Where indeed?
He told Nikki that what happened at the Dragonfly was all an accident. Up in Reed’s suite they played a game reciting famous movie titles, substituting the word “penis” for key nouns—Must Love Penis. ET the Extra Penis. GI Joe: The Rise of the Penis—while Toby laid out the portable pharmacy on the coffee table. Heat pressed him for details, and he listed pot, cocaine, and some amyl nitrate poppers. Reed had a stash of heroin that didn’t interest Toby and a bunch of Ambien he said he used to help him sleep. He also said it was awesome for sex, and he and Soleil both downed some with vodka straight from a bottle they kept jammed into a room service ice bucket.
While Soleil and Reed went into the bedroom, Toby said he put on some music to drown out their screwing and watched ESPN with the sound off.
When he heard Soleil screaming, he thought it was her orgasm at first, but Mills said she ran out into the living room naked, out of control, shouting, “He’s not breathing, do something, I think he’s dead!”
Toby went in the bedroom with her and flipped on the lights, and Reed was all gray-faced and had saliva bubbles in the corner of his mouth. Toby said they both kept yelling his name and shaking him and got no answer. Toby finally felt his wrist and couldn’t find any pulse, and they both freaked.
Toby speed-dialed Jess Ripton and got him out of bed. His handler told him to calm down and to keep quiet and stay put in the room. He told him to turn off the loud music and not to touch anything else and just wait there. When Toby asked if they should call an ambulance, Jess said, “Fuck no,” not to call anybody or even think about leaving the room. He amended that, directing him to call his limo driver and tell him to be out front and ready to go when he was, but not to say why or sound upset when he called. Jess said he would get there as soon as he could and would call when he was coming up. He warned Toby not to open the door for anyone else.
But when Toby finished his call with Jess, he went to tell Soleil what was happening and she was hanging up the house phone in the bathroom. Two minutes later Derek Snow came to the door. Toby said not to let him in, but Soleil didn’t listen and said the concierge would help, that they knew each other. As Nikki knew, Soleil had shot him in the leg only months before and had paid him off handsomely. Many relationships were built on less.
Derek wanted to call 911, but Toby was insistent and started to think he’d have to do something about this concierge. But Soleil took Derek aside and promised him a lot of money to be cool. When Derek asked what he could do, Toby told him to chill and just wait for his man to get there.
It turned out Derek was cooperative, and while Soleil finished getting dressed—not an easy feat considering all she had ingested—Snow helped Toby pack the drugs back into his gym bag. Twenty minutes later, Toby’s cell phone rang. Jess Ripton was on his way up. When he came into the room, he told them it was all going to be OK.
Jess wasn’t prepared to find Derek there, but he took him as a fact to deal with and put him to use, ushering Toby and Soleil out of there using the stairwell. On their way out, Jess told Derek that only he should touch doorknobs and to come back up after he delivered them to the limo.
Toby concluded his confession by saying that when they got outside the Dragonfly, Soleil was still freaked and didn’t want to ride with him. The last he saw of her she was running off crying into the night. Then he told the limo driver to take him home to his family in Westchester.
On Chambers Street, outside the front door of Stuyvesant High, Heat was about to get into her car when the Roach Coach pulled alongside her and stopped.
“Still no sign of Jess Ripton,” said Ochoa out the passenger window. “Not at Bouley, not at Nobu, or Craftbar. We checked all his other usual haunts and watering holes Toby gave us. Nada.”