I just smile and shrug. There’s no point trying to scream above the sound system, and besides, Sarah is eyeing me critically from over her clipboard. I don’t think she appreciates me fraternizing with the contestants, since it might render me less than impartial in my judging.

So I sit helplessly in my chair while Christopher Allington is possibly—probably—schmoozing with his next victim. Amber—from what I can tell, given that I’m only able to catch brief glimpses of her, not wanting to look as if I’m staring—seems to be coming to life under Christopher’s attentions. She fiddles with her red-brown hair and squirms in her seat, grinning nonstop and generally acting like a girl who has never had a handsome boy pay attention to her in her life. I watch worriedly, chewing my lower lip, wondering if tomorrow morning, we’re going to find Amber at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

Except that I can’t really see Christopher as the murdering type. The deflowering type, yeah. But a murderer?

Then again, Evita Peron’s husband had been a notorious letch, and I read somewhere that he killed a bunch of people in Argentina, which is why Madonna didn’t want people to cry for her in that song.

Finally the lip-synch ends. Greg, the hall president, comes out and announces that the judges should begin deliberating. Everyone else gets up and heads for the Doritos (luckies). Rachel scoots her chair around so that she is facing me and Jordan and Sarah.

“Well,” she says, smiling at me. “What did you think?”

I think we’ve got a problem, I want to say. A really big problem. And not with the contest.

But instead I say, “I liked Marnie.”

Jordan interjects, “You would! No, those guys who did the ’N Sync song were much better. They really had the choreography down. I gave ’em tens.”

Sarah says, “Their ironic take on the boy band was deeply amusing.”

“Um,” I say. “I liked Marnie.”

“And she’s been through so much,” Rachel agrees, earnestly. “It’s the least we can do, don’t you think?”

Just wanting to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible so I can make up an excuse to go talk to Chris, I say, “Yeah, okay. So let’s give Marnie first place, ’N Sync second, and the Christina trio third.”

Jordan looks a little peeved by the fact that we’ve basically ignored his input, but he doesn’t argue.

Rachel goes off to tell Greg our decision, and I turn in my seat to spy on Christopher some more…

… just in time to see him leaving, one arm draped casually over Amber’s shoulders.

I’m out of my chair like a shot, without a word to Jordan or anybody. I hear him call after me, but I don’t have any time to waste with explanations. Christopher and Amber are already halfway through the TV lounge. If I don’t act fast, that girl might end up as a stain on the elevator motor room floor.

But then, to my astonishment, instead of turning toward the elevators, Amber and Christopher actually walk out the front doors of the building.

I follow, darting past the groups of kids congregated in the lobby. Nighttime is when the hall really comes alive. Residents I’ve never seen before are leaning against the reception desk, chatting with the student worker on duty. The guard—not Pete, who works days—is harassing a clique of kids who claim to know someone on the fifth floor whose name they couldn’t remember. Why can’t the guard just be a pal and let them in?

I bolt past all of them, throwing open the doors and stumbling out into the warm autumnal evening.

Washington Square Park is crawling with cops at night, cops and tourists and drug dealers and chess players, who sit at the benches in the chess circle until the park closes at midnight, playing by the light of the street lamps. High school kids from Westchester, in their parents’ Volvos, tool down the street, playing their radios too loudly and occasionally having their cars impounded for creating a public nuisance. It’s a wild scene, and one of the reasons why so many kids request rooms overlooking the Square… when there’s nothing on TV, there’s always the park to watch.

Which is precisely what Christopher and Amber are doing. They’re leaning against one of Fischer Hall’s outdoor planters, smoking cigarettes, and watching the NYPD make a bust across the street. Christopher has his arms folded across his chest, and is puffing away like Johnny Depp or someone, while Amber twitters like a little bird, holding her cigarette like someone who isn’t used to holding one at all.

There isn’t a moment to lose, I can see that. I approach them, trying to look casual. I imagine that’s how Cooper would have handled the situation, anyway.

“Hey,” I say amiably to Christopher. “Can I bum a smoke?”

“Sure,” says Christopher. He draws a pack of Camel Lights from his shirt pocket and hands me one.

“Thanks,” I say. I put the cigarette between my lips, then lean down so Christopher can light it with the Zippo he’s brandished.

I’ve never been a smoker. For one thing, if you’re a singer, it messes up your vocal cords. For another, I just don’t get how a cigarette could ever be better than a Butterfinger, so if you’re going to indulge, why not go the way of delicious peanut buttery crisp?

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.