Seventy-Six

SEVENTY-SIX

I AM SITTING WITH Jimmy at one end of Jimmy's bar.

The Mets game starts a little after seven o'clock and Jimmy allows me to watch on the nearby TV.

"You're sweet," I tell him.

"Lower your voice if you're gonna talk shit like that."

It's the day after our walk to the beach with Rob Jacobson. Today has been good.

Brigid phoned me from Meier to say that the treatments are working. The doctors are guardedly optimistic—far from proclaiming her to be back in remission, but recommending she extend her stay.

I can hear gratitude in her voice. My sister seems almost as grateful that her health is stabilizing as she is that Rob Jacobson remains my client.

"I believe you partially did it for me," she says.

"Actually, sis, I did it for me."

Jimmy and I are both drinking draught beer. He's just slid the bowl of peanuts closer to him, explaining that if I don't stop eating them I'm going to spoil my dinner.

Ben Kalinsky, who had a late surgery today, is coming to my house around eight thirty with take-out shrimp po' boy sandwiches from the East Hampton Grill, with a side order of their to-die-for Heavenly Biscuits.

"My body, my choice," I tell him.

"Only if you're a guy, as far as I can tell these days."

It's always difficult to know if Jimmy Cunniff is happy or not. But I know that this bar has always been his happy place, maybe more than ever, now that somebody—we still think Champi, but possibly Licata—tried to burn it down during Rob Jacobson's first trial.

Jimmy keeps one of his laptops here so he can work, from one of the tables facing Main Street. He tells me that today he's been working his ass off looking for an alternative explanation about who killed Hank Carson and his wife and his daughter if our client did not.

The "other dude did it" defense, Jimmy calls it.

The problem is we still don't have another dude, as much as Jimmy wants to make it look as if the late Artie Shore might have done it before he shot himself. If only we had a shred of evidence tying Shore to the Carson house the night they died.

"Maybe the best thing is for you to just focus on this case," I tell him.

"The case you were willing to walk away from?"

"I thought it was a woman's prerogative to change her mind."

Jimmy's response is to grab the TV remote and switch the channel to the Yankee game.

"Oops," he says. "Just changed my mind."

We sit in silence then, until I guilt him into switching back to the Mets, just so I can get a score. I am only halfway through my beer, but I tell him I'm going to head home and primp for my dinner date.

"You're not a primper," Jimmy says.

I lean over and kiss him on the cheek. "My face, my hair while I've still got it, my choice."

I reach for my phone, which I've had on silent, just as it begins to vibrate with an incoming call.

NO CALLER ID

"This is Jane."

"Glad I caught the two of you together," a raspy male voice says.

I mouth "Licata" to Jimmy, and motion him closer.

"Saw you with my ex-husband the other night," I say. "How long have the two of you been dating?"

"Ask him, if you can find him."

That stops me.

"What does that mean?"

"Do I have your attention now, smart girl?" Licata says.

There's nobody close to Jimmy and me at our end of the bar, so I put the phone down and put it on speaker.

Jimmy says, "No need to peep through the window. Why don't you come in? I'll buy you a drink before I kick your ass."

There's a pause.

"Shut up and listen," Licata says. "Both of you."

I hold up a finger to my lips, telling Jimmy to let him go.

"Cunniff, you stop asking around about my business. Because I'm telling you straight up: it has nothing to do with your business. Leave me alone, I leave you alone. That's the deal."

Jane says, "Our client's son made me the same offer."

They hear Licata chuckle.

"He's the one you should be worried about," Anthony Licata says. "He's a bigger psycho than his old man ever was."

Then the line goes dead.