Frozen Heat (2012) (47 page)

“No.”

“And you have no thoughts about where she might have hidden it?”

“No. Wherever it is, she hid it very well.”

“You found Nicole Bernardin’s drop.”

“I told you, I don’t know. Don’t you think I’ve been through this on my own a million times?”

After a crisp nod, he got to his point. “I want you to cooperate with me on this.”

“I have been. Are you listening?”

“I mean moving forward.”

“I work for NYPD.”

“I work for the American people.”

“Then use your speed dial to call an American downtown at headquarters, then I’m all yours. Otherwise, thanks for the visit.”

She was almost to York with her hand up for a cab when he walked toward her, trying out any leverage he could bring to bear. “Think about this. Doesn’t the fact that someone can reach one of your prisoners and kill him while he’s in custody tell you something about how serious this threat could be?”

“I can’t help. I simply don’t have anything to give you.”

“I could help you get Tyler Wynn.”

Or, thought Nikki, keep me from getting him if it didn’t serve your purposes. She said, “Thanks for the tip on the wafel,” and got into her taxi.

Heat got back to her apartment that evening and Rook got up from his MacBook at her dining room table to greet her with a deep kiss. He folded his long arms around her and they melted into each other where they stood. After they held each other a moment, he said, “You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?”

“Standing up? Are you calling me a horse?”

“Neigh,” he said, and she laughed for the first time that day.

“So stupid.” She laughed again because it was stupid. And welcome. She cupped a hand on his jaw and caressed his cheek.

When he asked her how she was managing, she told him the truth. That the day had been a struggle and that she craved a warm bath. But after he mentioned he’d made a pitcher of Caipirinhas, the bath went on hold and the glasses came out.

They settled on the couch and she filled him in on her meeting with Bart Callan. “So that was your mysterious lunch engagement, DHS?”

For a moment, she thought about telling him about her shrink session but felt too spent to open up that topic and let it go. But then Nikki considered what Lon King had said about her reticence to reveal herself—his version of the wall speech—and she said, “No, I saw my shrink.”

“So you’ve gone from calling him ‘the’ shrink to ‘my’ shrink? That’s new.”

“Let drop it, OK?” Baby steps, she thought, baby steps.

But he persisted. “I think it’s good for you. If ever there was a time, Nikki. For the Petar baggage alone, if not for Don.”

“Speaking of Don,” she said, seizing an alternate topic to steer the conversation elsewhere. “I’m planning to fly to San Diego day after tomorrow. His family is holding a memorial at the navy base.”

“I’d like to go with you, if that’s all right.”

Nikki’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’d do that?” Rook’s smile said yes, and she leaned forward and kissed it, beautiful to her as it was.

They snuggled for a moment, and after just the right amount of stillness, he said, “But if Petar has a funeral? I’m busy.” The shock and poor taste of it made her laugh the way only Rook could, making the unsayable funny because it wasn’t unthinkable.

Then her brow darkened. He knew what that was about. She didn’t need to say anything. “I know it’s disheartening. You solve this huge case only to have it lead to another dead end. We’ll find out what’s behind this. Just not now.”

“But suppose what both Petar and Bart Callan said is true, that something big is coming that needs to be stopped?”

“At this point, I don’t know where to go with that. And from what you said about Agent Callan, the feds don’t either. Obviously Tyler Wynn is the key. It’s all about whoever he’s working for now. What did my friend Anatoly say that night in Paris? That it’s a new era and that when spies turn it’s not for other governments but—what did he call them—’other entities’?”

She rubbed her face in her palms. “It all feels bigger than me right now.”

“Nikki? That’s all right.” Rook put a hand on each of her shoulders and turned her to him. “You don’t have to be the one-person crime task force. You’ve already done a great job. Right now you could plant the flag, declare victory, and move on. Nobody would fault you.” And then he added, “I’ll be with you, either way.”

Everything rolled up in that sentence warmed her to the core, and Nikki said, “That helps, thanks.” She set her unfinished drink on the coffee table. “Would you be terribly offended if I took that bath and just spent some alone time here tonight?”

“You want to cocoon?”

“Desperately. I need it.”

“You’ve got it.”

Rook packed up his laptop and notes into his backpack, and after they kissed at the door, he said, “Think about this tonight in your jammies.”

“OK.”

“One thing that’s made this worth the trip: At least you learned your mother wasn’t having an affair. And she wasn’t a traitor. In fact, your mom was a hero.”

“Yeah, you know what F. Scott Fitzgerald said, though. ‘Show me a hero …’”

”’… I’ll write you a tragedy.’”

“Plus,” she said, “noble cause or not, I still feel pissed that she shut me out of so much of her life. Intellectually, I can say I want to forgive her, but the truth is, I don’t feel it. Not yet.”

“I understand,” said Rook. “Listen, I’m no shrink, but if I were, what I’d suggest is that maybe the best you can do in the meantime is find some way to connect with her and see where that goes.”

She floated in the indulgent warmth of lavender-scented water until the next track loaded on her boom box: Mary J. Blige, testifying to “No More Drama.” Nikki sang along at first, belting it out, but then became an audience of one receiving the message of the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul about standing for yourself, ending the pain and the game. Nikki had heard the song many times, but—like the answering machine recording that documented her mother’s stabbing—that day, it came to new ears. Especially the part about not knowing where the story ended, only where it began.

Sitting cross-legged on the couch with a hot cup of chamomile and wet hair dampening the terry shoulders of her robe, Nikki traced her mother’s life story into her own. She tried not to dwell on the blemishes Cynthia Heat’s secret life had created. Of course there were the absences that bred longings and fears, but more impactful were the learned traits that Nikki had so elegantly carried into her own life and selectively employed: caution, secretiveness, isolation. These could be her never-ending story, if she allowed it. The shrink had cautioned her to accept that her mother was dead, but Nikki knew her mother’s story would live on through her and that her mother still resided in her heart, as she always would.

Still, Nikki sought the beginning of a story. One that fastened itself to the many good things received from her mother that so outweighed the rest. Or, at least, they would, if she chose no drama.

In her living room in the solitude of the night she owned, Heat’s choice was to reflect on virtues and gifts. On the independence she’d gained from the upbringing her mother gave her. The sense of wonder, of imagination, of standards, and character, the value of hard work, of goodness itself, and the power of love. The new story she began went on like that, a tale of glasses that grew from half-full to brimming the more she composed it. It told her that laughter transcended, forgiveness healed, and music enkindled the coldest of hearts.

Music.

Nikki stared at the piano across the room.

Her mother had played it beautifully and shared its wonder with her. Why had it gained so much power in silence?

A flutter rose in her breast as she recalled Rook’s parting words about finding some way to connect with her again. The flutter became dread, but she chose courage and stood anyway. As she crossed the rug to the baby grand, her dread melted away and became something that buoyed her as she lifted the bench’s seat to take out the top booklet of sheet music.
Mozart for Young Hands
.

It was the first time in ten years she had opened that bench; even longer since she had held that book. Nikki was certain it had been lost.

She had been nineteen when she last lifted the cover on the Steinway. Nikki hesitated, not to falter but to mark the new passage.

The hinges on the cover creaked as she opened it and exposed the keys. Her fingers trembled with the anticipation of every one of her childhood recitals as Nikki sat, opened the music book to the first page, pumped the pedals for feel, and then began to play.

For the first time in a decade, music from that cherished instrument filled the apartment, and it came out of Nikki by way of Cynthia. Music is sense memory; however, it’s muscle memory, too, so she misstruck a few keys, but that only made her smile as she began Mozart’s Sonata Number Fifteen. Her play, which felt so rote and halting at first, slowly became more fluid and graceful. She fumbled, though, when she got to the bottom of the page and had trouble coordinating the turn with her fingering. Or maybe it was the tears that had clouded her vision. She wiped them away and prepared to resume, but stopped.

Nikki frowned and looked at the sheet music, confused. She leaned forward to the booklet on the stand and saw strange pencil marks in her mother’s handwriting between the notes.

Her mom had always told her that Mozart considered the space between the notes music, too, but these were not music notations that she recognized, but something else.

But what?

Heat snapped the light up one more notch and held the music book under its brightness to study the marks. To her eye, they appeared to be some sort of code.

She began to rock slightly on the bench and the floor felt like it shook. Nikki thought she was experiencing another aftershock. But then she looked around her.

The rest of the room sat perfectly still.

I participated in a mystery authors panel at the New York Public Library recently, and, as usual, it was the opening question. An aspiring novelist in the front row wanted to know about my habits. Did I write in the morning or evening? Use a pen or a keyboard? Auto spellcheck on or off? I gave my standard answer: I don’t have any habits. In fact, as I sit here now at dawn’s first light, filling my Hemingway Montblanc (medium nib) with Noodler’s Baystate Blue, a stack of thirty crisp, blank, annotation-ruled, twenty-two-pound Levenger sheets ready on my slant-angle editor’s desk, I’ve got to ask, where does a question like that even come from?

Not saying I do, but if I actually did have any habits, they’d probably stem from the fact that, if I’m doing it right—if I
am
hanging it all out there riding the bucking back of an untamed story—my little rituals would be the only things under my control. Writing a mystery is a bit like a trip to Atlantic City. Even though you’ve been there before, you can never be sure what will happen. You go sleepless for days, try crazy shit you wouldn’t otherwise dream of, and, when you’re through, you’re left with nothing. Oh, and all that great sex was in your imagination.

The only way through—Atlantic City or a novel—is never to go it alone, and I’m running with a posse that would put the
Hangover
boys to shame. It all starts and ends with Detective Kate Beckett, who has shown me that luck is a lady cop, and has a little experience herself waking up with a Bengal tiger. Her colleagues from the 12th Precinct, Javier Esposito and Kevin Ryan, know something about doing AC, and have made me feel like a brother. The brother they cherry-bomb in the outhouse, but a brother, nonetheless. I also owe thanks to Captain Victoria Gates, who kept me around in spite of seeing me for the stunted adolescent miscreant I am.

Dr. Parish has been a patient, if eye-rolling, medical examiner, enduring my ghoulish puns, gallows humor, and high jinks. I am also fortunate to have been around to discover that Lanie sings the blues.

My mother, Martha, has given me the primer on how to get myself into trouble—elegantly, while my dear daughter, Alexis, has shown me someone has to be the grown-up of the family. Thank God it doesn’t have to be me.

Nathan, Stana, Seamus, Jon, Molly, Susan, Tamala, and Penny bring life, truth, and heart, day and night. How the hell do they make it look so easy?

The crew in the Clinton Building at Raleigh Studios knows me better than I know myself, and to them, for the imagination, belief, and cold deli takeout, a sincere tip of the Montblanc cap.

Thanks to Terri Edda Miller, I never have to wonder who’s beside me or worry what’s behind me. May every journey continue to be a safari-level adventure for us.

Jennifer Allen still makes me swoon and then catches me when I fall. It shall be ever thus.

To Gretchen Young, my editor … one dice roll, and look, we’re still at the table, giddy and ignoring the three-dollar buffet. Thanks to Gretchen and everyone at Hyperion, including Allyson Rudolph. I’m also continually thankful for the care and support of Melissa Harling-Walendy and the team at ABC.

Thanks to Sloan Harris, my literary agent at ICM. I feel I am the luckiest author in the world after all these years of his faith and kind guidance.