“Pony up the money, ladies and gent,” Mike said. The jingle announcing Final Jeopardy! had begun to play. It was rare for Mike ever to miss a bet on the weeknight quiz show’s big question—whether at a bar or death scene or squad room.
Mercer, Mike, and I had a long tradition of making this twenty-dollar wager. Mercer—son of a Delta mechanic who had grown up with world maps on every wall of his room—was a maven on geography; Mike knew more about military history—he had been fascinated with it since childhood and studied it at Fordham—than anyone I’d ever met; and I was a student of English literature—a devotee of romantic poetry and dense Victorian novels.
“Let’s go, Coop,” Mike said, yanking on my wet hair. “Get back in the game.”
“Soon,” I said. “Not tonight.”
“The Final Jeopardy! category is: OSCAR WINNERS,” Alex Trebek said. “OSCAR WINNERS.”
All three contestants smiled and started to write their bets on the electronic boards in front of them.
“Everybody plays,” Mike said. He sat on the sofa and pulled me onto his lap.
Movies and Motown were the two categories that he, Mercer, and I went overboard on. The stakes got higher because we each thought we knew so much.
“Show me Mr. Green,” Mike said to our friends, holding out his hand for their money. “Double or nothing.”
My girls went to their bags to take out some twenties. They were doing it to pull me into the spirit of the moment. I didn’t move.
Trebek read aloud as the answer was revealed: THRICE NOMINATED AS BEST ACTOR, HE SUPPORTED HIMSELF WHEN BROKE BY HUSTLING CHESS PLAYERS IN NEW YORK CITY PARKS AND ARCADES.
The Jeopardy! music ticked away as the on-air players wrote out their questions.
“We’re in this to win, Coop.” Mike put his arms around me and nuzzled my neck. “What’s your best guess, Catherine?”
“Who was Paul Newman?” she asked.
“I’m in on that,” Marisa said.
“So wrong,” Mike said, reaching forward to snag their four bills from the coffee table. “He played Fast Eddie in The Hustler, but he wasn’t one. And nominated ten times. Popcorn and salad dressing, ladies. You are so wrong.”
Then he pointed at Nan.
“Daniel Day-Lewis?” she asked.
“You don’t even deserve to be in our league,” Mike said. “He’s a Brit.”
He reached for her money, too.
“What you got, big guy?” Mike said to Mercer.
“I’m going Nicholson. Who is Jack Nicholson?” Mercer said.
Before the winning question was offered by Trebek, Mike swept all the cash off the table. “Tell them, Coop.”
I shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“You really know how to disappoint me, babe,” he said. “You need to lighten up. Who was Humphrey Bogart?”
“That’s right,” Trebek said to the second contestant. “As a struggling young actor, Humphrey Bogart used to play for a dollar a match at New York’s famed Coney Island.”
Mike muted the sound. “Those scenes in Casablanca with Bogie playing chess? They were all his idea.”
“You just bought us some serious pizza,” Mercer said to Mike, getting up to answer the intercom from the front door announcing the dinner delivery. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste, Chapman.”
We were moving to the dinner table, with each of my friends working hard to find neutral topics to discuss.
“Tell you what,” Mike said. “If you shut down the Dewar’s, I’ll spot you one glass of wine. How’s that for a compromise?”
“I’ll take that deal,” I said. “White. Really cold.”
Catherine’s cell phone rang and she looked at me before answering. We both had the same thought, that it was a detective calling about a new case. A call that would have come to me had I not been on leave. She must have known that it pained me to be professionally crippled by my own victimization.
She turned her back to me and answered the phone, then just as quickly faced me again when the speaker announced himself to her.
“Yes, Governor,” she said. “This is Catherine.”
What the hell was he calling her about?
“Actually, I’m with Alex right now,” Catherine said. “I’m about to have dinner with her.”
The governor had been a prosecutor when I joined Battaglia’s staff. I had worked with him on a number of matters and he had been like a mentor to me.
“No, sir,” Catherine said. “The task force has her phone—just a routine part of their investigation.”
I was waving my arms over my head, telling Catherine I didn’t want to speak with him tonight.
“Of course you can, sir. I’ll just pass her my phone.”
I took a deep breath and put Catherine’s phone to my ear. “Hello, Governor,” I said. “Thanks for calling.”
We chatted for a minute or two, exchanging remembrances of Paul Battaglia and expressing our sorrow to each other. He told me how sorry he was that I was exposed to this violence, and in such a public setting.
Nan and Mercer were plating the pizza. I figured the governor was done.
“I wanted you to hear this straight from me, Alex,” he said. “I’m likely to give an interview tomorrow or Thursday.”
“What’s that?” I asked. What else could possibly impact me now?
“I’m not sure if you know any of the politics that apply in this situation,” he said.
“I don’t.”
Battaglia’s campaign slogan had repeatedly been YOU CAN’T PLAY POLITICS WITH PEOPLE’S LIVES, though he had become a master at doing just that throughout his career. I despised the part of the job that sucked any of us line prosecutors into the mix.
“The election for DA is next fall. November,” the governor said.
I knew that. Battaglia had already been off and running, thirteen months ahead.
“It’s my responsibility, Alex, to appoint an interim district attorney for Manhattan,” he said. “And I’ll have to do it within the next six weeks.”
I hadn’t given a thought to that. It hadn’t yet sunk in that Battaglia’s death left this critically important office without a leader.
“You know I’m very fond of you, Alex. You know how much respect I have for your work, for how you’ve helped with the legislative reform I’ve sponsored in your field since the start of my first term.”
I grabbed the back of a chair, pulled it out, and sat down. The room was spinning. I didn’t need the governor to thrust me further into the spotlight right now by flattering me with a job I’d never wanted—a job I certainly couldn’t handle at the moment.
“But, sir—” I said, scripting a polite way to refuse him.
“I wanted to tell you myself that despite my personal feelings, I can’t see any way to put your name up with the other nominees I’m considering,” the governor said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, putting my elbows on the table. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Did you say you won’t consider me to replace Battaglia?”
If I was truly relieved not to be a candidate, then why was my first reaction to the governor’s news to feel crushed? Why did it seem like another weight had been tossed around my neck?