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This time when he smiles at Jacobson he reaches over and grabs a fistful of his hospital gown, hard enough to snap Jacobson’s head back.
“Did you…rape that girl?”
Jimmy leans forward so that their faces are very close now.
“Did you?”
“For the last time…no!” Jacobson says. “Now let me go.”
Jimmy does. Reluctantly. He feels the urge to get in a couple of punches on him the way he did with the kid.
“Why would the kid lie?”
Jacobson says, “Ask him.”
Jimmy knows that Jane probably won’t be happy when she finds out he came here without telling her, or before telling her about the Palmer kid. But even she has to know by now that Jimmy isn’t much for chain of command.
Even with her.
“I think the one lying is you. Not the kid. There’s a stink that comes off liars.” Jimmy acts as if he’s sniffing the air. “You just can’t smell it because it’s coming off you.”
“Think whatever the hell you want about me,” Jacobson says. “And then you explain it to Jane when I fire both of your asses.”
“You’re not going to do that. Especially not this deep into the game.”
“You think Jane is my only shot to beat this thing?”
“Maybe your only shot.”
Jimmy leans close again and enjoys watching the rich boy flinch.
“But she can’t save your sorry ass if you continue to keep shit from her,” Jimmy says. “And from me.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, at least not yet today.”
Jimmy stands now, walks over to the door, grabs the chair, brings it back to the bed.
“One last question, for now. Did you pay them to keep them quiet?”
“Pay who?”
“The Gateses.”
“Yes,” Jacobson says.
Sixty-Six
MY SISTER ISN’T RETURNINGmy calls the morning after I’ve met with my son-of-a-bitch client in the hospital.
It’s the way I think of him now, the words all running together, nothing I can do to stop them:
Mysonofabitchclient.
I know it’s who he is and all he ever will be, whether he ends up getting found guilty or I can get him acquitted, whether he ends up a guest of the state of New York forever or eventually walks out of the Suffolk County Court a free man.
It’s my sister I want to talk to this morning. Only she won’t return my calls, or texts. There are several possible reasons for this, I’m aware. She’s turned off her phone. Or she’s at a doctor’s appointment. Or she’s at the gym. It’s a fact that her body is more toned now than it ever was, even if she’s lost as much weight as she has.
