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Jimmy asks me for a small whiskey and fills me in on where he’s been and what he’s heard from Paul Biondi as I go into the kitchen and pour him one and pour one for myself and come back with the two glasses. I ask if it’s all right to mix whiskey with pain pills and he says that he’s saving the pain pills for a rainy day.
He takes a small sip of whiskey and sighs contentedly.
“Lily Biondi Carson signed the same nondisclosure that her old man did,” he says. “I asked him.”
“NDAs,” I say. “Kind of Rob’s thing.”
“And apparently from an early age,” Jimmy says. “But what if—and I’m just spitballing here—Lily went to Rob wanting more money to help with her husband’s gambling debts, all that time after prom night?”
“And threatened to tell everybody that he raped her when she was a minor,” I say, “whether or not she signed that piece of paper and already got paid off.”
Jimmy takes another sip of whiskey. I take a sip of my own. I watch him absently rub the area where he’s been bleeding. He was lucky this time too, without question, with where the bullet had entered and where it had ended up and all the good things it had missed along the way. Very,verylucky. But as much of a tough guy as he is and always has been, hewasshot, gunned down in front of his own house. And if he hadn’t also gotten lucky with Pat Palmer being there and calling it in, he could have died. And the body count in the two cases the two of us are working could have gone up again.
I’ve told him that my defense of Jacobson will likely rest soon, and that closing arguments from Kevin Ahearn and me could begin early next week.
Then the only arguments that will matter will be the ones in the jury room, as they decide whether or not Rob Jacobson is one more sociopath with a big bank account and a famous name.
Jimmy Cunniff and I are having that same conversation right now, times two, knowing it sounds bananas to even suggest he might have had something to do with killing six people instead of the three for whom he’s on trial.
“I do feel like the mayor of Crazytown even thinking that, as you have so eloquently put it, he might have done them all,” I say.
“And yet here we are,” Jimmy says.
“Hey, you started it.”
“Damn straight.”
He looks tired to me. But I probably look just as tired to him. I tell him he needs to go home and get himself about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, then rinse and repeat all the way through the weekend.
He’ll leave in a minute, he says; he hasn’t even finished his drink.
“Say I’m right about the guy,” Jimmy says. “Say he did it or had it done with the Carsons even though we’re the only people in the world who can connect him to them. Other than Lily’s old man, of course. You know what that could mean?”
“I’ll bite.”
“It would mean that maybe Champi, along with somebody else Jacobson has maybe called in from the bullpen to replace Champi, has been running around removing loose ends from both our cases. The way he’s maybe been removing loose ends for our client for a long time.”
“You certainly are full of interesting theories tonight,” I say, and finish my whiskey.
Jimmy starts to say something else, but then he looks at me, almost curious, or maybe confused, as his eyes suddenly close and he slides out of his chair, unconscious by the time he hits the floor.
Ninety-Seven
I RIDE WITH JIMMYin the ambulance that transports him back to the Bridgehampton Trauma Center, sirens and lights blazing on Route 27 in the night.
The primary emergency room for the area is still at Southampton Hospital. But Dr. Williams identified Jimmy as a legit emergency not long after I called the center to tell him that one of his patients was on his way, perhaps because of the aftershocks of his most recent gunshot wound.
In the ambulance I say to Jimmy, “Your idea of taking it easy worked like a charm, by the way.”
Jimmy, who’s regained consciousness, turns to one of the EMTs and says, “Who is this woman and what is she doing in this ambulance with me?”
“Who doesn’t love 911 humor?” I say to one of the young guys monitoring Jimmy’s vitals.
I watch him as the EMT watches his vitals. I know there is nothing I could have done to stop Jimmy Cunniff from doing whatever the hell he wanted to do, because there never has been. He’s always been just as pigheaded as I am. Which one of us is the more stubborn is too close to call at this point in our relationship.
At the hospital, he is taken inside to Dr. Williams, and I wait for more than an hour. I find a vending machine and get a cup of coffee, not knowing just how long a night it is going to be. I’m not going anywhere until I know that Jimmy is all right.
Ms. Jane Smith: always much better at looking out for somebody else than for herself.
