Rook was already up and running on his new MacBook Air and jumped to his feet when she finished her calls and came into his office. “I have run down a very interesting piece of information on one of our players,” he said.
“Do tell.” Nikki sat in the guest chair and let herself melt into the soft cushions, feeling newly upbeat and admitting to herself she was enjoying this new work arrangement with Rook.
“I ran some Googles and Bings on some of the names we’ve got on Murder Board South. Not exactly Philip Marlowe gumshoeing bad guys in The Big Sleep, but it has its rewards. I can snack, for instance. Anyway, I had gotten around to checking out our human rights activists at Justicia a Garda. Milena Silva, as presented, is an attorney. However, Pascual Guzman . . . know what he did before he left Colombia? A college professor at Universidad Nacional in Bogotá. And what did he teach?”
Nikki took a stab. “Marxist philosophy?”
“Try computer science.” Rook sat back at his desk and referred to his screen. “But Professor Guzman left the university. Why? It was in protest because he claimed the computer programming he was doing in his department was being used by the secret police to spy on dissidents.” Rook punched the air with his fist and stood. “That’s it. This is the guy who hacked my computer.”
“But why?”
“OK . . .” He came around the desk, pacing. “Want to hear my theory? Guzman . . . and a cadre of radicals he recruited here in New York embraced violence too much for their friend and ally, Father Gerry Graf, who was fine with the protests but not with the bloodletting to come. They fight. Graf has to go. They kill Graf, done and done. But no. Here comes Detective Nikki Heat with all her smarts and tenacity and they say, Heat has to go. They try to bushwhack you in the park, thoroughly underestimating the heat that is Heat. And when that doesn’t work, they try to take you out another way: hack me to get you in trouble with One Police Plaza and knocked off the case. Boom.”
“Let’s arrest them right now,” said Nikki.
Rook’s zeal deflated and he slumped down on the edge of his desk. “When you say that, it’s like you’re saying my theory is crazy and unsubstantiated.”
Heat smiled. “I know.”
“Well, come on, doesn’t it make sense?”
“Parts of it do. Especially Guzman being a computer guy. But . . . ,” she paused, slowing down to model behavior for him, “. . . but it’s all based on conjecture. Rook, have you ever thought of writing crime fiction instead?”
“Nah,” he said. “I’m all about keeping it real.”
* * *
They were planning their next moves when the impact of the severe winter cold charted their immediate course. The TV and radio news was all over a major breaking story at the power plant on the East Side, where one of the giant, ninety-five-foot-tall boilers that pumped thousand-degree steam through underground pipes and heated Lower Manhattan had exploded. A mechanic was injured and expected to survive, but the consequence was that there was a steam shutoff in the entire zone serviced by that plant. The spectacular TV helicopter pictures of the crippled plant went split screen as the anchor showed a map of the affected area which would be without steam for the next two or three days.
Nikki said, “Look, my apartment’s right in the middle of the zone.”
“Man,” said Rook. “Gotta feel sorry for the buildings that don’t have their own boilers ’cause the landlords are too cheap to upgrade from district steam, huh?” He chuckled and then read from her expression that she was living in one of them. “You’re kidding. Oh, I am loving the irony, Nikki: No heat. And minus-degree temperatures tonight? Let’s go get some of your clothes and lady-whatevers and bring them here.”
“You’ll use anything to get me to shack up here, won’t you?”
“Steam failure, water hammer, act of God, I am above nothing.”
* * *