“We do. I just never felt like it was here.”
“Is that an I-told-you-so?” Yardley Bell, from ten feet away, handed the company’
s shipments manifest back to an agent and came over to join them. “See, Detective,
here is the fundamental difference between us: You’re ready to bag it because it
didn’t just land in our laps; I am ready to double down.” She turned to Callan. “
Pull me some more warrants, Agent. I want to toss Barrett’s house, I want to toss
the houses of his friends, his dealers, his hookers, his fucking pastor. I am ready
to rattle some cages.” She walked away backward, saying to Nikki, “And then, if we
survive to Monday, I can be an I-told-you-so.”
Callan arranged for an agent to shuttle Heat and Rook back to the Twentieth, which
only further postponed the conversation looming over them about Rook’s loose lips.
He filled the trip mostly by complaining about his Callan-forced SUV time-out. “I
hated that. I felt like I was sitting in the penalty box, having to watch a power
play. Anyway, I made use of the hour and a half getting my mother out of the city.”
“Rook.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her why. I’m much sneakier than that.”
“I know.”
He sidestepped that and explained, “I called in an IOU from a colleague of mine at
the State University of New York and arranged for Margaret Rook, Broadway’s diva’s
diva, to receive the first annual Stage Door Prize at the SUNY Oswego Drama
Festival. It’s short notice, but Mom’s thrilled.”
“What is the Stage Door Prize?”
“Haven’t figured that out yet. All I know is it’s going to cost me ten grand plus
luxury accommodations. But it gets Mom out of harm’s way. Just in case… you know.
”
She turned away and stared out the window as they turned off Lenox Avenue,
remembering for a moment when she caught a glimpse of foliage at the north end of
Central Park that it was spring. Her brief interlude with nature got interrupted by
a text. “Weird,” she said after reading it. “From Callan. Test results of the
bioagent traces on my blazer came back. It wasn’t ricin.” She held out her phone
to Rook.
“Smallpox?” His face turned ashen. “Didn’t Dr. Doom from CDC call that one of
the bad boys?” She nodded. “And all you can say is, ‘weird’? Oh, excuse me, just
a spot of bother. I seem to have picked up a bit of smallpox on my coat sleeve. No
biggie.”
“It is a biggie, I know it’s a biggie. Apparently it’s a marker, not enough to
cause worry, but a medic is coming to give me a shot.” She finished reading and
said, “What’s weird to me is that it’s not ricin, so that means I didn’t pick it
up from Ari Weiss’s corpse.”
“So where?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a silence. Then the driver lowered his window. “Don’t blame you, buddy,
” said Rook. “Stick your head out and breathe, if you like.”
As soon as the DHS car dropped them on 82nd, Rook smiled and said, “So. We good?”
“That’s it? That’s what you call dealing with this? Shrug it off and say ‘We
good’?” She mocked him by brushing her palms as if dusting them clean. “God, you
are such a boy.”
“I am not…” He mimicked her palm brushing. “I just think we should be good
because you know very well that I would never compromise you by sharing secrets.”
“Then what do you call it?”
Sharon Hinesburg passed by with a take-out bag, and they held their conversation.
When she went inside the precinct, Rook said, “First of all, before I can keep a
secret, I have to know it’s a secret. I thought we were all kind of working on the
same team here, trying to stop the bad guys from unleashing a plague.”
“Being on the same team is one thing, Rook, but that doesn’t mean you can go
reporting to other people. Especially Yardley Bell.”
“You don’t like her.”
“It’s not about liking her.”
“You’re still jealous because we have a history.”
“It’s not that, either. I just don’t trust her.”