Eighty-Six

EIGHTY-SIX

JIMMY GIVES US CHAPTER and profane verse on the wild goose chase all over the South Fork on which he'd been taken by Edmund McKenzie, until they were finally heading back west on 27 from Montauk and McKenzie floored it and passed about a half dozen cars on the double line and lost him like Jimmy's car was riding on its rims.

"Pro tip?" Jimmy says. "If the guy in the Tesla wants to lose the guy in the Jetta, he does."

"Good to know," Danny Esposito says.

One of the stops McKenzie made at the start of their little road trip, Jimmy says, was at the Bell & Anchor. But before Jimmy could follow him inside, McKenzie was back out side and heading over the bridge and into Sag Harbor.

"Total head fake, just to screw with me," Jimmy says.

"You think he knew you were coming to the house?" I ask.

"Knew I was coming, knew when I was getting close, wanted me to follow him," Jimmy says. "What I can't figure is why. Which, I might add, joins a whole long list of things I can't figure these days."

He tells Esposito about the alert he got on his phone when he started to get close to McKenzie's house, and how, other than the one quick call he made to Danny Esposito, he had shut the phone off.

"What I was going to ask you, is if there's any mechanism to find out who was tracking me, and from where," Jimmy says to Esposito now.

"Not a snowball's chance in Miami," Esposito says. "You could ask the feds, but they're not going to do shit for you. Because here's their dirty little secret: The tracking abilities they do have? They won't even admit they have them."

"Not even a location?"

Esposito grins and shakes his head. "Sorry."

We all drink in silence for a few minutes.

"At least you're safe," I say to Jimmy.

"And a schmuck," he says.

Esposito has a fresh beer. He's mostly listening tonight and not trying to play the part of the cool-dude cop. Another reason, on top of him being a hockey fan, why I am starting to like him a lot more than I did the night I first met him at the Parsonses' house.

"You think Licata is the puppet master?" he asks Jimmy.

"I've got nothing to base this on," Jimmy says, "but I have this feeling somebody else might be calling the shots. Somebody who does keep pointing us in the wrong direction. Look over there, schmuck. Not over here."

Jimmy has already passed on a second drink. He stands.

"I'm going back to Southampton," he says, "to see if the Tesla is back in the mutt's driveway."

"Want some company?" Esposito says.

"Sure."

I tell them to go have their cop fun. I'm heading home, it's getting near my bedtime.

Jimmy leans over and kisses me on top of my head.

"Thanks for worrying about me," he says.

He gives me a long look, his face both somber and curious at the same time.

"What if our guy isn't a murderer?" he says.

"Not to make too fine a point," I say, "but which murders are we talking about?"

"All of them," Jimmy says, then tosses Esposito his keys and tells him he can drive.