One Hundred Three

ONE HUNDRED THREE

I FINALLY GIVE IN and call Jimmy, trying to act as if nothing has gone sideways with us. Avoidance isn't one of my greatest skills. But I can do it with the best of them when I'm avoiding a major conflict with my best friend.

I just innocently ask what he's doing.

"You don't want to know."

"Wouldn't I be the best judge of what I want to know?"

"Not today, counselor."

He ends the call. I want to call right back and press him. But I know better. And know enough to give him room, whether I like it or not. Know I have to wait for him to make the next move, or the next call, whether I like that or not.

What is this, high school?

From the time I hired him, I've known he's never been much for chain of command. But it doesn't matter with our partnership, and our friendship. We're equal partners in this, always have been. Whatever he has going on right now, whatever is going on between us, requires patience on my part. Something else not high up in my skill set.

I'm trying to get Brigid to move in with me, just for the time being. She says she's fine where she is and will continue to be fine as long as I do what Nick Morelli told me to do, and back the hell off from him, and Eric Jacobson, and Edmund McKenzie.

"We have a deal on that, right?" she asks.

"Everybody seems to want to be making deals with me these days. Why should my sister be any different?"

"Just do your job," she says, "and focus on defending Rob."

"You know I can multitask with the best of them."

"What I know," my sister says, "is that you have a gift, a genius even, for pissing people off. But now I've seen with my own eyes that these are people you don't want to piss off. And I'm asking you to please not."

"Duly noted."

"So we do have a deal, correct?"

"Sure."

"That didn't sound very convincing."

"I try to save my convincing for court, sis."

I don't tell her that what she wants from me probably doesn't matter in the end if Jimmy Cunniff isn't going to stop pushing. And he's made much more of a career pissing people off, good guys and bad guys, than I ever have.

It's why we make a good team.

We both have always treated taking even one step back like it was some kind of felony.

I keep telling myself to do what Brigid wants me to do and focus on the trial. I know I'm ready for it. My two interns are at full throttle on the kind of trial prep I've always prided myself on doing but simply haven't had the energy for this time, even when I'm not in the chemo chair. And I know what I've always known, anyway, that as much as you need all the information you can bring with you into a courtroom, everything changes when the bell rings. Jimmy Cunniff has always said I'm not one of those people who looks like a million damn dollars in practice. He says I always save it for the game.

One of my law school kids, Estie, asked the other day if I've thought about hiring a jury consultant.

"Already did," I told her. "Me."

After I've spoken to Brigid, I sit at the kitchen table for a couple of hours, trying to work, Rip at my feet. But as hard as I try, even into the early evening, I can't get out of my head the image of Nick Morelli pressing his gun against my sister's face. She told me that when she opened the door and saw him pointing the gun at her she was wearing her Duke hat. He made her take it off. He wanted her to be bald and at her most vulnerable. As if walking her back into her own house at gunpoint hadn't made her feel vulnerable enough.

Brigid kept telling me that if she was willing to let that go then I should be, too.

But I'm not her, never have been. She's the one with the same gentle nature that our mother always had, to her dying day. Not me.

I'm more like my father.

Who is owed a posthumous favor, by persons unknown.

He was the one who taught me, from the first time I played hockey, not to let the other girl get the first punch in. He was the one who told me, when I beat up those mean kids, how proud of me he was.

"My girl," he said that night, before going off to work at the bar.

Now somebody has threatened to shoot my sister and has done that with me in the room.

I put down my pen and turn over my yellow legal pad and put my notes back into their manila folder.

Jimmy Cunniff isn't the only one who doesn't let shit go.

I go and get the keys to the car.

And my gun.