Richard Castle: Heat Wave

"Turning you on, Ochoa?" asked Raley.

His partner jabbed back. "Much like your shirt, you see right through me."

Roach reported the same hit off the photo array when they showed it to the doorman. "We had to sort of pry it out of him," said Ochoa. "Doorman was a little embarrassed Miric slipped into the building. These guys always call up to the apartment before letting anybody in. He said he was taking a leak in the alley and must have missed him. But he did catch him coming out." Quoting from notes, the doorman described Miric as a "scrawny little ferret" who came by to see Mr. Starr from time to time but whose visits had become more frequent over the past two weeks.

"Plus we scored a bonus," said Raley. "This gentleman was coming out with ferret dude that day." He peeled off another shot from the array and held it up. "Looks like Miric brought some muscle."

Of course, Nikki's instincts had already been crackling about this other guy, the brooder, when she screened the lobby video that morning. He was in a loose shirt, but she could tell he was a bodybuilder or at least spent a lot of his day at the weight rack. Under any other circumstances, she wouldn't have thought twice and would have assumed he was delivering air conditioners, probably one under each arm, from the looks of him. But the serene lobby of the Guilford wasn't the service entrance, and a grown man had been tossed off his balcony there that day. "Did the doorman give a name for this guy?"

Ochoa looked at his notes again. "Only the nickname he gave him. Iron Man."

While the precinct ran Miric and Iron Man Doe through the computer, digitals of the pair were blast-sent to detectives and patrols. It was impossible for Heat's small unit to canvass every known bookie in Manhattan, even assuming Miric was a known, and wasn't from one of the other boroughs, or even Jersey. Plus a man like Matthew Starr might even use an exclusive betting service or the Internet-both of which he probably did-but if he was the volatile mix of desperation and invincibility Noah Paxton painted him to be, chances were he'd hit the street, as well.

So they spilt up to concentrate on known bookmakers in two zones. The Roach Coach got the tour of the Upper West Side in a radius around the Guilford, while Heat and Rook covered Midtown near the Starr Pointe headquarters, roughly Central Park South to Times Square.

"This is exasperating," said Rook after their fourth stop, a street vendor who suddenly decided he didn't speak English when Heat showed him her shield. He was one of several runners for the major bookies whose mobile food carts were a convenient one-stop for bets and kabobs. They were treated to eye-stinging smoke that swirled off his grill and found them wherever they moved, while the vendor furrowed his brow at the photos and ultimately shrugged.

"Welcome to police work, Rook. This is what I call the Street Google. We are the search engine; it's how it gets done."

As they drove to the next address, a discount electronics store on 51st, a front specializing more in bets than boom boxes, Rook said, "Have to tell you, a week ago, if you told me I'd be hitting the sha-warma carts looking for Matthew Starr's bookie, I never would have believed it."

"You mean it doesn't fit the image? This is where you and I come from different places. You write these magazine pieces, you're all about selling the image. I'm all about looking behind it. I'm frequently disappointed but seldom wrong. Behind every picture hides the true story. You just have to be willing to look."

"Yeah, but this guy was big. Maybe not elite-elite, but he was at least the bus and truck Donald Trump."

"I always thought Donald Trump was the bus and truck Donald Trump," she said.

"And who's Kimberly Starr, the truckstop Tara Reid? If she's the poor little rich girl, what's she doing blowing ten grand on that face?"

"If I had to guess, she bought it with Barry Gable's money."

"Or she took it in trade with her new doctor boyfriend."

"Trust me, I'll find out. But a woman like Kimberly's not going to start clipping supermarket coupons and eating ramen one night a week. She's all about prepping her face for her next season of The Bachelor."

"If they're holding it on The Island of Doctor Moreau." She didn't like herself for it but she laughed. It only encouraged him. "Or if she's doing a remake of Elephant Man." Rook took guttural breaths and slurred, "I am not a suspect, I am a human being."

The radio call came when they were getting in the car after the discount electronics store dead end. Roach had spotted Miric in front of the Off Track Betting facility on West 72nd and was making a move, calling for back-up.

Heat slapped the gumball on the roof and told Rook to buckle up and hang on.

He beamed and actually said, "Can I work the siren?"

There is very little chance of a high-speed pursuit on any street in Midtown Manhattan. Detective Heat accelerated, then braked, eased forward, jerked the wheel hard right, and accelerated again, until she was forced to brake again in a matter of yards. As she continued like that, working the avenue uptown, her face was set in concentration, eyes darting to all mirrors, then to the sidewalk, then to the crosswalk, then to the double-parked delivery guy who swung his van door open and almost became roadkill but for her experience and skill at the wheel. The siren and light meant nothing in this traffic. Maybe to the pedestrians, but the traffic lanes were so packed even the drivers who cared enough to pull aside and make a hole had scant room to maneuver.

"Jeez, c'mon, move it," shouted Rook from the passenger seat, at another taxi trunk sitting there in front of their windshield. His voice was dry from adrenaline, his words punctuated by air squeezed out against his seat belt with each sudden braking, which broke his syllables in two.

Heat maintained her tense composure. This was the live-action video game cops played every day in this borough, a race against the clock through an obstacle course of construction, stalls, jams, daredevils, idiots, sons-of-bitches, and the unaware. She knew Eighth would be all-stop south of Columbus Circle. Then, for once, gridlock worked in her favor. A stretch Hummer, also heading uptown, was blocking the cross-flow at 55th. Nikki gunned it through the sliver of daylight it created and pulled a sharp left. Taking advantage of the lighter traffic the Hummer block created, she sped crosstown to Tenth with Rook's expletives and Ochoa's radio chatter filling her ears.

Things improved, as she had projected, when she squealed around the corner at Tenth. After a game of dodge 'em through the two-way intersection at West 57th, Tenth became Amsterdam Avenue and grew wider shoulders and a nice emergency lane up the middle that some drivers even respected. She was ripping it north with a little more speed, past the back of Lincoln Center, when the call came from Raley. He had custody of Miric. Ochoa was in pursuit of suspect two, on the run west on 72nd. "That would be Iron Man," she said, her first words since her instructions to Rook back in Times Square, to buckle up and hang on.

Ochoa was gasping into his walkie when she shot through 70th where Amsterdam and Broadway crossed at an X. "Sus…pect…running…west…approa…Now at Broadway…"

"He's heading for the subway station," Heat said to Rook, but more talking out loud.

"Crossing…" A loud car horn, and then…"Suspect crossing Broadway…to subway…station."

She keyed her radio. "Suspect description."

"Copy…white, male, two-twenty-five…red shirt over cammy…pants…black shoes…"

To complicate things there were two station houses at the 72nd and Broadway subway: the old stone historic building on the south side and the newer glass-and-metal atrium station house just across the street to the north. Nikki pulled up to the old stone building. She knew the OTB sat mid-block on the north side of 72nd, so a fleeing Iron Man would likely duck into the closest station-the newer one-and Ochoa would be following there. Her idea was to cut off him off from escaping up the tunnel of this one.