“I’ll ask him if he ever gets back to me.”

  So maybe Martin was doing business with Anthony Licata, which meant he could have done business with Joe Champi, too.

  Jimmy and I spend a lot of the ride to Mineola speculating if Licata might have been responsible for things we assumed Champi had done, including the disappearance of Gregg McCall, the Nassau DA who hired us to look into the murder of the Carson family in the first place. And maybe drugging Jimmy at McCall’s house.

  “Could your ex have had money problems you didn’t know about?” Jimmy asks.

  “Didn’t everybody in the restaurant business during COVID?”

  “Maybe he found a bad guy to partner up with the way your new friend Allen Reese did with his real estate business.”

  “Sometimes I get the idea everybody, us included, is in the same repertory company.”

  We pull up in front of the courthouse. Jimmy says he’s going for coffee but will be sitting right here when I come out. I mention that the parking space we’re in is reserved for official vehicles.

  “What’s your point?” he asks.

  I get out of the car, leather bag over my shoulder, and head up the same courthouse steps where Jimmy and I stood the day I really decided to take back Rob Jacobson as a client. Feeling the same thrill I’ve always felt walking up courthouse steps, every single time.

  Only now I’m about to do something that in my entire career I’ve never done once:

  Quit.

  If Judge Kane goes along with me, in a few minutes I’ll walk back down these steps and just walk away.

  But as I go through the double doors, I’m suddenly remembering.

  “You know when you stop fighting?” my father asked me.

  A boy had insulted me at school that day. I might have been twelve. The boy had told me I was more boy than girl, and I’d let him get away with it.

  “You stop fighting when you’re dead?” I asked, not for the first time.

  Dad smiled and shook his head. “Do the time, kid. Even after you’re dead, you still gotta be willing to go a few more rounds.”

  The next day, I waited for that boy after school, told him I needed to show him something, and then gave him a bloody nose. It got me suspended for a week. My father always used to say that winning meant being the last one in the room.

  Just not this time.

  Sorry, Pop.

  I know I’m doing the right thing, for me and Dr. Ben and even Jimmy. Being the last one in the room is no longer worth it, because it’s no longer cost-effective, and not just for me.

  This time in a courthouse may be the last time, who knows?

  Judge Kane’s assistant tells me she’s inside her chambers waiting for me.

  Get it over with.

  I’m only in there five minutes. Perhaps not even that. Then I’m passing the assistant’s desk again, and on my way down the hall and back through the doors and down the steps to Jimmy’s car.

  When I’m inside he says, “It go okay?”

  “Couldn’t have gone any better.”

  “So, you’re out?”

  I laugh.

  “Oh, hell no,” I tell him.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Jimmy

  JANE SAYS SHE’LL UBER home, where she plans to tell Rob Jacobson to his face that she hasn’t quit the case after all. Three or so hours later Jimmy is back in the city, all the way downtown, one of the highest floors underneath the observation deck at One World Trade. The building is in the same footprint where the Twin Towers had been before the planes hit, and where the offices of River View, Thomas McKenzie’s hedge fund, are now located, McKenzie having made a big show out of moving back down there.

  Jimmy hasn’t spent much time in this neighborhood since the planes hit the buildings, too many memories down here, too many people he knew lost that day. With all that, he is knocked out by the kind of panoramic view he remembers from the Twin Towers, just through the windows in McKenzie’s waiting area.

  There it all is, the same view, even though downtown Manhattan will never be the same, from the Brooklyn Bridge to New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, Jersey, and some of the skyline of Lower Manhattan and, Jimmy is sure, heaven if you knew precisely where to look.

  Jimmy has fake-badged his way this far but now runs into McKenzie’s assistant, an ice-sculpture with long blond hair and black-framed glasses whose nameplate reads TYLER. No Ms. before her last name. No Mrs. No Miss.

  Just TYLER.

  “Is that your first name or last?” Jimmy asks.

  “It’s irrelevant, Detective Cunniff,” she says. “Because unless you’re here to arrest me, this is the end of the line for you.”

  “Just trying to make conversation.”

  “Which now, sadly, is ending,” she says, shuffling some papers in front of her and trying to look busy, bored, both.

  “You’re right,” Jimmy says. “My conversation with you is ending. But before I go, you need to go inside and tell your boss that I’m here to talk about Anthony Licata, and everything they’ve always meant to each other. Or I can just talk about it with a friend I have at Page Six.”

  She considers that for a moment. The gossip page of the Post can still sound like the bogeyman to the rich and powerful. Or their assistants. When they aren’t reaching for a mention like a junkie reaching for a crack pipe.

  Tyler, Miss or Ms. or Mrs., gets up, gives a rap on the door, enters the inner sanctum, and is back in two shakes of a cat’s ass, as Mickey Dunne used to say.

  “He’ll see you,” she says. Icily. But then Jimmy expected no less, her being the one who acted like the cat’s ass.

  “This has got to sting,” Jimmy says as he passes her.

  McKenzie comes around his desk to greet him. Another short rich guy. Jimmy has met a lot of them, from Mayor Bloomberg on down. Or up. No jacket, white shirt, tie knot as big as Jimmy’s fist, gray hair buzzed down nearly to his scalp. Small wire-rimmed glasses. He bears little resemblance to his son. But looks a lot trimmer and a lot fitter.

  He doesn’t shake Jimmy’s hand. Fist bumps him instead. One of those. Like the COVID protocols are still in place. Or maybe he’s a germophobe.

  “What about Anthony Licata?” McKenzie snaps, not wasting any time. “All that name does is get you in the door.”

  “I was actually surprised to hear that name associated with you,” Jimmy says. “But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, since word has it that you used to be besties with a scumbag like Sonny Blum.”

  McKenzie waves his hand dismissively. “Urban legend,” he says. “And total bullshit.”

  “So, you got hooked up with a cheap goon like Licata instead?”

  McKenzie smiles thinly. “Who said he was cheap?”

  He gestures to the one chair next to him, walks around a desk the size of a pool table to his own. Somehow the view behind him is even better than the one outside, if that’s even possible. McKenzie’s money has bought him a view like this, but he somehow bought Anthony Licata on the way up here.

  “Mr. Licata and I parted ways some time ago,” Thomas Mc-Kenzie says. “He chose to cash out on what he called his 401(k) with me.”

  “Not what I hear.”

  “I frankly don’t give a shit what you hear,” McKenzie says.

  “Sure, you do.” Jimmy smiles. “Because here we are across the desk from each other, chopping things up like we’re boys.”

  “What exactly do you want to hear from me?” McKenzie says. “I have an important call I have to be on in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Are there any other kind of calls for you?”

  McKenzie makes a sound as if Jimmy has just hit him with a body blow.

  “Did Licata come to you originally, or did you go to him?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “More like I’m filling in some blanks.”

  “I had a friend, from my world, who had availed himself of Anthony’s services for a rather delicate situation. When I found myself in a not dissimilar situation, my friend made the recommendation. Sort of like a headhunter in the realm of shit happening.”

  “And what kind of delicate situation was it, exactly?”

  McKenzie’s face reddens, just like that. “My son couldn’t keep it in his pants, that’s what the situation was!” McKenzie is spitting out the words. “And he sure as fuck didn’t ever seem to understand the word ‘no’ as far as I could ever tell.”

  “He says he didn’t rape that girl,” Jimmy says. “That Rob Jacobson set him up.”

  “It no longer matters whether he did rape her or didn’t,” Mc-Kenzie says. “It eventually went away for everybody involved, once Licata and his friend Joe Champi realized they were essentially pulling on the same rope.”

  McKenzie leans forward over his desk. “You spoke of Page Six to my assistant. Well, I was going to be good and goddamned if my name was going to be in bold type next to my son’s while I was trying to build this fund. So I did what I had to do.”

  “Robinson Jacobson was the friend who recommended Licata to you?”

  McKenzie nods. “Not that their association did Robinson any good in the end, when he was the one who couldn’t keep his in his pants.”

  Jimmy watches what looks like a private plane banking toward Jersey, probably coming in for a landing at Teterboro. McKenzie probably keeps his own plane there.

  “Did Licata ever mention what he thought might have happened the day Robinson Jacobson Jr. and that young girl died?”

  “He didn’t offer an opinion and I didn’t ask for one,” McKenzie says. “He had his own problems with a son who couldn’t keep it in his pants. And maybe in the end, I didn’t want to know what I didn’t want to know about my own son.”

  “You happen to know where I might find your son these days?” Jimmy asks.

  Thomas McKenzie stands and offers Jimmy a smile that looks like two razor blades pressed together.

  “The gutter is always a good place to start.”

  SEVENTY-THREE

  Jimmy

  JIMMY IS OUT OF Thomas McKenzie’s office downtown by noon, and out east a little after four o’clock, having stopped to pick up Jane before heading over to Rob Jacobson’s rental house.

  “I could’ve handled this myself,” Jimmy says as he pulls into Jacobson’s driveway.

  “Just think of me as being here for quality control,” Jane says.

  “Heavy on the control, I gather.”

  “What was your first clue?” Jane asks.

  When Jacobson opens the door, he’s smiling as if Jimmy and Jane are the first to arrive at the party.

  “Look at us!” he says. “The band is back together!”

  Jimmy steps past Jane and shoves Jacobson hard, two hands to the chest, knocking him back toward the living room and nearly on his ass.

  “Jimmy,” Jane says quietly. “You promised.”

  “I lied.”

  Jacobson collects himself, but backs away from Jimmy, hands out in front of him, just in case Jimmy charges him again.

  “Hey,” he says. “Hey, Cunniff. Take a chill pill, okay? What’s this all about?”

  “Anthony Licata. Joe Champi. Edmund McKenzie. Everything you’ve held back on them and freaking held back on the day your father and a young girl, who clearly had shit taste in men, died at your fancy digs on Central Park West. That seems to be the day that people maybe started cleaning up for you. From what I can tell, they never stopped until the cleaner-uppers were Jane and me.”

  Jane puts a hand on Jimmy’s arm. He ignores it and keeps moving toward Jacobson, who keeps backing up, seemingly willing in the moment to back all the way to the ocean if it means getting out of Jimmy’s reach.

  “That pretty much sets the table,” Jimmy says to Rob Jacobson. “I think we can throw it open to questions now.”

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  JACOBSON ASKS IF WE can talk while we take the short walk to the beach. Indian Wells Beach, less than a mile away, is outside the range of his ankle monitor, but I make a call and clear it with the court officer.

  “He’d be doing us a favor if he tries to swim for it,” I say, “all the way to Portugal. Or do the Azores come first?”

  “I believe the Azores are a region of Portugal,” the officer, Molly Newsome, says.

  “Nobody likes a know-it-all,” I tell her.

  “Look in the mirror,” Molly Newsome says.

  As we make our way to Indian Wells, Jacobson makes sure to keep me between him and Jimmy, as Jimmy’s mood hasn’t improved that anyone can tell.

  I’m the one to ask Rob Jacobson why he has never once mentioned the partnership between Anthony Licata and Joe Champi, allowing both of us to think that Champi was always acting as a lone wolf, at least where Jacobson was concerned. Like some low-life guardian angel.

  “I’m not talking about Licata,” Jacobson says. “Not today and not ever. Cunniff can slap me around all he wants. I’ll still be alive.”

  We make our way across the parking lot. Big waves today. Big and beautiful and loud and filling me with a sense of wonder, every time I see them. I think a lot, maybe too much, about all the things the modern world has managed to ruin. Politics and privacy, for example. Civility, you could throw that in, too. But nobody can ever ruin these waves and the scene spread out in front of me. Despite everything happening in my life, the ocean still makes me believe in God.

  Even with the way She keeps screwing me around, sometimes on what feels like an hourly basis.

  “Where’s Licata now?” I ask.

  “The guy I’m not talking about? I honestly don’t know.”

  Jimmy snorts. “Honestly. Good one.”

  “And by the way?” Jacobson continues. “Why does it matter so much? The guy’s got nothing to do with my trial, which is supposed to be job one for the two of you.”

  Jimmy is suddenly on fire again, like Jacobson had pushed the wrong button. “You know what I would discourage you from doing today? Telling me what you think my job is.”

  We’ve made our way onto the beach. Jimmy moves around me, his back to the water, so he’s directly in front of Rob Jacobson again. In the moment Jacobson does look as if swimming for it might be a better alternative than having Jimmy back up in his face.

  “I now know that Licata and Champi were in this from the beginning, along with your old man and your pal Eddie Mc-Kenzie, and his old man.”

  Jimmy is pointing a finger at Jacobson, voice rising again, up and over the sound of the water. I know stopping him now, or even slowing him down, would be like trying to stop the waves.

  But I have to try.

  “Jimmy,” I say again.

  “Don’t Jimmy me!”

  He at least puts his hand down. “Are you the one who really shot your father and that girl?” he asks Jacobson.

  “No,” Jacobson says to Jimmy. “I swear.” He tries to back away from Jimmy, nearly slips and falls in the sand. “I’ve told you before. No matter how much of an asshole you think I am, I’m not a killer.”

  “But it has to be either Licata or Champi who killed my partner,” Jimmy says, his voice eerily low. “You think I’m just going to let bygones be bygones?”

  “If it was Joe, what does it matter now?”

  “It matters to me,” Jimmy says. “So if you know where Licata is, you tell me right here and right now.”

  “All I ever knew was that he had a place in Montauk somewhere. Or maybe it was Napeague.”

  Jimmy says, “He’s got paper on a place on Elm Lane.”

  “Not that one,” Jacobson says. “I think there was a bigger place somewhere, but neither me nor Eddie ever knew where. I never even had a phone number for the guy. When he had something to tell me, if one of the money transfers was even a day late, he’d call me.”

  “When’s the last time you talked to him?” I ask.

  “After Jane shot Joe. Licata wanted me to know that nothing had changed between us even with Joe gone. We met for a drink at the American Hotel. One drink. He told me it was still business as usual until it wasn’t. Then they got up and left.”

  “They?” I ask.

  “Anthony and his girlfriend. This little Asian woman. He called her Mei, never told me her last name. I got the feeling that she maybe had taken Joe’s place in the operation. She didn’t say much, but before we finished our drinks, I asked her what she did for Joe. She smiled at me and said, ‘Shoot.’”

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  Jimmy

  “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO let this go, are you?” Jane asks when Jimmy drops her off at her house.

  “Have you ever known me to let things go?”

  Jimmy heads back to his bar after that to make some calls. One of them is to Dick Kelley. Before they left Dorrian’s, Kelley mentioned in passing how ten years ago Paul Harrington retired to eastern Long Island. Everybody thought he’d hang around for a deputy inspector job, maybe even at the 24th. But Harrington put in his papers and walked away. Jimmy asks Kelley now if he can find out where Harrington lives.

  Kelley calls back in less than five minutes. “Where are you right now?”

  Jimmy tells him.

  “Well, my friend, you’re in luck, because it turns out the Lieu lives over in a town called Water Mill, which even I know is pretty close to you. You want me to find an exact address?”

  “I’ll find it,” Jimmy says. “Sonofabitch, I knew I had to catch a break sooner or later.”

  He finally comes up with an address on Cobb Road for retired lieutenant Paul Harrington, and a phone number. When Harrington answers the phone, first ring, Jimmy tells him who he is and what he wants to talk about. Harrington says come ahead.

  It is, as Jimmy discovers when Harrington shows him in, a very nice house.

  “My Sharon had family money she never told me about until she got that headache and never got better,” Harrington says, as if answering a question Jimmy hasn’t asked. “When she passed, I found out just how much family money. As soon as the check cleared, I found this place and moved out here. I felt like I’d earned it, even if it was my girl’s money and not mine.”