“You just had to be the smarty pants to call in the guy’s name, didn’t you, Lisa?” he said, holding his hand above his eyes, wishing like hell he’d grabbed his shades when he got the callout. “Couldn’t just be lazy and phone it in as an unidentified floater?”

A boater preparing to launch had spotted what he feared was a body, washed up between his boat and the neighboring one. The initial dispatch went to paramedics and the Marine Patrol. Without a name, an on-duty detective from the interagency major crimes team would have gotten the callout. But Lisa Robbins had managed to get a name to match the body: Alex Lopez.

“Wait. They told me they were sending out the detective who took a missing person report on this guy a few days ago.”

“Yep. Lucky me.”

“No, they told me it was Decker. Wow, it dawns on me I don’t even know your first name.”

“Sure you do.”

“Fine, you don’t want to tell me. How bad can it be? My middle name’s Eugenia, not that you asked. My uncle Eugene always gave me extra cash for Christmas to make it up to me.”

Not that you asked. The passive-aggressiveness wasn’t lost on Carter. He and Lisa Eugenia Robbins had gone out on one and a half dates last year. The second dinner was cut short, supposedly by a callout, and then Carter had never made it up to her. “My name’s Carter.”

“Yeah, I get it. You want to be called Carter. No first names allowed, I guess.”

I guess. This was why he’d feigned the appearance of a callout with a glance at his cell phone on that second date. And he was beginning to feel like he was in the middle of a bad version of Who’s on First. “Lisa, you do realize my first name—my actual first name—is Carter, don’t you?”

The expression on her face told him that she did not, in fact, realize that. “So what’s your last name?”

“Decker.”

“No, Decker’s got the hairy neck and always smells like deodorant.”

“Nope. That would be Kinderwood. Anyway, I’m Carter Decker. Nice to meet you. Again. Let me guess: You thought I was the one who pulled that little girl from the path of an oncoming car on Abe’s Path last summer?”

Her blank stare was confirmation.

“That’d be one Sergeant Deborah Carter.” He could see Lisa’s disappointment. “So, what’ve we got here?”

“No visible sign of distress. The ME will have to call it, obviously, but looks like a drowning. He’s in swim trunks and a rash guard, and we had a couple days of twelve-foot swells last week. Those kinds of waves are no joke.”

“Those kinds of waves aren’t on the shores of Lake Montauk, though.”