“Done that deed? Slept with each other? Was it good for them?” I said, mild annoyance beginning to trump my amusement. “Because if it’s ever happened, I have to say it’s pretty much slipped my mind. And if that’s what my troops and your bosses spend their time handicapping, the crime rate in the city should be off the charts.”
“Lowest it’s been in forty-nine years. That’s how come I can concentrate on your love life. What’s to lose?”
I stirred the ice cubes with my finger.
“Alex Cooper. You’re slow on the uptake. I asked what you’ve got to lose?”
My head was beginning to spin. “Maybe the best friend I’ve ever had, although that didn’t seem to be the case the way he talked to me tonight.”
“You’ve thought about it, though, right?”
“Of course I’ve thought about it.” Mike Chapman was six months older than I. Although we had taken strikingly different paths to public service, we both had a passion for doing justice that was pretty much identical. A Fordham University grad, he had majored in history, but his career path took a dramatic turn when his father dropped dead of a massive coronary two days after he turned in his gun and shield. “Mike’s smart, he’s funny-sometimes even when I’m the butt of the joke. He’s the best in the world at what he does…”
“And he’s almost as handsome as my man,” Vickee said.
“He’s like a brother to me, not a lover.”
“You’ve got two brothers already. You don’t need a third.”
“How fast before Paul Battaglia tells me I can’t work any more cases with Mike? That I can’t have him on the witness stand with defense attorneys badgering him about how he only got confessions because I demanded that he give me that kind of evidence?”
“So work cases with Mercer,” she said, looking at me over the top of her glass. “Is it the cop thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that you come from this really wealthy family, that you live off your trust fund in a lavish apartment with a compound on Martha’s Vineyard, that you like all these fine things that none of us could ever hope to have.”
“That’s about the most insulting thing you could say to me. You think it’s about money?”
“I don’t want to think that.”
“My grandfather was a fireman, and I absolutely adored him. My mother’s a nurse. My father’s parents were impoverished immigrants, and my father was the first in his family to go to college. He’s brilliant, I’m happy to say, and created something that he was lucky enough to make money from. And by the way, that’s what allows me to devote all my time and whatever intelligence I have to public service.”
“Could you marry a cop, Alex? Really?”
“I could marry my plumber if I was in love with him,” I said, thinking better of another sip. “And I happen to have a very cute one. Of course I could marry a cop.”
“Think of it,” Vickee said, closing your eyes. “You and Mike could be like Nick and Nora Charles. Fancy digs, car and driver, over-the-top furs.”
“Asta. I really ought to have a dog.”
“Solving crimes with a cocktail in each hand while the NYPD stands by helplessly. Give him a shot, Alex. Like they say on the street-YOLO.”
“YOLO?”
“You only live once.”
“That’s the wine talking, Mrs. Wallace. You need to remember to take something for that headache you’re going to wake up with.”
“No waking me up, understand? First morning I’ve had in months without my little Dinosaurus Logan crawling in beside me. Would you mind if I slept out here?”
I stood up and took both of our glasses to head for the sink. “It’s so much more comfortable upstairs,” I said as she put her feet on the wooden decking. “And be sure to hold on to the banister tight.”
Vickee grabbed my arm to steady herself, then embraced me in a hug. “I hope I didn’t come on too strong. Remember I walked away once from the best guy I’ve ever known. Don’t you do that before it’s too late to fix.”
“Say it all right now before you go to sleep, because the next forty-eight hours are a no-picking-on-me zone, okay? Sleep as late as you want. It’s almost midnight.”
I turned out the lights and went into my bathroom to wash up. My cell phone started to ring the moment I reached for my toothbrush. I went back to the nightstand to pick it up.
“Coop? Did I wake you?”
“Nope. Vickee and I are just headed to bed.”
“You sound-sort of cool,” Mike said.
“And you sound sort of intoxicated.”
“I am. Way drunk. Left my car near the restaurant and walked home.”
“And I’m as cool as I sound.”
There were a couple of moments of silence.
“I just called to tell you I was totally out-of-bounds tonight. I pounded you like a mean son of a bitch, and I want to apologize.”
“Then I’m glad you called. Apology accepted.”
“We’ve got to find an hour to talk next week. I’ve been wanting to do that.”
“Looks like you’ll have the chance.”
“Not the Park, Coop. Something that has me tied up in knots.”
“To do with me?” My heart started to race. Maybe Vickee and Mercer had lit a fire under Mike, too.
“No, not exactly. Well, not directly.”
“Oh.”
Mike made a halfhearted attempt at a laugh. “I’ve got my first stalker.”
“No, seriously.”
“I am serious. And it’s a problem, because it sort of involves you,” Mike said. “I just wasn’t prepared to see you this morning. I wasn’t ready to talk about it.”
“What involves me?”
“Remember just before Christmas last year, when I had the detail on Judge Pell?”
“Yeah. One of the hedge fund guys she sentenced to heavy time in that fraud case hired a hit man. It wasn’t my case. What’s this got to do with me?”
“Things got out of hand,” Mike said, taking care not to slur his words.
“How do you mean?”
“It got personal.”
“You and Jessica Pell?” My head was reeling as I sat down on the edge of the bed. “How’d you let that happen, Mike? She’s old enough to be your mother.”
“Hey. She’s only five years older than we are. Mercer’s age.”
I was stunned. It was such a professional boundary violation that I couldn’t imagine that neither of them had nipped temptation in the bud. “Well, age was the nicest of the things I could think to say about her, actually. Jessica was only appointed to the criminal court because she’d had an affair with that asshole deputy in the mayor’s criminal justice office, and the next best thing he could do for her other than leave his wife was put her on the bench. She’s half a psycho, Mike.”
“That’s the half that’s after me, Coop.”
My emotions had overtaken any attempt at rational thought. Vickee had tried to put me on a path to rethinking my love life, but Mike was otherwise quite engaged.
“This is TMI, Detective Chapman. Your love life is way too much information. I’m going to wish you and Jessica pleasant dreams, and I’m going to hang up the phone. Unlike me, you’re not alone on Friday-”
“Stay with me, Coop. I am one hundred percent alone,” Mike pleaded with me. “It was just a few-a few-”
“Dates? Or were you doing on it overtime so the taxpayers like me could protect Jessica?”
“Coop-”
“I know you have trouble saying the word ‘sex,’ Mike, but are you talking about a physical relationship with Jessica Pell?”
“Yeah. I mean, not for a long time. Maybe a month or two, and I’d only see her once a week. After the detail was over in mid-February.”
I was speeding through the events of March and April, wondering how I had missed any signs of this when Mike and Mercer and I had been working together. Jessica Pell cut a striking figure, in and out of her judicial robes. It was hard not to notice her when she entered a room, and difficult to be in her way when there was something she wanted.