“The lady whose picture you showed on TV. I’m manager at Surety Rent-a-Car
on Fulton. She’s at the counter now.”
Heat checked over her shoulder and gunned the car out into traffic. “You sure it’s
her?”
“No. But it sure looks like her.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Asking to rent a truck.”
In spite of the gymnastics required to access on-and off-ramps, the FDR won the toss
for fastest route from Kips Bay to Lower Manhattan. Heat figured whatever time she
lost in backtracking to get on and off the highway, she more than made up for by
circumventing the one-ways and surface snarls.
She pushed it, racing there Code Three, to the delight of her ride-along journalist.
When they passed the South Street Seaport to turn up Fulton, Heat killed the siren
so—if the woman really was Salena Kaye—they wouldn’t tip her off to their
arrival. While Nikki concentrated on her wheel work, she handed Rook the phone to
speed-dial Bart Callan at Homeland Security, who put out the call to his agents to
meet and intercept.
Rook spotted the Surety Rent-a-Car sign ahead on the right, adjacent to an
underground parking garage. “I’m serious,” said Heat, “stay with the car.” With
that she notched it in park and hopped out right in the middle of the street,
leaving the engine running and the gumball flashing as she jogged two doors up the
sidewalk and into the garage entrance with her hand on her hip.
An Asian man in a long-sleeved shirt and a tie pushed open the glass door to the
rental office as Heat approached. “Detective, that way. She saw you.” He pointed
urgently into an alcove of putty-colored cinder block in the corner of the garage,
where a motorized overhead wheel spun, feeding a bright yellow upright conveyor belt
down a three-foot hole in the concrete floor. Heat paused.
A man lift.
She had seen these things before; man lifts were in use all over the city at
construction sites and parking garages. She’d never been on one and had never hoped
to be. Not since she was a uniform and had to guard the remains of the parking
attendant who fell off one. What she really remembered was the poor guy’s elongated
blood smear circulating on the continuous-loop belt until somebody turned it off.
Nikki checked the street, hoping to see some DHS backup. Then she addressed the man
lift. The next toe-step fed by. She grabbed the guard handle, and got on.
Falling didn’t worry her as much as the vulnerability. Disappearing down a hole in
the floor was one thing. Riding feet first through a hole in the ceiling to the
level below with your back exposed to an open garage made you a sitting—or hanging
—duck. So Heat flouted OSHA safety rules and one-handed the grip, turned out from
the belt instead of facing it, and held her Sig in the free hand. Heat hopped off on
Level 2, found cover behind a metal trash can, and scanned the line of parked
rentals under the humming fluorescents.
Out on Fulton, horns blasted. Rook accepted car horns as just the brass section of
the New York soundtrack, but when he turned and saw the long line jammed by Heat’s
hasty parking job, he got out, waved to the queue as he came around the trunk, and
got in the open driver’s side door. “Technically, I am still in the car.” He put
the transmission in drive and eased the Crown Victoria to the side, still double-
parked, but leaving sufficient room for others to pass.
Before Heat made a move, she looked up. The last time she’d found herself in a
parking structure with Salena Kaye, she’d dropped on Nikki from above. Know your
enemy, she thought, then crept forward, easing the soles of her shoes on the
concrete, both to hear better and not to be heard as she ducked down to see under
the cars.
A sound.
One tiny piece of grit, cracking under a shoe.