little rusty lately."

"The Navy SEAL?" he asked. "Tragic. His name was Don, right?" G.o.d, this guy did his homework. Callan knew her murdered friend Don had been her close-combat sparring partner. Nikki studied the DHS agent, wondering if he also knew that she and Don once had a no-strings s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p. The ex-SEAL used to call himself her trainer with benefits. If Bart Callan knew about that part, he didn't let on. So she couldn't tell if there was deeper meaning when he said, "Listen, if you want a new partner, I love a good workout."

Her gaze left his to dwell on the walls of the bar, which she recognized had been ill.u.s.trated by the same artist who'd drawn the Madeline books. "I called because I want to hear again about your contact with my mother," she said, glancing back his way, glad now to be on her ground. "A few weeks ago you said something about an informant."

"There's not much more I can tell you."

"Then tell me again."