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“Joe is dead,” Jacobson says.
“He was at Mickey Dunne’s apartment this morning.”
“Somebody might have been there. But I’m telling you it wasn’t Champi.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because I had it done,” Jacobson says.
“You expect us to believe you had Joe Champi killed,” I say.
“Said the client to the lawyer,” Jacobson says.
“Let’s say you did, despite the history you have with the guy,” Jimmy says. “Whydid you?”
“Because he had something on me, something I thought I’d settled with him a long time ago,” Jacobson says. “But he came back wanting more, even after he faked his own goddamn death, and told me that if I didn’t pay, he was going to take it to the DA.” Jacobson shrugs. “And you can understand how in my present circumstances I couldn’t have done that.”
Still just the three of us in the room.
I say, “What did he have on you?”
“Things got out of hand one night with one of those girls I told you I had,” Jacobson says. “And then she died.”
Eighty-Three
I’M DRINKING MONTAUK SUMMER ALEat Jimmy’s bar. He’s sipping on Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, from the one bottle he keeps, seventy-five dollars a glass for the customers who know he has it behind the bar and are willing to pay for it.
“He wouldn’t even admit whether it was him who killed the girl he told us about or Champi,” Jimmy says.
“After bragging about how his uncle Joe had been making problems go away since he was in college.”
“Makes you wonder exactly how many problems there were. Or how man dead girls.”
“Until even Champi couldn’t make a triple homicide go away.”
It’s a slow night here. Ball games on both sets, at each end of the bar. Maybe three tables full.
Before they left the jail, Jimmy asked Jacobson who he thought had killed Mickey Dunne if Joe Champi hadn’t.
“Not my problem,” Jacobson said.
“I thought I might have to pull you off him at that point.”
“You would’ve had to if Tommy hadn’t come back,” Jimmy says.
I finish my beer. Jimmy finishes his drink. Jimmy walks me out to the parking lot behind the bar. I ask him if he really believes Joe Champi is gone.
“Jacobson acted pretty proud of the fact that he’d taken him out,” Jimmy says. “After Uncle Joe had becomehisproblem.”
“Even though it was supposed to look like a suicide.”
Jimmy leans against the hood of my car.
“But if all this is true, then we might have ourselves a new problem.”
“Such as?”
“Maybe Champi had a partner.”
