But I stand there and pretend to inhale, wondering what I should do next. What would Nancy Drew do? Jessica Fletcher? That other one, what was her name? On Crossing Jordan? God, I totally suck as a detective. What’s going to happen after Cooper and I get together—you know, after I get my degree and all? How are we going to be all Nick and Nora Charles, when Nora can’t hold up her share of the detecting? This is a very distressing thought. I try to push it from my mind.
Across the street, the cops are busting some drunk who thought it would be amusing to expose himself to the people sitting in the chess circle. I don’t know why some men feel this compulsion to show off their genitalia. It’s invariably the guy with the least interesting appendage, too.
I say as much to Christopher and Amber. You know, to make conversation. She looks startled, though Christopher laughs.
“Yeah,” he says. “There should be a law. Only drunks with at least six inches should be allowed to drop trou.”
I look at him, my eyebrows raised. Trou. He’s kind of funny, Christopher Allington. Did Ted Bundy have a sense of humor? He did when Mark Harmon played him in that movie I saw on Lifetime the other night…
Across the street, the drunk is hurling insults at the cops who’ve cuffed him, and a few people in the chess circle are shouting back at him. Chess players are not anywhere near as mild-mannered as they’ve been made out to be by the media, you know.
“Oh my,” Amber says, when one particularly colorful epithet reaches us. “They sure don’t talk like that to the police back home.”
“And where’s home?” I ask her, nonchalantly flicking my ash on the sidewalk. At least, I hope I look nonchalant.
“Boise, Idaho,” Amber says, as if there’s more than one Boise.
“Boise,” I echo. “Never been there.” Total lie. I’d performed at the Boise Civic Center before five thousand screaming preteens during the Sugar Rush tour. “How about you?” I ask Christopher.
“Nope,” he says. “Never been to Boise. Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“Me?” I try to look surprised. “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I do. Hey, you in law school?”
“No,” I say, flicking more ash. They may give you cancer and everything, but cigarettes really do make great props if you’re trying to look casual. For instance, while catching a possible murderer.
“Really?” Christopher blows pale smoke from his nostrils. No fair! He knows smoke tricks! “ ’Cause I swear I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
“Probably right around here. I’ve seen you lots. You’re President Allington’s son, Christopher, aren’t you?”
You’d have thought I’d smacked him in the face with a sack full of Gummi Bears, he looks so surprised. For a second I think he’s going to swallow his cigarette.
But he recovers himself pretty quickly.
“Uh, yeah,” he says. His eyes are gray, and at the moment, still friendly. “How’d you know?”
“Someone pointed you out,” I say. “Do you live here? With your folks?”
That stings. He says quickly, “Oh no. Well, I mean, I have my own place, but it’s in the law school dorm, over there—”
“You’re not an undergrad?” Amber asks. She clearly isn’t very swift on the uptake. “You’re a law student?”
“Yeah,” Christopher said. He doesn’t look quite as comfortable as he had before I’d mosied over and dropped my little bomb. Poor guy. He doesn’t know I have even more ammunition up my (capped) sleeve.
“I didn’t know you were President Allington’s son,” Amber says, with something like reproachfulness in her little Minnie Mouse voice.
“Well, it’s not something I like to advertise,” Christopher mutters.
“And I thought you said your name was Dave.”
“Did I?” Christopher finishes his cigarette, drops the butt on the sidewalk, and stamps it out. “You must not have heard me right. It was kind of loud in there. I’m sure I said my name’s Chris.”
Across the street, the cops haul the pantless drunk into a squad car. Now they’re all standing around, filling out forms attached to clipboards and drinking coffee somebody’s bought from the deli around the corner. The drunk bangs on the car window, wanting some coffee, too.
Everyone ignores him.
Okay, this sucks. I’m turning out to be world’s worst detective. I’m definitely going to have to take some courses in criminal justice. You know, when I pass my six months’ probation and can start taking classes free.
“It’s so sad, isn’t it?” I ask, in a voice even I think sounds way too chipper—sort of like Less Than Zero’s voice from the jean store the other day. “All the losers there are in this city, I mean. Like that pants-dropping drunk getting hauled away right across the street. Oh, and those stupid girls here in the buildings. The ones that died—what was it, again? Oh, yeah. Elevator surfing. Can you believe anyone would do anything that dumb?”
I glance at Chris to see how he’s taking this direct reference to his victims. But he doesn’t look disturbed at all…
…unless you can call pulling out another cigarette and lighting it disturbed.
Which, uh, I guess it is. In a way. But not in the way I meant.
“Oh,” gasps Amber, in a valiant attempt to hold up her end of the conversation. “I know! That was so sad. I knew that last girl, sort of. One time I got stuck in the elevator with her. It was only for about a minute, but she was freaking out, because she hated heights. When I heard how she’d died, I was like, ‘What?’ ’Cause why would somebody that scared of heights do something so dangerous?”