I don’t hold back now.

  “I want to be happy,” I say. “Is that too much to ask?”

  Then I’m crying again.

  FIFTY

  “WELL,” I SAY AFTER a lengthy trip to the ladies’ room, “that was embarrassing.”

  “Don’t feel embarrassed on my account, pal.” Sam smiles. “As I remember it, I cried for a week after Tommy O’Neill broke up with me in high school. I thought I was going to have bags under my eyes for the rest of my life.”

  We both order appetizer salads as entrées, even though I’ve pretty much lost my appetite.

  “I frankly don’t know how you’ve managed to hold it together this long.”

  “Fake it till you make it.”

  “Jane Smith,” Sam says, “you’re the toughest person I know.”

  “Everybody going through what I’m going through is tough. I’m not better or braver than anybody else.”

  “How about we go with as tough as anybody I know?”

  “What if it doesn’t do me any good in the end?”

  Our glasses are empty. But Sam holds hers up anyway. I feel as if I have no choice but to do the same.

  “Let’s not drink to that,” she says.

  We both pick away at our salads. The waitress comes by and sees how little each of us has eaten. I tell her to blame us, not the chef.

  I wink at Sam when the waitress has walked away. “At least don’t blame her chef.”

  My breathing is back to normal, even if I feel as if I’ve thrown a brick through our night out together.

  We sit there quietly until she says, “Can you see yourself marrying him? Ben, I mean.”

  “You mean marry him and live happily ever after?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before I answer, maybe you could tell me how long ‘ever after’ is.”

  “I’m your friend and your doctor, Jane. But not a prophet.”

  “How about an informed opinion?”

  “My opinion, as your doctor, is that you just keep doing what you’re doing, with the same strong attitude you’ve always shown, and we’ll both see where that leads us.”

  “The witness didn’t answer the question.”

  We smile at each other. This is more like it. More us being us.

  “You’re just afraid I’m going to have another crying jag,” I tell her. “You weenie.”

  “Totally!” Sam Wylie says. “You know the deal. Doctors are supposed to do no harm.”

  She picks up the check, over my objections. She got to the restaurant before me, so her BMW is parked so close to the front door she’s almost at the hostess stand.

  We hug before she gets into her car and then she tells me to go home and take two shots of Irish whiskey and call her in the morning.

  “I love you,” she says.

  “I love you, too.”

  “Is it as easy telling Ben that?”

  I grin. “Easier,” I say. “Much, much easier.”

  I think about calling Jimmy on the way back to Amagansett, just to see how he’s feeling and if he’s managed to stay out of trouble tonight. But then I decide I’ve done enough talking for one night. And definitely enough crying.

  I lock up and set the alarm and take a hot shower, which helps me sleep sometimes, and get into bed and for once fall asleep right away.

  I’m awakened by the sound of Rip barking from somewhere else in the house, definitely not the end of the bed.

  When I sit up, that’s where I see the outline of a man.

  “You need a better alarm system,” the voice in the dark says. “And a better guard dog.”

  His voice is very soft.

  “And if you’re thinking about reaching for your gun,” he says, “I already have it.”

  From outside the bedroom door, I can hear Rip’s low growl. I want to do the same.

  “Who are you?” I manage.

  “We haven’t met,” he says. “I’m the prodigal son.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  MY FIRST THOUGHT?

  I may be dying.

  Just don’t let it be tonight.

  “There’s no reason to be alarmed,” he says.

  I remember Rob Jacobson once quoting me the late Joe Champi, about how anybody can get to anybody. Now Rob Jacobson’s son has gotten to me.

  The room is dark enough that he’s just a shape standing next to the bed. I like it dark in here. Jimmy dog-sat for Rip, slept here when Dr. Ben and I decided last month to spend a night in the city, and called it the “cave of doom.”

  “I just want to talk,” he says.

  For the second time tonight I’m trying to get my breathing under control.

  “Call and make an appointment,” I manage. “I’ll make sure to fit you in.”

  I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him know how scared I really am.

  I can’t see Eric Jacobson very well but can still hear Rip’s low growl from outside the bedroom door.

  “Could you please let my dog in here? He’s worried about me, and too old to attack you, even if he wants to.”

  “The dog’s fine,” Eric Jacobson says, “even if he did promise to keep quiet after I gave him the treats I brought with me.”

  “You mean after you got in through one of my locked doors and managed to disable my alarm.”

  “Alarms were always easy.” He chuckles. “Gazillion dollar–homes out here and alarms installed by amateurs.”

  No need to tell him that Jimmy installed mine and that he is anything except an amateur.

  “I’ll be sure to ask the alarm company to have my next bill adjusted.”

  I’ve seen pictures of Eric, so even in the darkness I feel as if I have a visual. A younger version of his father. But you could always see a lot of Claire Jacobson in him, too.

  “It must be pretty important if you choose this way to take a meeting with me.”

  I slowly sit up, so my back is against the headboard now.

  “Careful,” he says. “I’ve heard what a tough guy you think you are.”

  “Somebody told me once that tough is the one with the gun.”

  “You never know. Smart people do dumb things. My father thinks he’s smarter than everybody and look at the dumpster fire he’s made of his life.”

  You’re the one not as smart as you think you are.

  “Now that you’re here,” I say, “I might as well mention that your old partner, Dave Wolk, and his girlfriend tried to kill my partner tonight.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. He always was a dumb-ass. Why do you think Dave the Dude was the only one of us who ever got caught?”

  He’s so sure of himself. A smug bastard like his father.

  “Let me ask you something, junior,” I say, unable to help myself. “Do you think I’m going to let you get away with this?”

  His voice is suddenly so loud it’s like my window just shattered.

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Sorry.”

  His voice grows softer. “Trust me on something, Jane. You don’t want to make me mad.”

  There’s a glass of water I always keep by my bed. But no way to get to it. And he’s still the one with the gun.

  “Why are you here?”

  “You need to quit this case.”

  “Because?” I say, dragging the word out.

  “Because you can’t let him get away with murder twice, that’s why. He hurt more people after he killed the Carsons. And if you get him off again, he’s never going to stop.” I hear him take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “He needs to pay.”

  I try to see the outline of my Glock in his hand but can’t.

  “You really believe he’s a killer?”

  The voice is soft again.

  “Maybe it runs in the family,” he says. “Maybe something for you to consider.”

  Before I can answer, he continues. “But maybe you’re just one more person looking the other way on this freak because the money just keeps flowing in?”

  He reaches over and puts his hand on my cheek and I recoil.

  “Unless he’s not the only freak in the family,” he says. “Something else to consider.”

  I think about all the things that have happened to me and to Jimmy and all around us since I first agreed to take on his father as a client.

  How did I get here?

  “Don’t touch me,” I say.

  “Or what?”

  He silently moves to the foot of the bed, a tall shadow now facing me directly, towering over me.

  I can hear Rip’s low growl again from the other side of my bedroom door. Some watchdog he turned out to be.

  “There’s no way you could have known he killed the Carsons when you took his case,” Eric Jacobson continues. “But now you have no excuse.”

  “How can you be so sure about all this?”

  “Because if he can kill his own father, he can do anything.”

  His voice barely above a whisper now in the dark room.

  This kid in his own dark place talking about his own father.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Eric Jacobson says. “You walk away and I’ll do the same thing. And you won’t hear from me ever again. Or my boys.”

  “How come Morelli’s not with you tonight?”

  “I told him I could handle this. And, counselor? Trust me on something. You’d much rather deal with me than him.”

  There’s so much more I want to ask him. But I sense that I’m running out of time.

  “It’s that important for you to see your father go down?”

  “He’s a predator,” Eric Jacobson says. “A violent sexual predator, no matter how much he wants to be the coolest guy at the cocktail party. He wanted my girlfriends. He wanted mothers and their daughters. He wanted somebody’s wife, if only because she was somebody else’s wife.” A pause. “Why do you think I’m the way I am?”

  “He may be the prick you say he is. But that doesn’t mean he did it.”

  “He told me he did, you stupid cow!”

  Somehow I’ve touched a nerve.

  Another nerve.

  “Told you what?”

  He’s whispering again. “Everything. Like he wanted somebody to know. Like he was bragging.”

  We hear the sirens then, and junior now knows what I’ve known all along, that he isn’t nearly as good with alarms as he thought he was, or as smart. Because Jimmy Cunniff is no amateur.

  Somehow the sirens don’t seem to rattle him very much.

  “I forgot what a rush all of this was,” he says.

  Then he gets next to my ear. I can feel his breath as he adds, “I’ll be in touch.”

  He walks over to the window closest to him and opens it. Before he climbs through and out, he says, “One thing I inherited from my father? We both think we can get away with anything.”

  Then he’s gone.

  I get out of bed and open the top drawer to my nightstand.

  The Glock is still there.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Jimmy

  JANE IS ON HER way to Mineola for the hearing in which she’ll ask Judge Kane to move up the trial date. She hasn’t told the East Hampton cops the identity of her intruder, only that he ran off when he heard the alarms and thanked the cops for their service.

  Jimmy knocks on the door of Rob Jacobson’s rental house in Amagansett.

  A tall girl wearing a St. John’s sweatshirt that barely covers anything south of the equator answers.

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  “The truant officer,” Jimmy says. “Where is he?”

  “Still in bed. Where I should be, by the way. But he made me come answer the stupid door.”

  “Tough shit. Go get him. Unless you want me to call your parents.”

  She gives him the finger over her shoulder as she heads up the stairs.

  Jacobson comes walking down a couple of minutes later, wearing a white T-shirt with a penguin on the front and tennis shorts. Jimmy hasn’t seen an ankle bracelet in a while. It’s bigger than he remembers, or maybe it’s just Jacobson’s skinny chicken legs. If he still had the tennis court at his old house, the thing would probably hamper the shit out of him rushing the net.

  “All I have to say to you,” Rob Jacobson says, “is that I got nothing to say to you.”

  But being Jacobson, he has to add, “I did hear you had some car trouble?”

  “And where would you hear something like that?”

  “A friend.”

  “Wait,” Jimmy says. “You still have friends?”

  “You just met one of them.”

  “You mean illegally blond?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Jacobson says. “You got anything else you want to ask me, talk to my lawyer.”

  He turns around, like he’s on his way back upstairs, when Jimmy grabs him by the shoulder and spins him around, feeling the immediate spasm of pain through his rib cage, but not caring because spinning this guy makes the pain well worth it.

  He raises his hand just slightly, so he now has Jacobson by the neck. As he does, he hears the girl in the sweatshirt make a chew-toy squeak from the top of the stairs.

  “This is not the day for you to annoy me more than you already have, for too many reasons to list,” Jimmy says, his mouth close to Jacobson’s ear.

  “I have pointed this out before, but I can fire you,” Jacobson says, through clenched teeth. “You know that, right?”

  “And I’ve pointed out to you that you fire one of us, you fire both of us,” Jimmy says as he lets go. “Now let’s go sit in the living room without me having to pull you in there by your ear.”

  Jimmy can hear the girl walking around upstairs. Jacobson takes the couch. Jimmy lowers himself down, carefully, into a wicker chair.

  “Okay, what’s got your hair on fire this time?” Jacobson asks.

  “Your son broke into Jane’s house last night and threatened her.”

  Jimmy sees genuine surprise on Jacobson’s face, even knowing how little is genuine with this bastard, other than maybe the fear he showed Jane after he’d gotten shot at.

  “Wait… Eric was at Jane’s?”

  “In her bedroom. In the middle of the night.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “He told her to quit your case. Told her that he couldn’t let dear old dad get away with murder twice in the same lifetime.”

  Jacobson sadly shakes his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he may be even more of a loser than I thought. And still dumber than cement.”

  “Jane found him pretty persuasive when he was talking shit about you, and what he says you’re capable of.”

  “Rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Eric could always fake sincerity even better than I do.”

  Before Jimmy can respond, he sees a familiar sneer. “Broke in, huh? At least the kid is still good at something besides riding the waves.”

  Jacobson yells up to the girl. “Bethany, come down here and get me some coffee.”

  “Get it yourself,” they both hear from upstairs. “I’m walking to the beach.”

  Jacobson shrugs. “Kids today.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me your kid was back in the country?” Jimmy asks. “Or that he used to be a thief?”

  “I didn’t know he was back this time,” Jacobson says. “But if he is back, I’ll hear from him eventually, because he’ll want money. But spoiler alert? He’s through getting it from me. The last time he came back he said he owed some bad people. I asked him if they were the same bad people from the last time and then told him to get lost.”

  “One of his house-looting buddies was the one who tried to kill me the other night.”

  “Wolk or Morelli?”

  “Wolk.”

  Jacobson snorts. “I wouldn’t have thought he had the balls.”

  Jacobson starts to get up off the couch. “We done now?”

  “We’re done when I tell you we’re done.”

  “Least I know you’ve got some balls on you.”

  “How come you didn’t tell Jane or me after Morelli testified against you that he and Eric were partners in crime?”

  Jacobson doesn’t answer right away. The leg with the ankle bracelet is stretched out on the coffee table, and Jacobson is staring at it suddenly, curious almost, like maybe he can’t believe that after the pampered, rich-boy life he’s led, he can’t buy his way out of this.

  “I knew Morelli was going to disappear,” Jacobson says finally.

  “And why was that?”

  “Because his uncle wanted him to disappear after his face got plastered all over the media,” Jacobson says. “I assume by now you know who his uncle is.”

  Jimmy nods. “Something else that never came up before.”

  “You want to know why? Because I got a call from his uncle, that’s why. At which point he told me to keep my mouth shut for once in my life and if I did, I wouldn’t hear from the kid again until the trial was over.” Jacobson grins. “I’d rather piss you off than Bobby Salvatore, any day of the week. Starting with today.”

  Jimmy stands up too quickly and immediately wants to double over in pain. But thinks he manages to hide it.

  He turns around when he gets to the door.

  “As it happens, the other night Salvatore was at a dinner party thrown by a guy you know.”

  “And which guy might that be?”

  “Allen Reese.”

  “Speaking of gangsters,” Rob Jacobson says.

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  Jacobson smirks at Jimmy in a way that reminds him of a chimp.

  “You know what they say in the movies, Cunniff. Follow the dirty money.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  KEVIN AHEARN AND I are in Judge Kane’s chambers at the Nassau County Courthouse by ten. No robe for the judge today, just an exquisitely tailored pantsuit.

  I’m already halfway through my presentation about why it would make sense for all concerned to move up the trial date. I began by telling her, and Ahearn, about having a conflict that may at some point down the line affect my ability to responsibly conclude the trial if it doesn’t begin for six or more months.