“You wouldn’t.”
She smiled again. “Let me ask you a question. How’s your investigative report going to proceed when I hold you off the street for seventy-two hours, isolated from what’s going on, sequestered from information?”
She could see his wheels turning. It looked like she had him. But then he said, “That’s a nice bluff.”
“You willing to try me?”
“My lawyer would spring me.”
“If he could find you. You like to play games? I’ll play Hide the Client. It’s been done. The New York jail system is one massive bureaucracy.”
They held a mini stare-down. Before either could blink, Detective Raley pulled the door open and stood half in the sound lock. He wore his excited face and gave Heat a beckoning nod. When she joined him, he spoke in a low tone. “Thought you’d want to know right away. Got a hit on the gait analysis we did on that dude on security video at Lon King’s medical building.”
Behind her, Heat could hear a chair scrape the floor tile. When she flashed a quick glance to the magic mirror she caught Rook leaning over the table, straining to hear what they were saying. Not only, it seemed, was Raley her King of All Surveillance Media but his timing couldn’t have been better if his interruption had been planned. “Who’s our dude?” she said, then she made an obvious turn to shoulder-check Rook. “Wait. Let’s step out so we can have some privacy.”
Inside the Ob room, Raley showed Nikki the prison mug shot of the man matching the result of the gait analysis. Her first thought, a disappointing one, was that Joseph Barsotti was not the same man who had broken into Lon King’s and Sampson Stallings’s apartment that morning. But at least she had a name for one of the two unnameds circling this case. “Is this high-confidence?” she asked.
“Very. They had him banked in numerous surveillance videos—both RICO and NYPD Organized Crime Unit—walking the walk at meet-ups in Howard Beach, Belmont Park racetrack, even at a mob funeral. He pinged multiple matches for the swing phase of his stride and a telltale…let me get this right…” Sean paused to look at his notes. “Here it is: a ‘telltale circumduction of his right leg.’ That means he rolls it out slightly with each step.”
“You have an address?”
The detective shook his head. “Last residence is now vacant. We’re running down other leads. Including known associates. You ready for one of them? Tomasso Nicolosi.”
“Fat Tommy?” Heat raised her eyes to the glass and caught Rook, fidgeting, eyeing the door. “Good work, Rales. Let me know right away when you have a line on him.”
Heat strode back into the box and found Rook trying to act nonchalant but not pulling it off.
“Who was the dude with the telltale gait? My money’s still on John Cleese,” he said with that grin that usually melted her from half a block away.
But this was about as far from usual as they could get. Nikki remained circumspect. She gathered up the pad and pen she had left behind and said, “The booking sergeant will be in to process you in a few minutes.”
“Wait. You’re serious?”
“If it helps, there’ll be some good sex waiting for you when you get out. I still loves me a bad boy.”
Heat’s hand was six inches from the doorknob when he called out, “Wait.” His head was bobbing when she turned back. “OK,” he said.
Nikki sat across from him again. “I think your cooperation with my investigation will be noted as a timely show of good faith.”
“You’re twisting the knife.”
“I know.” She uncapped her ballpoint. “You want to be in the game, you can’t sub on the other team.”