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“I should have thought of this before she ever sat down in that chair and swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but,” he says. “She gets something, I get something. You learn that in business. Always leave something on the table, so youdon’tlook like a complete pig after the deal is done.”
“But that’s exactly what you are. And who you are.”
He shrugs. “I am who I am.”
“One last question, at least for now. Whathaven’tyou lied about to me?”
“Killing those people. That’s always been the truth. And the truth is supposed to set you free, right?”
“The truth might not be able to setyoufree, Rob. But I can.”
I stand up. My hand is on the doorknob when I hear him laugh from the bed.
“You know what you and I have, Jane? A marriage even worse than my real one.”
“How do you figure?”
“Can’t live with you, can’t kill you.”
I turn to look at him. He’s not smiling now.
“Yet,”he says.
Sixty-Four
Jimmy
IT’S A KID,the area around his right eye starting to color, blood coming out of his nose. He can’t be much more than a teenager. But then everybody is starting to look younger and younger to Jimmy Cunniff.
He is sitting on the street now, beaten. Jimmy sits down across from him. When the kid’s head starts to drop, chin to chest, Jimmy grabs his long blond hair and jerks it back up.
“I need a name.”
“I’m not telling you shit.”
“The next punch breaks your nose,” Jimmy says.
“Do it,” the kid says.“Do. It.”
Then he says, “Pat Palmer.”
A car rolls past them without stopping, heading back toward Main Street. Jimmy can feel his phone buzzing in his pocket. Jane, probably.
“I loved her!”the kid says.
“Loved who?”
“Laurel Gates,” Palmer says.
“She was your girlfriend.”
“She was my girlfriend.”
He looks as if he might cry.
Jimmy looks down at his left hand, sees it already starting to swell. The one he used to break all the time when he was still fighting. The one that threw the best punches he ever threw but ended up being the reason he quit.
“So you decided to come after one of the people trying to save the guy you think killed her and her whole family.”
