Heat Rises (30 page)

“Father Graf?” she asked.

“Mm-maybe. Hadn’t thought of him. I was thinking more like some existing personal bond. A lifetime confidant. The mortgage buddy.”

“Explain?”

“The one pal you can call, no matter what time of night it is and no matter what you’ve gotten yourself into, who would mortgage his house to save your rear, no questions asked.” He saw her glint of understanding. “Tell me, who is a cop closest to?”

She didn’t hesitate. “His partner.” Nikki was just about to say the name, but he beat her to it.

“Eddie Hawthorne.”

“How could you know about Eddie?”

“Writer’s friend. A little thing called an Internet search engine. Got multiple hits on citations of valor for those two, both as uniforms and detectives. I figured if they found a way to stick together when they got their gold shields, they’d be tight.”

“Eddie retired and moved away, though.” A distant memory brought a smile to her. “I was at his retirement party.”

“July 16, 2008.” He indicated his laptop. “I loves me my Google.” Then Rook pressed a few keys and his printer came alive.

“What’s that, Eddie Hawthorne’s cholesterol level?”

He took two pages from the tray and walked over to Nikki, handing her one of them. “It’s our boarding passes. The car service picks us up for LaGuardia in a half hour. We’re having lunch with Eddie in Florida.”

Eddie Hawthorne pulled up in his Mercury Marquis as soon as they stepped from the terminal in Fort Myers. He got out and gave Nikki a big hug, and as they parted and looked at each other, Nikki’s eyes gleamed as they hadn’t in a long, long time.

He took them to a fish taco place two exits west of Interstate 75 off the Daniels Parkway. “It’s local, it’s good, and it’s close enough to the airport so you don’t have to sweat making your return flight this afternoon,” he said.

They ate at a patio table shaded from the sun blare by a Dos Equis umbrella. The first part of the lunch conversation was reminiscence about their lost friend. “Charles and I were partners so long people didn’t see us as two people after a while. I walked by our sarge once—all by myself, you see—and he looks right at me and says, ‘Hi, fellas.’ ” The old cop laughed. “That’s the way it was. Hawthorne and Montrose, the thorn and the rose, that was us, man. Damn, that was us.” Eddie Hawthorne seemed more interested in talking than the food, which was excellent, and so Heat and Rook just listened, enjoying fresh grilled fish and shirtsleeve weather while he reminisced. When the subject turned to Montrose’s wife, the laughter over glory days faded. “So sad. Never saw two people so close as he and Pauletta. It’s a stunner for anyone, but man . . . It hollowed Charles out, I know it did.”

“I kind of wanted to ask you a little about that, I mean the past year,” said Nikki.

The ex-detective nodded. “Didn’t think you flew all the way down here for the
horchata
.”

“No,” she said, “I’m trying to make sense of what went on with the Cap.”

“You won’t be able to. Doesn’t make any sense.” Eddie’s lip quaked briefly, but then he sat up, willing some steel into his body, as if that would help.

Rook asked, “Did you have much contact with him since his wife was killed?”

“Well, you could say I made a lot of attempts. I flew up for her funeral, of course, and we sat up talking most of the night after the service. In truth, maybe more sitting than talking; like I say, I made attempts, but he went to stone in there.” Eddie poked his heart with two fingers. “Who couldn’t understand that?”

Nikki said, “It’s not uncommon to sort of slide a rock over you for a time after you suffer a trauma like that. But after a period of intense grieving most people come out of the funk. And when they do, it’s sort of startling, the new energy.”

Eddie nodded to himself. “Yeah, how’d you know that?” Nikki felt Rook’s hand touch hers under the table briefly. Hawthorne continued, “It was out of the blue, like three months ago. He calls and talks awhile. Old times small talk, that kind of stuff. More conversation than I’d heard from him in ages. Then he says to me that he’s been sleeping poorly, tossing thoughts all night. I told him to join a bowling league, and he just says, ‘Yeah right,’ and keeps on about his insomnia.

“He asks me, ‘Edward, you ever get bothered by any of the old cases?’ And I said, ‘Shit, man, why do you think I retired?’ and we had a good laugh about that, but he came right back to it, like he was scratching at poison ivy. And he gets to the point, saying that he’s been thinking more and more about The Job and how he’s having doubts about his purpose. Even said—get this—wondering about how good a cop he was. Can you believe that?

“So he says he’s been sitting up nights chewing on this one case we worked together, saying he was never satisfied we got it right, and the deeper the hole gets dug around him with all the administrative bullshit he has to deal with, the more he feels the itch to do something. Something to prove that he’s still the cop he believed he was. I told him to open the Scotch and watch some Weather Channel, anything to get his mind clear, and he gets pissy with me, saying he thought that I of all people would understand the importance—the duty, he says—of getting it right. I didn’t know what else to say to that except, let’s hear about it then. Charles says he never believed it was a bad drug deal. It didn’t figure for the victim and his priors to be in with that low end of a dealer, or in that part of town. And I said what I said back then, drugs is dangerous business; if they don’t get you, the dealers will. And then I reminded him I always thought if it wasn’t a busted deal it was a Latin gang initiation.” There it was again, thought Nikki. The catch-all explanation for unsolved crimes. “But Charles, he said he was picking up pieces that smelled like a planned killing and a cover-up. He said he was looking for a revenge motive. Either way,” he shrugged, “what are you going to do? You give it your best shot and don’t look back. That’s what I did, anyway. But he wasn’t one to let anything go unfinished.” The steel left him and his lip quivered again. “I dunno, maybe that’s what finished him.”

“The case,” said Nikki. “What was the case that bothered him so much?” But she knew the answer before she asked it.

“The Huddleston kid,” answered Eddie.

If Nikki couldn’t have access to the Huddleston file, she would have the next best thing. She asked Eddie Hawthorne to walk her through the case. The ex-detective leaned far back in his plastic chair, and when his head left the shade of the umbrella, the sunlight that hit his hair made the black dye shine purple. His eyes worked back and forth as he searched his memory, and he exhaled loudly, girding himself for this unexpected heavy lifting. “Two thousand four,” he said. “Charles and I were working Homicide out of the Four-one and got the call about a gunshot victim in a car over on Longwood. That zone was pretty much junkie central, you know? Joke among the uniforms was, you hit a perp with your baton and the crack vials come falling out like a piñata. Anyway, so Charleston and I roll, figuring this was just another garden variety crack whack.

“We reset that notion pretty quick, though, as soon as we drove up and clocked the M5. The only Beemers in that zip code belonged to dealers and we knew them by heart. So we got ready to check out the vic, figuring on a kid from maybe Rye or Greenwich who saw
Scarface
one too many times and made the mistake of coming to the big city to bypass his pharmacological middle man. Profile was right, too, when we saw the body. Very early twenties, expensive clothes, Green Day CD still blasting an endless loop on the custom sound system. But then it kicks up a notch when Montrose says he knows this kid. Not personally, but from TV. Wallet and registration both ID him as Eugene Huddleston, Jr., son of the movie star, and then it all starts to tumble in place for us. He’d been all over the news, especially
Access
and
ET
, for his drug spiral. Nothing like Charlie Sheen, but enough for me and my partner to paint the picture. And why wouldn’t it make sense?” Eddie wasn’t just being rhetorical. Nikki could see he was seeking her understanding. She gave a mild shrug, enough to acknowledge how it could happen, but mindful, too, that a detective follows evidence and doesn’t lead it, which was probably the same homily that kept her captain awake in hindsight.

“How was he done?” asked Heat.

“Single head shot.”

“How, face? Execution style in back?”

“Temple,” said Hawthorne.

“Like a drive-up buy where the dealer sees the gourmet car and thinks fat wallet and puts one . . . here?” She pointed a finger pistol at Rook’s left sideburn.

“See, that’s where it started to fight our theory.” Eddie put a finger to his own right temple. “Entrance wound on this side. Passenger side.”

All these years later, Heat was back there in her mind with Montrose and Hawthorne, processing that first odd sock. “You sure he was done in the car?”

“No doubt. Brains and broken glass on the driver’s side.”

“The window was up?” Odd sock number two for Nikki; not inherently significant, just . . . odd. “What about the passenger window, open or closed?”

Eddie’s eye rolled upward while he thought. “Closed, yeah for sure, closed.”

“So whoever shot him was probably inside the car with him,” said Heat.

“Riding shotgun,” offered Rook. He saw their expressions, crossed his arms, and said, “All yours.”

Nikki continued, “And I assume no prints?”

“None that did us any good. Just his clubbing and party buddies, a few girlfriends, and plenty of no-matches.” Which meant no criminal records for the unknowns. “All the matched prints alibied out,” he said, a step ahead of Nikki.

“Anything else about his body? No signs of beating?” She wanted to know if Eddie knew about the
TENS
burns.

“Not beating, per se. His wrists had marks like he’d been tied up.”

“Or cuffed?”

He grew thoughtful. “Honestly, never thought of cuffs, but here’s what we did attribute it to. We check out the neighboring buildings, of course, and we come upon this empty loading bay inside a low-rise industrial space. Old sign said it had been one of those textile rental places that supply uniforms and coveralls to hotels and construction. Door’s unlocked and, inside, there’s nothing in the whole place but this wood frame lying in the middle of the concrete floor.”

Heat and Rook exchanged glances and Nikki said, “Describe it for me, Eddie.”

“Simple. Like a wood pallet hammered together, kind of crudely, but in the shape of a big X—about seven feet long, three wide. And the thing of it is, it had straps at each corner.”

“Like restraints,” said Heat.

“Yeah, but improvised. I think they were tie-downs, like you’d get for strapping a kayak to your roof rack. Of course, this was the point when me and Rose totally fell out of the drive-up-drug-deal-gone-bad notion. Somebody took that kid in there and lashed him to that rig.” When Hawthorne’s face grimmed up, it was like he was seeing something unpleasant right then and there instead of years ago. “In addition to the chafing at the young man’s wrists and ankles, he had these red marks like a bad sunburn. Only in blotchy areas all over his skin. I’m talking about his chest, his legs, his . . . his groin . . .” Eddie winced and said, “You get the idea. Charles and I worked it as best we could, but given the kid’s history of drugs and drug busts and all the crazy and dangerous stuff he got into, it went down as a sour drug deal.”

“What about the torture?” asked Rook. “Didn’t that play in?”

“Oh, yeah.” Hawthorne nodded. “
OCME
said it was electrical, something called a
TENS
. That just added credence to the bad drug deal theory, saying Huddleston wasn’t a drive-up target of opportunity but was probably dealing regularly with a player who the kid shorted on money, and the torture and killing was payback to make him an example to others or to increase the dealer’s status in the ranks.”

“I’m not accusing, Eddie, I’m just asking this to get into the load Captain Montrose was carrying,” said Nikki gently. “You guys didn’t take it any further?”

“We wanted to, but the Huddleston family, they were begging for closure. They’d had enough, so pressure came from downtown to move on, especially since there’d been official disposition. And then Charles got his promotion and took over the Twentieth, so it fell away.”

Heat handed him the mug shot of Sergio Torres. “This guy would have been doing some low-level dealing north of 116th and in the Bronx back then. Ever come across him?”

He studied it carefully and said, “No, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t around. I was Homicide, not Narcotics.”

“Speaking of which, does this guy look familiar? He worked Narco around then.”

Eddie took the picture of Steljess and said, “Mad Dog.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Total dipshit, that’s all you needed to know. He was undercover but everyone knew he crossed over. Went native, you could smell it on him.” He handed the picture back. “I hear they drummed him out. Good riddance.”

“Well said,” from Rook.

After Heat took back the pictures, she said, “One more question, if you don’t mind, Eddie. Who was the big player then?”

“In drugs? Uptown and in the Bronx?” He chuckled. “One man, Alejandro Martinez.”

On the flight back to LaGuardia Nikki said, “Nice one, thinking about Eddie.”

“Not a problem. I am an investigative journalist, you know.”

“Oh? And I understand you also have not one, but two Pulitzers.” She drilled his ribs with her knuckle.

“Do I say that too often?”

“Not really. Maybe if you just carried the awards around it would be more subtle.” She laughed and said, “But you did put your talents to good use. Even if we don’t know all the answers to this yet, we do know one thing.”

“If you’re dyeing your hair black, keep out of direct sunlight?”

“Absolutely.” Then she grew serious. “At least we know Captain Montrose was working on something and not . . . you know.”

“Dirty?”

“And I knew it. And now that we’ve talked to Eddie, I truly know it. So thanks, times two, Pulitzer boy. For the idea and the plane ticket.”