Eighty-Four Jimmy

EIGHTY-FOUR

Jimmy

EDMUND MCKENZIE'S HOUSE IS on Gin Lane in Southampton, the ultimate old-money address.

McKenzie hasn't been on the premises for weeks. Jimmy knows because he's been checking. But it's still Jimmy's dream that McKenzie and Eric Jacobson are both at the house, so that he can brace them both at the same time.

For now, though, he'd settle for a face-to-face with McKenzie. That way Jimmy can ask him, straight up, about his friendship with Rob Jacobson's son.

Working a case, you can run into something, or something runs into you. Like the night before at the Bell & Anchor, when Jane saw McKenzie and Eric Jacobson together, right before she went down and out and ended up in the hospital.

Jimmy is on his way through Southampton town, passing Fellingham's, an old neighborhood-type bar he likes almost as much as his own, when his phone pings.

It's not a text alert, he sees when he pulls over, but another device attempting to access his phone.

Or, as far as Jimmy knows, already has accessed it.

No location on the other device.

What the fuck?

If it's not some kind of mistake, somebody has gotten sloppy trying to track his phone. Or hack into his phone remotely. It's not Jane. Jimmy knows she can check his location whenever she wants to. He told her he'd be the one to call her if he found out anything interesting at McKenzie's place, but he's not even there yet.

Jimmy's not enough of a techie to know exactly how they're doing it with his phone, or from where. If he were smarter about phones, maybe he could try to find out where. But when he's watching TV and somebody starts speaking cell phone on one of those commercials, he either mutes the set or changes the channel, because he just doesn't give a shit, you could stump him with any question about what 5G even means.

Right now all he knows is that the best thing for him, in real time, is to turn the phone off.

He even considers tossing it.

He hasn't been checking for a tail since he left Jane's. And good luck to anybody who might have been following him in a car. He's taken back roads to Southampton to stay away from the afternoon westward grind of people who work out here but can't afford to live out here.

Only now he gets this alert.

To him it means somebody is trying to tail him, just not in a car.

Once the phone is turned off, it feels the way it did in the old days when Jimmy was running down a lead with just a gun and badge. Sometimes the only person who knew where he might be headed was Mickey Dunne, and sometimes not even Mickey, when Jimmy needed to be on the move.

He makes the turn onto Gin Lane and is approaching Mc-Kenzie's house when he sees the automatic gate at the end of the driveway pull back and a black Tesla spraying gravel in all directions as it ramps up from zero to sixty.

As the car flies past him, he spots Edmund McKenzie behind the wheel.

Jimmy turns around in the closest driveway and follows the fancy car when it makes its first turn away from the ocean. Something else from the old days.

Follow that car.

Jesus, those really were the days, no matter how old he feels missing them the way he does and thinking about them as often as he does.

But when he looks in the rearview mirror, he's smiling back at himself.

He makes the same turns heading for the village, from a distance, that the Tesla does.

Hell, yeah.

Follow that car.

Old school.

Even if he's chasing an electric car.