“More poetry,” said Rook.
The two hit it off, and at the end of their stint at the zoo, the comedy writer got Petar a gig at Later On as a production assistant. “Not quite a step up from shoveling the elephant yard,” said the voice from LA, “but entry level, and he did OK. Worked his way up to segment producer pretty quick. My friend says once Petar sets his mind to something, there’s no stopping him.”
That was the thought that left Rook sleepless, worried about that signature Petar Matic tenacity—plus conflicted over whether he should tell Nikki about her ex’s smuggling bust. But suppose he did tell her? That could make it worse, exponentially worse. He made a list of potential fallout. It could damage a perfectly good relationship she enjoyed with an old friend, which Rook would then feel bad about. Sort of. He might inadvertently create greater interest in Petar. Nikki had a naughty side, and maybe the bad boy thing was something she would spark to all the more. And finally, how did it make him look, doing background checks on her old boyfriends? It made him look . . . well, insecure, needy, and threatened. Sure wouldn’t want to give that impression. So when he saw her come through the door at the other end of the bull pen, smiling, he knew exactly what to do. Look busy and pretend he didn’t know anything.
“Look at you here, all bright-eyed and . . .”—she studied him—“. . . bushy faced.”
“I skipped the shave this morning. A little time-saver after a long night. Researching.” He waited while she hung up her jacket, and then he added, “And you?”
“Feeling pretty good, actually, thanks.” She turned across the room. “Roach? You get Derek Snow’s phone records yet?”
“Put in for them,” answered Raley. “Should arrive anytime now.”
“Call them again. And keep me up on it.” She put her bag in her desk file drawer. “Rook, you’re hovering.”
“Huh? Oh, I’m just wondering . . .” His sentence hung there, suspended between them. What he wanted to ask was about her night. What she did. Where she went. What she did. When it ended. What she did. So many questions. But the one he asked was, “Is there something I can do to be useful this morning?”
Before Nikki could answer, the phone rang on her desk. “Homicide, Detective Heat.”
Before Nikki heard the voice, she heard the unmistakable sound of subway wheels squealing to a halt. “Are you there?” She recognized the voice of Mitchell Perkins. But Cassidy Towne’s editor didn’t sound quietly superior as he had in his office the day before. He was agitated and tight. “Damn cell phone. Hello?”
“I’m here, Mr. Perkins, is something wrong?”
“My wife. I’m on my way to work and my wife just called. She caught someone trying to break in.”
“What’s the address?” She snapped her fingers to get Roach’s attention. Raley picked up the extension, copied the address Perkins gave, uptown on Riverside Drive, and called Dispatch while Heat stayed on with the editor. “We’re sending a car now.”
She heard him panting, and the background acoustics changed, telling her he had come up from the subway to street level. “I’m almost there. Hurry, God, hurry . . .”
Hurrying in Manhattan isn’t so easy, even with police lights and a siren, but the traffic flow was downtown at that hour, so Detective Heat made good time up Broadway to West 96th Street. From her TAC frequency Nikki heard that three blue-and-whites were already at Perkins’s apartment, so she killed her siren and eased it back slightly after she crossed West End. She looked up the street and chin-nodded to Rook beside her. “What’s this?”
Ahead of them, mid-block, two people were kneeling on the sidewalk in front of a car at a garage entrance. A third, a parking attendant to judge by his uniform, saw her flashing light and waved his arms to flag her down. Nikki was on the air calling for paramedics before she even saw the body stretched out on the pavement.