PAPD also has a Criminal Investigation Bureau of a hundred detectives, and Nikki’s call was to one of the CIB supervisors.
“Inspector, just doing some I dotting and T crossing,” she began. “One of my detectives investigating a Haitian immigrant named Fabian Beauvais heard that another pair of men had also been working Flatbush looking for him recently. I’m not sure who these two are, but their description made me wonder if they could be plainclothes cops, so I’m making the rounds of other PDs to make sure we’re not stepping on brother detectives’ toes anywhere.”
Inspector Hugo said he appreciated the professional courtesy and that he’d check and get back to her. Heat didn’t mention the nature of her case or the commissioner. She also left out the fact that the men were linked to a Port Authority-registered car. But it struck her as due diligence to make this outreach in the event the Impala was a CIB undercover. If Beauvais was part of a PAPD investigation, that would be game-changing information. Their behavior and demeanor—especially knocking them over fleeing the rooming house—was not very coplike, but there was also something about the staging and precise execution of their dual car escape that smelled like training to her.
A half hour later, Heat convened a catch up at the Murder Board with Raley, Ochoa, and Rhymer to report that PAPD called back and said they have no investigation into a Fabian Beauvais.
“It still leaves the open question of, what was a Port Authority car doing there?” said Ochoa.
“Well, the link to Gilbert is pretty cozy.” Heat flicked a thumb to the plate number on the whiteboard under the sketches of the two men. “We’ve sent the plate out on the alert system, so if we get a ding, we may get our answer.”
Detective Rhymer had made contact with the staffer at Happy Hazels, the agency that placed Jeanne Capois as the housekeeper. “Nothing earth-shattering. Kinda sad, though. They loved her, and had all good things to say. Also Fabian was more than a boyfriend. The both of them apparently came from Haiti at the same time and were engaged. But they said the only thing Jeanne cared about was to somehow get back home for the wedding.”
“I found an anomaly of sorts on Jeanne Capois’s MetroCard,” said Raley. “Her pattern on days off was to take the Three line from the Seventy-second Street station to Saratoga Avenue in Brooklyn, which was the nearest station, I guess, to her fiancé’s place near Kings Highway in Flatbush. You could set your clock to that, twice a week, for half a year. But a few weeks ago, she started using the card to round trip it on the One train from Seventy-ninth and Broadway to the Fourteenth Street stop in Chelsea, then come back to the Upper West Side the same day.”
“Were these at repeating times and days?” Heat knew the value of breaks in habit. Big things like changes in lifestyle and income were key indicators to look for in an investigation, but you sometimes got the biggest breaks from the smallest things, like switching gyms or altering subway stops. “I’m wondering if she had some kind of appointment. Like maybe she was pregnant. Or had medical issues. Is there a clinic near there? Physical therapy, maybe?”
“The trips were all at different times, both day and night.”
“Tell you what I’d like to do,” said his partner. “I say we Roachify this.”
Heat cocked her head to Detective Ochoa. “Did you just say Roachify?”
“I did. As in getting all over this. I want us to go back through her purse, her room, everything, to see if something links up to Chelsea.”
“When you put it like that,” said Nikki, “I’d be foolish to say no.”
She had set her iPhone on her desktop and she caught the thing side-creeping across her blotter from the vibration when she came back from the restroom. Once again, not Rook. Detective Feller was calling in from Flatbush.
“Got one for you,” he began. “A detective goes into a bar.”
“Yeah?”
“And comes out with a clue.”
“I’m listening.” By reflex, she flipped to a clean page in her Clairefontaine notebook. Feller liked to clown around, but Heat knew he wouldn’t have called unless it mattered. Did it ever.
“There’s kind of a dive spot around the corner from Beauvais’s flophouse. I know it’s early in the day, and all, but I thought I’d go in and see what kicks. So the bartender doesn’t seem to want to talk but wants to at the same time; you’ve seen those types, right?” She had. “So I noticed there were some guys at the bar, chins over their beers, who he may not want to share in front of, so I ask him if he could come outside and give me directions to the BQE. When I get him alone, sure enough, he knows Beauvais from the neighborhood and says one night about a week ago he comes in about last call, acting like he’s drunk, but he’s not. He’s got blood on his shirt, and says he’s been shot.”
“Did you say shot, as in gunshot?”
“One and the same. Beauvais says no 911 call, refuses a trip to the ER, but remembers the barkeep has a friend who’s a doctor.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Already spoke to him. And guess what? He’ll cooperate,” said Randall Feller, keeping his record unassailable as Nikki Heat’s most-esteemed street cop. “I’m heading there to interview him now.”
“I want to be there when you do. I can be there in half an hour.”
“He’s on Cortelyou near East Sixteenth.” He gave her the street number, repeating it for clarity. “Look for the Klaus’s Auto Parts store.”
“The doctor’s next door?”
“Negative. That’s where he works. Ask for Ivan.”
En route to Brooklyn, Heat tried calling Alicia Delamater to give her a chance to clarify her statement that Fabian Beauvais had injured himself with hedge clippers. Or, more to the point, to present Gilbert’s neighbor-mistress an opportunity to recant it and come clean about her lie. She got no ring, just an insta-dump to voice mail: “This is Alicia. Away for a while. If it’s urgent, call this number…” Nikki called it and got her attorney.
Vance Hortense of Hortense, Kirkpatrick, and Young sounded like the male version of Siri when you asked your iPhone to do something off the menu. His tone was neutral, dispassionate, and unaccommodating—which, to Heat, might have been a better name for the law firm. “Ms. Delamater has left the country.”
“Where did she go?”
“Somewhere she is out of touch.”
“Did she leave a number where I can reach her?”
“I’m sorry, she didn’t.”
“Are you saying you wouldn’t know how to reach her if you had an emergency?”
“If she checks in, I’ll pass on your request.”
“Do you expect her back soon?”
“I can’t say.”
And won’t, she thought.
“Please, I am not in trouble, I hope,” said Ivan Gogol. His eyes, which were set in meaty lids under a constellation of moles, darted nervously from Heat to Feller. “A man need help, is all, so I help.” His palpable fear in a police interview reminded Nikki of every Cold War-era spy movie Rook addictively Netflixed where the KGB breaks a hapless citizen in two while he confesses to anything they want.
“Let me put you at ease,” Heat said in as reassuring a way as she could. “Your cooperation is quite appreciated. We are not here to investigate you, but simply to hear about your experience with this man.”
He took another look at the photo of Beauvais and nodded, relaxing only slightly in his chair. Under the fluorescent lighting of the cluttered office the auto parts manager had let them use, his beard seemed like a dark blue tattoo beneath his pasty white skin. He had told them he was thirty-eight, but his baldness added twenty years. Or maybe it was the toll of a life spent in paranoia.
Her first question felt obvious but, knowing it was an inherent stressor, she approached it offhandedly. “I was surprised when Detective Feller said to meet you here.”
“This is my work. How I pay my way,” he said. “In St. Petersburg, I left medical academy knowing to be doctor of medicine, yes? But when I come to United States, the, what is it…? The criteria…for doctor license not so easy. In Russia, I would have own clinic. Coming here to be with my wife, surprise. I drive cab or work this. Someday I take board exams and have practice in Brighton Beach.”
“So you aren’t technically a doctor,” said Feller, and Ivan’s eyes started darting again. She jumped in.
“Which makes your service to friends who can’t afford doctors so admirable.” She paused while he took out a cigarette and then put it back in his pocket. “Is that how the man in this picture came to you?”
Gogol recounted the late-night call from the bartender, all the details matching up with Feller’s source. “So I dress and get my satchel to drive to the bar where this man, Fabian, is in the back kitchen. He is in pain and not well.”
Heat asked, “How severe was the wound?” Feller had taken a cue and taken a seat beside the desk to observe.
“The wound itself not life threat. He had stopped own bleeding with compression like this.” Ivan held both palms to his rib cage and pressed. “But skin is very thin at ribs and many nerve endings radiate from spine. Very painful.”
“What kind of bullet was it?” And then she added with anticipation, “Did you keep it?”
“Was no bullet. The wound slice like a cut. Slice, not puncture, you see?” Feeling more in control of things, he tore a blank off a Klaus’s Auto gummed pad and drew an anterior outline of an upper torso. To her surprise, his sketch was precise and expert, neater than some drawings she had seen in autopsy files. He added a slash where the bullet struck Beauvais.
“A graze.”
“That is it, graze. But close to heart. Was lucky man.”
For a while, anyway, she thought. “Did you talk at all?”
“
Da
. His accent make hard, but yes,” he said in his own variant of English.
“Did he say who shot him?”
Both detectives studied him as he shifted in the seat. “No.” Then Ivan fixed his stare on his little drawing and he fussed with it, smoothing down the page with the side of one hand. The silence unnerved him and he filled it.
“All he tell me was earlier that night somewhere in Hamptons.”
“Did he tell you exactly where?”
“Mm, no.”
“In a bar, a house, in the street?”
“I do not know this.”
Feller joined in. “What town?” All he got was a shrug from the Russian before he went back to fiddling with his sketch, which he then slid to Heat as an offering.
“Help me understand,” she said. “Did he not see who shot him, or did he not say?”
“I did not ask him so many questions as you ask. This is best, I think.”
It struck Nikki that she was getting about as far with him as she had with Alicia Delamater’s lawyer on the drive over. Same obfuscation, the difference being the fear she sensed from Ivan Gogol. Was it his own nature or was it the plight of the immigrant to be ever wary, careful beyond measure? Or was he hiding something? “I want you to know that you can share anything with us without worry.”
In response, he stood. “I must go back to work. I have carburetors to deliver.”
One last try. “Fabian Beauvais was murdered. Whoever did that is still out there.” Nikki watched that sink in as she gave him her business card. “If you remember anything more, call me anytime, day or night. I will help you.” She smiled but he broke eye contact and left the room.
When Heat and Feller stepped out onto the sidewalk, Ivan was waiting by their cars. “When I finished stitching his wound, this Fabian left but came back in. He said there was a car and he waited for it to go. He was very scared. He said he wanted to tell me who did this in case something happened to him. And now you say something did?”
Nikki knew better than to speak and fracture this man’s delicate moment of truth. He took a long moment to gather his courage before his leap.
But he took it.
“He said it was a powerful man. And he is. Because I have seen him on the TV. Mr. Keith Gilbert.”
To be honest with herself, Heat had no idea yet how getting shot by Keith Gilbert had anything to do with Fabian Beauvais’s eventual—and more lethal—plummet from a high altitude into the planetarium. But she did have enough experience in homicide to know a few things. Two attempts on Beauvais (one of which was successful), plus the torture death of his fiancée, plus a wad of hidden cash, plus the ransacking of an upscale apartment in a home invasion smelled strongly of a cover-up and conspiracy. And something Heat also knew from experience: The thing about a conspiracy is that there’s always someone behind it. Someone with power. The sum of all that math told her it was time to bring in the prime suspect.
Getting a warrant would take some doing; she knew that. The DA sign-off presented enough of a hurdle. A high-profile arrest like a commissioner on the Port Authority, especially one like Keith Gilbert, who was so prominent and well connected, would require approval at the highest level downtown. But Heat trusted the courageous impartiality of the district attorney and felt confident in asking. The problem was on a much lower rung.
Her precinct commander’s face went florid when she asked his permission to call the prosecutor for the arrest order. The overworked springs of Big Wally’s executive chair groaned as the skipper tilted backward, jaw slack, eyes big as cue balls as he mentally played out the risks-versus-rewards of this action. To nudge him along, Heat led him from his office to the Murder Board to recap the main points, persuasively and, most importantly—ploddingly—laying out her case against Keith Gilbert as if to a first grader. He listened without interruption, bobble-heading in a way that made Nikki feel she had at last fracked through the thick insulation of fat encasing his brain.
But she had underestimated the power of organizational survivor instinct.
“Answer me this,” said the captain. “Your cause of death on the flying Haitian was smacking into the planetarium, right? And now you want an arrest warrant for Gilbert because some Russkie sawbones with a sewing kit and no license claims the commissioner blasted the guy? The gun didn’t kill him, gravity did.”
Once again, her precinct commander fabulously displayed his lack of street experience. Nikki knew how cases get solved. You pick up a piece of the puzzle here, an odd sock there, a coincidence that doesn’t make sense.…You stick with it, and soon, as you get more pieces, you get a whole picture, and the truth is revealed. It never dropped cleanly into your lap the way Wally fantasized.