Free Midnight Club by James Patterson Page A

moderately civil.
    “I turn the volume down when I fast-forward,” Sarah offered an explanation for the silence.
    “Anything interesting in the latest batch?” Stefanovitch asked.
    She held up a pad that was full of the morning’s notes. “I’m keeping a log. What I’ve seen on the tapes is a mixture of organized crime figures, legitimate businessmen, an awful lot of show business celebrities, especially the Los Angeles-to-New York jet set.
    “I made coffee,” Sarah said before she took another sip. She noticed that Stefanovitch was still being reasonably nice.
    He was actually starting to laugh.
    “You’re laughing at me.” Sarah frowned. “I’m playing by all of your rules, too.”
    “I’m not laughing. It’s just that you’re so serious. The investigative reporter.”
    It was Sarah’s turn to smile.
    Out of the corner of her eye, she could still see naked bodies dancing on the television screen.
    “Lieutenant, I’m from Stockton, California. Do you know Stockton? Truck farms, migrant workers. My family grew up as onion toppers, lettuce thinners, pea pickers. I got out somehow. Got a newspaper job. As Red Smith used to say, ‘I make a living working a typewriter.’ The money, any notoriety, that just happened. I was lucky. I caught a very good story.”
    “You also wrote a good book. That wasn’t luck. That was you being super-serious again.”
    John Stefanovitch found himself studying Sarah McGinniss a little more closely. There was a hint of sweetness in her smile. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. She was embarrassed, and he was surprised that she would be so vulnerable.
    “Listen, Sarah.” Stefanovitch looked contrite. “I’m sorry for being a shit yesterday. That’s the act I’ve had to play since all of this happened. Sometimes I overdo it just a little.”
    “Maybe just a little.” Sarah smiled.
    The small room was quiet for a few seconds. The pencil in Sarah’s hand tapped lightly against the rigid spine of her log pad.
    “Listen, are you hungry? Because I am. How about if we go around the corner for a bite? Do you know Forlini’s? C’mon, Lieutenant. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

25
    ON THE WAY to the restaurant in Little Italy, Stefanovitch slipped a folded-up dollar to a street beggar, a wino wearing a heavy, black, tattered winter coat in June.
    “Are you always so generous?” Sarah asked him.
    Stefanovitch mumbled something about soup kitchens, about trying to do the right thing every once in a while. Sarah let it drop. Still, she was oddly touched. The image of this strangely charismatic man in a wheelchair helping out panhandlers stuck in her mind.
    At Forlini’s, the maître d’ greeted Sarah with an effusive smile and a gallant, almost seductive handshake. “Ah, la bella signora, so nice to see you always.”
    Since she had been writing The Club and spending so much time downtown at Foley Square and Police Plaza, Forlini’s had become one of her favorite lunchtime haunts. The maître d’, and most of the waiters, knew her from several past visits. The maître d’ took their drink order after escorting them to a corner table. He hurried away to the bar.
    Sarah had brought other policemen there, and she always seemed to pay the check. Women paying for dinners in Little Italy was still unusual, highly suspect.
    “So tell me about working on newspapers,” Stefanovitch said once the waiter had left them. “I get to watch a few pretty good reporters occasionally. Times guys. New York Daily News. You broke into a tough club.”
    “It’s not quite so macho on the West Coast. Maybe a little bit where I started, in San Francisco. Certainly not in Palo Alto.”
    Sarah had never really felt comfortable talking about herself, not even after her book had become successful. She didn’t particularly want to talk about herself now, either.
    “Why don’t you go first?” she said across the small, intimate table. “Tell me something about yourself,