One Hundred Nine

ONE HUNDRED NINE

I GO FOR SOMETHING unusual on the weekend:

I go for normal.

I'm still not going anywhere without my gun, I'm not crazy, even taking it into the bathroom with me when I shower. I take it with me when I walk Rip, either on the street or on the beach. I take it with me to the farm stand and the grocery store and Jack's.

Brigid is safe with her maybe-not-soon-to-be ex, at what she calls an undisclosed location in Maine that she promises to me is far from the line of fire.

Rob Jacobson is still calling a couple of times a day to tell me how bored and stir-crazy he is.

"That's where I am with my so-called life," he says. "I might be the only guy in the world to be excited about standing trial for murder again, as long as it gets me out of the house."

Sam Wylie calls to remind me, as if I need reminding, that my next appointment with her and Dr. Mike Gellis, my oncologist, is scheduled for next Saturday, both of them willing to meet with me on a weekend to accommodate my court schedule. I tell her I'm more likely to forget my birthday than an exciting opportunity like that.

"You know you can drop the tough-guy act with me, right?" she says on the phone.

"What act?"

At least she didn't call me a bitch after telling me she loved me.

Jimmy continues to investigate Sonny Blum, without much success. The only success he's had is with the prints Danny Esposito ran for him off the glass the hard case at the bar left. It turns out they're in the system, and belong to a man named Len Greene, who came up in Blum's organization around the same time as Bobby Salvatore. His service was interrupted by the four years he spent at Green Haven Correctional.

"Ask me what he was in for," Jimmy says.

"I'll bite."

"Blowing up the car of somebody stealing from Sonny."

"Was this somebody in the car at the time?"

"He was not."

"Does Mr. Greene have an address?"

"Yeah. Sonny's house."

"Would it help if I suggested letting sleeping Jewish gangsters lie?"

"No," he says, and ends the call.

His tough-guy act isn't an act, either. But I already knew that.

I work all of Saturday on trial stuff, throwing myself into the grind, knowing the day will end with the dinner I'm preparing for Dr. Ben Kalinsky and myself. For the first time in weeks, I've decided to go fancy with ingredients from Balsam Farms: mushroom Asiago chicken pasta as the main course, preceded by an apple harvest salad.

For dessert I'm reaching for the sky, a chocolate soufflé I've prepped to go into the oven as we start the main course.

"What's the occasion?" Ben says, pouring us more wine.

"It's not really very complicated," I say, leaning across the table, nearly knocking over my wineglass as I do, and then kissing him.

I pull back, smiling at him. "The occasion is that I love you."

"You're right. Not that complicated at all."

"I still am, you know. Complicated as all get-out."

"Just another reason why I love you. And why I'm so happy that you're getting back to work you love."

"You mean being a criminal lawyer instead of running around with a gun and behaving like one?"

"Like that."

The soufflé is beyond a guilty pleasure. We clean up the kitchen and share a brandy in the living room and then shut the bedroom door on Rip the dog and make love, after which I experience the best night of sleep I've had in a long time.

I tell myself I'm getting back to my day job, even knowing that my full-time job is cancer.

The next night, alone with Rip, and pizza from Astro's, I'm deep into a dreamless sleep for a change, no visits in the night from either of my parents, when I hear my phone. The clock on my bedside table reads 12:01.

UNKNOWN CALLER.

I instinctively reach for the Glock.

"It's McKenzie," I hear. "You have to help me."

My old friend Edmund McKenzie. He sounds as if calling from the middle of a wind tunnel.

"Why in the world would I do something like that?"

"They're gonna kill me, Cunniff!"

"Where the hell are you?"

"I ran up into Walking Dunes in Montauk after I ditched my car."

A pause.

"They were following me, but my car was faster."

"Why there?"

"I'll explain everything when you get here. Just hurry. I figured they'd come for me eventually."

There's a pause, and now just the sound of the wind.

"I'm tired of looking over my shoulder," he says.

"Why should I trust you?"

"Because I know everything you want to know," he says. "But I can't tell you if I'm dead."