On the way over the bridge to Queens, she had told Rook not to expect much, that Internal Affairs would have been over the apartment just like his office. She said to expect furniture but no files or anything like that. Those items would have been boxed and inventoried and shipped off for examination. When he asked her what she was looking for then, she told him whatever IA might have missed that she wouldn’t. “They were only investigating him. I’m clearing him.”
They worked together methodically, Rook following her lead and her instructions. The bathrooms were the first stops. Cops knew that’s where most people hid their valuables because there was so much to look through. But when they opened the cabinets, they saw that clearly IA had had the same thought, because the shelves were bare in the medicine chests and under the sinks of both bathrooms. The kitchen was much the same. Although a few items were left on the pantry shelves, most items had been cleared out and were no doubt gone over by downtown.
The second bedroom, which had been converted to a study, had been picked clean, as Heat had predicted. They could see the gaps on the shelves where books and videos had been removed. The desk drawers were empty, and there were compression lines on the rug from the footprints of absent filing cabinets. The master bedroom was an easy search. The bed had been stripped and the frame was empty; the mattress and box spring were leaning neatly against a wall. “Not looking so promising,” said Rook.
“It never does until it is.” But she was feeling the futility as well. “Tell you what, I’ll take the closet, you do the dresser, then let’s call it a night.”
Nikki was sliding suits on hangers along the wooden pole when Rook said, “Oh, Detective Heat?” When she stepped out of the walk-in, he was at the dresser. The top drawer was open.
“I’m not sure if this will be anything, but if it is, I figured you deserved the honors.” She slowly crossed the room to join him, then followed his gaze down into the open drawer.
Captain Montrose’s sock drawer. In it were about a dozen pairs of black and navy dress socks, folded and balled to marry the pairs. And toward the back of the drawer, a lone beige sock without a mate. Nikki looked up at Rook. Both were thinking it, but neither was saying it.
An odd sock.
Heat picked it up. Her heart raced when she did. “There’s something in it.”
“Come on, I’m gonna pee myself.”
Nikki opened the sock and reached inside. “It’s cardboard.” She pulled it out. It was a business card. For a talent representative. “This is for Horst Meuller’s agent.”
When she turned it over her throat contracted and she stifled an involuntary wail. She covered her face with one hand and turned away as she handed the card to Rook. He flipped it over. The ballpoint handwriting read, “Nikki, just be careful.”
SIXTEEN
At nine the next morning, when Heat and Rook climbed the subway steps up to 18th Street, a frozen mist was descending on Chelsea, wrapping the neighborhood in a harsh, woolen chill. They crossed Seventh, heading west, toward the agent’s office, joining an eclectic sidewalk mix of tortured young artists and upstart dancers who might have been cast in a music-video salute to brooding. By the time they reached Eighth, Rook said he had stopped counting navy berets.
When they entered the third-floor walk-up office of the Step This Way Talent Agency, Phil Podemski was eating take-out oatmeal at his desk. As he swept old trade magazines and newspapers from his couch onto the floor so they could sit, the agent eyeballed Nikki and said he could really do something with her, considering her figure and looks. “You have to strip, of course. Not for me, I don’t go for any funny business, I mean in the act.”
“Much as I appreciate the offer,” she said, “that’s not why we’re here.”
“Oh . . .” Podemski sized up Rook and tugged at his orange Yosemite Sam mustache. “Sure, guess I could give you a bullwhip and a fedora. We’d market you as Indiana Bones. Or maybe go sci-fi. You sorta look like that guy who roamed outer space everybody’s so crazy about.”
“Malcolm Reynolds?” asked Rook.