“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.”
