The next morning Heat and Rook walked down Fulton toward the South Street Seaport to visit another one of her mother’s tutoring clients. This time, barring surprise ambushes, they had an appointment. As Rook paused to read the plaque on the Titanic Memorial, Nikki said, “I’ve been thinking about our encounter with Fariq Kuzbari. If it made me feel like I’m swimming into deeper waters on this case, imagine how Carter Damon felt.”
They moved on and Rook said, “You’re not excusing that loser, are you?”
“Never. I just understand why, being the mediocre lead he was, he probably felt overwhelmed and checked out.”
“And what about Kuzbari? After a pushback like he gave us, do you just cross him off your list?”
“No. And I make that call, not he. But I have a gut feeling that says Kuzbari’s not worth the focus, so I am going to concentrate on the other names on Flynn’s list, for now. I can always brace him again later, if I need to.”
“Did you just say you had a gut feeling? Detective Heat, are you starting to pick up someone’s bad habits? Are you thinking like a writer?”
“Lord, take my gun and shoot me now. No, forget gut. You want to hear my rationale? Fine. Even if Kuzbari were implicated, it’s not likely he would have done the killing personally. He has a crew of suited goons to do that, so I’m certain he’d alibi out. Also, he’d be tough to investigate because of his diplomatic protection. Not impossible, but it would draw time and energy. Meanwhile, I have three others to interview, and we both know the clock is ticking before Captain Irons works his magic again. No, Rook, this is triage. So let’s not call this my gut. Let’s say I am … accessing instincts born of experience.”
“Spoken just like a writer.”
A custodian in rubber boots hosing cobblestones on the mall shut off the nozzle to let them pass as they arrived at the main entrance to Brewery Boz. The landmark brick mercantile building not only had been restored to serve as the British company’s U.S. flagship brewery, it catered to tourists with a Dickens-themed pub. The owner and chief brewmaster, Carey Maggs, met them in the lobby, and the legendary English reserve went right out the window when he saw Nikki. “Bloody hell,” he said in his Mayfair accent. “You look just like your mum.”
Maggs had good reason to do a double-take at the sight of her. In London back in 1976, when Carey was eight years old, Nikki’s mother had been employed by his beer magnate father as his piano tutor. After he’d emigrated to America in 1999, Carey Maggs had passed the torch by hiring his childhood piano teacher to tutor his own son. “That’s the circle. The circle of life,” said Rook.
“Don’t need to tell me about history repeating. Here I am making suds just like my father did back in the UK,” Maggs said as he led them on a tour of his brewery. The humid air in the massive facility was tinged with enough yeast and malt to taste them; equal parts inviting and off-putting at that early hour. As they passed giant vats and containers with their sprouts of coiled tubing and pipes, Carey Maggs described the process in brief, and how they performed all processes on-site, from malting, to mashing, to lautering, fermenting, conditioning, and filtering.
Rook said, “I don’t know why, but I thought these would all be copper.”
“Stainless steel. Doesn’t impart taste to the brew and it’s easy to clean and sterilize, which is critical. Those vats over there are copper-plated on the outside, but that’s just for aesthetics because they face the showcase window of the pub.”
“Impressive. Your father must be proud of you for continuing the legacy,” said Nikki.
“Not so much. We part company on the business model. Dad named his signature beer after the town drunk in a Dickens novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
“Durdles,” said Heat, recalling her own dad’s longing for it.
“Right. Well, my dear father seemed to forget that Charles Dickens was all about exposing social injustice and corporate greed. So now that I run the company, I’ve not only expanded our Dickens brand to pubs and beer gardens, I donate half our profits to Mercator Watch. That’s a foundation that monitors international child labor abuse. I call them GreedPeace. You heard of it?”