James Patterson - I, Michael Bennett

Sitting at the bar, Tara looked pretty grand and imposing herself, in a black jacket, ivory blouse, and black pencil skirt. She was wearing her long shiny black hair up a way I’d never seen before. I liked it.

A gaunt old bow-tied bartender, who looked as though he might have served some of the robber barons who built the joint, was waiting for me as I arrived beside Tara.

“What are you drinking, Ms. McLellan?” I said.

“Irish whiskey, what else?” she said with a wink. “No rocks this time.”

“Jameson?” I said.

“No, Bushmills sixteen-year.”

“Sweet sixteen sounds good to me,” I said, giving the ancient barkeep a thumbs-up.

After the relic brought my drink and took away two twenties I’d likely never see again, we clinked glasses and drank.

“So you finished your report?” I said.

Tara put a finger to her lips and giggled.

“Shh. Drink first, work in a minute,” she said, slurring her words a little.

She blinked at me, a wide, fixed smile on her face. By the glaze in her eyes, I could tell the drink in front of her wasn’t her first.

We chitchatted for a while about the weather and the latest Yankees loss before I realized something. I looked around on the floor beside her bar stool.

“Tara?”

“Yes, Detective?” she said, batting her eyes at me. “May I call you Detective, Detective?”

“Tara, where’s your briefcase? You know, your work? All the paper you wanted me to see?”

She smiled mischievously.

“Upstairs in my room. I was just taking a drink. I mean, a break.”

“How many breaks-I mean, drinks-have you had?”

“Just the one, Detective, I swear. Please don’t arrest me,” she said, smiling, as she raised her palms.

“I have an idea. How about we call it a night, and we go over it tomorrow?” I said, grabbing her clutch purse from the bar and gently taking her elbow.

Outside the bar, in the lobby, the grim, middle-aged woman behind the hotel’s desk gave me a frosty glare as I escorted Tara unsteadily into a brass elevator.

No fair. I’m the good guy, I felt like saying to the clerk. Can’t you see my shining armor?

When the door binged closed, Tara turned and touched my face.

“Mike, ever since the wake, I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” she said quickly. “Did you know that I practically killed about six people to get put on this case? I thought it was for Hughie, but it wasn’t. It was so I could spend time with you.”

“That’s… that’s… ” I said, flabbergasted. “I’m flattered.”

Tara put her head on my shoulder.

“My husband died in a plane crash, you know. He was a weekend pilot, and he screwed up somehow over Long Island Sound and crashed. We were best friends. We did everything together. When he died, I felt like dying, too.”

She pulled away from me and shook her head as she stared up into my eyes.

“I read how your wife died, too, Mike. I know what it’s like to lose someone that close. You understand. You’re the first man I’ve met in five years with whom I felt that click. I’ve just been so lonely. I went on an Internet date a few months ago. Have you ever gone on an Internet date, Mike? My God, the horror.”

The elevator stopped on the eleventh floor, and we stepped out into a white, furniture-lined hallway.

“You think I’m a stalker now, don’t you?” she said, pouting, when we arrived at her door. “I’m not a stalker, Mike. No, wait-that’s what a stalker would say.”

I got her room door open with her passkey. Inside, she immediately ran down a short hallway and then through another doorway. Then she ran back out.

“Don’t leave, Michael Bennett,” she said. “If you leave, I’ll come looking for you. You wouldn’t want a drunk woman running around the streets of New York on your conscience, would you?”

I stepped in and closed the door.

“Not me. I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

She went back into what I assumed was the bedroom. The room was a suite, with a living room window that looked north up Fifth Avenue, toward Central Park. How much money did she have, exactly? I thought. And exactly how drunk was she?

After a minute, I heard water running in the next room. When she came back out a minute or so later, my jaw dropped. Uh-oh. She was wearing a fluffy white bathrobe-quite a short fluffy white bathrobe.

She stopped at the love seat, sat, and tucked her long legs up underneath her.

“There. Okay. Much better. My head isn’t spinning so much,” she said. “Hey, c’mon. Sit down. Do you want a drink?”

I started laughing at that.

“I think the bar’s closed, Tara.”

“I like how you laugh, Mike,” she said, sounding a little more sober. “I’m so glad you came. Down at the bar, some Eurotrash creep tried to pick me up. When I blew him off, he said some nasty things to me before he left. I got afraid. That’s when I called you. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re in trouble, right? Call a cop?”

I laughed again.

“And here I am.”

“Exactly. Here you are,” she said, and stood and undid the spill of her hair.

As I watched it fall, I thought of a fragment of an Irish song from my childhood for some reason. Her eyes, they shone like diamonds I thought her the queen of the land And her hair, it hung over her shoulder Tied up with a black velvet band.

It was actually her robe that slipped down over her shoulders a moment later, revealing pale tan lines at the nape of her neck. I swallowed. It was a really nice nape.

But at the last second, as Tara rose up to kiss me, for some unknown reason I suddenly gave her my cheek and turned her embrace into a quick hug.

She stiffened in my arms. Then her head sank.

“Too much?” she said.

She turned, stomping away, and collapsed back onto the love seat.

“I always push it. Always,” she mumbled into the arm of it. After a minute or two, she started to sob as if I’d just broken her heart.

I stood there, speechless, in the middle of the luxury suite. What was I doing here? First hugs and kisses, and now tears?

Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Michael Bennett, I could hear Seamus say.

But as I scrambled for a clue, I finally caught a break. I thanked my lucky stars as the muffled sobbing turned into soft snoring.

After another minute, I lifted Tara up and carried her back into her bedroom, where I laid her under the seven-hundred-thread-count ivory sheets, carefully keeping her robe properly placed at all times.

I stood for a moment and smiled down at her as she slept. I didn’t think goofballs came this attractive. Would she even remember all this tomorrow? I wondered. I thought about deleting her text messages to me, but then decided not to. It was what it was. She’d gotten a little drunk and gone a little crazy. I knew how that felt. I was the last one to judge.

“See you at the trial, Tara,” I said as I closed the door behind me.

The same stern desk clerk frowned at me downstairs as I stepped back into the lobby. I suddenly remembered who she reminded me of-my fierce seventh grade teacher, Sister Dominick.

“Do you have the time, ma’am?” I said, winking as I passed her.

“Actually, no,” the reincarnated Sister D. said, as if she were aching to put a ruler to my knuckles one last time. “Fresh out.”

The cop cruiser on the corner hit me with his brights as I got out of the taxi in front of my building back on West End Avenue. Great. It was bad enough that my doorman knew all my dirty rotten nocturnal activities; now my coworkers did as well. There goes the department’s Father of the Year award.