“Yes.”
“You don’t mean that.” He studied her. “OK, you do. Which is why I didn’t want to tell you. But what could I say to her? Tell her you didn’t want to hear whatever information she had? And what if it’s useful?”
“You could have done this by yourself.”
“She wanted to talk to the police. That would be you. Come on, we’re here, it’s the end of the day, what have you got to lose?”
Nikki put on a smile and turned to walk to the table. On her way, still grinning, she quietly said to him, “You are so going to pay for this.” And then she let her smile grow as they approached Margaret Rook.
She was seated in a corner banquette, regally situated between the caricatures of José Ferrer and Danny Thomas. It occurred to Nikki Heat that the setting for Margaret Rook was probably always regal. And if it wasn’t, she made it so. Even at the poker game in Rook’s loft when Nikki met her last summer, his mother’s presence had been decidedly more Monte Carlo than Atlantic City.
After hugs and hellos, they sat. “Is this your usual table?” Nikki asked. “Nice and quiet.”
“Well, it’s before the pre-theater rush. Trust me, kiddo, it will get loud enough when the buses unload from New Jersey and White Plains. But yes, I like this table.”
“It’s her favorite view,” said Rook. He twisted in his chair, and Heat followed his gaze to his mother’s own caricature on the facing wall. The Grand Damn of Broadway, as he called her, smiled back from the 1970s.
Mrs. Rook draped her cool fingers on Nikki’s wrist and said, “I have a feeling your caricature might have been up there, too, if you had stuck with theater after college.” It jarred Nikki that Rook’s mother knew this, since she’d never mentioned it to her, but then it came to her. The article. That damned article. “I would like another Jameson,” said the actress.
“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me,” said Rook, probably not for the first time in his life. Nikki asked the waiter for a Diet Coke and Rook ordered an espresso.
“Right, you’re on duty, Detective Heat.”
“Yes, Jameso— Jamie said you could tell me something about Cassidy Towne.”
“Yes, do you want to hear it now, or wait for cocktails?”
“Now,” said Heat and Rook in unison.
“Very well, then, but if I get interrupted, don’t blame me. Jamie, you do remember Elizabeth Essex?”
“No.”
“Look at him. It always irritates Jamie when I tell him stories about people he doesn’t know.”
“Actually, it only bugs me when you tell them two or three times and I still don’t know who they are. This will just be the first time, so go, Mother, go.”
Nikki prodded her more gently by giving her what she wanted, an official ear. “You have relevant information to the Cassidy Towne case? Did you know her?”
“Only in passing, which was how I liked it. We all trade in favors, but she reduced the high art to low commerce. When she was new at the paper, Cassidy would invite me to drinks and ask me to trade her house seats for planting items about me in her column. Oh, I made sure I paid for the drinks. It was different with male actors. She would promise a lot of men ink in exchange for sex. From what I heard, she wasn’t always good for her end of the bargain, either.”
“So is your information about her . . . recent?” Nikki asked with hope attached.
“Yes. Now, Elizabeth Essex—write that name down, you’ll need it—Elizabeth is a marvelous patroness of the arts. She and I are on the committee to bring an outdoor program of Shakespeare soliloquies to the fountain at Lincoln Center next summer. This afternoon we met with Esmeralda Montes from the Central Park Conservancy for lunch at Bar Boulud before it gets too cool for the patio seating.”