“I shouldn’t have put off the judo lesson,” Spike said.
“Hey, the gun worked out pretty well for me,” I said.
“I know, but knowing a martial art is a good backup if your gun jams or you run out of ammo,” he said. “Plus, it gives you confidence. Big-dick energy.”
“I’ve already got that,” I said.
“Yeah, you do,” Spike said.
It was late, and we were at my place, finishing our second glasses of wine. Spike had been the first person I called once I got home and fed Rosie. Not Richie, because I knew how he’d react. And when I’d told Spike everything that had happened to me today, he’d done exactly what I’d expected him to do. He’d listened without judgment. Without saying anything really, except Come to the restaurant. Bring Rosie. Dinner’s on me.
It was only then that I’d realized how exhausted I was, physically and emotionally. I’d told Spike I couldn’t imagine anything worse than leaving my apartment again. And again, as ever, he understood. Since it had been a slow evening at the restaurant (Mondays always were), he’d stayed just one more hour and tasked his manager with handling the rest of the night and closing up. Then he’d headed over to my place, with three bottles of his best cabernet and a soup bone for Rosie.
I didn’t deserve Spike. Lucky for me, he didn’t seem to know that.
“So let me get this straight,” Spike said. “You got a text today from this chemist guy…”
“Actually, it was Dylan Welch who got the text.”
“Dylan Welch. Who has been missing for two weeks. Without his phone. He’s somehow arranged to meet with this chemist today at the Gonzo factory, which is closed. And a couple hours after texting Welch, asking where he is, the chemist is found dead.”
“Yes.”
“Cops are involved.”
“Very.”
“Meanwhile, Welch has managed to get the Mob after him.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And don’t forget the grieving mother.”
“Right,” Spike said. “Jesus.”
“I know,” I said. “We haven’t even started on all the women he’s pissed off.” Which reminded me. I needed to call Teresa Leone.
Spike poured himself another glass of wine—a longer and more difficult process than it would have normally been. Rosie was now sleeping in his lap. He didn’t want to disturb her, and so he had to disengage the top half of his large body from the lower half. Somehow he managed to do it without waking Rosie or spilling a drop. Spike liked to call himself “big but agile,” and I had to agree. I was impressed.
“Please tell me again,” he said after draining his glass, “why you decided that this asshole was worth finding?”
“The paycheck,” I said.
“Oh, right.”
“But that may be not as important as I thought.”
“Wait, what? Why?”
I shrugged.
“You’re not reconsidering the Jersey Shore, are you?”
I took a big swallow of wine and felt the warmth of it in my chest, my stomach. My cheeks and nose flushed. I absorbed it all.
Rosie was snoring softly. Spike scratched her ear. I patted her on the back, remembering her in bed with Richie and me this weekend, squeezed in between us, muttering in her sleep. How natural that had felt. That was vacation, though. To me, vacationing with a man had always felt like acting in a play—the lines rehearsed, the time limited, everything a little too perfect and heightened and unnatural.
“Richie wants me to stop taking dangerous jobs,” I said.
“Well,” Spike said, “you’d better not tell him about this one.”
I finished the rest of my glass and set it down on the coffee table. “Hey, I got hired to find a missing rich douchebag…by his mommy,” I said. “You have to admit that on paper, that doesn’t seem very dangerous.”
“That’s true, I guess,” Spike said.
“It is,” I said. “By the same token, I’ve taken jobs that made me want to up my life insurance policy, and they wound up putting me to sleep. You know…there’s no telling how dangerous a case is going to be when you accept it. Which is one reason why I love my job. I’ve never done well with predictability.”
“Have you explained this to Richie?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “I can’t even explain it to you.”
“No, no. I get it.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
I poured myself more wine and took a lengthy sip.
“You are going to need to talk about this with him,” Spike said. “No matter what either one of us happens to think.”
“Do you talk things like this through with Flynn?”
“Things like this? With Flynn?” Spike said. “He’s a foodstagrammer, Sunny. I’ve never been afraid he’d lose his life on the job.”
“You know what I mean. Once a relationship reaches a certain point, you start thinking about the future.”
“I don’t know. Flynn and I aren’t like you and Richie. We just started dating a few weeks ago.”
I smiled. Spike and Flynn Tipton had been together for six months. At the start of their relationship, he’d described it as a much-needed fling or a breath of fresh air following his breakup with Sam, the morning-show anchor. It’s just a one-night stand, he used to say back then. Okay, maybe a three- or four-night stand. Five. Six, tops.
Spike was like me. He could stay in a relationship forever—just so long as no one made him define it or make sacrifices for it, and he had to think of it only from day to day to day. “You understand how I feel,” I said, “don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Good.”
“For what it’s worth, I understand how Richie feels, too.”
“Jesus, would it kill you to take sides?”
Spike laughed. I laughed, too. I drank more wine. He poured himself another glass. I was starting to get a little tipsy—that wonderful stage in drinking where the stress lifts and nothing really matters as much as you thought it did and so you may as well enjoy yourself.
Rosie stretched in her sleep and yawned. I was pretty sure she was at that exact same stage, no alcohol needed. “Maybe Rosie is my one true soulmate,” I said. But Spike didn’t seem to hear me.
“You are going to sit down with Richie and discuss this,” he said. “You’re going to hear each other out and come up with a compromise.”
“Is that supposed to be a question?” I said. “Because it didn’t sound like one.”
“It wasn’t,” Spike said. And then my phone rang. “Speak of the devil,” Spike said. Indeed, it had to be Richie. Who else would be calling me at eleven p.m.?
It wasn’t Richie. On the screen, I saw an unfamiliar number with a Boston area code. I tapped the green dot and put the call on speaker. “Hello?”
“Sunny Randall?” The caller sounded young and female and breathless. I looked at Spike. He shrugged. “Is, uh…is this you?” she said.
“Yes, this is Sunny,” I said. “Who is this?”
“Elspeth. From Gonzo?”
“Oh, Elspeth. Hi. Thank you so much for returning my—”
“I’m outside right now.”
“Okay. Why are you outside?”
“I mean, I googled your address and I’m pretty sure I’m right outside your apartment. Is it all right if we talk, like…in person?”
Spike’s eyebrows shot up.
I walked over to my street-facing window and pushed the curtains aside.
Elspeth Wasserman was standing directly below my apartment. She was the only person on the street. But even if she hadn’t been, there would have been no mistaking her in that all-white outfit, that winter-white coat, silver baubles dangling from her wrists as she grasped the phone. Elspeth’s hair was a mess and she was breathing hard, her slim body doubled over, as though she’d run all the way here from the Gonzo offices. Had she?
I wanted to ask Elspeth that. I also wanted to ask her if it had really been that easy to find out where I lived, but she seemed too emotional to answer either of those questions. So instead I just said, “Sure,” and buzzed her up.