Heat Rises Read Online Free PDF Page B

check, but we’ll be lucky if we see anything.”
    Nikki pondered briefly. “Screen what you have here anyway and pull faces. You never know, we may see Graf there and connect him with someone.”
    Raley disappeared up the hall with his box of tapes. Nikki continued into Interrogation.
----
    “You already asked my client that question,” said the old man. Simmy Paltz poked a finger bent from arthritis on the legal pad on the table in front of him. He looked to be a hundred, all skin and bones, withered and leathery. He wore a 1970s Wemlon tie in a big knot, but Nikki could have fit a hand right down to her wrist in the gap created between Simmy’s pilled collar and his rooster neck. He seemed sharp enough though, and certainly a hard-line advocate. Heat guessed one way to keep your costs down in a small business was to retain your grandfather or great uncle as counsel.
    “I wanted to give her time to rethink her answer, let her memory do its work,” replied the detective. Then Nikki directed herself to Roxanne, who was still wearing the same vinyl and contempt as she had in her office at six that morning. “You’re absolutely certain you had no dealings with Father Graf?”
    “Like what, in church? Don’t make me laugh.” She sat back and nodded in satisfaction to the old dude. “He wasn’t a client.”
    “Did anyone else have access to the locker with your security tapes?”
    “Ha,” from the lawyer. “Fat lot of good your warrant did.” His eyes looked huge to Nikki behind the smudged eyeglasses that covered half his face.
    “Ms. Paltz, who had keys?”
    Roxanne looked to her attorney, who gave the go-ahead nod, and she answered, “Just me. The one set.”
    “And there are no other tapes, Roxanne?”
    “Who is she,” said the lawyer, “the Homeland Security?”
    Roxanne continued, “Truth is, that plastic bubble in the ceiling does the job of keeping everyone in line anyway. Far as the clients know, it’s on and they behave. Sort of the way when you call customer service and they say, ‘This call may be monitored.’ Their way of saying watch your mouth, asshole.”
    Heat turned a page of her notepad. “I’d like the names of anyone who was there last night, say from six o’clock on. Dommes, doms, clients.”
    “Bet you would,” said the lawyer. “Pleasure Bound is a discreet business protected by rights of privacy and client privilege.”
    “Excuse me, Mr. Paltz, but last I heard, client privilege may protect lawyers and doctors, but not people who dress up and play doctor.” Heat turned again to the manager. “Roxanne, a death took place on your property. Are you going to cooperate, or shall we close you down while we assess the public safety and health concerns at Pleasure Bound?” Nikki was only sort of bluffing. A shutdown, if she got it, would only be brief, but her assessment of the state of the business—old paint, cheap furniture, shopworn fixtures, neglected security surveillance—told her Roxanne operated on a thin margin and that even a week without clients would put a hurt on her. She was right.
    “All right. I’ll give you her name,” she said after another nod from the lawyer. “Fact is, I only have one dominatrix at present. I lost my other two a couple of months ago to the higher-end places Midtown.” Roxanne Paltz made an audible shrug with her vinyls. “I tell you, the bondage business is a struggle.” Nikki instinctively waited for Rook’s wisecrack. Same as she had so many times during his absence. What would he blurt? Knowing him, something like “That would make a catchy ad slogan.” She pictured a match turning Rook’s Le Cirque photo to ashes.
    After Roxanne gave her the name and contact number of the domme, Heat asked about clients. “That’s all on her,” answered the manager. “She pays me to use the space, sort of like a hairdresser. The client bookings are her deal.”
    “For the record, Roxanne, can you account for your whereabouts last