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“Have another chat with him, first thing. Just play nice this time.”
“Maybe if Jacobson did rape her, maybe somebody else besides the Palmer kid knows,” Jimmy says. “Like Nick Morelli maybe knew more than he was telling, which is why somebody wanted to shuthimup with a more permanent kind of NDA.”
Jimmy waves for the check.
“Weird that the kid came after you.”
“It’s called transferal,” Jimmy says. “He couldn’t get in any swings against Jacobson. I was the next best thing in his mind.”
“‘Transferal.’ You do have a lot of fancy words for a tough guy.”
“Fuckin’ a,” Jimmy says.
After Jane leaves, he walks up Main Street to where he parked his car, realizing he left his phone in it while he and Jane were having lunch.
There’s a text from Mickey Dunne.
Just one word of text, actually.
Champi
Sixty-Eight
Jimmy
IT TAKES JIMMY ONLYa few phone calls to get an address for Pat Palmer in the Springs. And the name of the body shop where he works on Springs Fireplace Road. The body shop is on the way to the Springs. Jimmy stops there, and Palmer’s boss, whose name tag readsSTAVROS, tells him he’s out of luck, Pat Palmer isn’t around.
“He called in sick.”
“He do that a lot?” Jimmy asks.
“Is never a lot?”
Jimmy thanks him, gives him a card, tells Stavros to tell Pat he’s looking for him if he checks in. Then he continues on his way to the Springs, what turns out to be a small ranch house set back from the street on Sand Lot Road.
No car out front.
Shit.
He is thinking again about Nick Morelli disappearing after he put Rob Jacobson with Laurel Gates that night across the street from the Stephen Talkhouse. His mind has gone back there because where else would it go until he locates Palmer, and finds out he’s gone without a trace, too?
It doesn’t take much effort for Jimmy to pick the lock on the front door with the kit he still carries around in his glove compartment, just in case the opportunity for B&E presents itself.
The place is practically military neat inside. Two bedrooms, across from each other down a short hallway. Two bathrooms. Decent-sized kitchen. Pictures of the kid on the walls leading down to the bedrooms, of him and Laurel Gates, most of them beach shots, one on top of the lighthouse in Montauk.
The bed in the master bedroom is made.
Huge flat-screen television above the fireplace in the living room, practically a necessity for all young guys everywhere.
But nobody home.
Jimmy finally lets himself out, goes back to the car, calls the number Stavros gave him for Pat Palmer.
Gets his message:“This is Pat Palmer. You know what to do when you hear the beep.”
Jimmy thinks about calling the East Hampton Police, but for what, the guy taking a sick day and not answering his phone? Because Nick Morelli went over the side of his boat since he knew something about Rob Jacobson and Laurel Gates?
Pat Palmer doesn’t call him back. Mickey Dunne doesn’t call him. Jimmy drives home, knowing what he’s really doing is driving himself crazy waiting for the damn phone to ring, or chirp, or whatever it’s doing these days.
