“I also want a team to work the Dragonfly. Malcolm, you and . . . how about Reynolds from Vice? Cover the usual coworker angles, beefs with guests or vendors, the union. But it is a hotel, so look into the vice aspects, too. He was a concierge, and rumor has it some of them actually have been known to procure.” She paused again for the chuckles to subside. “But our best connection is through a new person of interest, the rock singer, Soleil Gray, who connects—loosely, so far—to Cassidy Towne and to Derek Snow. Rook, any thoughts on Snow’s connection?”
She had startled him from a thought. His Moleskine dropped to the floor, where he left it. He almost stood, but that would be dorky, so he just sat a little straighter, feeling all the cop stares turned his way. “Uh, yeah, actually, I have something very interesting now that I hear he worked at the Dragonfly. Before I knew the specific hotel, I assumed the connection might be he was one of Cassidy Towne’s sources. Cassidy paid her sources for their tips. That’s unusual. Richard Johnson of ‘Page Six’ at the Post told me he doesn’t pay tipsters. Other papers don’t have the budget. But she did, and they were mostly in personal service industries. Limo drivers, private trainers, cooks, masseuses, and, of course, hotel employees. Concierges.” He started to relax as he saw the nods of understanding from the detectives.
“That’s a viable theory, so we’ll go with that for now,” said Heat, as one of the detectives handed Rook his Moleskine with a nod and a smile.
“I’m not done,” Rook said. “That was where I came down before I just heard he worked at the Dragonfly. That’s the hotel where Reed Wakefield died last May. Soleil Gray’s fiancé.”
Heat didn’t like to bigfoot Malcolm and Reynolds, but she wanted to check out the Dragonfly herself. Those two detectives could cover the other angles, but she wanted to check out the Reed Wakefield death. Nikki called ahead to Lauren Parry to tell the ME she would be later than planned. While she had her friend on the phone, Heat asked her if she could look up the coroner findings on Wakefield, then she and Rook headed for SoHo. Lauren called back while Nikki was parking in an open space in front of Balthazar, just around the corner from the hotel on Crosby.
“COD was toxic overdose, ruled accidental,” said the medical examiner. “Deceased was a habitual user, a self-medicator. Looked from his history like one of those seesaw cases, you know, took something to bring himself up, then something else to level it off, something else to set him down. Blood work and stomach showed high alcohol, plus toxic amounts of cocaine, amyl nitrate, and Ambien.”
“I have the file on its way to my office, but I’m on the road. Is there a notation in yours about the inquest?”
“Yeah, of course. And we all talked about it here, too, so I remember it pretty well from the office buzz. They took a close look, especially after Heath Ledger, to cover all the bases. He was depressive, distraught after his engagement broke off, but gave no hints of suicidal thoughts. They interviewed coworkers, family, even the ex.”
“Soleil Gray?”
“Right,” said Lauren. “Everyone says the same thing. He was pretty much to himself the final month of shooting his last movie. When it wrapped, he went to the hotel in SoHo, basically, to cocoon and shut out the world.”
Nikki thanked her for the crib notes and apologized for being late. “If you want, I could just get your Derek Snow report over the phone.”
“Not on your life,” said Lauren. “You get your happy ass down here when you’re done.” And then she left it with a cryptic “I promise to make it worth your while.”