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CHAPTER FOUR

The New Knickerbockers

The New Knickerbockers are an American indie rock band formed in Brooklyn, New York, in 2014. The band consists of Jack Vale (vocals, guitar, piano), Claudia Baldwin (guitar, keyboards), Ryan Nash (bass, vocals), and Sarah Creed (drums, percussion). The band’s original lead singer, Tommy Esposito (vocals, guitar), died in a motorcycle accident in 2021. The Nicks, as they are known by their fans, are renowned for their diverse influences and styles.

History and early years (2014–2017)

The founding members of the band, Esposito, Vale, and Creed, met while attending Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music she’s efficient. With a single link, she says everything she wants to. Hello, darling, just your quarterly reminder that you are a disappointment to your parents. Hugs, Mum.

He unlocks his door and heads inside, kicking off his shoes and flicking on the lights. He divests himself of his gear—badge, cuffs, shoulder holster—and then he pours himself a glass of red. This is typically the part where he puts on some classical music, but tonight he finds himself typing New Knickerbockers into his phone. He’s not sure what to expect, even after reading about them online. He really isn’t into popular music. Even as a kid, he never listened to it much. He couldn’t name a single Top 40 song, and the last time he watched a music video he was still an awkward ten-year-old grappling with complicated feelings about Justin Timberlake.

He cues up a random song on his wireless speakers and starts loosening his tie. Then the opening strains of “Soar” fill his apartment, and his fingers go still. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t this. The shimmering guitar, the quiet urgency of the drums—and then Vale’s rich tenor, barely a murmur but thrumming with tension. Rav finds himself sinking onto the couch, his wine forgotten. The guitars build, layering over each other in cascading arpeggios, a glittering waterfall of sound, and when Vale goes up the octave and smoothly over the break, reaching until his voice scatters like smoke… “Achingly melodic,” Rav murmurs, recalling the words he’d read in the review. He gets it now.

An hour later, he’s sprawled on the sofa, still in his shirt and tie, swiping through pictures of Vale on his phone as the Nicks play in the background. He tells himself this is research, but the tug of guilt at the bottom of his belly says otherwise.

He should stop. No good can come of this, but… Wait, is this one at the beach? Ugh. Rav pinches out, and of course Vale is perfection, lean and fit and actually smiling for once, apparently oblivious to the photographer lurking somewhere in the shrubbery. The photo is a few years old, from the look of it. No tattoos, and his hair is shorter. Mostly, though, it’s the expression on his face—the lightness of it, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. As Rav looks at him, his traitor brain conjures a brief but vivid fantasy in which he’s there with Vale, standing just out of frame. He’s the one Vale is smiling at, sharing a secret with just a glance.

Bloody hell, Trivedi. He tosses his phone onto the sofa, piling cushions on top of it for good measure. He will not let this suspect mess with his head.

He goes to bed, but it takes him forever to fall asleep. “Soar” is stuck in his head, relentless and hauntingly beautiful.

He drifts off with Jack Vale crooning softly in his ears.

Flashpoint Records occupies the third floor of a nondescript office building on the Lower East Side. The corner office is Vanderford’s, but Rav can tell from the moment they walk in that the victim spent very little time here. The desk is virtually barren. No photos or knickknacks, generic modern art on the walls. Even the framed platinum albums feel impersonal, more like trophies than genuine mementos.

Someone else’s trophies at that. What must it have felt like for Vale, standing here surrounded by his own music while Vanderford told him about his plans to sell it to someone else? Even Rav is irritated. It wasn’t enough for you to steal his music, you had to rub his nose in it?

“Makes you wonder if he even liked the music business,” Will muses. “Looks to me like this was just a prestige asset for him.”

Rav starts going through the desk and is pleasantly surprised when he hits pay dirt almost immediately, in the form of an intriguing business card. “Look here.” He shows the card to Will.

“A private investigator?” Will grunts. “Something to do with the ex-wife, maybe?”

“Let’s pay him a visit when we’re done here.”

Their interviews take most of the morning. No one overheard much of the argument between the victim and Jack Vale, but security confirms that the singer didn’t offer any resistance when they were called to escort him from the office. “Sounds like Vanderford just did it to be a prick,” Will says in an undertone on their way out. “I know we’re supposed to remain objective and all that, but it’s really hard to like this guy.”

The PI’s office is only a few blocks away, in a dingy walk-up on Henry Street. Rav scans the buzzer and finds the one he’s looking for.

CHRIS NOVAK, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS

GRACE KIM, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS

They buzz in and head up to a small office on the third floor, where they find a young woman working alone at a desk. “Excuse me,” Rav says, “we’re looking for Chris Novak.”

“You and me both,” she says without glancing up. “If you’d like to leave a note, there’s some stickies and a pen on his desk there.”

“Are you Ms. Kim?”

“That’s right.”

Rav shows his badge, and he’s definitely got her attention now. “Do you know how we might be able to reach him?”

A troubled look crosses her face. “I don’t, actually. He hasn’t been in for days, and his phone goes straight to voicemail.”

“Is it unusual for him to be away like this?”

“Without giving me a heads-up? Yes. Especially when the rent is due.”

Rav exchanges a glance with Will. “Did he ever mention a Richard Vanderford?”

“The name sounds familiar. Is that a client of Chris’s?”

“We were hoping you could tell us.”

“Sorry, we just share office space.”

Rav scans Novak’s desk. There’s a wide-screen monitor and a USB dock, but that’s about it. No laptop, no paper files. “What sort of investigative work does Mr. Novak do?”

“Just the usual. Insurance fraud, background checks, missing persons.” Her glance shifts between Rav and Will. “You guys are freaking me out. Is this Vanderford guy bad news or something?”

“He’s been murdered.”

“Oh.” She swallows.

Rav gives her his card. “If Mr. Novak turns up, or if you think of anything else that might be useful, please let us know.”

He’s halfway to the door when she says, “Detective? Should I file a missing persons report?”

“I think that would be a good idea, Ms. Kim.”

Will waits until they’re out of earshot before saying what’s on both their minds. “Hell of a coincidence that he vanishes around the same time as the murder.”

“For all we know, he’s just skipping out on his rent, but…”

“Yeah,” Will says. “ But .”

They spend the afternoon trawling the victim’s social media and his finances, sifting through Richard Vanderford’s life like raccoons going through his trash. They get the IT guys to work on his laptop and have his car towed to the lab, but it’ll be a while before anything comes of that. The whole day is pretty fruitless and Rav goes home to have quite a lot of wine about it—while listening to the Nicks and cruising the internet for tidbits about Jack Vale.

For research, obviously.

Will catches him humming in the car the next morning, on their way into the city to meet the FBI. “Is that ‘Soar’?”

“Sorry, what?” Rav sits up a little straighter.

“It is! You’re humming a Nicks song!” Shepard grins. “Oh, this is priceless. Please tell me you don’t have a crush on our suspect.”

“Hilarious. I’m in a chipper mood, that’s all. I have a good feeling about this meeting. They’re going to give us something useful, I know it.”

“I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” Will mutters. “By the way, the lawyers got back to me this morning about the Lupin Media deal. You were right, the papers hadn’t been signed yet. The whole thing’s on hold until further notice.”

“How convenient.”

“Right? With Vanderford out of the way, the deal gets trashed.”

“A deal Vale very much doesn’t want.” As if he needed even more of a motive. How could this guy not be their perp?

They pull up outside a federal building downtown and submit to the ignominious screening, after which they’re shown to a bleak conference room that smells of old coffee. The agents keep them waiting just long enough to demonstrate that their dicks are longer, and then they settle in across a chipped faux-wood table. They’re a matched set, Thing One and Thing Two, a man and a woman in ill-fitting pantsuits. “I’m Agent Rice,” the woman says, “and this is Agent Keller. How can we help you?”

They know perfectly well what this meeting is about. It’s just more flexing, but Rav plays along. Diplomacy , right? “We’re hoping you might have turned up something in your investigation that could shed light on ours.”

Her expression stays closed. “Such as?”

“I’m not sure. It would help if we knew the nature of the investigation. The media made it sound like the incident at the Concord was a political stunt gone wrong, but there must be more to it if the Bureau is involved.”

“For the moment, we’re treating the matter as an attempted homicide.”

Rav’s eyebrows go up. For one thing, murder is usually the NYPD’s patch; there’s only a handful of circumstances that would warrant FBI involvement. “Who was the presumed target?”

“Jack Vale. We believe the suspect traveled from out of state with the express purpose of killing him, possibly as part of a broader conspiracy.”

“What kind of conspiracy?” Will asks.

“We’re still gathering the facts,” she says evasively. “What we do know is that the suspect, Joseph Miller, is a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist. Frequents all the usual sites, posting about all the usual subjects—tracking chips in vaccines, chemical trails from secret government aircraft, that sort of thing. He was put on a federal watch list a few months ago after he made some threatening statements about a congressman in Georgia, but until now it’s been small-time stuff.”

“What’s his issue with Vale?” Rav asks.

“Another conspiracy theory. Are you familiar with the band’s original lead singer, Tommy Esposito? There’s a fringe group of fans who claim the motorcycle crash that killed him wasn’t an accident. Miller has been writing to the Bureau about it since it happened, asking us to investigate.”

That explains the sign Rav saw at the theater. In full, it probably said, Tommy was murdered.

“Who’s supposed to have done it?” Will asks.

Agent Keller hitches a shoulder indifferently. “There’s at least a dozen different versions, in all the usual flavors. The government did it, or the CIA, or the record label. You see it every time one of these music gods meets a sudden end. John Lennon, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G. We still get letters about Kurt Cobain. Miller has been trying to get close to Vale for a couple of years now, to ‘show him the evidence.’”

“So he’s a stalker,” Rav says. “But what makes you think he wants to kill Vale?”

“We got a tip—”

Agent Rice cuts across her partner smoothly. “We received some information that inclines us in that direction. But as I said, we’re still gathering the facts.”

Why does Rav get the feeling they’re holding something back?

“Is he in custody?” Will asks.

“Not yet.”

Rav squirms. What if Lieutenant Howard was right, and it’s his fault Miller got away? “Is Vale aware of the threat?”

“Sure,” Keller says. “That’s why he’s got Morillo.”

“Who?”

“ángel Morillo, the body man? He’s no joke, either. Former CIA.”

“The bodyguard used to be CIA?” Will glances at Rav. “The kind of guy who’d be packing a .40 S&W and know how to use it?”

“What’s the significance of that?” Rice asks.

“Vanderford was killed with a .40 caliber,” Rav explains. “One to the head, one to the chest.”

“Sounds like a pro,” Rice says, and she slides her partner a look.

They’re holding something back, no doubt about it. So much for interdepartmental collaboration , Rav thinks sourly.

“Well, gentlemen,” Rice says, “it sounds as if you have an interview to arrange. Don’t let us keep you.”

Rav rises and buttons his jacket. “If you turn up anything connected to Vanderford…”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Agent Rice assures him as they shake hands. “And likewise. You come across anything linked to our stalker, you be sure to pass it along.”

“They’re playing it pretty close to the vest,” Will observes as they head to the car.

“They’re being territorial wankers. But at least we came out of it with a solid tip. We’ll need to pull up everything we can on this Morillo.”

“Vale’s PA confirmed they’re back in town late tomorrow afternoon. I’ve already made appointments to interview the other band members on Monday, but maybe we can squeeze in the bodyguard before then.”

“We’ll want his phone records as well. Are Vale’s back yet?”

“Anytime now.”

“Good,” Rav says, popping open the door of Will’s Golf. “I think we’re finally getting somewhere.”

There are still plenty of unanswered questions. If the bodyguard was the trigger man, where does the guy in the hooded jumper come into it? What does any of it have to do with Vale’s stalker?

The answers are out there, and he’s going to find them. In the meantime, he tells himself that flutter in his belly is excitement about the case and nothing more.

He almost manages to believe it.