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“Decided I need a quick shot of courage. And knew where I could get it.”
He snorts. “There you go, acting like this case is a matter of life or death or something.”
He turns without me asking and grabs a bottle of Bushmills and a glass and smiles at me from underneath a nose he broke—between boxing and bar fights as a teenager in this very spot—countless times. The nose makes a hard right about halfway down before cutting back to the left. I’ve always thought of it as a bit of an architectural wonder.
“And don’t let this go to your head,” he says as he pours, “but you need a glass of courage less than anybody I know. Present company included.”
He pours some Bushmills into his coffee mug, then stares at me. “Hey. You okay?”
“Brilliant.”
“You know something I don’t about today?” he asks.
I grin. “Lots.”
He’s talking about the trial. I’m not.
Tell him.
Sit him down at a table and tell him.
If I’m going to tell anybody what Sam Wylie just told me, it’s Jimmy.
Tell him now.
I throw down the whiskey instead.
What my old man used to call the breakfast of champions when mom was dying of cancer in front of our eyes.
Jimmy raises his coffee mug. “You got this, Janie.”
Yeah,I think.I got it, all right.
Eight
I CRANK UP GREEN DAYall the way to Riverhead, driving fast when I can, trying to focus on where I’m going and not where I just came from. And what I just came from.
Thinking this:
Maybe in my case, not Rob Jacobson’s—mylife—New York State hasn’t abolished the death penalty after all.
“Control what you can control,” Jimmy always says, “and let God take care of the rest of the shit.”
He can be such a poetic bastard.
But wait.
This is Her idea of taking care of me?
The scene outside the courthouse when I arrive is just as wild as it would be if Rob Jacobson’s trial were being held at Criminal Court on Centre Street in the city, as if they moved all the color and pageantry and BS this far east.
I see by the satellite trucks that all of the networks are represented. All the local New York channels. I see some newspaper people I recognize, the fortunate few who still have jobs. But only a few. The rest shouting questions at me as I make my way across Court Street look as if they’re here representing a school paper, or have stopped on their way to Driver’s Ed.
I answer a few questions. Might as well start working them now, out here in what always feels to me like an open-air courtroom.
“Did he do it, Jane?” a voice shouts at me from down below.
“Wouldn’t be here if he did.”
