Heat crossed the blacktop to her tipster after he got out of the passenger seat and gave him her most welcoming smile and a friendly handshake. She had already slid her badge further back on her belt so that he wouldn’t spot it and freeze up. She made out Speyer to be about forty-six to forty-eight, with the kind of cheerful bad-boy face that some women find irresistible, and the faded-glory level of fitness you see in suburban sports coaches. Nikki wondered if the previous night’s Gotham slumber party had been with a soccer mom or a lucky customer, then banished all that as distracting. “Hi, Mr. Speyer, I’m Nikki,” she said, careful to keep it informal. No sense introducing rank-caused jitters. “I want to thank you for your cooperation, and I want to assure you, right off, that your assistance will remain just between us.”
“Good. ’Cause I’ll end up in court if it gets out I was here. According to my wife, I’m supposed to be in East Meadow on a big condo contract all this week.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” In order to move away from the subject of adultery before he retreated, she added, “Why don’t you describe exactly what you saw.”
Speyer massaged the back of his thick neck and said, “Sure. We were heading to dinner up at Neary’s, you know, that Irish spot, when this asshole in a silver van cuts me off and hits the brakes right in front of me. I give him a dose of horn, but then I see these three big dudes coming, and figure I’d better cool it. Then I see they’re wrestling this guy who no way wants to go with them. My lady says we should get out of there, but my dad was a fireman, you know? It’s in the blood to help. I tell her let’s just follow and see what’s what, you never know. Then when I see this lady get dropped in the gutter, I say, ‘No brainer, we’re on these dudes.’”
Speyer described the route, and Heat was happy to see Randall Feller taking notes behind him, out of his view. From the East Side they had taken the FDR south past the Williamsburg Bridge, finding their way to South Street and then to the place where they now stood. “We didn’t want to get too close. Who knew what the fuck they were up to. Or carrying. So I hung back there near the street and watched. They pull up to that ramp down there.” He made a chop with one hand toward an incline to the East River. “Then they drag the same guy out and take him down to this motorboat that’s waiting. They load him in and it takes off.”
With her heart lashing her rib cage, Nikki asked, “What about the man? Did he seem all right? Hurt? Was he struggling?”
“Naw, he wasn’t fighting at all. He seemed sort of out of it. Upright, but these guys were big, and they were basically carrying him one on each shoulder.”
“Drugged?”
“I’d say so. Or they’d fucking cold-cocked his ass. He had a lot of blood on his shirt.”
Nikki felt herself lose feeling in her hands and feet.
Feller picked up on it and stepped in to distract her. “Tell us about the boat.”
“Not much to tell, and we didn’t hang around, I’ll tell you that.”
Every detective knows that when an eyewitness says there’s not much to tell, it’s only because they haven’t been asked the right questions yet. Randall had a few. “Did it have any numbers? Maybe a name or markings?”
“I’m sure it had numbers and such, but it was too far to read.”
“Could you see what color it was?”
“It was night, much darker than now.” They looked east. The sun was not yet up, and oystery clouds hung low.
Heat had regained her equilibrium and joined in. “But I see some lights there on the pier; they’re still on.”
“Hmm, I’m thinking blue. The boat was blue.”
“Good,” said Feller. “All kinds of blue, Alvin. Navy, powder, light, dark?”
“Light and bright. Kinda like the sky, I’d say.”
“Sky blue.”
“Yeah, I’d definitely call it sky blue. Open boat, too. Like a skiff. Big outboard. That thing hauled.”
“So you actually saw it leave?” asked Nikki. “Did you see where it went?”
“It was foggy, so I lost it. But the direction was sort of that way.” He straight-armed toward Brooklyn.
Nothing definitive—but more than they had had five minutes before.