Thirty-Three

THIRTY-THREE

ON THE BEACH LAST night, somebody fired shots at Rob Jacobson. The house he's renting on Hedges Lane in Amagansett is less than a half mile from the beach. You can hear the water from his back patio even though you can't see it.

Claire told me what Rob had told her about the gunshots.

Now my client and I are doing a face-to-face and I'm about to get the full story directly from him. Rob Jacobson is trying to act cool, trying not to break character in the part he plays for me. But I can see that he's rattled.

Two brand-new human beings this morning, same marriage.

What are the odds?

"I didn't get much sleep." He forces a smile. "But not for the usual reasons."

He sips some coffee. He offers me some. I pass. I'm wired enough at this point.

"You sure you want to hear this?"

"As much as I might occasionally want to kill you myself, I'm not letting somebody else do it on my watch," I say. "And I haven't lost a client yet."

"I didn't tell you what happened because I didn't want you to worry about me," he says.

"Just tell me what happened last night and we'll worry together."

I had gotten him permission to do a route I knew they could track on GPS: drive into town for dinner with the ankle bracelet on and walk down to the beach afterward. But he didn't want to eat. He wanted to drink and didn't want to drink alone.

He says he had a few too many at the Main Street Tavern, but wasn't drunk enough to forget this was no time in his life to get picked up for a DUI. He walked the short distance to his house and was still so buzzed that he continued walking down to Indian Wells Beach to see if the ocean air could help sober him up before bed.

He did sober up then. But not because of the air. When he drunkenly kicked off his loafers, he did a full face-plant into the sand.

"Luck of the Irish whiskey, I guess. Because that exact same moment was when I heard the shot. Pretty sure I then heard the bullet maybe bang off one of the parking signs."

He's not the cool Rob now, the one who wants you to think he's the only one who gets the joke. By now I know what a good liar he can be. But I don't think he's lying now. He's reliving what happened to him. And how close he came.

"Could you tell where the shot came from?"

"Behind, I'm pretty sure. From the parking lot. Like I said: I sobered up pretty quick and rolled to my right and then I'm tearing ass into the dunes. It's a cloudy night, no moon or stars. You can barely see the ocean. I hear another shot. That one misses, too. I'm not the sprinter I was in high school, but I've done a lot of beach running in my life and I can still get it in gear when I have to. I must have been faster than whoever it was shooting at my ass. The shooting stops. But I don't stop until I get all the way to Maidstone."

"You walked all the way home from the country club?"

He shakes his head. And grins. For a moment this is the Rob I know, if not love.

"I called a friend and she came and got me and we came back here."

"Not worried that the shooter might come looking for you here?"

"You don't want to know this, Janie. But I've still got a gun."

He's right. I don't want to know that.

"You didn't consider phoning the police instead?"

"Don't feel as if I'm a white life that matters to them these days."

"Will you please be serious for once in your life, Rob? Because this actually happens to be life-and-death shit we're discussing."

"Sorry," he says. "I mean it."

"By the way? I don't suppose the friend you phoned was my sister."

He frowns. "Not exactly."

"Don't tell me you two crazy kids have broken up again."

"See, that's the thing, Janie. We might not have ever really gotten back together."

I stare at him, knowing I shouldn't be remotely surprised.

"So you lied to me about that."

He puts out his hands. "What can I tell you? It's like with women. Sometimes I can't stop myself."

"How do I know you're not lying about being shot at?"

I have slapped him in the past. He reacts as if I've just done it again.

"I'm not lying, goddamnit! Somebody tried to shoot me in my goddamn back!"

I'll never be sure when he's lying and when he's telling the truth. Still not sure, in my heart, whether he's capable of murder. But the same way I suddenly found myself caring about his wife, I also care about him.

And I'm scared right along with him.

"Any theories about who would want to take some shots at you? Or hire somebody to take them?"

"It would take too long to list all the people I've screwed in my life. Or screwed over. Or both."

"You need to be careful, Rob," I tell him. "Whoever came for you once might come again."

"See, Janie, you do care about me."

Slipping back into character, as if he can only stay serious—or act scared—for so long.

"Believe me on something," I tell him. "I'm as surprised about that as you are."

Before I head home, I drive up to Indian Wells and check the EMERGENCY VEHICLES sign in front of the fence between the parking lot and the start of the beach. There's no sign of a bullet hole anywhere on it, or on either of the other two parking signs.

As I pull into my own driveway, I see Brigid sitting on my front porch.

Before I can even apologize about believing Rob Jacobson when he told me they were back together, she says, "My cancer is back."