AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s the new case that has the old cop in Jimmy jazzed and running hot.
He remembers the feeling, and likes it, especially now that Gregg McCall is on the phone, telling him to get to Mineola ASAP, that they might have a suspect who might be good for the Carson murders. It’s an ex-con, name of Artie Shore. After he served out his last sentence, aggravated assault, at Green Haven, he went back to work for his old friend Bobby Salvatore.
“With whom Hank Carson was in over his head.”
“Like the deep end of the pool and he didn’t know how to swim.”
“It would have been helpful if your cops had found all this out a long time ago,” Jimmy says. “But you already know that.”
“It’s like I told Jane: my guys didn’t dig deep enough at the time,” McCall says. “Carson managed to do a good job keeping his head down with his friends and neighbors about his gambling, so they just Keystone Copped their way into the narrative that the Carsons walked into a burglary in progress and whoever it was they walked in on lost his shit and shot them all.”
McCall tells Jimmy they will have picked up Shore by the time Jimmy gets to Mineola. It’s because, McCall says, a witness has come forward who suddenly remembered, all this time later, having seen Shore come out of the Carson home on Kildare Road the day before Hank Carson was taped up in the ER at Winthrop-University Hospital of Mineola for three broken ribs.
“Can I sit in when you talk to the guy?” Jimmy asks McCall. “Shore, I mean.”
“You can’t sit in,” McCall says. “But you can sit on the other side of the window.”
By now Jimmy is heading for the LIE, stepping on it.
“Guys like Salvatore, it’s always the same,” he said to McCall. “And for the guys working for them. If they kill you, they never get their money. So if it’s Bobby Salvatore who had this done, there might be something more than a gambling debt going on here. Unless the debt was worse than we even know.”
“We’ll talk about it when you get here.”
McCall calls him again as Jimmy is finally getting on the Meadowbrook Parkway.
“There’s a problem.”
“Shore did a runner?”
“I wish.”
“You say a problem,” Jimmy says. “How big a problem?”
He has a bad feeling about where this is going.
“Shore’s not dead, is he?”
“Well, not yet.”
Twenty
AS SOON AS Iget home from court, I decide to take a trail walk in the Springs.
Not a run tonight. No gun and no shooting, even if I am feeling an urge to shootsomething.
Just a long walk on my private trail.
The temperature has dropped again, so I throw on my old maroon BC hoodie. My plan is to park the car, walk to the end of the long dirt road and back. Alone with my thoughts about my life, Jimmy on his way to see McCall.
What’s left of my life, anyway.
And, I think, isn’t that the almighty everlasting bitch of it all? Right now, this moment, I’m as big as I’ve ever been, at least professionally. Looking at a huge payday from Rob Jacobson, win, lose, or appeal. The payday for the Carson case won’t be as big, I know. If I solve it, though? If Jimmy and I find out who did it and nearly got away with it? My profile goes sky-high, like I launched a rocket in the backyard.
But there’s a problem with that, one that existed for me, and deeply, even before my visit to the office of Dr. Samantha Wylie:
The thought that my guy did it makes me feel as if there’s more damage inside me.
Not to my neck and head.
