One of essentially the most acclaimed movies by Oscar-nominated writer-director Michael Mann is his 1995 crime mystery “Heat,” through which a police detective and a thief play cat-and-mouse at the blood-spattered streets of Los Angeles. Now, Mann has teamed up with Edgar Award-winning suspense novelist Meg Gardiner for “Heat 2” (William Morrow, to be printed August 9), a prequel and sequel to the occasions of “Heat.” It expands the backstory of characters (performed within the movie by Al Pacino, Val Kilmer and Robert De Niro) and the repercussions in their bad dance with demise.
Read the excerpt beneath, and do not pass over Seth Doane’s interview with Michael Mann on “CBS Sunday Morning” August 7!
William Morrow
The solar is thrashing down when Hanna and SWAT crash into the Blue Room. The bar is a gloomy group throwback bar on a pale industrial boulevard.
The seek warrant got here via at one p.m. Hanna, his crew, uniforms, and SWAT approached from the streets at the back of. They blocked each ends of an alley with black-and-whites. They eradicated a surveillance digital camera.
If Shiherlis is right here, he will be armed to his fingertips. Who else is also inside of?
Hanna, in a ballistic vest with a Benelli semiauto twelve-gauge at port fingers, is in the fitting scrum, stacked up throughout the SWAT unit within the tactical ballet, our bodies to our bodies, exactly aligned ft. He nods to the SWAT crew chief, who holds an automated rifle throughout his chest, barrel top. The guy raises a hand and counts down on his arms. Silent access. He reaches 0, targets his hand on the door like a hatchet, and is going.
The door is unlocked. They’re in. In an fast they quilt and command the distance. A protracted bar runs alongside the wall at the left, reflect at the back of it, bottles sparkling within the dim gentle. A couple of early drinkers stand on the rail or sit down at wobbly tables. “Gangsta’s Paradise” thumps from the jukebox. The bartender turns.
Hanna shouts with the others, “Freeze. Show me your hands.”
A SWAT officer bellows at consumers. “Up against the wall, hands behind your heads.”
A 2d crew strikes tactically up a staircase.
The bartender steps again and raises his arms overhead. A buyer dodges for the entrance door. When he slams it open, Drucker clotheslines him. He and Casals, with a Remington 870, input.
Hanna arrows towards the tall man status on the bar, arms in undeniable view, one keeping a espresso cup. He’s who Eady had described. Older SoCal exhausting case, stringy gray-blond hair, sit back eyes observing Hanna within the reflect.
“Hands on the bar,” Hanna says.
The man complies. He smells like Brut and dry-cleaned polyester. He eyes Hanna within the reflect with a subzero gaze. He’s frisked. A SWAT crew member tosses his keys and pockets at the bar.
Hanna flips open the pockets. The similar ice-blue eyes stare from the driving force’s license.
Hanna reads the identify. “Nathan. We’re going to talk about a mutual friend.”
Nate turns, his face impartial. “I know you?”
“How the f*** do I know if you know me? I know you. And I know one guy you know. Neil McCauley.”
Nate’s expression is a complete clean. “Who?”
“Your pal.”
“Does not ring a bell.”
“What kinda bell? Like ding-dong, Avon calling? That bell? Security camera out back? Does it put you and McCauley together at the rear entrance? What are the odds?”
Upstairs, one of the vital SWAT officials calls, “Clear.”
The SWAT crew chief comes down the corridor. “All clear.” Chris Shiherlis is not right here.
“So happens, the odds are zero,” Nate says.
Hanna feels the black scorch of anger. Outside, he smiles like a reaper’s scythe. “Good. ‘Cause rewinding and erasing evinces what we call ‘consciousness of guilt.'” He seems round, all-seeing. “Since others have laid eyes on you and your meeting him.”
Drucker says, “Why lie? You wanna lie, lie about something maybe we can’t prove. Lie about Neil? That lie is a loser. Why lie about that?”
Nate seems round, surveys his LAPD-occupied bar with disdain. “So far, up to now you are eluding me.”
“Eluding?” Hanna shrugs. “Shiherlis, Christopher. I figure you’re the middleman-slash-fixer. Right now, at a minimum, you’re looking at accessory after the fact on the armored van robbery with three associated homicides and a bank robbery, including the murder of an LAPD sergeant during its commission, one of my partners, and three uniformed officers. The killing of Roger Van Zant and, in addition to that aforementioned … carnage … the killing of an asshole named Waingro”—he leans shut—”by Neil, your pal, who told me in person that he was never going back. And he is not.”
Nate’s chilly blue eyes, set throughout the red blotching of burst capillaries, glide throughout Hanna, slightly registering him. “Robbery-Homicide Division. RHD. Try your showboat act somewhere else.”
Hanna’s cool, like nonetheless water. “Shiherlis on the run may or may not elude me. You will not. For you, I’ve got a lotta time.”
Nate glances away skeptically, then seems again at Hanna squarely. “If you got cause, arrest me. If not, your presence is discouraging my midday business.”
“Yeah, yeah …” Hanna, all at once centered somewhere else, glances at the back of him. Officers are looking out the again place of work. That may just take hours. Hanna nods Drucker apart.
“Waste of time,” Hanna says sotto voce. “This guy’s like talking to last week’s roadkill.”
“What’s the play?” Drucker says.
“Him? Haul him in. Old-school ex-con? Assign someone young to wear him down. They won’t get to first base. Chris Shiherlis …” He considers it. “Casals hit Shiherlis above the vest. Clavicle. He’s too f****d up to risk commercial air travel. Maybe not enough time for Mr. Fix-It over there to lay on a private plane, file flight plans, look legit, all that. Shiherlis is running, but he’s on the ground.”
“BOLO’s out to every agency in California,” Drucker says. “Driver’s license photo and mug shot.”
Hanna thinks about it. “He won’t look the same.” He eyes the alley in the course of the rear door, tapping his hand in opposition to his leg. “He’ll get rid of the surfer dude ponytail. Cut his hair short, maybe dye it dark. Get our artist to put together a sketch. New BOLO.”
“If he’s got no time,” Drucker says, “he’s heading for Mexico.”
“And he ain’t backpacking through the desert,” Hanna says. “Hit the border crossings. Send the new sketch and BOLO to Customs, Border Patrol, Mexican immigration, and Baja, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas Judiciales. I want every goddamn border crossing from San Diego to Brownsville wallpapered with his picture.”
A SWAT officer comes within the again door from the alley. “Lieutenant?” Hanna turns.
The guy jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a detached garage out here. You want to see this?”
Hanna follows him into the alley and rounds a nook. The door of the storage has been rolled up. Hanna stops, staring in. A recent oil stain, now not but soaked into the concrete. Someone left. Recently.
From “Heat 2” by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner, printed by William Morrow. Copyright © 2022 by Michael Mann Books, LLC. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
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