One Hundred One

ONE HUNDRED ONE

brIGID AGREES TO COME back to my house and spend the night. I give her my room and take the fold-out bed from the sofa in my office.

In the morning I meet Jimmy at Jack's in Sag Harbor. Jimmy orders a regular coffee. After sleeping only a couple of hours, at most, waiting across the rest of the night to hear my alarm triggered, I've ordered an espresso-and-coffee mix called Mad Max.

"Can you see any possible connection between your father and any of these scum buckets?" Jimmy asks.

"He was a Marine. He was a bartender my whole life until he dropped dead in the bar one day. He grew up in Hell's Kitchen with a lot of kids who could have gone either way. He met a lot of people in his life, on both sides of the line, is what I'm saying."

"Now somebody in this thing of ours owes him a favor, from way back."

"At least according to Morelli."

"Your sister wants you to walk away, which means she wants both of us to walk away."

"And that's exactly what we're going to do," I say. "It's time for us to stop chasing our tails and focus on the trial and let God sort out the rest of it."

I see Jimmy staring across the street as a couple of uniformed cops from the Sag Harbor station wave at him before they get into their cruiser and head up Division Street. By now I'm convinced that Jimmy Cunniff knows the name and rank of every cop on the South Fork, and what they like to order at his bar.

He turns and looks back at me.

"Gotta give you a hard no," he says.

"It wasn't a request, Jimmy."

"I don't care whether it was or not," he says.

He hasn't changed his tone, or raised his voice, doesn't sound angry, or confrontational, or as if he's looking to pick a fight. But I've seen this set to his whole impressive self before, eyes and expression and even body language. The old boxer who once told me he knew everything in the ring except when to stop coming.

"Morelli threatened everybody. You talk all the time about risk and reward in this business. We need to be done taking risks, no matter how hard we want to go at these people. They've already gotten to you more than once. They got to Ben. They got to Brigid. They got to me again. We're out."

"I'm not stopping," he says. He's still staring across Division Street. "Not even if you fire me."

"Come on," I tell him. "Nobody's talking about firing you. Are you kidding? I'd fire myself before I'd fire you."

We both sip coffee. He's back to looking at me. Still completely calm. Sometimes with him that's not necessarily a good thing.

"I'm just telling you how it is," Jimmy says. "One of these people killed my partner. Or knows who killed my partner. They killed the DA who brought us in on the Carson case. I can't let that go."

What comes out of him next comes out in a harsh whisper.

"You should know me well enough by now to know that I don't let shit go."

"Even if it puts us all in danger?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Janie? We're already in danger."

I can't remember the two of us ever having a real argument. We have disagreements all the time, though rarely on the big things. But he never gets genuinely angry with me.

Until now.

"I'm not telling you to let anything go," I say. "I'm asking you, Jimmy."