One

ONE

JIMMY CUNNIFF CALLS TO tell me to get dressed, we're taking a ride.

"Am I allowed to ask where we're going?"

"To check in on an old friend."

"Am I allowed to ask which one?"

He tells me. And I tell him I'll be ready when he gets to my house.

Now we're standing at the top of steps leading up and into a courthouse, a new one for us, the Nassau County Courthouse in Mineola.

Rob Jacobson, my former client, one I recently got acquitted of a triple homicide in Suffolk County, is about to turn himself in one county over. On another triple homicide. Like Jimmy always says: You can't make this shit up.

"Apparently he's gonna tour," Jimmy says. "Like the Ice Capades."

"Ice Capades ended years ago."

"I was making a larger point," he says.

"You often are."

Jimmy is my investigator, wing man, best friend, former hot-ticket NYPD detective. His divorce from the cops wasn't pretty. But then neither were my divorces from husbands one and two.

"Here he comes," I say.

"It's a perp walk," Jimmy says. "Not a red carpet."

With plenty of time to spare, it got out, the way everything gets out in the modern world, that Jacobson and his new lawyer, Howie "the Horse" Friedlander, were going to do it this way, here at the courthouse. Jacobson's renting a house not far from mine in Amagansett, between East Hampton and Montauk. Having him led out of a residence in handcuffs was not the optic Howie or Rob wanted, as if any good optics could come from a moment like this.

The crowd today isn't the size that we routinely got during trial in Riverhead. A trial that ended, thanks to Jimmy and me, in Jacobson's acquittal. But now, in what felt like a blink, he has been charged with murdering another father, wife, teenage daughter. It was the Gates family last time. This time the Carsons of Garden City.

"He says he was set up," I tell Jimmy Cunniff.

"Set up again? For three more murders? What are the odds?"

"He's either a psychopath or the unluckiest SOB on the face of the earth."

"I'll take psychopath for two hundred, Alex," Jimmy says.

"Alex Trebek is dead."

"So are all those people."

Howie Friedlander is walking next to Rob. Howie got his nickname because he's about the size of a jockey. A case like this is the kind of ride lawyers like Howie and me look for their whole lives but hardly ever get.

All Howie has to do is what I did:

Win.

Rob Jacobson's trying to look as sure of himself as ever, the cameras back on him, at the center of his own three-ring circus all over again.

It's been a few months since I've seen the aging frat boy. He seems a lot older and the thousand-dollar suit he's wearing hangs on him a little bit.

But there's a deeper difference in him today. Maybe his old friends in the media can't see it. But I can.

In his eyes, mostly.

"He's scared this time," I say to Jimmy.

"You mean he wasn't scared last time of living out his days in a federal prison?"

"Last time he had us," I say.

Jacobson is doing something he never used to do on his way into the courthouse in Riverhead: ignoring the questions being shouted at him, from both sides of the railings.

He only stops when he sees Jimmy and me.

As soon as he does, he taps Howie on the shoulder and holds up a finger, telling him to wait.

Then walks right over to me, ignoring Jimmy.

"Janie," he says, suddenly back into character and back in charge of things. "You shouldn't have."

"You're right. I shouldn't have."

"Come on. Admit that you've missed me."

I make a gesture that takes in the whole scene.

"What I don't miss is all this."

"You sure?" he says.

"Like they say, Rob. Another fine mess."

"I'm innocent."

"Tell it to your new judge."

Before I can step back, he is leaning close to me. "We need to talk."

Howie Friedlander wants to hear what's being said, so he steps in, puts a hand on Jacobson's arm, and gently pulls him toward the courthouse doors.

"We need to get this over with," Howie says.

I watch as the doors open and two cops who could double as bouncers step outside. of them is carrying handcuffs, which means shit is about to get very real for Rob Jacobson.

Again.

Before they put the cuffs on him, he turns around and looks back, his eyes suddenly pleading with me. Not even trying to hide how scared he is, Jacobson puts one of his free hands—while they still are free—to his ear and mouths as if into a phone: Call me.

Then, as if he's silently shouting at me, he mouths one last word:

Please.

Then the cuffs go on him and the doors open back up and he's gone.

Jimmy sees me staring in Jacobson's direction. Maybe he can see in my eyes that I didn't just tell Jacobson the whole truth. I don't miss scenes like this, that is the truth. But I do want to be inside the courthouse, breathing that air again, instead of being out here, like I'm on the sidelines at the big game.

"Why do you look like you've got a hook in your mouth?" Jimmy asks.

"Probably because I do."