“You threaten him? Maybe say I’ll do him dirty in the press?”
“If you must know, I haven’t spoken to him. He’s not in yet. Look, don’t give me that face, this won’t be a problem. Trust me, I know how to handle Wally Irons.”
Good enough for Rook. He held the door for her. But she didn’t budge so he closed it again. “What?”
“Irons isn’t the only one who needs to be dealt with. I have a condition, too.”
“Go on.…”
“You have an article to write, and I will honor my commitment so you can keep riding along. But—I have enough stress without adding to it if you’re going to go around bruised or harboring an attitude.”
“I hear you. And just you watch. I can be a team player. I can even still be your court jester.”
“Good.” she said. “Now, we can hash our personal stuff out when all this gets settled. But, until then, Rook, I need to know we can move forward without any more drama.”
“Are you telling me to behave myself?”
She smiled. “See? We’re back to normal already.” Heat pulled the door open and went in. He shrugged then followed.
It sure didn’t feel like a Saturday when they entered the Twentieth. Although Nikki and her homicide detectives worked plenty of weekends when the casework called for it, today the entire station house was in force, not just her section. In the Homicide Squad Room, the big TV on the wall was on, but muted. Raley, Ochoa, and Rhymer were on phones or working their computers. Occasionally one of them would glance up at the storm-track animations or to shake his head at the obligatory live shots of some poor correspondent getting pelted by sand and wind, or dodging palm fronds.
While Heat updated the Murder Board, Rook stared at the crawl on the bottom of the screen beneath the silent video of the Office of Emergency Management team answering press questions from its Brooklyn HQ. The ribbon of text said Connecticut’s and New Jersey’s governors had joined the rest of the region in declaring states of emergency. The Jersey governor had gone so far as to order evacuations of the barrier islands from Cape May up to Sandy Hook, and to tell Atlantic City casinos to close by four Sunday afternoon. Amtrak canceled service on many of its East Coast routes. It was too soon to tell where the hurricane would make landfall, but Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey seemed likeliest targets. New York’s mayor was holding off on evacuations pending more data, but expected Lower Manhattan to be most vulnerable to storm surge, especially Battery Park.
“Not going to stop for a formal meeting,” said Heat to the group. “You guys are busy, and I don’t want to slow you down. Just a few quickies.” She summarized her meeting with Opal Onishi that morning. The feeling she left with was that she was hiding something and Nikki wanted to look deeper into her. When she told them about Rook and Detective Aguinaldo of Southampton Village PD recovering two slugs from a building at the Conscience Point Marina, Nikki got a big reaction, especially from Raley and Ochoa.
“Could make me think twice now about Earl Sliney as the Beauvais shooter,” said Raley.
“Me, too,” added his partner. “Not ready to give it up, but sounds like it could be righteous. Maybe.”
Heat and Roach triangulated a moment of speechless reaffirmation, and all three appeared relieved to have tensions ease. Then she asked them to call the ballistics lab to set up a meeting for her later. “I want to be the squeaky wheel on the slug Inez Aguinaldo delivered there and to drop off the one recovered by Rook.”
“Jameson Rook is…” boomed Ochoa in a hoarse TV promo voice, “The Bullet Whisperer.”
Rook picked right up on it. “I see lead people.…”
Their hissing and belittling of Rook—and his enjoyment of the crap they were giving him—made Heat happy that he could live up to his pledge not to harbor resentment. She brought things back to business, asking Opie about his attempt to lure Alicia Delamater out of hiding. Rhymer said he’d left The Surf Lodge party message as bait the afternoon before. Still no Alicia callback.
Feller slid into the room. “Got something you might be interested in. Remember how Records came up with a prior on Fabian Beauvais?”
“Yes,” said Heat. “It was from a while back. A misdemeanor trespassing bust for Dumpster diving. It’s top of mind because I’ve been trying in vain to connect with Beauvais’s so-called Gateway Lawyer, Reese Cristóbal, so he can put me in touch with the accomplices.”
“Well, your favorite detective went all old school on ya. Real Time Crime Center came up with the last-known addresses you requested, so I went knocking on some pretty seedy doors.” He referred to notes. “OK, one miscreant…moved back to Jamaica ten days ago.”
“Oh, ouch,” said Rook. “Just in time for the hurricane.”
Feller tapped his notepad. “However, his other accomplice, Fidel “FiFi” Figueroa, is also going to get a taste of Sandy, because FiFi is here.”
“Can we go see him?” asked Heat.
“Be stupid not to.” Detective Feller gestured to the hall. “When I said here, I meant right here. He’s in Interrogation-Two.”
“I was told there would be a reward of a monetary nature” were the first words of Fidel Figueroa when Heat and Rook entered the interrogation room. Feller, who was already in there leaning one shoulder against the wall behind the wiry man, simply shook no to Nikki.
“Actually, although we value your cooperation, there is no reward, Mr. Figueroa.”
“FiFi. Everybody calls me that.” He hooked two thumbs to indicate himself. “Fidel Figueroa. FiFi.”
Rook said, “Wouldn’t that be
Fih Fih
?” The silent reproach of the entire room fell on him and he held up a surrendering palm. “But who am I to edit another man’s gangsta handle?”
FiFi kept to his talking point. “So, no money?”
Back when she was a uniform, Heat had arrested scores of guys like Figueroa, usually working street corners on Eighth Avenue off Times Square. If it wasn’t selling counterfeit sunglasses and handbags, it was running short cons like Find the Pea to fleece unwitting Nebraskans in a rigged game. They came in all sizes, shapes, ages, genders, and colors, but all shared the dodgy moves, quick eyes, and body ticks of the career hustler. And they were always seeking the elusive one-up. Even in a police department interrogation room. “Let’s call it banking one for good citizenship,” she said.
The guest brushed his knuckles across the graying line of his chin strap beard then said, “Hey, worth a shot, huh?”
“Why don’t you just tell her what you know about Fabian Beauvais?” said Feller, pushing himself off the wall and looming over the grifter. Heat got a strong manifestation of Randall’s history as a street detective, knowing how to take physical intimidation right up to the line—and effectively.
Fidel scooted his chair an inch away and cowered. “Sure thing, the Haitian. Smart dude, that guy. Rough life, but had the touch, you know?”
“I don’t know,” came back Feller. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Nikki hoped the hustler wasn’t playing them because this was her first real opportunity to get a sense of her victim’s activities. Maybe FiFi would also give her some red meat, too. What that constituted, she would only know through careful listening. This bullshit artist gave her a lot to wade through.
“He had
astucia
. Cleverness. Some guys grow up getting shit on, and all they get is mean.” He brought his forefinger just close enough to his thumb to make a crack to peek through. “These many, just this much, get clever instead. Fabby was new—maybe off the boat just a coupla months after the big quake. That’s when he joined our, um, enterprise.”
“Picking through trash?” said Feller with a sniff. He took a seat on Figueroa’s side of the table and rested a boot on the man’s chair. This time FiFi didn’t shrink. On the contrary, he gave him a derisive side-glance.
“You don’t know, man, you have no clue. You think we were like these hoboes or some shit? Fuck that, man. We were pickers. But not for cans and bottles.”
This felt like it was heading somewhere. Nikki took the contradictory route, seeing now how conflict opened him up. “Well, what else do you call it, climbing into trash bins? I sure as hell wouldn’t call it an enterprise.”
Rook fell in step. “No shit. An enterprise? That’s usually a business undertaking that calls for slightly more resourcefulness than fishing for empties to recycle.”
“What about scoring hundreds of thousands? Millions. Would you call that an enterprise?”
“I would,” said Heat. There were numerous ways to get a witness to talk. Intimidating, cajoling, inducing, begging. She read FiFi as a man who needed to boast. So she fed the hungry egotist. “And you personally know of such a thing?”
“Know it? Hell, I worked it.” He checked himself in the observation mirror and said, “This may get me busted, but what I’ve seen? Whoo. Mind-boggling.”
“I can be boggled,” said Rook. He asked the others, “Anybody else?”
“I worked on a team for an organization that sent hundreds of us out in the field, day and night, to harvest the good stuff out of the trash.”
Nikki shrugged. “Help me here. The good stuff?”
“ID stuff. Bank stuff. Credit card stuff. God, are you people dense?” Of course not, but playing it sure kept him rolling. “Any piece of paper that goes out in the trash with a name, an address, a birth date, a social, a club or union membership, Christmas card with momma’s maiden on it, preapproved credit lines, computer passwords—I shit you not, people throw away papers with their fucking passwords on it.” He laughed to himself. “We’d go out in the city like a little army every night and find all kinds of stuff.”
Feller asked, “And do what with it?”
“Turn it in, of course. For money.”
“Where?” Heat hoped for an address.
“Different places every time. A box truck would come. We’d trade, they paid.” He laughed again, so smart about life, this one. “They hauled it off to some place to process it, don’t know where.” He read her skepticism. “Honest, I don’t. All I know is it got sorted and used for, you know, fake IDs, credit card fraud, the whole buffet. They bought everything off us. Even shreds.”
Rook asked, “What good are shredded documents?”
“You’re kidding, right? Idiots think they’re safe just ’cause they shred. Guess what? Most machines people use are strip cutters. And then what do they do? Put the neatly cut strips in a handy plastic bag for us to pick up and deliver.”
“But they’re shredded,” he persisted.
“In strips. Clean slices—no security. They’ve got tons of people, you know, illegals and such? Sit in a big room and put that stuff together like jigsaw puzzles for pennies an hour. Worth it, too, because why shred it in the first place if it’s not valuable?” He gave a knowing nod and rocked back in his chair with his arms folded.
Nikki now had a direction forming and followed the path to it. “And that’s where you met Fabian Beauvais?” FiFi gave her a you-bet grin. “And what about him was special, this, this…?”
“…
Astucia
? The man was a genius. Example. One day he shows up with a cooler on wheels. I say what are you doing, you bring some Bud Lights for the crew? No. It’s empty. He goes into an office building pretending he’s doing sandwich delivery. Every fucking office building in Manhattan has these guys walking the halls, so who notices another immigrant hawking turkey wraps? Nobody. He’d go in with the empty cooler in broad daylight, bust the padlock on the blue recycling bins in the copy room, or wherever, put the papers into his cooler, roll it out the front door, thank you very much, and sort it all out later.”
“That’s bold,” said Feller.
“Worked great, too. Until the bulls caught him boosting some of the docs, you know, keeping a stash for himself. They were ripshit, man. After they moved him up the chain, let him work ATM skims with them, and all.”
After she and Rook and Feller mind-melded over this bit of news, Heat said. “What do you mean, bulls?”
“You know, the ballbusters. The enforcers for the enterprise that kept us pissing our pants if we got greedy. Or talky.”
The door from the observation room opened quietly over Heat’s shoulder and Raley stepped in, handed her some head shots, and left. “FiFi, I am very impressed with how much you know. Really blown away.” She slid the two pictures of Beauvais’s ATM street
playahs
across the table toward him. He started working his head up and down before they reached him.
“That’s them.”
“The bulls?”
“Yeah. This one’s Mayshon something. And that bad boy’s Earl. Earl Sliney. That dude’s a freak. Laughing one second, and bam, turns on a dime…Scary shit.” He pushed Sliney’s picture away like it carried a curse. “When it went bad with him and Fabby, it got ugly. Said he was going to kill him. Meant it, too.”
“Do you know what documents Fabby—Fabian Beauvais stole?” Nikki held her breath after she asked. So much rode on this.
“No idea.” She tried again, had to. But he still said no.
One more thing and we’re done. “Do you know if Earl Sliney killed Beauvais?”
“Don’t know who killed him. Only what.” He arched a brow. “
Astucia
.”
Something about Keith Gilbert loved a front page. Heat found his smiling picture filling the bulldog edition of the
Ledger
on the rack at Andy’s when she waited for her turkey sandwich and bought a copy of the rag to read on her walk back to the precinct. The headline read:
KING ME
, and the
Ledger
exclusive announced that the powerful New York ex-governor and former UN ambassador known as “The Kingmaker” was giving his endorsement to Gilbert’s senatorial bid.
Even though the nod virtually ensured him a party nomination and a fat war chest of election funds, the candidate-to-be took the PR high road. “
‘This approval means more than anyone can know’ commented Commissioner Gilbert in a written statement. ‘But the time for politics will have to come some other time. Right now I have a job to do keeping the citizens of this region safe from a storm of historic proportions, and that shall be my sole focus.’”
Passing through the precinct lobby Heat tossed the tabloid on the visitor chair beside the hooker waiting for her pimp to be released. Maybe
she’d
swallow that.