Eric Vreeland seemed quite at ease seated with his hands loosely clasped on the table in Interrogation One. He wore a well-cut off-the-rack suit and one of those French-blue shirts that you still saw around but which had been more standard issue for the MBAs who had been released to roam lower Manhattan about ten years before. His hair was the shadow of another time as well, and the way Heat handicapped it, she figured he was about a year from either plugs or a shave, with a possible intermediate stop for Julius Caesar bangs before a confrontation with denial forced the Big Decision.
“Are we just going to sit here like this?” he said at last. “I’m not getting any younger.”
It’s like your reading my mind, Nikki thought, noticing the horizontal line above his gut, a dent made by the male shapewear she had felt when she frisked him back in Throggs Neck. “Ball’s in your court, Mr. Vreeland. All you have to do is start answering some of my questions, and we can move this right along.”
His response was to scope himself briefly in the magic mirror, then study his hands. Nikki made out the ghost of an absent wedding band, completing her midlife assessment of one Eric Vreeland.
One the other side of the mirror, in the Observation Room, Rook stepped in to find Raley and Ochoa watching the interview through the glass. “Aw, hell, she started without me.”
“Snooze, you lose, homes,” said Ochoa.
“For your information, home-away-from-home skillet, I was anything but snoozing. I made a call to one of my contacts to see what I could scare up about Timothy Maloney.”
“Whadja get?” asked Raley.
“Time will tell. Just laying my groundwork.” The lull in Interrogation One matched the uncomfortable silence between the partners in the Ob room. Rook turreted his head back and forth from Raley to Ochoa, who had mutually created a gulf between them by standing at opposite ends of the window. “Anything I can do to help you guys?”
Ochoa said, “Just keep turning over rocks with your contacts like you are. Maybe one will pay off.”
“I don’t mean help you with the case. I mean help you with this.” He held his hands apart as if to measure the distance between them. “You think nobody notices the tension? Maybe you two need to go out and get drunk. Or go to a movie. Or get drunk at a movie, I’ve done that—although, it was at a porn theater, purely for research on an article. I mean, why else would I pay money to see Lord of the Cock Rings? That’s not even subtle, is it?” He paused. “I seem to have lost you.”
“It’s not that you lost me,” said Raley. “I just don’t want to talk about it. Some things are not for open conversation. For instance, you don’t see us commenting on whatever’s going on between you and Heat.”
That took Rook plenty aback. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Raley smirked. “There you go. That’s how you keep people from getting into your shit. Deny and clam up.”
Eric Vreeland’s voice came on the speakers, and they turned their attention back to the box. Rook, however, did so with his attention suddenly divided by Raley’s remark.
“My lawyer’s on the way. You think I’m going to say anything about anything without her here?”
In fact, as patient as she was playing it, hoping the man would feel uncomfortable with the silences, Heat was quite aware of the ticking clock, and of the need to move things forward before the attorney showed. She transitioned to impatience. “That’s how it works for you scumbags. Do what you please, create your own morality, even break the law because you have something bigger on your side: money and the lawyers it buys.”
“What the hell?” Finally some reaction. He put his hands in his lap and dried his palms on his thighs. “I am a licensed private investigator.”
“On record as being on retainer to SwiftRageous, LLC.”