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“Don’t think,” Palmer says. “Know.The way everybody around here except you and the lawyer bitch knows. He did it, and now you and the lawyer have whored yourselves out trying to prove that he didn’t.”
Nothing to say to that. Nothing that is going to change his mind, now or ever.
Palmer leans forward a little. Jimmy is ready if he tries to throw another punch. But he doesn’t.
“He didn’t just kill her. Way before that, he’d already raped her. You didn’t know that, did you, smart guy?”
Jimmy reaches over and backhands him across the face.
“What the hell was that for?” Palmer says.
“For not being the guy I was hoping you’d be,” Jimmy says, before standing up and then helping the kid to his feet.
“Why didn’t Laurel tell anybody what he did to her?”
“Because Laurel told me he made them all sign that piece of paper,” Palmer says, “and then he paid them off.”
Sixty-Five
Jimmy
JIMMY HAS CALLED AHEADand gotten a heads-up on when they’re going to process Rob Jacobson out of the hospital. It’s earlier than Jimmy thought it would be. Maybe the asshat forgot to pay for late checkout like he would at a Ritz.
Yeah,Jimmy thinks,the rich are different from you and me.
It always makes him want to laugh, just because that’s the only part of the line everybody remembers from the F. Scott Fitzgerald story.
Jimmy, though, can quote the rest of it about the rich, how they possess and enjoy early. How they are soft where we are hard, and cynical where the rest of us are trustful.
Jacobson is still in his bed and surprised when Jimmy walks into the room.
“What do you want?” he says.
Jimmy doesn’t answer him, just grabs the chair next to the bed, turns it around, tips it back, and leans it underneath the doorknob. He’s only doing this for show. He knows the chair bracing the door won’t keep the cop outside from getting inside if he wants to, not for ten seconds.
But Jimmy knows that Jacobson, the rich guy, is soft. And he wants to remind him Jimmy Cunniff isn’t.
Now Jimmy sits down on the bed. Jacobson is already fumbling for the Call button. Jimmy gets his hand on it first and puts it out of reach.
“Hey,” Jacobson says.“Hey.”Then he says, “I could yell, you know.”
Jimmy leans closer to him, smiling. “Yeah. But you won’t.”
Now Jacobson gives a little roll to his shoulders, straightens a little in the bed, like he thinks he can still take control of the meeting. Like he’s still in charge. Something in this moment they both know is bullshit.
“What the hell do you want? First your boss shows up here to jam me up. Now you. I’m starting to think it’s safer in prison.”
“Shut up and listen,” Jimmy says, and Jacobson does while Jimmy tells him about Pat Palmer jumping him and what he told Jimmy after he did, about Laurel Gates and the rest of it. “Did you rape that girl like he said?” Jimmy says when he finishes.
“He’s lying.”
Jimmy smiles at him again. What he thinks of as his best cop smile. Mickey Dunne always said it reminded him more of one of those fright masks people wear on Halloween.
“Amazing, when you think of it, everybody lying except you,” Jimmy says to him now. “And you the only one locked up for a triple homicide.”
“I keep trying to tell you. I didn’t do the Gates family, even though somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it look like I did.”
“Tell it to Jane. She’s more trusting than me, even with a dirtbag like you.”
