Mike hesitated before speaking. “Scully’s giving me a big break, taking a real chance. You think I just disappeared on you? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t exactly have a choice, do I? Or has there been another temptress?”
Mike threw back his head. “Just because your peepers are green, kid, don’t fall into that trap and become some green-eyed monster. There’s no other woman. No competition.”
“What then?”
“Scully sent me on a mission, okay? If I tell you about it, I’ll have to kill you,” Mike said, grinning at me as he walked back toward the chair he’d first been sitting in.
“You’re killing me anyway.”
“Will you give me a week?”
I shook my head. “Tell me now.”
“No can do.”
“I see,” I said, walking toward the door. “I’m supposed to trust you, but you can’t-”
“It’s not me. It’s the commissioner,” Mike said, pivoting to cut me off at the door.
“Scully trusts me implicitly.”
“He thinks you have too many friends. That you gossip.”
“That I-I-?” That one was hard to dispute.
“We’ll have this all out, Coop. Believe me. Next week.”
“What about Saturday night?”
“We’re still on.”
“But you won’t tell me your secret?”
“It’s not mine to tell.”
“So your mother? That’s all some line you fed me?” I put my hand on the doorknob.
“Keep your temper under check, Coop. I wanted her out of harm’s way,” Mike said, gripping my wrist and pulling it off the knob. “Very same place I want you.”
TWELVE
“So you were starting to tell me about Corinne’s brother,” Mike said to Mercer.
“Yeah. He’s as broken up as you might guess. Pug’s going to talk to him. Corinne’s brother gave us all the contact information for Paco, as well as his family. Rocco’s got somebody going out to pick Paco up. Did you divine anything from the photographs, Detective?”
“Corinne’s not talking to me yet, Mercer.”
“Dead girl winds up in the very hotel where the president is coming to stay, and her ex-lover has a grudge against the top dog.”
“That’s a major leap to make,” Mike said, reaching for the remote control and turning on the television set hanging above the whiteboard across the room.
“Well, we’ve got a major case and nothing else that even smells like a clue,” Mercer said, throwing his pad on the table and pausing to look at the pictures. “Turn the volume down before you wake the dead.”
For as long as I could remember, Mike had an addiction to the Final Jeopardy! question on the popular long-running television show. The location didn’t matter-morgue or steak joint, crime scene or courthouse-he’d find a way to the nearest television and tune in to test his own bottomless well of trivial information against whoever was in his company.
The three of us bet against one another every time we were together. Mike’s strength reflected his deep knowledge of all things military-and, like me, great affection for old movies and Motown music. Mercer’s upbringing by a single father who was a mechanic at Delta Air Lines had infused him with a love for world geography and modes of transportation, even in the most remote locales. I had majored in literature before law was ever a career path I’d considered, so I knew a lot about works from Beowulf and The Decameron to the romantic poets and Victorian novelists.
“That’s Alex Trebek rattling the bones downstairs in the autopsy room. Not me,” Mike said. “And don’t tell me ‘not I’ again, Coop, like you’re always doing. I can see you’re in that kind of mood-grammar police on patrol.”
“I gave that business up while you were away. Can’t change the spots on this leopard, that’s for sure.”
Mercer laughed. “Wolverine. I told you wolverine.”
“I get the feeling I’m missing something here.” Mike unmuted the television as Trebek stood in front of the board with the final category.
“Twentieth-Century Words,” the TV host said. He repeated the category, and as the three contestants picked up their pens to write the question down, Trebek reminded viewers that there were new words entering the lexicon all the time. “Your Oxford English Dictionary won’t help you with this one, I don’t think.”
“I’ll throw in my twenty bucks,” Mercer said, “but this has Ms. Cooper written all over it.”
“Just because the kid’s got a sharp tongue doesn’t mean she’s on top of all the street jive. I’m good for twenty.”
The category screen disappeared and was replaced by the Final Jeopardy! answer, right after I had agreed to join in with the guys.
The answer appeared in the giant blue-background box on the screen: COINED IN 1979, THIS WORD MEANS ROMANTIC ATTRACTION THAT RESULTS IN MANIC, OBSESSIVE NEED TO HAVE FEELINGS RECIPROCATED.
Mercer started to laugh again as Mike’s feet dropped to the floor with an exaggerated bang.
“How stupid could I have been, Mercer? Of course she knows this.”
“Don’t go there, Mike,” Mercer said, wagging a finger at him.
“I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what the word is or what Mike is talking about,” I said, picking up my case folder. “And now I’m really hungry and I need a stiff drink.”
The first two contestants drew blanks, as had I.
Mike pointed at the screen, as if trying to get the attention of the third player. “C’mon, lady. What is Coopster-itis? It’ll be in all the psych write-ups before too long. Emphasis manic. Emphasis obsessive.”
“None of you have this?” Trebek asked, then tsked them for not knowing the question. “Not even venturing a guess?”
“What is limerence?” Trebek said, repeating the word twice.
Each of the contestants groaned.
“Obsessive love, folks. An infatuation that’s not necessarily reciprocated,” the host continued. “Coined in 1979 by a psychologist named Dorothy Tennov,” Trebek said. “I guess that was a tough one.”
“I got to say, Coop, that’s a word right out of your playbook.”
“Never heard of it.”
“But you live it, girl. Infatuation. Not necessarily reciprocated. Like first there was this investment banker type, then the newscaster dude, then the Frenchman with the frying pan.”
“You are so close to the fire, Mr. Chapman,” I said, “you might get scorched if you don’t keep your mouth shut.”
“Don’t knock my girl off her game,” Mercer said, crossing behind Mike as he tried to playfully muzzle him. “I need her positive energy beaming in on finding a killer.”
“So buy us dinner,” Mike said, flashing his best grin at me. “I’m all tapped out after being suspended without pay for three weeks. Oh, and then there’s the dimes I blew on the rest of the vacation.”
“Dinner it is,” Mercer said. “That’ll give Rocco’s guys time to get to the Bronx and see if they can bring Paco in for questioning. I can flip back down to talk to him after we eat.”
“Let’s shoot up to Primola,” I said. My favorite Italian restaurant was on Second Avenue near 64th Street, a ten-minute ride from the morgue and an atmospheric world away, part of the Upper East Side scene. The food was consistently good and the staff took great care of me and my friends. “I’m obsessing about prosciutto and figs and maybe a half order of pasta. Positively manic about it. My limerence for food is so much more rewarding than a romance.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Mike said.
“Now that’s a joke. You’ve probably sublimated more with food than anyone on the planet,” I said.
“Another twentieth-century word I’m not familiar with. Sublimating? What are you suggesting, exactly?”
“She sort of means you eat all the time instead of hooking up with the ladies,” Mercer said.