James Patterson - 11th hour

“So McInerny needs a lot of breaks. He doesn’t like the deli food we served, so he has to order lunch from his favorite restaurant. Then he has to have a conference with his imaginary twin. As if that weren’t enough to make us all crazy, now he’s got a new shtick.

“When we restart the camera, McInerny pretends that he’s in the middle of a conversation. The camera goes on and McInerny says to me, ‘That’s the filthiest joke I’ve ever heard in my life.’”

Yuki demonstrated the shocked look she got on her face; it was hysterical and we all laughed. Yuki said, “The second time we come back he looks directly at the videographer and says to her, ‘Are you hitting on me? Are you coming on to me?’

“Then, of course, we had to take a five-minute break because she was laughing so hard she was crying.”

One minute I was laughing at the story, but the next my mind must have wandered off, because I suddenly realized that the girls were staring at me.

Yuki in particular gave me an appraising eye.

“Something’s wrong, Lindsay. What is it?”

“I’m fine. It’s been a really long day, but I’m okay.”

“I know what you look like when you’re tired, Lindsay,” Yuki said. “This is different. You look like you’ve been running laps in hell.”

Cindy said, “Yuki’s right. Are you feeling sick? Are you coming down with something?”

The waitress brought over another pitcher of tap along with a bottle of Australian root beer and a frosty mug of ice, both of which she put down in front of me.

When her footsteps faded I said to my friends, “Joe is having an affair.”

I poured root beer into my mug with a shaking hand. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the hiss and crackle of the soda hitting the ice. Then everyone spoke at once.

Claire shouted — actually, she insisted — “No. No. Joe would never cheat on you.”

Cindy cut in. “This just can’t be true.”

But Yuki believed me.

She was back in her role of human nail gun, pinning me with her eyes, firing questions, bam-bam-bam.

“Who is the woman?”

“June Freundorfer. An old partner of Joe’s in DC.”

“How old?”

“My age.”

“How did you find out, Lindsay?”

“Does it matter?”

“Did Joe tell you about the affair?”

“No. She did,” I said.

“She called you?” Yuki pulled back, her face flattened in surprise.

“She called Joe. I picked up his phone.”

Claire got up from her chair, wrapped her arms around me, squeezed the tears right out of my eyes.

Yuki went on as if I weren’t crying, as if Claire weren’t beaming stop signs at her with her eyes.

“Did you ask Joe about this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He admitted it?”

I shook my head no.

Cindy reached across the table and clutched my hands.

Yuki said, “So, just to make sure I’ve got this right, Joe denies the affair.”

“He’s lying about it, yes. So I kicked him out of the house.”

Claire said, “Honey, what did this woman say?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t talk anymore.

Cindy let go of my hands and gave me a wad of paper napkins stamped with MacBain’s logo: the planet Earth whirling through a sudsy amber sky.

I sobbed into the napkins. It was disgraceful. It was pathetic. I couldn’t stop crying. Yuki shook my arm like she was a terrier and my arm was a sock doll.

“Lindsay, do you think it’s serious? Maybe it just happened and he can get you to forgive him.”

By then Cindy had typed Freundorfer into her iPad and pulled up the benefit story. She held up the candid photo of Joe with his mistress looking adoringly into his face.

“Oh my God,” Yuki said. “Oh, Lindsay. I’m going to be sick.”

I loosed some fresh tears and then all of us were crying. It seemed a little less pathetic when we were all wet together, but still: Joe was having an affair, my baby and I were alone, and I wanted to die. Before I could drown myself in root beer, my blinking phone rang.

Was it Joe?

No. It was Brady. He was with Conklin.

I hugged and kissed my friends, then fled down the stairs.

I parked the Explorer behind Brady’s unmarked sedan on the north side of Ivy, a one-way residential street in Hayes Valley dotted with trees and lined with ordinary single and multifamily houses built so close together there was no space between them.

Jacobi’s brown, shingled house was at the far end of the block, and although he had a garage that took up the ground floor, his black Hyundai SUV was parked on the street.

Jacobi had a black SUV — like half the law enforcement officers in California.

Brady and Conklin got out of the unmarked and Conklin got into the Explorer beside me.

Brady stooped down by the window, said, “We’ve had a team on him all day. He came in about an hour ago. Lights went on. He’s probably in for the night.”

“I take it you didn’t catch him killing anyone?”

Brady ignored my tone. “You and Conklin do four hours. Narcotics will spell you at eleven. If he leaves the house, call me.”

“Yes, sir.”

I watched Brady get into his car, then I pulled out my phone, saw three messages from Joe, and ignored them. I arranged dog-sitting for Martha, then leaned back.

I must have sighed. “So you ready to tell me what’s going on, Linds? I’m not going to leave you alone until you spill.”

My mind was still in high gear, boosted by my surging hormones and the whole crappy day.

“Have you cheated on Cindy?” I asked him.

His mouth fell open and he stared at me, a look of shock and disappointment on his face I hadn’t seen in all the years I’d known him.

“Why would you ask me that? Is that what she thinks? Did Cindy say that to you?”

“No. So, have you, Rich?”

“No. Hell no. Seriously, is this what you’ve been thinking? Is this what’s got you all jammed up?”

Conklin’s gaze left me, went past me and through my window, but his shocked expression didn’t change. I heard a hard rapping on the glass.

I swung my head, saw Jacobi’s face right there. He was scowling. He knew that we weren’t parked on his street by accident.

He signaled to me to roll down my window, and I did it.

All I could get out of my mouth was “Jacobi” before he lit into me, lit into us both.

“How nice of you to visit. You are visiting, right, Boxer? You too, Conklin. My old friends, stopping by to see how I’m getting along?”

“It’s a stakeout,” I said miserably.

“You’re tailing me.”

I dropped my head. I was ashamed and mortified. Jacobi gripped the window frame and shook it as if he were rattling bars on a cage.

“You think I’m that Revenge shooter? Is that it, Boxer? I don’t hear from you for weeks, months, then, suddenly, ‘Can you help me with my cases, Warren?’

“I don’t know how many thousands of hours I worked with both of you,” he spat. “Put my life in your hands and vice versa.” He looked at me, then at Conklin, then turned his hooded eyes back to me.

“You turn my stomach, both of you.”

“Jacobi, I’m sorry. Wait!”

“That’s Chief. Chief Jacobi.” He turned away, stalked off with his wooden gait. The silence in the car rang like a bell.

Conklin said, “I’m going after him.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I called Brady.

“Is Jacobi leaving the house?” he asked me.

“Brady, he made us. He made us and he called us out.”

Conklin came home to the apartment he shared with Cindy. It was completely dark except for the light in the kitchen. That meant that Cindy had been working for hours and hadn’t gotten up to turn on the rest of the lights.