Nikki took a long pull on her drink, feeling the carbonation bite her tongue as she stared through the Plexi barrier beside her at the avenue seven floors below. She didn’t know what Lauren’s information meant, but she got out her notebook and made a note: “One punch, no ring.”
They ordered some arancini and a plate of olives, and by the time their finger foods arrived they were on to other subjects: Lauren was teaching a seminar at Columbia in the fall; her dachshund, Lola, got picked for a dog food commercial when she took her to the dog run last weekend; Nikki had a week off at the end of August and was thinking of Iceland and did Lauren want to come. “Sounds cold,” she said. But she also said she’d think about it.
Nikki’s cell phone vibed and she looked at the caller ID.
“What’s up, Detective,” Laura asked, “are you going to have to deploy or something? Maybe rappel down the face of the building and spring into some two-?fisted action?”
“Rook” was all she said and held up the phone.
“Take it. I don’t mind.”
“It’s Rook,” she reiterated, as if it required no further explanation. Nikki let his call drop to voice mail.
“Forward him to my phone,” said Lauren, stirring her bloody Mary. “You could do worse than Jameson Rook. That man is doable.”
“Oh, sure, that’s just what I need. The ride-?along isn’t bad enough without putting that in the mix.” When her phone pulsed to indicate voice mail, she pressed the button for a fetch and held the phone to her ear. “Huh. He says he’s come upon something big about the Matthew Starr case and needs me to see it…” She held up a staying palm to Lauren as she listened to the rest and then hung up.
“What’s the development?”
“Didn’t say. He said he couldn’t talk now but to come to his place right away, and left his address.”
“You should go,” said Lauren.
“I’m almost afraid to. Knowing him, he’s probably made citizen’s arrests of anybody who knew Matthew Starr.”
When the industrial strength elevator reached his loft, Rook was waiting for her on the other side of the accordion mesh doors. “Heat. You actually came.”
“Your message said you had something to show me.”
“I do,” he said and strode from the entry and disappeared around a corner. “This way.”
She followed him into his designer kitchen. At the other end of it, in the great room, as the cable designer shows called those open spaces that merged living rooms and dining rooms off an overlooking kitchen, there was a poker table, a real poker table with a felt top. And it was surrounded by…poker players. She came to a halt. “Rook, there’s nothing you need to show me here about the case at all, is there?”
“Say, you are a detective, aren’t you?” He shrugged and gave a little impish grin. “Would you have come if I had just plain invited you to play poker?”
Nikki got hit with a major turn-?around twinge, but then the poker crowd rose to greet her and there she was.
As Rook escorted her into the room, he said, “If you really, really need a work reason to be here, you can thank the man who got you your warrant for the Guilford. Judge, this is Detective Nikki Heat, NYPD.”
Judge Simpson looked a bit different in a yellow polo shirt, hunkered behind tall stacks of poker chips instead of his bench. “I’m winning,” he said as he shook her hand. A network news anchor she and the rest of America admired was also there, with her filmmaker husband. The anchorwoman said she was glad a cop was there because she had been robbed. “And by a judge,” said her husband. Rook placed Nikki in the empty seat between him and the newswoman, and before Nikki knew it, the anchor’s Oscar-?winning husband was dealing her a hand.