“I feel sorry for him. Truly, Rook, who knows what any of us would do under those circumstances.” They rode in silence again. A block later her cell phone buzzed. “Raley,” she reported when she did a screen check. “Hey, Rales, what’s up?”
“Coupla things I know you’ll be interested in. First, your man DeWayne did call. Forensics is draining and sieving the tank on top of the Graestone as we speak. Ochoa’s there supervising.”
“That’s great. Let’s hope there’s a bullet in there somewhere.”
“Now, I’ve got one more item in the breaking news category. In my spare time, when not focusing on maintaining an orderly work area, I ran a financial on Father Graf.” God, thought Heat, how much she loved working with Roach. “Guess what kicked out. Remember that folder for Emma on his computer? I discovered that an Emma Carroll and Graf had a joint bank account. It’s only got a few hundred in it now, but it’s fluctuated as high as twenty, thirty grand over the past year.”
“Rales, you’re the best. At least you will be if you also have an address for Emma Carroll.” Raley gave it to her, and when they hung up, Nikki leaned forward to the cabdriver. “Change of plans, if you don’t mind. Park Avenue at Sixty-sixth.”
* * *
From a high floor in any building in Manhattan you can scan the sur rounding apartment rooftops and find a sunroom or two. Emma Carroll met them in hers, and Nikki was amazed at how warm and brilliant it was in there, even though it was near zero outside. The light did little to brighten the woman’s face, however. Emma Carroll was quite attractive in what some would call a cougarish way, but the skin was swollen around her eyes, which had a dullness from medication or despondency, or both. “I’m still reeling,” she told them as soon as they sat. “Father Gerry was a great priest and a great man.”
“Were you close?” Heat surveyed her, wondering if there was any forbidden romance lurking, but she couldn’t tell, which usually meant there wasn’t any. Nikki prided herself on having finely tuned lay-dar.
“Yes but not like that, oh, please. What the father and I had was a shared vision for doing work through the church to foster human rights and social justice.” She took a sip of whatever she had on ice on the coffee table. “Why spoil the fun with something tawdry?”
“I do see that you and Father Graf shared a bank account. An occasionally large bank account,” said Nikki.
“Of course we did. I am not only a contributor, but also the treasurer of the account we held for donations to fund a human rights organization we believed in passionately.”
Rook asked, “And that would be Justicia a Garda?”
Emma Collins perked up for the first time. “Why, yes. I’m so glad you know of them.”
“Not so well, really.” More for Heat’s benefit, he said, “We have what I believe is more of an e-mail relationship.”
Nikki ignored Rook’s suspicions about Pascual Guzman and asked Collins, “So you would do both the fund-raising and banking for this cause?”
“Well, it began that way. But more recently, I do less administration and more of the development of new donors. I don’t even use the bank account much anymore, but steer our patrons to give directly to the liaison for Justicia. They seem to enjoy the sense of hands-on funding and their capital administrator is a very charming man.”
Nikki opened her notebook. “May I ask you his name?”
“Sure. It’s Alejandro Martinez. Do you need me to spell that?”
“No,” said Heat, “I’ve got it.”
SEVENTEEN
Rook fortified his first cup of coffee of the morning with a shot of espresso and said, “Mother, are you sure you are up for this?”
“Up for playing the role of a wealthy socialite? Up for it isn’t the phrase. Born to it would be more accurate, kiddo.”