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please?”
    â€œIxnay on that, kid,” Mike said. “You stay sober and I’ll let you play detective with me this week. Break you back in, if you’re up to it.”
    None of the contestants had come up with the correct question. Trebek apologized to them before he got ready to ask the winning question.
    â€œYou got this?” Mike asked Mercer.
    â€œIndeed I do.”
    They both spoke at the same time. Mercer said, “Who is Rod Carew?” while Mike said, “Who is Sir Rodney, one of the great Zonians?”
    The two friends high-fived each other as we walked to the front of the dining room. I looked longingly at the dregs of my drink, left behind us on the bar, while they tossed around statistics about the Twins star who had been born in the Panama Canal Zone.
    Mike tried to get me to eat some of his grilled thirty-five-day dry-aged sirloin and sides of onion rings and fries—usually my favorite dinner—but I could barely manage a Caesar salad, which Stephane whipped up at the side of the table.
    Vickee chattered on about the social gossip of the last three weeks, trying to keep the conversation away from crime and violence. Keith Scully sent his regards—which signaled to me that Vickee had told him she was on her way to see me tonight—and one of the other women at DCPI was pregnant again and one of the guys from Major Case who’d given me a hard time over the years had been flopped back to a lesser command.
    â€œYou can do better than this,” I said. “Something more interesting must have happened while I’ve been in PTSD land. Give me some of the real dope.”
    â€œWhy is it always all about you, Coop?” Mike said, leaning back against the smooth leather surface of the booth encircling our table. “Why can’t the four of us just chill for the evening?”
    This time I had reason to think it was about me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything in my life had been turned upside down—maybe never to be righted—just a few short weeks ago.
    I pushed the salad around my dinner plate, like a six-year-old playing with her food.
    â€œI’m going to go home tonight,” I said. “To my own apartment.”
    Vickee flashed a quizzical look in Mike’s direction. “Why don’t you—?”
    â€œI think that’s a great idea,” Mike said.
    â€œMind your business, Vickee,” Mercer said. “Home is where Alex should be, actually. It’s where she lives, for God’s sake. And there are two doormen on duty ’round the clock.”
    I was testing Mike, but he didn’t seem to mind the pushback at all.
    I lived in a pricey high-rise close to Park Avenue in the seventies. The trust fund my father had set up for my brothers and me, after he and another doctor he partnered with invented a tiny plastic device used in practically all open-heart surgical procedures, allowed me a lifestyle that public service couldn’t support. The Cooper-Hoffman valve had sent me through Wellesley and the University of Virginia School of Law, and made it possible for me to do the work that I found so deeply rewarding.
    Mike’s cell phone vibrated, and he stood up at the side of the booth to take the call. He turned his back to us, listened for close to a minute, then talked for twice as long before rejoining our table.
    Mercer and Vickee knew better than to ask him what the call was about. I, on the other hand, felt no need for boundaries at this particular moment.
    â€œTanya Root?” I asked.
    â€œSince when have I been a one-case wonder, Coop?” Mike asked. “All quiet on that front.”
    â€œNone of you are talking about your other work. Rape, murder, the load of cases you’ve been handling. You all obviously think it will upset me.”
    Mercer and Vickee shifted in their seats, deferring to Mike’s judgment.
    â€œIt was Lieutenant Peterson, kid. Picking