“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Rook didn’t answer. He just gave her a smile that made her blush. She turned away and pretended to watch cross traffic out her side window, worried about what he saw on her face.
Up on the top floor of the Marlowe Building there was no heat wave. In the enveloping coolness of his corner office, Omar Lamb listened to the recording of his threatening phone call to Matthew Starr. He was placid, his palms rested flat and relaxed on his leather blotter as the tiny speaker on the digital recorder vibrated with an enraged version of him spouting expletives and graphic descriptions of what he would do to Starr, including where on his body he would insert an assortment of weapons, tools, and firearms. When it was over, he turned it off and said nothing. Nikki Heat studied the real estate developer, his gym-?rat body, sunken cheeks, and you’re-?dead-?to-?me eyes. A surplus of refrigerated air whispered from unseen vents to fill the silence. She was chilly for the first time in four days. It was a lot like the morgue.
“He actually recorded me saying that?”
“Mr. Starr’s attorney provided it when he put the complaint on the record.”
“Come on, Detective, people say they’re going to kill people all the time.”
“And sometimes they do it.”
Rook observed from a perch on the windowsill, where he divided his attention between Omar Lamb and the lone blader braving the heat in the Trump Skating Rink in Central Park thirty-?five stories below. So far, Heat thought, thank God he seemed content to follow her instructions not to butt in.
“Matthew Starr was a titan of this industry who will be missed. I respected him and deeply regret that phone call I made. His death was a loss to us all.”
Heat had known on sight that this guy was going to take some work. He didn’t even look at her shield when she walked in, didn’t ask for his lawyer. Said he had nothing to hide, and if he did, she sensed he was too smart to say anything stupid. This was not a man to fall for the ol’ Zoo Lockup routine. So she danced with him, looking for her opening. “Why all the bile?” she asked. “What got you so lathered up about a business rival?”
“My rival? Matthew Starr didn’t have the skill set to qualify as my rival. Matthew Starr needed a stepladder just to kiss my ass.”
There it was. She’d found an open sore on Omar Lamb’s tough hide. His ego. Heat picked at it. She laughed at him. “Bull.”
“Bull? Did you just say ‘bull’ to me?” Lamb jerked to his feet and hero-?strode from behind the fortress of his desk to face her. This was definitely not going to be a perfume ad.
She didn’t flinch. “Starr had title to more property than anyone in the city. A lot more than you, right?”
“Garbage addresses, environmental restrictions, limited air rights…What does more mean when it’s more crap?”
“Sounds like rival talk to me. Must have felt bad to unzip and flop ’em on the table and come up short.”
“Hey, you want to measure something?” This was good. She loved it when she rattled the tough boys into talking. “Measure all the properties Matthew Starr stole from under my nose.” With a manicured finger, he poked her shoulder to punctuate each item on his list: “He fudged permits, he bribed inspectors, he underbid, he oversold, he underdelivered.”
“Gee,” said Heat, “it’s almost enough to make you want to kill him.”
Now the developer laughed. “Nice try. Listen. Yeah, I made threats to the guy in the past. Operative word: past. Years ago. Look at his numbers now. Even without the recession Starr was a spent force. I didn’t need to kill him. He was a dead man walking.”
“So says his rival.”
“Don’t believe me? Go to any of his job sites.”
“And see what?”
“Hey, you expect me to do all your work?”
At the door, as they were leaving, Lamb said, “One thing. I read in the Post he fell six stories.”