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Jimmy
THE PUNCH, EVEN THROWNwith his left hand, sends another hot current of pain all the way to his wounded shoulder.
But the punch connects, rocking the guy back, and the one Jimmy follows it with, another beauty, more of a short uppercut, causes a grunt of pain and puts the guy onhisback now.
Just not for long.
He gets himself up, shaking his head. His bell rung now. They’re both up. Still nobody else around at this end of Bay Street, for the feature bout of the night.
“Whoareyou?” Jimmy yells.
The guy doesn’t answer. He’s bigger than Jimmy, by about a head, maybe a little more. Big enough to be Champi, if it’s him—Jimmy has seen pictures of Champi from the old days, towering above other cops.
Jimmy’s right arm is hanging at his side, useless, still hurting like a bastard.
The guy, breathing hard, says, “You had this beating coming for a long time.”
Then he’s stepping in behind what turns out to be a wild right hand. No sucker punch this time. Jimmy snaps his head back and steps inside the guy’s right hand and hits him with another left, this time to the body, like he’s trying to drive it all the way through him.
It doubles the guy over.
If it is Champi,Jimmy thinks,why the hell doesn’t he just shoot me if there’s nobody around?
As he tries to come back at Jimmy again, Jimmy gives himself enough room, the slide step he learned in the Times Square club, moving away enough to throw another uppercut, this one connecting with the guy’s chin.
It doesn’t put him down but might as well have. Jimmy knows the look: the guy is done, his arms hanging now, head down.
Jimmy is tired and hurting and pissed off about being jumped this way. He’s not an old cop now, he’s an old fighter, and he wants to finish this guy, whoever he is, put him down, and out.
Jimmy steps in and pulls the mask off.
Not Joe Champi.
Sixty-Three
“THIS WAS ALL ABOUTaprenup? You have got to be kidding me.”
Jacobson nods, as if somehow it’s the most obvious thing in the world to him, as natural as screwing around on his wife in the first place.
“It’s why I didn’t want Brigid to testify. She thinks she’s helping me. She thinks she’s doing the right thing. For her, maybe. Not for me.”
I just let him go. As always, he loves the sound of his own voice.
“If Claire can prove infidelity, it voids the prenup. And then the laws of the good old state of New York kick in. And you know what that means? Those laws kick me right in the balls.”
“She gets half.”
He snorts. “As she folds that prenup into a paper airplane.”
“Rob. Help me out here. How thefuckdo you plan on using the half that you’ll get to keep when you’re spending the rest of your life as a guest of the goddamn state?”
He smiles.
“Because I’ve gotyou,Jane,” he says. “Because maybe now you’ll start believing me when I tell you that Claire is the one with the motive here, if she can pin this on me. Shewantsme in prison. It’s not enough for her to get the money. She wants it all.”
I look at the heart monitor for some reason and wonder idly how he’d do with a lie detector.
“You want to know the truth?”
