They reached a bull pen area of three assistants' desks outside three wooden doors that were conspicuously larger than the others they had passed. The center door was open and the assistant led them in to meet the editor.
Mitchell Perkins smiled over a pair of black-rimmed bifocals, dropped them onto his blotter, and came around the desk to shake hands. He was cheerful and much younger than Nikki had expected for a senior editor of nonfiction-in his early forties, but with tired eyes. She quickly understood when she saw the piles of manuscripts spilling out of his etagere and even sprouting up from the floor beside his desk.
He gestured to a conversation area off to one side of his office. Heat and Rook sat on the couch; he took the armchair in front of the window that spanned his whole north wall, giving a spectacular unobstructed view of the Empire State Building. Even for the two visitors who had spent most of their lives in Manhattan, the panorama was awe-inspiring. Nikki almost remarked that the office could be used as a movie set with a backdrop like that, but it wasn't the proper tone for this meeting. First she had to offer condolences for the loss of an author. Then she had to ask him for his dead author's manuscript.
"Thank you for seeing us on short notice, Mr. Perkins," she began.
"Of course. When the police come, would I do anything but?" He turned aside to Rook and added, "These are unusual circumstances, but it's wonderful to meet you. We almost met last May at Sting and Trudie's Rainforest Benefit after-party, but you were in deep conversation with Richard Branson and James Taylor and I was a bit intimidated."
"No need for that. I'm just people."
So Rook, thankfully, provided the ice-breaking laugh, and Nikki could then steer to business. "Mr. Perkins, we're here about Cassidy Towne, and first of all, we're sorry for your loss."
The editor nodded and puckered his cheeks. "That's very thoughtful, certainly, but may I ask how you came to hear we may, or may not, have had some association with her?"
She wouldn't have been much of a detective if she hadn't noticed the thick smoke screen of his word choice. Perkins hadn't come out owning the simple fact that Cassidy was writing a book for him. He'd parsed. Nice guy, perhaps, but he was playing a chess game. So she decided to come straight up the gut. "Cassidy Towne was writing a book for you and I'd like to know what it was about."
The impact was visible. His eyebrows peaked and he recrossed his legs, shifting himself to get comfortable in his soft leather chair. "Well then, the small talk portion is over, I suppose." He smiled, but it lacked heart.
"Mr. Perkins-"
"Mitch. This will strike a more pleasant note for all of us if you'll call me Mitch."
Heat remained cordial but pressed the same theme. "What was her book about?"
He could play that game, too. His non-answer was to turn again to Rook. "I understand you were contracted by First Press to do five thousand words on her. Did she say something to you? Is that how we got here today?"
Rook never got a chance to respond. "Excuse me," Nikki said. She maintained the decorum Perkins had established but rose and moved away to lean with her hips on his desk so he had to twist and pivot away from Rook. "I am running an open homicide investigation and that means following every possible lead to find Cassidy Towne's killer. There are a lot of leads and not a lot of time, so-if I may? — how I got my information is how I got my information. How I got here is not your concern. And if striking a more pleasant note is what you want, let's begin with me asking the questions and you being direct and cooperative, all right… Mitch?"
He folded his arms across his chest. "Absolutely," he replied. She noted that he closed his eyes briefly as he said the words. Mitch was one of those.
"So can we start over again with my question? And if this helps, I do know she was working on a tattletale book, a tell-all."
He nodded. "Of course, that was her wheelhouse."
"So who or what was the subject?" She sat down again across from him.
"That I don't know." In anticipation of her, he held up a staying palm. "Yes, I can confirm we had a deal for a book with her. Yes, it was to be a tell-all. In fact, Cassidy guaranteed it would be newsworthy across the board, not just the tabloids and ambush TV shows. It would, in the parlance of the Paris Hilton generation, be hot. However." He closed his eyes again and opened them, making Nikki think of barn owls. "However… I can only say that I do not know the subject of her expose."
"You mean you know and won't say," responded Heat.
"We are a major house. We trust our authors and give them great latitude. As such, Cassidy Towne and I operated on blind faith. She assured me she had a blockbuster book, I assured her I would get it to market. Now, sadly, we may never know what the subject was… Unless you can locate the manuscript."
Detective Heat smiled. "You know, and you're not telling. Cassidy Towne got a huge advance, and especially in this economy, that doesn't happen without a solid proposal and everybody signing off."
"Forgive me, Detective, but how would you know whether she got any advance, let alone a sizable one?"
Rook weighed in on that issue. "Because it was the only way she would be able to fund her network of tipsters. You know newspapers. She didn't have the budget from the Ledger to pay that tab. And she wasn't a wealthy woman."
Nikki added, "I can get into her bank records, and I bet I'll see a deposit from Epimetheus in a sum that says you knew exactly what you were buying."
"If you do, and there is such an advance, the linkage you insinuate is only conjecture." He said no more, and a beat of silence passed between them.
Nikki got out a business card. "Whoever this book was about could be the killer or lead us to the killer. If you change your mind, here's how to reach me."
He took her card and put it in his pocket without reading it. "Thank you. And if I may say, as good as Jameson Rook here is, his article barely did you justice. In fact, I'm starting to think there may even be a book in Nikki Heat."
For her, nothing could have more definitively ended the meeting. As soon as the elevator door closed, Nikki said, "Shut up."
"I didn't say anything." And then he smiled and added, "About a Nikki Heat book…"
The car stopped at the ninth floor and several people got on. Heat noticed that Rook had turned himself to the wall. "You all right?" she asked. He didn't answer, just nodded and scratched something on his forehead, covering half his face for the rest of the ride down.
At the ground floor, he let the elevator clear before he slowly got off. Nikki was waiting for him. "Did you get bitten on the face by something?"
"No, I'm fine." He turned and speed-walked ahead of her, crossing the lobby at a fast pace. He had just put his hand on the door leading out to Fifth Avenue when Nikki heard a woman's voice echo across the marble.
"Jamie? Jamie Rook, is that you?" She was one of the women from the elevator, and something in the way Rook hesitated before he turned from the door to face her told Heat to hang back and watch this play out from the near distance.
"Terri, hello. Where's my head? I didn't see you." Rook stepped to her and they hugged, and Nikki saw a blush come to his face and blend with the scratch marks he had just excavated on his forehead.
When they separated, the woman said, "What are you doing coming here and not saying hello to your editor?"
"Actually, that's just what I was going to do, but then I got a call for an assignment I'm working on so I figured, next time." He looked up and caught Nikki watching and stepped around, presenting their backs to her.