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“Then you find my card in the pocket of his windbreaker,” Jimmy says.
“I didn’t have your new cell number,” Aaron McGrath says. “But the dead guy apparently did.”
The dead guy.
Paul Biondi.
Lily’s dad.
The one who said Jacobson bought him off because of what happened on prom night.
Very much still alive when Jimmy went to see him in Little Neck.
“Sounds like he never got over his daughter and granddaughter dying the way they did,” McGrath says.
“He might not have ever gotten over it. But he wasn’t suicidal about it.”
“You know this…how?”
“Because I was just with him a week ago,” Jimmy says. “I looked him in the eye.”
He is leaning against the front window. He turns and sees Jane staring at him from inside. The bottle of bourbon is still in front of her.
“Why were you with him?” McGrath says.
“Jane and me, we’ve been looking into what happened to Biondi’s daughter, the whole family, in Garden City, favor to a friend. Biondi was helping me out on it.”
“And you don’t think it’s possible he could have offed himself now that he knew the great Jimmy Cunniff was on the case?” Aaron McGrath says.
“Maybe not great,” Jimmy says. “But still very, very good.”
“You think somebody staged this?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jimmy still finds himself getting tired if he stands too long, even though nobody shot him in the legs. He’s not there yet. But he feels himself starting to sag.
Sagging in Sag Harbor.
Good one, Cunniff. No shit, you’re some wit.
“Heard you took a bullet,” McGrath says.
“Zigged,” Jimmy says, “when I should have zagged.”
He hears his old friend chuckle.
“Don’t you hate when that happens?”
Jimmy looks down and sees he’s put a hand to his midsection without even thinking about it. It’s been happening a lot that day, almost as if he’s trying to hold himself together.
“You still there?” Aaron McGrath says.
“He didn’t kill himself,” Jimmy says to him. “Somebody just wants it to look that way.”
“Who?” Detective Aaron McGrath says.
“A monster, maybe.”
