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“Where’s the bullet now?”
“In the able hands of Chief Larry Calabrese. He sent one of his guys to collect it—he wants to run it through the system right away.”
Jimmy tries to sit up a little in the bed, turn more toward Jane, but then realizes his good arm is attached to an IV.
“Good thing it missed my heart,” Jimmy says.
“What heart?”
She manages a smile, Jimmy sees. Just not much of one. He’s afraid she might start crying on him. It would be the first time she’s ever done it. Not cried. Cried in front of him.
“I was so scared,” she says in a small voice.
“Get out of here. Nothing scares you.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear.”
Jimmy doesn’t know what kind of medication they’re giving him. But for now, it must be working like a dream, because he’s feeling no pain. Like he’s floating.
There were two other times on the job when he took a bullet. One time in the shoulder when he saw the shooter before Mickey did and jumped in front of Mickey and knocked him out of the way in the same motion and probably saved his life.
The other time was when Jimmy was alone, chasing down a gang kid in Hell’s Kitchen, not knowing the kid was carrying until it was too late. The kid wasn’t much of a shot once he turned around and fired on Jimmy. That one was also a through-and-through, flesh wound to his left hip.
This was different.
This time he got ambushed.
What he can’t understand is why the shooter didn’t finish the job.
Jimmy tells Jane that all he remembers is stepping out of the car and getting hit.
“How did I even get here?”
“Because Pat Palmer brought you. Right before he told them to call me.”
“Wait. The kid isn’t dead?”
Jane shakes her head.
“It’s why you’re not.”
Eighty-Eight
DR. BEN KALINSKY ANDI are having dinner at Sam’s, our favorite Italian restaurant in East Hampton. I’ve been telling him about Pat Palmer’s life being threatened, about him faking his own death, about him hiding out on the North Fork until he thought somebody traced him there. The kid finally decided that the only person he could trust was Jimmy, so he followed him home from the bar, and he was close enough behind him when Jimmy got to his house that he heard the shot.
“He was driving a car he borrowed from a friend, but he had his own gun with him,” I say. “He didn’t have much of a plan once he saw Jimmy go down, so he leaned on the horn and started firing his gun into the sky, and spooked the shooter. Then he called 911.”
“Then he came to the hospital?” Ben says.
“To make sure Jimmy hadn’t died on him,” I say.
“Where is he now?”
“Gone again.”
I see him smiling at me. “But you know where he is, right?”
I smile back at him. “No comment.”
