Heat quickly ran the events of the the past week through her memory and asked, “How come you didn’t tell any of this to Detective Rhymer when he interviewed you?”
“Hey, don’t get mad at me, I was only doing what that other cop told me to do, which was not to tell anyone.”
Heat felt her pulse flutter. “What other cop said that to you, Mr. Podemski?”
“He was a detective, too. The one who killed himself.”
Heat said, “Captain Montrose?”
“Montrose, that’s right.” Podemski fished the captain’s business card out of the slush pile atop his desk. “He showed up here a couple hours after Horst took off with that priest. Said he wanted to know where they went or if they left anything behind, you know, for me to hold or stash.”
“Did he say what it was? Money, an object?” asked Rook.
Podemski shook no. “Just told me to call him if anybody else came looking and to tell nobody about any of it. Not even other cops.”
“Has anybody else come by looking for whatever this is?” asked Rook.
“Nope.”
Nikki said, “Mind if I ask why you’re telling me?”
“Cuz I just realized that you’re the lady cop from that magazine. I figured if I can’t trust you, pack it in.”
* * *
Rook hit the sidewalk ready to rock and roll. “We’ve got him now. I’m telling you, Nik, that German is in this up to his umlaut.”
“How can you know that?” she asked.
“Come on, Meuller fights with Graf at the strip club, Meuller leads Graf away the morning he’s murdered, Meuller runs from you . . . If you want to know why he hid out and quit those dancing jobs, I refer you to Mr. George Michael’s theory about guilty feet and rhythm.”
“Rook, think of our timeline and tell me this. Meuller left Podemski’s agency with Father Graf just after nine &A.M.& How is it then that Graf shows up at Justicia a Guarda headquarters very much alive an hour and a half later?”
Rook shifted gears like nothing had happened. “Right. Alternate thought, that’s good. Any other notions?”
“No, a question. I want to know what a male stripper could have with him that Montrose would want and that got so many people killed. I want to talk to Horst Meuller again.”
“Great, let’s go.”
“Not yet.”
“Absolutely not,” said Rook, deftly flip-flopping. “Why not?”
“Because Meuller plays too close to the vest. I want to confront him, but I want to go in there knowing more than he thinks I do,” said Heat. “So let’s be smart and use the help Montrose gave us. He led us to that agent for a reason. Since we already knew about Meuller, I think it was to point us to his lover, the videographer. Let’s see what we can find out about Alan Barclay.”
Rook hailed a cab, and on the way to Gemstar Studios in Queens, where they produced Payback Playback, Heat called Mrs. Borelli at the rectory. The housekeeper not only confirmed that Alan Barclay was a parishioner at Our Lady of the Innocents but that Father Graf said his funeral Mass and delivered the eulogy two weeks earlier. “They knew each other very well, then? Were they friends?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call them friends,” said the woman. “Alan had some moral crisis he was dealing with, and Father was counseling him. The last days of poor Mr. Barclay’s life, things got quite heated in Father Gerry’s study.”
“Did you hear what they were arguing about, Mrs. B?”
“Afraid not, Detective. I may be nosy but I’m not a snoop.”
* * *