Sixty-Seven Jimmy

SIXTY-SEVEN

Jimmy

THE SURFBOARD ABOUT THIRTY yards away from the body, the lifeguards long gone, it would have looked like some kind of early-evening surfing accident at Ditch Plains Beach in Montauk if not for the bullet somebody had put in the middle of Dave Wolk's forehead, center cut.

"This the guy who tried to run you over?" Esposito says.

"One and the same."

Esposito and Chief Larry Calabrese are sharing the scene, even though it's technically Calabrese's jurisdiction. So they're playing nice, which is why Calabrese waited for Jimmy to arrive before allowing the body to be bagged.

"Big-ass storm blew through here about seven o'clock," Esposito says. "Everybody on the beach cleared out. A couple of kids in search of big-ass waves found him, freaked, called 911."

"This was an execution," Jimmy says.

He thinks about the way his old partner, Mickey Dunne, took one to the forehead in the Bronx, the murder still unsolved, Jimmy still certain Mickey had died at the hands of Joe Champi, Jacobson's former fixer, the one Jane took out.

How many people connected to this thing are going to die?

Esposito walks Jimmy away as the ME's people bag the body.

"I gotta ask, just on account of you having history with this guy."

"I've been with Jane all day." Jimmy doesn't tell him where or why. "You can ask her. I'd just dropped her off at her house when I got your call."

"Didn't think this was your style."

Jimmy looks out at the water. The waves are still huge.

"Bullet?" Jimmy asks.

Esposito shakes his head. "In the front door, out the back, nowhere to be found. Maybe the ocean swallowed it. No shell casing, either. Small caliber from the looks of the entry wound."

"You think he was surfing before he got shot?"

Esposito gives a who-knows shake to his head. "Why not? Maybe the surfer dude felt as if he had the best waves out here all to himself. But somebody must have followed him and waited for him to come out of the water, and then got it done."

Jimmy walks back to where the body was.

"Just the two kids out here after the fact?"

"Still here," Esposito says, and points to the two of them, sitting on a piece of driftwood, the boy's arm around the girl.

High school kids. Maybe college. Jimmy has a harder and harder time telling the difference. Esposito tells him that the boy's name is Jared Willson. The girl is Missy Gomes. Both from Montauk.

Jimmy goes over and introduces himself. They look up at him, seeing him but not seeing him, as if still in a state of mild shock.

"I'm with the cops."

Technically true.

"All we wanted to do was come look at the waves," Missy says.

She looks as if she's been crying and might start up again if Jimmy says the wrong thing.

"Is there anything you can remember, other than what you've told the cops already, that might help us figure out who did this?"

They look at each other. "We called 911 right away!" Jared says.

Like he'd earned them a merit badge.

"Nobody else around when you parked your car?"

They look at each other, shake their heads, no.

"Wait," Missy says. "There was one other thing we maybe forgot to mention, we were both so creeped out when they were asking us questions. There was one other car, but it wasn't in the lot up top. Leaving as we were coming in."

"You happen to notice what kind of car?"

They both shake their heads again.

"Just that it looked like it had been in some kind of accident," Jared Willson says.

Jimmy Cunniff's voice is low enough that he wonders how they can hear it over the sound of the water.

"Did you by any chance get a look at the driver?"

"It was a woman," the boy says.