“Plus we scored a bonus,” said Raley. “This gentleman was coming out with ferret dude that day.” He peeled off another shot from the array and held it up. “Looks like Miric brought some muscle.”
Of course, Nikki’s instincts had already been crackling about this other guy, the brooder, when she screened the lobby video that morning. He was in a loose shirt, but she could tell he was a bodybuilder or at least spent a lot of his day at the weight rack. Under any other circumstances, she wouldn’t have thought twice and would have assumed he was delivering air conditioners, probably one under each arm, from the looks of him. But the serene lobby of the Guilford wasn’t the service entrance, and a grown man had been tossed off his balcony there that day. “Did the doorman give a name for this guy?”
Ochoa looked at his notes again. “Only the nickname he gave him. Iron Man.”
While the precinct ran Miric and Iron Man Doe through the computer, digitals of the pair were blast-?sent to detectives and patrols. It was impossible for Heat’s small unit to canvass every known bookie in Manhattan, even assuming Miric was a known, and wasn’t from one of the other boroughs, or even Jersey. Plus a man like Matthew Starr might even use an exclusive betting service or the Internet—both of which he probably did—but if he was the volatile mix of desperation and invincibility Noah Paxton painted him to be, chances were he’d hit the street, as well.
So they spilt up to concentrate on known bookmakers in two zones. The Roach Coach got the tour of the Upper West Side in a radius around the Guilford, while Heat and Rook covered Midtown near the Starr Pointe headquarters, roughly Central Park South to Times Square.
“This is exasperating,” said Rook after their fourth stop, a street vendor who suddenly decided he didn’t speak English when Heat showed him her shield. He was one of several runners for the major bookies whose mobile food carts were a convenient one-?stop for bets and kabobs. They were treated to eye-?stinging smoke that swirled off his grill and found them wherever they moved, while the vendor furrowed his brow at the photos and ultimately shrugged.
“Welcome to police work, Rook. This is what I call the Street Google. We are the search engine; it’s how it gets done.”
As they drove to the next address, a discount electronics store on 51st, a front specializing more in bets than boom boxes, Rook said, “Have to tell you, a week ago, if you told me I’d be hitting the sha-?warma carts looking for Matthew Starr’s bookie, I never would have believed it.”
“You mean it doesn’t fit the image? This is where you and I come from different places. You write these magazine pieces, you’re all about selling the image. I’m all about looking behind it. I’m frequently disappointed but seldom wrong. Behind every picture hides the true story. You just have to be willing to look.”
“Yeah, but this guy was big. Maybe not elite-?elite, but he was at least the bus and truck Donald Trump.”
“I always thought Donald Trump was the bus and truck Donald Trump,” she said.
“And who’s Kimberly Starr, the truckstop Tara Reid? If she’s the poor little rich girl, what’s she doing blowing ten grand on that face?”
“If I had to guess, she bought it with Barry Gable’s money.”
“Or she took it in trade with her new doctor boyfriend.”
“Trust me, I’ll find out. But a woman like Kimberly’s not going to start clipping supermarket coupons and eating ramen one night a week. She’s all about prepping her face for her next season of The Bachelor.”
“If they’re holding it on The Island of Doctor Moreau.” She didn’t like herself for it but she laughed. It only encouraged him. “Or if she’s doing a remake of Elephant Man.” Rook took guttural breaths and slurred, “I am not a suspect, I am a human being.”
The radio call came when they were getting in the car after the discount electronics store dead end. Roach had spotted Miric in front of the Off Track Betting facility on West 72nd and was making a move, calling for back-?up.