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Jimmy says, yeah, he does.
“You think of anybody you ever knew or ever heard about capable of shit like this?” Jimmy says. “Being a killer or a fixer or both?”
Mickey finishes his beer, and his whiskey, and waves for more, pointing at Jimmy as he does.
“Funny you should ask. Just on account of the other thing you got going.”
“The trial.”
“No, your stamp collection. Of course your trial.”
“What you got?” Jimmy says.
“There’s this guy who kind of maybe might fit the profile you just gave me,” Mickey Dunne says. “Fixer and hitter for the rich and famous back in the day. There’s just one small problem.”
“Waiting.”
“Guy’s dead.”
Forty-Eight
RIP IS WAITING FORme when I come through the door.
“What’s that you’re asking?” I say to him as I scratch him behind an ear. “How did my day go, dear?”
He looks at me expectantly, as if I have promised him a treat.
“Don’t ask.”
I do give him a treat and let him out into the backyard and feed him dinner. I take a long, hot bath, then turn on the television to watch the Mets. Or they watch me once I hit the couch—hard to tell. I always like listening to the Mets announcers. As if they owe me a good performance, either way, you can never tell from them whether the team is winning or losing. They do their job.
I did some job today, didn’t I?
A shit job.
Nice work, Janie.
Before I walked into the courtroom this morning, I’d told myself that I wasn’t going to win my case today, not with this much trial left.
But I hadn’t expected to walk out feeling as if I’d lost it.
“How could we have not known the guy was gay?” I’d said to Jimmy before he left for the city.
“I should’ve known,” he said. “This is on me.”
“We both should’ve,” I said. “And you know why we didn’t? Because we were dumb enough to think he didn’t fit some kind of profile. War hero. Local tough guy. Divorced. As if a guy like that couldn’tpossiblybe gay.”
I’d made a faulty assumption. Jimmy and I both had. And then I’d walked right into it.
Or stepped into it—that was probably a better way of looking at it.
Otis Miller had known I was going to ask him again about the affair, or else I would never have called him back to the stand. And he had been lying in wait for me. The divorced, local hero, Army vet, ready to turn the tables and ambushme.
I’m gay.
That’s my partner, sitting right there.
On top of everything else, I’m the lawyer who just outed a gay man.
