The bartender, a young woman who used to babysit for Eddie’s twins, said, “Hey, Eddie, what can I get you?”

He couldn’t remember his former babysitter’s name. It was in the Elisa/Alyssa/Alicia vein, but he wasn’t sure exactly which. Grace would know—Grace would also probably know the girl’s middle name—but if Eddie texted her to ask, he would receive a response sometime next month, because Grace never checked her cell phone. He was disappointed in himself. He was a real-estate agent; it was his business to remember names.

“I’ll have a…” He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Around him, the drink of choice seemed to be the Bloody Mary. But drinking a Bloody would immediately give Eddie heartburn; he was getting heartburn just looking at the Bloody belonging to the man next to him. “I’ll have a Triple Eight martini, straight up with a twist, please.”

“You know who invented the twist, right?” asked the man next to him. “It was John D. Rockefeller. He was a germophobe, and citrus was a natural disinfectant, so Rockefeller always asked his bartenders to run a lemon peel around the rim of his glass.”

Eddie turned to the man. “I did not know that,” he said, but such nuggets of trivia were always of great use to him. He would use that tidbit the next time he took a client out for drinks. As soon as that thought formed, Eddie realized that the man next to him was not just a man—it was Ed Kapenash, the chief of police. “Whoa! Chief!”

“How you doing, Eddie?” the Chief said with a smile. He and Eddie shook hands, and when Elisa/Alyssa/Alicia set down Eddie’s martini, they touched glasses with great camaraderie. The Chief was here at Cru! Eddie could not have been more surprised if he’d bumped into the Chief in some foreign location—a bar in Hong Kong or a café in Amsterdam. He wondered if the Chief was following him. But again, the Chief had been here first. This was merely a coincidence.

“What are you doing here?” Eddie asked. The Chief was deeply incognito. He was wearing a navy polo shirt, a pair of khaki shorts, and the red Mount Gay Rum Figawi baseball hat that announced one’s participation in the festivities. Eddie lowered his voice. “Are you undercover?”

The Chief threw his head back and laughed, which, in turn, made Eddie laugh. The Chief sucked down what was left of his Bloody Mary and ordered another from their bartender, whom he called Eliza.

Eliza!

“I came down to check on the guys, see how they’re doing, even though I’m off duty today,” the Chief said. “Everyone assumes I hate this weekend, but everyone is wrong. I’m a sailor myself. I enjoy the energy.”

Eddie nodded and laid into his drink, which had been perfectly made by his former babysitter Eliza.

Immediately, his mood improved.

“I don’t mind it either,” Eddie said. “And I enjoyed that story about Rockefeller. History always was my best subject.”

“Oh yeah?” the Chief said. “Mine, too. I’ve done a bunch of reading about Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Mellon—all the big industrialists.”

Eddie said, “I wonder what future generations will say about us. I’m pretty sure they’ll call us the Cell Phone Era.” At that very moment, Eddie’s cell phone rang—his ring tone was “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, which made the Chief chuckle.

“That right there is the first and only song I ever learned to play on the guitar,” he said.

Eddie checked his display: it was Nadia calling, probably to find out what time the girls should be at the house tonight. Eddie’s skin grew hot and prickly. He silenced his phone, slipped it into his pocket, and took another swill of his drink.

“I forgot you were a sailor,” Eddie said. He would call Nadia on his way back to the office. He obviously couldn’t say one word to her while he was sitting next to the chief of police.

“I haven’t sailed in six years,” the Chief said. “Since Greg and Tess MacAvoy…”

“Oh God,” Eddie said. “Right. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking…”

The Chief picked up his Bloody and rattled the ice, then added a shot of Tabasco, squeezed the lemon wedge, and stirred it up with his celery stick. “It’s okay,” the Chief said. “Greg and I used to sail Figawi every year. It was a tradition for us. I guess the real reason I come down here is to honor those memories. We always came here for a drink when we were done, back when it was the Rope Walk. Bloody Marys and a dozen littlenecks apiece.”

Eddie finished off his drink and signaled Eliza for another. Eddie wasn’t sure how they had landed on such a maudlin topic, but he felt it was his fault, and he wanted to make it right. When Eliza delivered his second martini, he held it up. “To Greg MacAvoy,” he said.

The Chief nodded solemnly as he and Eddie clinked glasses again, but the Chief seemed too overcome for words. The Chief, Eddie realized in that moment, was just a human being, like the rest of them. He wasn’t here to sting Eddie; he was a guy who had lost his best friend and was still mourning. “Greg had his flaws,” the Chief finally said. “But I loved him like a brother. It’s six years later, and I still can’t believe he’s gone. Sometimes, when it’s just me in the cruiser and I’m out late either on rounds or headed for home, I can hear him laughing.”

“I’m going to tell you something pathetic,” Eddie said. “I’ve never had a friend like that.”