His gut took the express elevator to the basement, but he maintained an unfazed smile and kept it casual. “Really? A drink after, then?”
“Problem is, I don’t know when after will be. We’re going to get together on his dinner break. Who knows, I may end up back at the show. I’ve never seen them shoot one of those things.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got to run or I’ll be late. Catch you in the A.M.” She made sure the squad room was empty, then kissed his cheek. He started to reach for her but thought better of it in the police station and all.
But as he watched her go out the door, he wished he had put his arms around her. Irresistible as he was, she might have canceled her dinner.
Roach came in early the next morning to find Jameson Rook camped out at his commandeered desk. “I was wondering who turned on the lights in here,” said Raley. “Rook, did you even go home last night?”
“Yeah, I did. Just thought I’d get here early for a jump on the day.”
Ochoa said, “You don’t mind me saying so, you look kinda messed up. Like you’ve been skydiving without goggles.”
“Thanks.” Rook didn’t have a mirror to look at, but he could imagine. “Well, I’m burning that candle, you know? When I leave here, it’s off to my night job at the keyboard.”
“Uh-huh, I’ll bet it’s tough.” Ochoa gave him a pleasant nod, and the pair moved across the bull pen to log on to their computers.
Ochoa’s comment was sympathetic, but it only made Rook feel guilty. Guilty, first, that he’d had the audacity to tell an NYPD homicide detective how difficult life could be in his comfortable Tribeca loft, writing. And guilty, second, because he had not been writing at all. He tried, all right. He had two full days of notes to write up to stay current with his Cassidy Towne article. But he didn’t write them up.
It was Nikki. He couldn’t let go of Nikki having dinner with her old college lover. He knew it was nuts for him to be so . . . freaked. What he admired in her was her self-sufficiency, her independence. He just didn’t like it when she was so independent of him. And with an old boyfriend. Around 11 P.M., unable to concentrate on his work or even watch the news, he had started to wonder if this was how it started with stalkers. And then he started to think maybe he’d do his next article as an investigation of stalkers. But then, he wondered . . . if you do a ride-along with a stalker, are you stalking the stalker?
It all got very weird.
That’s when he made a phone call. There was a comedy writer he knew on a late-night talk show in LA who had been in the business forever, and sure enough, this guy had the story on Petar Matic. “Don’t you love the name, Rook? Sounds like a product a mohel would sell on an infomercial.” Call a comedy writer, get a one-liner. But it was the only laugh Rook got from the conversation.
Comedy writing, especially in late night, was a small circle of frenemies, and Rook’s LA guy knew one of the Later On comedy writers who had done community service a few years back. “Hold on,” said Rook, “why would a comedy writer have to do community service?”
“Beats me. Pitching a Monica Lewinsky joke after 2005? Who knows?”
So while the Later On comedy writer was doing his community service at the Bronx Zoo—for DUI, Rook’s friend eventually recalled—on the crew with him doing cage cleaning and litter detail was this bright guy from Croatia, a nature documentary shooter. Rook asked if Petar was there for DUI, too.
“No, here’s the poetry. Nature filmmaker. Busted for what?” Rook’s friend paused for a drumroll. “Smuggling endangered species into the country from Thailand. He did six months of eighteen in jail, got early release for good behavior, and was assigned community service. To the zoo!”