“With RTCC and the other databases down I couldn’t check on vice harassment complaints, so I went old-school and started making a surveillance circuit of some of the skin clubs Fat Tommy has a hand in. This afternoon, broad daylight, during the generously titled Gentlemen’s Fashion Lunch at one of the titty bars in East Harlem, I spot Barsotti in the parking lot kicking the snot out of some showgirl in a bathrobe. The dancer’s up at Metropolitan getting stitches. Barsotti’s in Interrogation Two.”
Through the glass of the observation room Joseph Barsotti projected the calm you only see in the conscience-free. Dead eyes, a dead stare, and a mind that had parked its body and gone elsewhere because whatever had to be endured would simply be endured as the bargain made with life and the capo. “How’d you like that to be your collection agency?” asked Feller. It wasn’t likely that the enforcer could hear through the mirror, but Barsotti rotated his chin toward them and, with those vacant eyes, it felt like he took an X-ray through the glass to add targets to his list. Randall shivered. “Whoa, chilly.”
Heat felt her iPhone vibrate. To her relief, Rook had replied to her previous text message suggesting that they meet for dinner. “To continue the conversation,” as Nikki had put it. Her torment easing slightly, she set aside her cell and said, “Randy, I want you to have the honors.”
“Truly?”
“You bagged him, you work him.”
This gesture by the captain, stepping aside to let the detective handle his own interrogation, added an inch to Feller’s height. “Thank you. He’s only going to keep it shut, you know.”
“You never know. Maybe he’ll buckle under the stink.” She left for her office to return calls and make a dent in the mountain of forms she had to complete on the typewriter that had been resurrected from the basement. At least it was electric.
As a professional courtesy, the USPS cop watching the postal truck garage on the north side of Roosevelt Station waved Captain Heat into the driveway and pointed her to a safe spot to park beside one of the idle loading docks. Nikki didn’t like to call in PCs, but relentless administrative grappling hooks had snagged her on her way out of the precinct, and she didn’t want to keep Rook waiting while she hunted for a public space. Or, to be more honest, she wanted to get there first so she could settle herself down. Shame had started to shuffle into her emotional mix, as if sadness and regret about her outburst weren’t enough.
A chilly fog had settled over Manhattan, and Nikki waited for the cone-shaped beam of headlights to pass before she jaywalked from the Midtown East mail center across 55th Street to the restaurant. P. J. Clarke’s, a landmark Irish pub frequented over the years by everyone from Sinatra to Hedy Lamarr to Buddy Holly, occupied the ground floor of a two-story brick building squatting between modern high-rises on 3rd Avenue. Less known, and in Heat’s view, the better for it, a sister restaurant, a warm, clubby steakhouse named the Sidecar, lived on the second floor at P. J. Clarke’s. Part of its mystique was the speakeasy entrance on the sidewalk near the back marked by a small, unassuming sign jutting out above a black door. It gave Nikki a Gotham-throwback feel every time she approached the nondescript entrance, pressed the silent door buzzer, and presented her face to the lipstick camera until the hostess upstairs buzzed her in.
Nikki climbed the double flight of stairs past the curated memorabilia adorning the walls beside vintage Yankees team photos and framed newspaper pages of Mayor LaGuardia, big-band crooners, and last-century prizefighters. Nikki pushed open the door from the stairwell into the festive, muted bustle of the restaurant. The hostess greeted her warmly, but Heat looked past her, surveying the dark wooden bar and the banquettes for Rook. Both disappointed and relieved, Heat said she’d wait to be seated until her other party arrived. The woman moved off to retrieve coats, and Nikki reflexively checked her watch. Somehow, she’d gotten there a minute early. She heard the nearly inaudible purr of the door buzzer and craned over the podium at the surveillance monitor, and there he was, Jameson Rook, smiling up at the lipstick camera, from Heat’s perspective, directly at her. It beat the look she’d gotten from Barsotti thorough the interrogation glass. It beat a lot of things.