AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“With me it is. Or maybe I’m just a realist.” He grins again. “I always think about a line I heard one time when I was watchingSportsCenteron ESPN.”
“I know whatSportsCenteris, Doc.”
“Sorry. I forget occasionally that I’m sitting with a former enforcer for Boston College hockey.”
“I considered myself more of a finesse player.”
“Sure. Go with that.”
He sips some of his wine. I watch him do it. Our eyes meet. Now we’re both smiling at each other. Sometimes when I’m with him I feel normal. Happy almost. Not healthy—I know better than that. Just not sick for a little while.
“Anyway, one of the anchors was talking about some injured player being day-to-day. At which point he paused, looked into the camera, and said, ‘But aren’t we all?’”
I stare at him over my glass, maybe for a beat too long, and finally say, “Some of us more than others.”
“You mean like Brigid.”
“Sure,” I say, winking at him. “Go with that.”
“When do you think you’ll hear from her?”
“She’s kind of day-to-day,” I say, and we both laugh.
It’s when we’re clearing the table of the dessert plates and about to move to the living room with coffee that I hear the knock on the front door.
When I open it, Jimmy Cunniff is standing there.
“Somebody killed him,” he says.
“The Palmer kid?”
“Mickey Dunne.”
Seventy
Jimmy
DR. BEN KALINKSY EXCUSEShimself after Jimmy shows up. Jimmy practically walks him to his car, apologizing for screwing up his dinner date. Ben Kalinsky tells Jimmy, “I would have screwed it up myself eventually, just off my track record.” Then he puts a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and tells him how sorry he is for his loss. “He sounds like he was a good friend,” the vet says.
“More than a friend,” Jimmy says. “He was my partner.”
Jane pours Jimmy coffee that she was supposed to have been drinking with Dr. Ben, she says. Jimmy tells her he’s leaving for the city from here. He tells Jane how they found Mickey, two shots to the forehead, close range, in an alley a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, between two buildings, 158th and Gerard.
“So mob style,” Jane says. “You think this might have something to do with the mob?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
He has already told Jane about Mickey Dunne’s text. Now he shows it to her on his phone.
Champi
The last thing Mickey Dunne ever said to him.
“You know what I think?” Jimmy says. “Mickey must have thought he had a lead on Champi. Only Champi found him first.”
“Was his phone still with him when they found him?” Jane says.
She points at his coffee. Jimmy shakes his head, tells her he doesn’t want to hit every other rest stop on the LIE on his way to the city.
