Driving Heat by Richard Castle

pocketed his cell. But then Rook stopped short. Nikki jerked to a halt beside him. Both stood
astonished by what they saw.
    Around the corner on Reade, where they had left it parked after dinner, someone had key-etched the paint on Heat’s new Malibu and flattened all four tires. She recovered quickly and
checked the doors, which were still locked, and found that nothing inside had been disturbed. Heat turned around in a circle, first to see if any other cars had been vandalized (none had been) and
second, to see if the perpetrator had hung around to enjoy the impact of his work (nobody took any notice except passers-by).
    Heat was mainly interested in one person. And she would personally brace ex-Detective Timothy James Maloney about this later.
    “Want me to hitch a Hitch!?” asked Rook.
    “Yeah, maybe we should. Or just hail a cab.”
    “Never mind. Look,” he said then whistled and waved both arms. “There’s Randall Feller. How fucking lucky is that?”
    Heat tried to act surprised as Detective Feller—totally made—responded to the street hail and pulled up beside them in his undercover Taurus. Jameson Rook, the conspiracy
theorist’s conspiracy theorist, said it must be Kismet—as he called shotgun.
    The only one who seemed to be enjoying the ride was Rook. Nikki hid under the radar in the backseat, finding it easier there to mask
her tells—to avoid inadvertently revealing by her expression that it was in fact no coincidence that, with 508 linear miles of road in Manhattan, one of her detectives had just happened to be
happening by the spot where they had been standing. Feller worked his jaw muscles behind the wheel, no doubt calculating how long it would take to live down getting eyeballed on a stakeout by the
journalist everyone knew he had written off as a dilettante showboater.
    When Rook asked what had brought Randy to Tribeca, Nikki jumped in like a rodeo clown. “I’m going to have to call in the ten-thirty-nine on my vehicle.”
    “Yeah, and who fucks with a cop’s ride?” asked Feller, continuing the redirect.
    Rook, now on their track, speculated. “Maybe he or she didn’t know it was a police car.”
    “First of all, bro,” said Feller, “let me explain something to you. They call these undercover? But get real. Every miscreant on the street knows what they are a block
away.”
    “Plus I had my courtesy plaque on the dash,” Heat said, adding, “I think I know who it was.” The two up front listened intently as Heat described her sighting from the
window the night before.
    “You should have called it in,” said Feller.
    “I did. At least I know Roach did right after I texted them to see if Maloney was buttoned down or not. Before I went to bed I saw three cruisers from the First Precinct gridding the
neighborhood.”
    Rook said, “He must have done your car beforehand.”
    “Or after,” countered Feller. “Maloney’s a sick fuck, but he’s got skills. I heard from the Spliff about how he outplayed you in the park uptown. A guy with a head
like that probably saw the blue-and-whites and figured he’d leave his mark, and fuck you.”
    “The Spliff?” asked Rook.
    “Roach,” explained the detective with a sneer of condescension.
    “Ah…a nickname for a nickname.” Rook nodded and smiled. But then he twisted around to one side of his headrest to address Nikki. “But why do this to you?”
    “I think it’s kinda in the diagnosis,” she said. “Paranoid personality disorder?”
    “But wait a minute. It was my loft he was outside of in the middle of the night. You don’t suppose he’s got some fixation on me because I took him down, do you?” When
Feller cackled, Rook shot back, “That’s right, Randall, I took him down. And now, he’s put me on his crazy payback list.”
    “But it was her car.”
    “Let’s all be clear, I’m not sure it was Maloney I saw. And whether it’s me or Rook or both of us he wants to hassle, I say, bring it