The judge asks what kind of conflict.

  “Personal,” I say.

  “Can I assume that you’re talking about your sister’s health concerns?” Judge Kane asks.

  You don’t know the half of it, sister.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I say with a straight face, “this is very much about cancer, unfortunately.”

  “But I have to point out, and with all due respect, Ms. Smith, that you were aware of your sister’s cancer when you chose to resume your defense of Mr. Jacobson, knowing that the trial was scheduled to begin next spring.”

  “I did know,” I say. “But my sister’s situation is only one element of my request to the court, if you’ll allow me to continue. Because we’re talking here about the professional as well as the personal.”

  From there I throw everything I have at her. It’s another founding principle of lawyering, one they really should teach even at the best law schools:

  Throw enough shit at the wall and the law of averages says some of it will eventually stick.

  All of it, if you’re lucky.

  And even as a kid, my dad told me I had a great arm, and not just for a girl.

  I tell Judge Kane that the more intense the media coverage of Rob Jacobson, now that he’s been charged with two consecutive triple homicides, the less chance I have of getting him a fair trial.

  “Not because of you, Your Honor. Absolutely not because of you. But all of us in this room know that no matter how much you tell the jury to ignore the coverage, it’s pretty much impossible in the modern world. It’s not like in the old days, when you could tell them to stay away from newspapers. It doesn’t work that way any longer, not when they’re on their phones before they make it to the bathroom.”

  I can stand now, as if we’re back in court and I’m in front of her bench, and not her desk. As I do, she actually smiles.

  “In one of my favorite old movies,” she says, “I believe it was the Sundance Kid who said he was better when he moved.”

  I move to the right of the desk, so both she and Ahearn can see me.

  “The bottom line,” I say, “is that the only fair trial my client can get has to begin as soon as possible. I know this is an old legal chestnut, but it applies in this case: Slow justice is no justice at all.”

  And sit back down. I look over to see Ahearn smiling at me.

  “Note to self,” he says. “If I’m ever accused of killing three people, my first call needs to be to Jane Smith.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Wasn’t trying to be funny,” he says.

  “Is there anything relevant you’d like to add, Mr. Ahearn?” Judge Kane asks.

  “No, Your Honor. It’s the state’s belief that everybody’s interests are best served by not waiting until next year.” He smiles at her now. “If necessary, I’d be ready to make my opening statement this afternoon. So, for once, and maybe for the last time, Ms. Smith and I are in agreement and our interests are aligned.”

  Judge Kane leans forward and hard-looks at me.

  “Just to be clear, Ms. Smith. Is there some other reason, one you haven’t shared here today, why you want to fast-track these proceedings?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Not the first time I’ve lied to a judge.

  She says she’ll check the court calendar and maybe get back to me as early as this afternoon. I thank Judge Killer Kane for her time and walk out of her chambers smiling. Not because of the lie I just told her. No. It’s because I know I’ve done my job today. I’ve been a good lawyer.

  All I’ve ever wanted to be.

  In sickness and in health.

  I walk down the hall to an empty ladies’ room and lean against the wall. I don’t cry. I just close my eyes and think about what I’ve done, because I have just hidden behind my sister’s cancer and not told either the judge or the district attorney about my own.

  It is another choice I’ve made. Cancer isn’t. The way I live my life is. In the last six months, I’ve been shot at and had my house broken into and been threatened. Jimmy Cunniff could have been killed on multiple occasions. My sister told me I should concentrate on this case and let God sort out the rest of it.

  But a normal person would be doing what Brigid is doing, concentrating on my recovery, letting someone else defend Rob Jacobson, and taking myself and Jimmy out of the line of fire.

  Fight for my life and not his.

  I push off the wall and walk over to the mirror and smile into it.

  “That’s what a normal person absolutely would do,” I say in the empty room. “But you’re not.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  IN EAST HAMPTON, ALLEN Reese, who is big and fit and brown and bald, greets me at the door as if he’s been expecting me, even though I didn’t call first.

  I’m feeling more than a little salty today.

  “I’ve actually been wanting to meet you,” Reese says as he walks me through a living room that opens into a sunroom and finally a back patio, the two of us having passed what feels like a Met’s worth of art. And not the New York Mets.

  Some Hamptons homes have private beaches. Allen Reese somehow seems to have arranged a private ocean.

  “I’m actually not all that interesting,” I tell him.

  “To me you are,” he says. “Put me down as one more person out here wondering why in the world you’d defend a prick like Rob Jacobson.”

  “But my client speaks so highly of you.”

  “Well, yeah, but from behind bars,” Reese says.

  Reese makes a gesture now that takes in the back lawn, the dunes, the water, everything from heaven on down. “It’s not much, but we call it home,” he says, and then laughs, as if he’s just amused the hell out of himself. I suspect it happens a lot.

  We both sit in expensive deck chairs. There is a setup for iced tea, with two glasses. Maybe he doesn’t want to get caught short when it’s time to play host.

  “My ex-husband cooked for you here the other night.”

  “Marty? Yeah, he told me the two of you had been married.”

  Never until this moment had I heard him called Marty. The nickname is, I’m sure, a way for Reese to make him sound like the help.

  “After the first or second course of all that cutesy-poo food,” Reese continues, “I wanted to point at the grill and ask him for a couple of well-done burgers with bacon and cheese.”

  “I’m curious,” I say. “Whose idea was it to have him come out?”

  “My wife’s, who do you think?”

  He pours us both iced tea without asking what I want in mine, puts my tall glass in front of me, drinks down half of his and smacks his lips.

  “So, I finally get to meet the great Jane Smith,” he says.

  He finishes his iced tea in another swallow. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me about your relationship with Bobby Salvatore, for starters.”

  He doesn’t change expression, just pours himself more iced tea, drinks some. Smiles. Salesman at heart.

  “Not much to tell. He’s just one of my many and rather colorful acquaintances. I collect interesting people at this house.”

  “Lucky you,” I say.

  “An old baseball guy once said that luck is the residue of design.”

  “Branch Rickey,” I say.

  “I’m impressed.”

  I let that go.

  “I’ll try to bumper-sticker this for you, Allen. Bobby Salvatore keeps wandering in and out of my case. Which really means in and out of my life, and uninvited. You call him colorful. I call him a criminal. Which may or not make you a criminal as well, at least by association.”

  He nods. “I’ve heard about what a mouth you have on you.”

  I angle my chair so I’m facing him now, tearing myself away from the spectacular view.

  “Bobby Salvatore was the bookie for Hank Carson, whom your friend Rob Jacobson is accused of murdering, along with Hank’s wife and daughter. He was the bookie for Carl Parsons, also deceased, husband and father to the two Elises. Also dead. In addition, he is uncle to another criminal and world-class punk named Nick Morelli.”

  I reach for my iced tea and drink. It’s very good. I always forget to add mint. “How am I doing?”

  “Are we getting to the place where this has anything to do with me?”

  “We are, as a matter of fact.”

  “Thank God you’re not billing me,” he says. “Christ, you lawyers talk the way fish swim.”

  I move my chair a little closer to his. “Here’s what I know about you and Mr. Salvatore, without talking too much. I know that you were on your way to being the king of real estate out here way back in 2008, a time when you were attached at the hip to Bear Stearns.” I shake my head sadly. “Also deceased. But then everything came crashing down on you and a whole country full of big guys like you. I know that when the mortgage crisis hit, your problems suddenly became their problems. And when the shylocks at Bear Stearns realized you couldn’t cover your sudden and impressive debt, they told you that your business was about to become their business.”

  Danny Esposito did some digging and discovered that Allen Reese and Bobby Salvatore have been business partners for quite some time. He shared his intel with Jimmy, who immediately called to share it with me.

  As I tell Reese, I see something change in his eyes, the way Rob Jacobson’s eyes always change when he doesn’t like something he’s hearing from me. The look is fairly reptilian. Guys like this can only shed so much of their skin, no matter how rich they are.

  “Is that all of it?”

  “Not quite,” I say. “When you couldn’t find a bank to bail you out, Bobby Salvatore, ever impervious to market fluctuations, did.”

  Reese stands now, so he’s suddenly towering above me. His face has reddened. He is breathing hard.

  “Before I show you out,” he says, “explain to me what any of this has to do with your prick client?”

  It hurts my neck staring up at him. So I stand, too, moving back out of his air space, toward the railing behind me.

  “I keep asking myself who benefits the most when Rob Jacobson’s business craters the way it has. Everybody knows that his former friend Gus Hennessy has benefited mightily with his own real estate firm. But not nearly as mightily as you have.”

  “Okay, now we really are done here.”

  “Rob keeps saying he was set up,” I say. “You know who could handle something like that no problem? Your friend, Bobby Salvatore.”

  “I told you he was an acquaintance, nothing more.”

  “Sure. Go with that.”

  He briskly leads me back toward the front door, to the point where I’m nearly jogging my way back through the living room to keep up with him.

  But when I reach to open the door, he holds it shut.

  “You are messing with the wrong people,” Reese says. “All in the name of somebody who’s getting exactly what he deserves.”

  He’s still holding the door shut.

  “I am going to give you a piece of free advice, even though I hate to give anything away,” Reese says. “If I were you, I’d be careful about saying any of this bullshit about me to anybody else. Or have it get back to me. Or to Bobby Salvatore.”

  The look is even more feral now.

  “Is that a threat?” I ask when he finally does open the door.

  “Call it an appraisal contingency,” Allen Reese says before he slams the big door behind me.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I spend over an hour driving on Route 27 to my regularly scheduled appointment with Dr. Sam Wylie. She has nothing new to report, nor does my oncologist, Dr. Gellis. She just wants to make sure I’m still good with resuming chemo, even with the trial date being moved up.

  “Can’t wait!” I say.

  “I’m immune to your sarcasm by now,” Sam says. “You know that, right?”

  “It had to happen eventually,” I tell her, before hugging her good-bye and reminding her that I love her madly.

  The trip home takes an hour. I do a couple of hours of prep work on the case, then consider driving over to Three Mile Harbor to do some running and shooting. I haven’t done much of either lately, mostly because I’ve abandoned the idea of competing in my no-snow biathlon in the fall.

  I still like to run and shoot.

  Instead I take Rip the dog, who continues to defy his own bleak prognosis and keeps getting stronger—one of us has to—for a long walk on the beach, Indian Wells to Atlantic and back.

  It is a beautiful afternoon, one of those afternoons out here, and I am happier than ever to be making this walk with my dog, happy to be walking these beaches, wind in my hair, ocean at full voice, hardly any clouds in the sky.

  I put Rip into the car and then walk back down to the water, not wanting to leave until I offer one of my quiet prayers—the praying always seems to go better here—for this not to all be taken away from me.

  Not just these beaches.

  “I like my life now,” I say quietly, talking to God or to the ocean or to both of them. “I finally like me.”

  I’ve just gotten out of the shower an hour later when I get the call about what happened to Dr. Ben.

  FIFTY-SIX

  SOMEBODY BROKE INTO DR. Ben Kalinsky’s office, swung away at him with a baseball bat, then fled. He awakened long enough to call 911 before passing out again.

  When the cops and EMTs got there, a little after eight, Ben was still unconscious near the back door, bleeding from the head. I knew he was always the first to show up in the morning and the last to leave the office at night.

  A friend from the East Hampton cops called Jimmy and told him that the locked cabinet where Dr. Ben kept his drugs had been broken into and apparently cleaned out.

  “He only keeps heavy-duty pain pills in case of an emergency,” I tell Jimmy.

  “Addicts don’t care how many, or how they get them,” Jimmy says. The last thing Ben remembered, according to the first cops on the scene, was walking to the back room to lock up, hearing a noise, and seeing the bat coming for his head.

  The EMTs got him into the ambulance and on his way to the trauma center in Bridgehampton.

  “How bad is it?” I ask Jimmy from the car.

  “They’re trying to find out how much swelling there might be near the brain, and whether they might need to go in as a way of alleviating it,” Jimmy says.

  It’s just Jimmy and me in the waiting area when I arrive at the trauma center. No other patients tonight except for the kindest man I’ve ever known, somewhere inside with his head cracked open like a walnut.

  Maybe because of me.

  By now I’ve told Jimmy about Allen Reese warning me that I was messing with the wrong people.

  “You think he called Salvatore after you left him?”

  “It’s what I would have done,” I say. “Maybe he was afraid that I might go around and tell people that he and Salvatore were besties.”

  I stare down at my hands, inspecting what’s left of my last manicure, not even sure what the color was when I’d had the nails done. Wanting to think about anything except what’s happening with the doctors on the other side of the double doors.

  “What’s taking them so long?” I ask.

  “He was pretty banged up.”

  I’m too angry to cry. And too scared.

  “Maybe it was just supposed to look like a robbery,” I say to Jimmy. “Maybe whoever did this was just there to deliver a message to me.”

  Jimmy takes one of my hands and puts it in his own. “Or it really was a break-in and they were looking for drugs. Newsday reported that local vets’ offices are frequent targets. Maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Maybe the wrong place for Dr. Ben is me,” I say. “And the wrong time is right now.”

  After what seems like about three lifetimes, the doctor finally comes through the door. It’s not Raymond Williams, who treated Jimmy after he was shot. Tonight it’s a small woman with big red hair and what looks to be a sleek runner’s body.

  Dr. Byrne, her name tag reads.

  “He’s awake,” she says.

  “Are you going to have to operate?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Even though his skull is fractured.”

  “Good Lord.”

  She smiles. “Let me finish,” she says. “Fortunately, it’s a linear fracture and not what we call a depressed fracture. So, no surgery.”

  “So that means he’s going to be okay?”

  She pauses. After everything I’ve been through over the past several months, I’m not crazy about doctors hitting the pause button, even for a beat or two. Every time they do, I feel like I might be slip-sliding toward the end of the world.

  “He’s very lucky, let’s put it that way.”

  “Is that an answer?”

  “As a matter of fact,” she says, “it is. Because this could have been so much worse if he hadn’t somehow regained consciousness long enough to make that call, and they didn’t get him here as quickly as they did.”

  I decide not to press her further. She’s on Ben’s side, after all. And I don’t want her to feel as if she’s on the stand.

  “Can I see him?”

  “He wants to see you,” Dr. Byrne says. “But be aware that the drugs have him feeling no pain.”

  “Good,” I say. “I just need to tell him something.”

  Before I follow Dr. Byrne inside, Jimmy gently takes my arm.

  “What do you need to tell him that can’t wait?” he asks quietly.

  “How sorry I am.”

  “I’m sure he knows that.”

  Now I’m the one pausing.

  “And that as soon as he’s out of here I’m breaking up with him.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Jimmy

  AFTER THE SHOOTOUT AT Napeague Harbor, Jimmy’s Jetta should have been tagged do-not-resuscitate. Miraculously, he’ll be picking it up from the shop in a couple of days. For now he drives out from the trauma center in his rented Hyundai, toward Montauk.

  He retraces the route he took the night he was following that prick Dave Wolk, takes the same right on Old Montauk, pulls up in front of the house on Elm where Wolk had picked up the woman. No lights on inside. No car in the driveway. No sign of life. When he gets out of the Hyundai, he discovers there’s no mail in the box. The front door is locked. Same with the sliding doors in back. And all the windows.