“Let’s have it, Vickee. This must be my eyeball-to-eyeball day. First Peterson, now you.”
She waited till I looked at her. “Alex wasn’t on her way home last night when she walked out of Primola. You need to know that.”
“What’s that old saying? Free, white, and twenty-one.” I had a knot in the pit of my stomach. “Excuse my political incorrectness, Vickee. Back in the day-”
“You need to take this more seriously, Mike.”
“I’ll bite. That’s what I’m supposed to say, right? Where was she going?”
“I got a phone call last week from Jake.”
“Jake Tyler?” The knot felt more like the ache from a sucker punch. He was one of Coop’s ex-lovers, a news jock who fancied himself in the line of succession for a Lester Holt anchor job at NBC.
“Yes,” Vickee said. “He told me he was coming back to town for two weeks and wanted to know if I thought Alex would see him.”
Selfishly, I’d been happy when Jake was stationed in London after he and Coop broke up a few years back. I wasn’t about to get in the game and try to match wits with the Yale grad/Rhodes scholar who had snake-charmed his way into her bed.
I rolled my chair toward the computer. “Thanks for having my back, Vick.”
“I did, Mike,” she said. “Don’t get snide with me. I told Jake she was in love with you. And very happy about it. I told the man to leave it be.”
“Obviously, Coop still carries a torch, don’t you think? For him, or for the NBC peacock.”
“I was so annoyed at her last night I was seeing red. I was sure he’d called her, but she didn’t want me to know. Then today, Catherine said to me Alex told her, on the way to Primola, that she couldn’t stay because she was supposed to meet a friend for a drink. That has to be Jake.”
I threw a balled-up sheet of paper at the wastebasket and missed by a foot. “What am I supposed to do about it, Vickee? Get real.”
“Find her, Mike. Find out what this is all about before she gets hurt. And before she hurts you any more than she’s already done.”
SEVENTEEN
“What’d you get?” I was outside the station house on the street, leaning against Vickee’s car.
“The intern who answered at the news desk didn’t have cell phones for any of the reporters,” Vickee said. “I used my NYPD public info credentials to find which hotel he’s at, and lucky to have gotten that. Jake is staying at the London.”
“West 54th Street. Convenient to Rock Center and the NBC studios. Coop loves herself a fine hotel. Somebody else to make the bed.”
“Give it a try, Mike.”
“I’m not sure what you want me to do, girl.”
“Worst-case scenario? Alex didn’t keep her assignation with Jake and we’ve got real trouble on our hands.”
“Even worse than that case scenario? I get to the London and find a love nest, but a ménage is not what they had in mind,” I said. “Giuliano put her in a cab when she left the restaurant. She’s just embarrassed to see you or me.”
“Turns out he didn’t walk her out,” Vickee said. “Al Vandomir told Catherine he saw her using her Uber app to order a car.”
“To go five blocks? That’s not her style. She always walks home from Primola.”
“Exactly. That’s my point.”
“So what do you propose? Dumping her phone, checking her credit card to see if there’s an Uber receipt with her destination?” I asked. “I’d be treating her like she’s a perp-or like I’m a stalker. She’d have my head for that.”
“I want to know where she is, Mike. Just like you do.”
I wasn’t sure I needed to know the truth. After ten years of verbal foreplay, I didn’t fancy rejection quite this way.
“Maybe she flew off the handle, me pressing her about playing with your emotions. Maybe she just, I don’t know, disappeared, like Battaglia suggested-like to the Vineyard. We can talk sense to her.”
“She’s not there.”
“At her house?” Vickee asked. “How do you know?”
“’Cause I called the Chilmark police when you went to freshen up. They rode up and checked the house,” I said. “All locked up and nobody home. Got the call back while you were on the phone with the intern.”
I was pacing the sidewalk now. I was somewhere between jealousy and concern, but not even twenty-four hours had elapsed since we’d all been together. Coop often let her team take what she called “mental health days”-just a break from the stress of a very difficult job.
A trial had blown up in her face, an impostor hired by the DA’s people had hacked into her computer and stolen an unknown measure of professional and personal information, and she was obviously in some kind of turmoil-maybe regret-about our affair.
“I know you’ve got a conscience, Mike,” Vickee said, pulling open her car door. “So it’s on your head, okay? Whatever is going on with Alex.”
“Hold on,” I said, grabbing the door before she slammed it shut. “Because you’ve decided to put the weight all on me? That’s why it’s there?”
Vickee nodded. “May not be fair, but you’ve got to do it.”
“Okay. It’ll give me something to occupy myself with for the rest of my tour. I guess murder doesn’t trump your pal, even if she’s just livin’ la vida loca, huh?”
“Bring her back in, Mike. And you’ll stay in touch with-?”
“I’ve made a fool of myself for less important reasons. Sure, I’ll call.”
When Vickee reached for her belt I closed the door. It was time for my meal break anyway. I went inside, told Peterson that I’d grab a bite and then canvass some of Wynan Wilson’s neighbors to see what they’d heard the night of the murder, and went back out to my own car.
It was the height of rush hour, so it took me almost an hour to crawl down Broadway to get to 54th Street. I parked the car, went to the front desk of the London-making my way past all the Eurotrash clientele clogging the lobby bar-and asked for Jake.
“Certainly, sir,” the receptionist said, the French accent coating her words like a treacly sweet syrup. “I’ll ring his room for you.”
She looked me up and down with a keen sense of disapproval while the rings went unanswered. “I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Tyler is not in at the moment.”
“What’s his room number?”
“I’m sorry again, sir. But I can’t give you that information.”
“I bet you can,” I said, putting my badge on the countertop. “Homicide.”
I didn’t exactly whisper the word. The receptionist’s eyes opened wide, and the woman beside me inquiring about a driver for the next day placed the forefinger of her gloved hand next to the badge.
“Did I hear you say ‘homicide’?” she asked, while the receptionist scurried off to get her supervisor. “Is everything all right here?”
I gave the bejeweled older woman my best grin. “Except for the dead man, it’s fine.”
“Here? A murder?”
“No, ma’am. Not here. You’re perfectly safe, if all that glitz in the lobby isn’t lethal.”
She turned her head to look at the other guests just as the senior desk clerk arrived. “Do you have a problem, Detective? May we take it into my office?”
“No problem at all. If you’ll have security accompany me up to Mr. Tyler’s room, I just need to look around for a few minutes.”
I had the woman’s attention again. “Jake Tyler? The NBC reporter? I just saw his on-air segment fifteen minutes ago,” she said. “Surely he’s not hurt?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said, her gloved hand to her throat. “He’s not a suspect in a murder case? That’s not possible.”
I put my finger up to my lips, hinting that I was telling her something in confidence. “Just a person of interest at this point,” I said, using the bullshit term that had become so popular on television news. “No charges yet.”
Fuck Jake and the horse he rode in on.