OK, fine, she thought. But why today, my first day?
With a sense of renewed balance, if not of buoyancy, she drank her wine standing in the great window, taking a quiet moment to watch the streets reflect neon candy colors as a soft shower passed through Lower Manhattan. Nikki brought her glass up to drain it and, when she brought it down, caught sight of a man in a baseball cap standing on the near corner, staring up at her. She couldn’t make out his features, which were cast in silhouette against the shimmer from the wet streets. She wondered if Detective Feller had begun his assignment of tailing Rook early. But Heat couldn’t be sure that the figure had Randall’s physique, even though there was something familiar about him.
Maloney?
Heat retreated one step back into the shadows and observed the man. In that light, she couldn’t be certain, but he seemed to be still watching her. Nikki picked up her BlackBerry from the coffee table and texted Roach, asking whether they had Maloney under surveillance. Raley and Ochoa immediately group-texted that he hadn’t returned to his apartment. Apparently he had slipped his leash. By the time Heat looked up from the screen, the man was gone.
The next morning, Rook was already in the kitchen when Nikki came out from her shower, dressed for work. “You’re not fooling me, you know,” he said as he leaned across the counter and poured a cup of French roast into the mug beside his. Nikki tensed a little, wondering if he had overheard her call to Feller giving him a heads-up that she and Rook would be leaving separately, and that Rook would probably hail a cab or hitch a Hitch! But then he came around to her beaming a self-satisfied grin. “I pay attention. No uniform today. How good am I?”
“Plus-ten for you, Rook.” Heat slipped her Sig onto the waistband of her jeans and gave the holster a security tug.
“What’s the matter? Didn’t like the way the kids made fun of you at school yesterday?”
“Oh, please.”
“One mobster says you look like you’re in the St. Paddy’s Parade, and you change everything? I thought you were made of stouter stuff, Ms. Heat. Or is it still Captain Heat? With all the denim and cashmere you have going on there, it’s, frankly, fried out a few of my circuits.”
“It’s a choice I made.”
“And you’re allowed to just do that? Aren’t there regulations about what you folks wear?”
“Sure, but there’s room for discretion.” She added some Equal to her coffee; he stirred it. “Spending another day doing detective work in full regalia isn’t something I’m going to do.”
“So it was Fat Tommy’s smack talk.”
“Fat Tommy can bite my ass.”
He gave his eyebrows a Groucho flicker, and bent for a salacious look-see. “And in those jeans, who wouldn’t want to?”
“Rook.”
“Fat Tommy’d have to take a number. And who’d be first? Me. Doing an Ickey shuffle like the big man himself at the cold cuts counter. ‘Whoo! I’m next. I am gonna bite Nikki’s ass.’”
Heat laughed so hard she had to set her mug down. And while she caught her breath, the thought surfaced again about calling off the tail. A short-lived waver, as it turned out.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m going to have to split off from you today. Don’t ask why, OK? I’m not answering.”
“Are you shopping for a wedding venue?”
“No.” He slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Dang. Got me. I said I wasn’t answering.” But Rook’s impishness faded when he saw her all-business stare.
“You do what you have to do, Rook. And I will do what I have to.”
“Ooh. Chilly in here.”
“Just giving you fair warning. This cuts two ways. You’re holding. I’m digging. Someone put a bullet in a member of the police family. My shrink. And your…?” She left the thought hanging there, giving him ample chance to Mad Lib the blank. But he didn’t, so she pulled a go cup from the cabinet and poured her coffee into it.