“Damn straight I won’t. Know what they’ll do to me if I talk?”
“What did Fabian Beauvais take from you guys.”
“I said I’m not talking.”
“That’s too bad. Because I was going to offer you a plea deal. Hurricane special. Because, you see, Mitch, we are really good at finding things out. What do you think we’ll learn when we check your cell phone for calls?”
He looked up at Rook, who said, “Oh, yes. Any call to you, or from you.”
“Mitch, don’t you think we’ll figure out who you work for?” Heat let him stew on that for a while and snapped her fingers. “Wait, I have a terrific idea. Do you shred your papers, Mitch? Because I am going to have our Crime Scene Unit go through your trash. Here at your little office and at your home. What will we find, Mitch? Check stub? An e-mail you printed carelessly?”
Rook tagged in. “Lucky you like to work out, Mitch. New York prisons have the best weight facilities. A piece of advice? I’d be careful who spots you. Some of those lifers act clumsy, but I think they just like to see what happens when heavy iron lands on a throat.”
Mitch started to squirm. He gave Heat a nervous look, and she said, “Don’t listen to him. Nobody’s going to bother you in the exercise room. A build like yours, someone will most likely test you out in the recreation yard or in the chow line. Put a shiv in a big fella like you, that’s going to buy some gangster a lot of cred.” She patted his knee. “Too bad. You had a chance to take the deal.”
As soon as she stood, Mitch said, “OK.”
On their rush to the car Rook called to Heat in the lobby near the display cases. “Wait.” She stopped and turned.
“Wait? Really?”
“Gotta do one thing. I’ll hate myself if I don’t.” He held up a pause finger and ran back into the warehouse. Nikki stepped in the doorway and watched him jog past Mitch and the officers who were about to lead him off. He arced around a mound of old PCs and stopped at the confetti pile. He paused over it a beat, then turned and opened the back door. The howling winds moaned and lifted the piles into the air, grabbing at them with greedy force and sucked the shreds out of the warehouse, scattering them into the maelstrom.
When they were gone, now just ticker tape in the storm, Rook pulled the door closed. He passed Heat on his way out again and said, “Whoopsie.”
The high tide wasn’t supposed to crest for almost two hours, but when they passed Wall Street just past 7 P.M., the wheels of Heat’s car were rim-deep in East River overflow. The TAC frequencies were lively, to say the least. They heard reports that the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel had begun to take on seawater, that numerous residents were stranded in elevators in the downtown-most high-rises because Con Ed had cut power as a precaution, and that the entire fa?ade had shorn off an apartment building in Chelsea, exposing all four stories of front rooms to the street. “Would not want to be the guy sitting on the can with the Ledger in that building,” commented Rook, who then gave a jaunty wave. “Hello, New York City.”
Heat appraised him and said, “How old are you?”
“Go ahead, hate me for my highly visual imagination.”
On Beaver Street the power was still on when Nikki parked, but the streetlights didn’t keep her from bumping the curb with her front tire because it was submerged. She checked her mirrors and gave the block a full rotation. All the retail shops were closed, as was the Delmonico’s restaurant on the corner. Nobody was out driving, and the only vehicles on the street were parked cars and a UPS truck, all of which were empty. “I’m not seeing our boys.”