He pulled up into a shrug and left his shoulders like that, nearly touching his ears, as he said, “I cannot be sure. He was black man. His name, I can no longer be sure.” Heat took the photo of Beauvais from Feller and held it up, but before she could ask him, Ivan said, “Is him? Not him? I cannot be sure now. Very traumatic night. I had been sleeping, you know, I startle awake.”
No sense prolonging the agony. “Mr. Gogol? Mr. Gogol, please look at me. Thank you. I need you to think about this before you answer. Just yesterday you told us that this man here,” she tapped the Beauvais picture, “had been shot and that you treated him, and that he told you the name of who shot him was Keith Gilbert. Isn’t that the truth?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Mr. Gogol.”
“This man say many things. Maybe delirious or drunk from getting in bar fight and shot that way. Yes, that is what I think happened. The drinking.”
Nikki stared at Ivan Gogol. His wasn’t the face of a liar. What she read on him was fear. Almost panic. Someone had said—or done—something to turn him into a wreck. Heat’s concern for him blended with her own as she witnessed a critical piece of her case—her airtight case—deflate before her eyes. “Ivan, if you are at all afraid, please know that the NYPD will provide you with—”
“Enough. I will say nothing more.” He pushed the pad away again with such force that the pen slid off the table and clacked somewhere below on the linoleum. Nobody reached to pick it up. It was going to be of no use.
The old salts working the Atlantic off Long Island didn’t have Doppler radar, computer models, or satellite imagery to predict a brewing storm. They smelled the air, watched the birds, or consulted the Farmers’ Almanac, if the pages hadn’t been torn out in the privy. Of course, they also got surprised a lot. In 1938 the Long Island Express slammed into the Northeast killing about eight hundred people who got little advance notice. So much for red skies in the morning.
Detective Heat only had sunshine and sixty-two degrees to ponder as she drove past the exit for the Fire Island National Seashore. Instead of scoping out weather telltales, her attention went to patrolling side and rearview mirrors in case a certain Impala or vehicle yet-to-be-detected seemed to be following. After the attack in Chelsea she knew Captain Irons would insist on a uni driver or even try to make her take a blue-and-white to Southampton, so Nikki ducked out to her plain wrap Taurus right after the busted interview with Ivan Gogol to ensure some needed solitude for the trip.
Could it really have been only two days before that she covered this same road with Rook? So much had changed in that span, and little of it for the better. Notably Rook, not riding along. Whatever he was doing at that moment, she only hoped it would not result in further disruption. Nikki pushed to stay positive. Sure, the Russian doctor had crapped out, yet she had her warrant. But the situation felt much too fluid to let her relax.
Heat had begun by seeing Beauvais’s planetarium crash and the home invasion on West End Avenue as two different cases. But then came the connection between the Haitian couple as lovers. And now—thanks to Lauren Parry—the forensic nexus between the SRO goons and Jeanne Capois tied them together, as well. However, the rise of Earl Sliney as the possible shooter jumbled things. Nikki wondered, was she really working one case, or could she possibly be back to two?