In the auditorium of the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Battery Park City, Yankee phenom Toby Mills posed with an oversized prop check for one million dollars, his personal gift to the varsity athletic program of the public school. The audience was packed with students, faculty, administrators, and of course, press—all on their feet for his ovation. Also standing, but not applauding, was Detective Nikki Heat, who looked on from behind the curtain at the side of the stage, watching the pitcher grip ’n’ grin with the athletic director, flanked by the Stuy baseball team turned out in uniform for the occasion. Mills smiled broadly, unfazed by the strobe flashes pummeling him, patiently turning to his left then his right, well acquainted with the choreography of the photo op.
Nikki was sorry that Rook couldn’t be there. Especially since the school was only a few blocks from his loft, she had hoped that if he hurried he could meet her there to close the loop on his article. She had tried to return his calls on the drive down, but his phone rang out and dumped to voice mail. She knew better than to leave a message with sensitive content, so she said, “So let me get this straight. It’s OK for you to bug me when I’m working, but not the other way around? Hey, hope the writing’s going well. Got something going on, call me immediately when you get this.” He’d be pissed about missing it, but she’d let him interrogate her, a thought that gave Nikki the first smile of her long hard day.
Toby’s eye flicked to Heat in one of his turns, and his smile lost some of its luster when he registered her presence. It gave Nikki second thoughts about coming to see him in this venue, especially after her experience that day on the Intrepid. But he made no move to flee. In fact, when he finished shaking hands with the team mascot, who was attired in fifteenth-century garb as Peter Stuyvesant, Mills made his good-night wave then strode across the stage directly to her and said, “Did you catch my stalker?”
Without hesitating and without lying, Heat said, “Yes. Let’s find a place to talk.”
Heat had arranged to have use of a room nearby and she escorted Toby Mills into a computer lab and gestured to a chair. He noticed Raley and the two waiting uniform cops on the way in and got a funny look on his face when one uniform stayed inside while the other closed the door and posted himself outside with his body blocking the little window slit. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Nikki replied with a question. “Isn’t Jess Ripton here? I’d expect he’d be all over an event like this.”
“Right. Well, he was going to come but called to say he had a sponsor fire to put out and to start without him.”
“Did he say where he was?” asked the detective. Heat already knew The Firewall wasn’t at his office or his apartment.
Mills looked up at the classroom wall clock. “Ten of nine, he’s probably having his second dirty martini at Bouley.”
Without being told, Detective Raley moved to the door. He gave a soft two-tap as he opened it, and the cop in the hall stepped aside to let him out.
The departure of the plainclothes cop wasn’t missed by Toby. “This is starting to weird me out a little here, Detective.”
That was pretty much the effect Heat was hoping to have on the pitcher. Her instincts were on alert that Ripton had broken form and wasn’t there, but on the plus side it gave her a chance to apply pressure on Mills without the security blanket of his handler. “It’s time, Toby.”
He looked perplexed. “Time? Time for what?”
“For us to have a talk about Soleil Gray.” Nikki paused and, when she saw the blinks come to his eyes, continued. “And Reed Wakefield.” She took another beat and, when she could see him dry swallowing, added, “And you.”
He tried his best, he truly did. But as sophisticated as were the circles a multimillionaire athlete in Gotham traveled in, Toby Mills was at heart still the kid from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and his upbringing made him a poor liar. “What about Soleil Gray and . . . Reed? What have they got to do with this? I thought this was about that creep following me and my family around.”
“His name is Morris Granville, Toby.”
“I know that. But he’s always just ‘the creep’ to me. Did you get him or not? You said you got him.”
“We did.” She could see he wanted her to continue, and so she didn’t. Toby Mills wasn’t a star now, he was her interrogation suspect and she was going to run the board, not he. “Tell me how you knew Soleil Gray and Reed Wakefield.”