In New York, the line between the cops and the bad guys can be paper-thin, as befits people living cheek by jowl in the same colorful neighborhoods. The catering hall in Bensonhurst where the Albano-DeFelice reception was being held was straight out of a wiseguy movie, and so were a lot of the guests. Christmas lights twinkled in June. Naked nymphs danced in the wall murals, squirting wine from leather pouches into one another’s mouths. Men in pastel satin tuxes imitated them, feeding champagne to their big-haired, big-bosomed companions.
A ten-piece orchestra played as Melanie and Dan wound their way across the teeming dance floor to their table. They were seated with others from the Major Crimes Unit, next to a table full of judges and their clerks. Melanie slid into a seat beside Susan Charlton, who’d brought her girlfriend, Lisa. Susan wore a practical navy-blue business suit and Lisa a tank top and sequined peasant skirt. On the other side of Melanie, Shekeya Jenkins and her husband, Kwame, who worked for the MTA, were tucking into plates groaning with enormous piles of antipasti. Shekeya, who looked like a celebration in hot-pink satin, waved her fork enthusiastically.
“The shrimp is out of this world, girl. You got to get some before it’s all gone.”
Melanie glanced over to an adjoining table with cops and agents from Vito Albano’s Elite Narcotics Task Force. She spotted DEA Agent Raymond Wong, the guy she’d set her friend Sophie up with, sitting there among his colleagues. She waved at Ray-Ray, but he didn’t notice, so wrapped up was he in a conversation with the perky, athletic-looking blonde sitting next to him, who wore a red dress. As Melanie watched, Ray-Ray leaned in and smooched Detective Bridget Mulqueen full on the mouth.
She turned to Dan. “Hey, is something up with Bridget and Ray-
Ray?”
“They’re here together?” Dan asked, following the line of her gaze. “What do you know? They were sorta going out for a while, but I heard she dumped him.”
“I set him up with Sophie Cho.”
“Your friend Sophie?”
“Yeah, just last week. I had no idea he was dating Bridget. He never mentioned it.”
“Dating is an overstatement. He follows her around like a dog. Sometimes she lets him, mostly she just kicks him. But he’s a goner. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for your friend.”
“I thought Ray-Ray hated Bridget.”
“There’s a thin line between love and hate,” Dan said, and then laughed at himself. “Listen to me, the philosopher. Like I have a fucking clue.”
“You do okay,” Melanie said.
From across the table, Joe Williams gave Melanie a look so withering that it shocked her. Her stomach sank. Regarding the whole Clyde matter so far, Joe had been more than understanding, and now Clyde was cleared. Joe didn’t know that yet, but why would he suddenly get so angry? Had something changed? Joe was alone as usual, the seat beside him empty. In all the years she’d known him, Melanie had never seen Joe with a date. She made up her mind to go sit next to him and find out what was wrong, but then the band segued into a romantic song.
“Come on,” Dan said, grabbing her hand.
“We just sat down.”
“It’s a slow dance,” he said.
The lust in his eyes worked on her like a narcotic. “Okay,” she said.
On the dance floor, Dan put his powerful hands on her hips. Their eyes locked together and their bodies melded from the waist down. His hands caressed ever so slowly from her bare back to her derriere and up again.
“I can’t stop thinking about the sex we had in your office,” he said, his voice husky and low, so only she could hear. “I can’t get the image out of my mind. You, bent over, looking back at me with those hot eyes. Aagh, let’s do that again.”
She rested her head against his broad chest, closed her eyes, and sighed. “Okay…but not in my office.”
“How about my car? Or better yet, the stairwell over there? Standing up against the wall. You like it like that.”
She opened her eyes and stared at him. “Now?”
“Don’t expect me to wait until I get you home. You’re way too sexy in that dress. Your ass looks amazing. I was walking behind you the whole way, drooling.”
“Dan, I’ve got a psychotic killer stalking me.”
“So what? He’s not in the stairwell.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ll check it out first,” he said.
She laughed. “Seriously, we can’t do that again.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Have sex like that. Where we can get caught by people I work with. It’s unprofessional. I mean, it could jeopardize my career.”
His face fell. “Don’t say that! I’ve been fantasizing about it non-stop ever since.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.”
“Why not? People already know we’re going out.”
“Going out is one thing. Knocking boots on my desk could get me in trouble.”
“I’m in trouble. Have been from the day we met. Jump in, the water’s fine.”
She laughed.
“Come on,” he coaxed, leaning down to whisper in her ear. The soft buzzing made her melt all over again. “If we’re careful, we won’t get caught. That’s half the fun, the challenge of the thing. Don’t you want to have crazy memories to look back on when we’re sitting in our rockers on the front porch fifty years from now?”
“I never thought of you as so reckless,” she said, struck by his reference to the future. Fifty years from now. He’d talked of marriage when they first met, but not recently. Was that only because Melanie seemed like she wasn’t ready? She wasn’t ready, yet when he’d stopped mentioning it, she’d begun to worry.
“Look who’s talking. You locked the door and jumped me,” Dan said.
“You’re right. It was all my fault.”
“That wild streak. I can’t get enough of it. And what a contrast with how sweet you seem on the surface.”
The song ended. She shook her head, “Let’s sit down.”
“Fine, but I’m not giving up. A little vino, and maybe you’ll change your mind. A guy can always hope, anyway,” he said, smiling at her dreamily.
When they returned to the table, Joe Williams was gone. Shekeya said he’d gone to the men’s room, but when he didn’t return after a while, Melanie got worried. She thought about calling his cell phone, but she wasn’t sure what to say. What if Joe’s absence had nothing to do with her? She’d just be harping on a sore subject. Then dinner was served. Melanie had prime rib and lots of red wine. Everybody seemed to be in a great mood. Susan danced with Judge Fox, who’d been threatening to sanction her the day before, and came back pink-cheeked, telling everybody what a charmer he was. Dan and Kwame got into a rousing argument about the Knicks that ended with them laughing uproariously and slapping each other on the back. By the time the best man, a hefty lieutenant with white hair whom Melanie recognized from somewhere or other, tapped on a wineglass to make the toast, she’d utterly forgotten that the Central Park Butcher was stalking her, or that one of her best friends had walked out on the wedding because he was so pissed about how she’d handled her investigation into his father’s activities. As Bernadette and Vito crammed fluffy white cake into each other’s face, Melanie cheered and hooted with the rest of the crowd as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
When the newlyweds stepped onto the floor for their first dance, most of Melanie’s table got up to join in. Melanie and Dan stayed behind, their fingers intertwined. She leaned toward him and they kissed, their tongues exploring, teasing. Before she knew it, she was thinking about that stairwell.
“Let’s go home,” she said, sliding her hands up his muscular thighs.
Just then, Dan’s phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out and held it up to read the display, which glowed a vibrant blue green in the romantically lit room. Melanie glanced at it, absorbing without intending to.
“Hold on, I have to take this,” he said, and despite the dim light, she saw his face flush red.
The number had come up as DIANE CELL. It took a minute for Melanie to get her mind around what her eyes had just seen. If his ex-wife’s cell-phone number was registering that way on his caller ID, it must be programmed into his phone. Yet Dan had assured her he never had contact with Diane.
“What’s up? Any news?” Dan said. She couldn’t help noticing that his tone betrayed no surprise at the call. To the contrary, he sounded as if he’d been expecting it.
“Aw, jeez, I am so sorry…God, I loved that guy. We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it easier…I can’t right now, I’m at a wedding right…Yeah, yeah, with Melanie,” Dan said, glancing up at her as he spoke her name.
Seeing the stunned expression on Melanie’s face brought Dan up short.
“Listen, Diane, I’m gonna have to call you back…No, I really have to go. Tell your mom to count on me for a pallbearer, okay? Bye.”
He hung up and thrust the phone back into his pocket. Within seconds, it started vibrating again insistently, but he didn’t answer.
“Your phone’s ringing,” Melanie said hollowly.
“It can wait. You look upset.”
She shook her head, at a loss for words. Upset? Melanie felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. She felt like somebody had taken the world and tilted it sideways until she didn’t know where she was. Not to be the only woman in Dan’s life? Then she didn’t recognize herself.
“That was my ex-wife,” Dan said.
“I figured. I thought you said you never talked to her.” Her voice came out lower than normal, quiet, unlike herself.
“I just…well, I hadn’t, not for a long time. But come to find out, her dad was dying of cancer. She just called, uh, just now, actually, to tell me he passed. I think I told you once, Seamus was like a father to me growing up because my old man didn’t give two shits. Seamus really stepped up and did right by me. So I been going by the last couple of nights, to pay my respects.”
“The sick friend you were visiting in the hospital was your ex-wife’s father?” When I couldn’t get you on the phone? When you didn’t return my calls? When I didn’t know where you were?
Dan was watching Melanie’s face intently. “Yeah. Uh-huh.”
“When you visited, she was there, too?”
“Sure. Yeah, of course. Not only Diane, but her whole family.”
“You never mentioned any of that. You never told me.”
“I meant to. But you know, we’ve been so busy with the case and all.”
Melanie looked down at her hands dumbly. Dan’s last remark had been her cue to shrug the incident off. To say she understood and that this wasn’t a big deal. But she didn’t, and it was. Early in their relationship, Dan had been so jealous of Steve that Melanie had taken to reporting on all her contacts with her ex-husband, just to make Dan feel secure. She thought of this as their “full-disclosure policy” and she’d always assumed Dan was following it, too. But obviously, he hadn’t felt obliged to. How could she have been so trusting?
“So you do talk to your ex-wife?” Melanie asked. Her words were coming out slow and strangled, like she was underwater.
“Only in the past couple of days. But don’t worry, sweetheart, nothing’s going on. We just hung out at the hospital a little bit. I bought her dinner the other night, but that was only—”
“You bought her dinner?” she repeated, trying to comprehend the enormity of that revelation to her own heart. She couldn’t remember the last time Dan had bought her dinner. Her last birthday—many months ago now? Their dates generally consisted of Dan coming over after Maya was asleep. Which wasn’t his fault, really. Maybe if she didn’t have Maya he would take her out to restaurants more. Not that she would ever wish not to have Maya. But as things stood, they tended to order in Chinese or pizza and take turns paying.
“Just in this diner across the street from the hospital,” Dan was saying. “I felt sorry for her, with her dad dying right after her husband left. But it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Her husband left her?” This kept getting worse. Diane was available, and hurting, and Dan was comforting her. Suddenly all the food and wine Melanie had consumed weren’t sitting well in her stomach.
“Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that part. He left her for some chick who works in a tattoo parlor. Not that Diane doesn’t deserve it, seeing how she left me for him and all, but still, it’s hard not to feel for her. You know, you should meet Diane. I think you would like her. I mean, she’s an untrustworthy bitch, but otherwise, she’s a lot of fun.” He forced a laugh.
Melanie stared at him, dumbstruck. Then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she stood up and grabbed her handbag.
“Where you going?” he asked, concerned.
“I don’t feel very well. I think I’ll go home now.”
“Okay, I’ll drive you.”
“No. No, you stay. I think I’d rather just take a cab.”
“A cab? You can’t do that.”
Melanie took a few steps backward. Dan stood up and clutched at her arm, but she yanked it away. She was trying not to cry.
“Sweetheart, you’re overreacting,” he said gently.
“Dan,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm, “I inform you every time Steve calls, every time he e-mails, for God’s sake. And you don’t mention this? Not one word?”
“I just did. I told you about it.”
“Because she called you right in front of me!”
“I told you that I bought her dinner,” he said. Dan’s voice was getting shaky, and he was starting to look upset. “I didn’t have to say anything about that.”
“Right, you could have deliberately concealed it from me. Let’s award you ten points for honesty,” she said bitterly.
“You’re taking this the wrong way.”
“Your ex-wife just separated from her husband. She’s crying on your shoulder, and you don’t mention a word about it until you’re caught in the act. What’s the right way to take that?”
“What I’m trying to say is, nothing was going on. Nothing physical. She wasn’t crying on my shoulder physically. She was just doing it, like, metaphorically.”
“Metaphorically? You sure about that? That’s a big word for you.”
His eyes widened with hurt. As Dan hesitated, Melanie turned and ran for the exit.
“Get back here!” Dan called after her. “We’re not done!”
Despite his longer stride, she was smaller and lighter and maneuvered through the dense crowd more nimbly than he did. She beat him to the street and hailed a passing taxi, but the driver didn’t see her, thank God. Because the next second she had the sense to stop and reflect on what she was doing. The sickest killer she’d encountered in her entire career was out there somewhere, lurking in the dark night. And as much as she wanted to get him, it seemed he wanted to get her more. Dan was right. She shouldn’t take a cab.
She spotted the unmarked car parked across the street and ran for it, banging on the passenger-side glass. Agent Tim Crockett rolled down the window.
“Everything okay?” he asked, concerned.
“I need a ride home. Now.”
Melanie jumped in and slammed the door. Dan plunged through the catering hall door just in time to see them speed away.