She then patiently explains to me, not for the first time, the confidence she has in Gellis. She hasn’t changed very much since we went to school together and she was the smartest girl in our class. Even smarter than me. Not that I was going to admit that to her, then or now or ever.

  “We both know what great physical condition you were in before this,” she says, “when you were still training for those no-snow biathlons. And you’re still young.”

  “Define young.”

  I thought that might get a smile out of her. It doesn’t. Tough room.

  “I’m not even classifying today’s numbers as a setback,” she says. “Just part of the process.”

  I smile at her now.

  “You’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had,” I say. “So please don’t bullshit me. Remember, we’ve got a deal about you not bullshitting me. So promise me again that you won’t.”

  Her voice is suddenly small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

  “I promise,” she says.

  Then, just like that, she starts to cry.

  Really cry. Chest heaving. Sobbing-type crying. Trying to get air into her and failing. Losing it.

  Maybe I’m too stubborn, even now, to break down in front of her. There have been times, plenty of times, when I’ve lost it in the privacy of my own home. Or with Dr. Ben. Or on a beach walk with my dog, Rip.

  Just never in front of her.

  Before I know it, she’s come around the desk and the two of us are standing in the middle of her office, arms around each other, her tears finally beginning to subside. She’s the doctor. She’s the one giving me what passes for good news these days. Only now I feel like I’m the one consoling her.

  When we both step back and out of the hug, Sam Wylie’s face is a mess for what I think is the first time in all of recorded history. She does manage to smile now, embarrassed.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t take this as a criticism,” I tell her. “But you may think about doing some work on your bedside manner.”

  I get to the door, but then turn around.

  “I don’t want you to die,” Dr. Sam Wylie says.

  “Imagine how I feel.”

  FIVE

  Jimmy

  JIMMY IS SURPRISED WHEN he looks up to see Jane walking toward his car so soon. But it doesn’t matter.

  He knows that even if she’s inside with Sam Wylie until tomorrow morning, he’ll still be out here waiting for her. Jimmy has promised her he won’t let her go through this alone. He keeps his promises.

  Especially to her.

  “So how did it go?”

  “Great,” she says.

  “You don’t look great.”

  “Thanks for sharing.”

  “You know,” Jimmy says, “people say that sarcasm is the weapon of the weak.”

  “I am weak,” she says in a quiet voice.

  “No,” he says, “you’re not. You’re tougher than me, and nobody is tougher than me.”

  “Does that even make sense?”

  “To me it does.”

  They’re stopped at the light where Main Street merges into 27. He feels her eyes on him, turns so he can see her.

  “What?”

  “I love you,” she says.

  Then his girl smiles at him and it’s as if all the seriously bad shit she’s got going in her life suddenly has washed away.

  Jimmy actually feels a catch in his throat as he remembers, all over again, how much he loves her right back.

  Not that way, of course.

  It was never that way for either one of them, even when they first started working together and he was coming off a divorce and Jane was coming off her second. He loves her like a sister. Or the best friend that she is.

  Both, probably.

  He’d always known he’d take a bullet for her if he had to, something that finally happened, twice, while he was working the Carson case. Knows in his heart that he’d take cancer of the neck and head for her if he could, without hesitation.

  “How did it go for real?” he says when the car is in motion and going through Water Mill.

  “Basically, no change, according to the good doctor.”

  “So, for today it’s a push,” Jimmy says. “A push isn’t a loss, right?”

  “Sure,” Jane says, without much enthusiasm.

  Then she tells him to take the back roads, she likes the back roads better.

  By the time they get to Scuttle Hole Road, Southampton becoming Bridgehampton, she’s asleep. Jimmy punches the button for the Miles Davis channel on satellite radio. He really only bought satellite radio because it makes it easier, this far from the city, for him to actually hear Yankee games in the summer.

  Miles is playing “So What.”

  In a soft voice, covered by Miles’s horn, Jimmy says, “You either beat this or else.”

  From the seat next to him he hears, “Or else what?”

  He grins. “I’ve never been entirely sure. But it always sounds good.”

  In that moment he hears the little ping that means a text message. It’s Jane’s phone, not his.

  She reaches into the pocket of her jeans and comes out with it.

  “What the hell?” she says.

  “What?”

  “Text. Unknown number.”

  Then she reads it to him:

  Wouldn’t you just rather die in peace?

  Jimmy turns down the radio, so it’s quiet then in the front seat of his car.

  Jane is still staring at her phone.

  “Is that all of it?” Jimmy says.

  “It’s signed.”

  “By who?”

  “Joe Champi.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. It’s signed ‘Joe Champi.’”

  “Morelli is only presumed dead,” Jimmy says. “Champi really is.”

  “I know,” Jane says. “I killed him, remember?”

  SIX

  JIMMY TAKES THE THREAT seriously, even if it came from a dead guy.

  Joe Champi: former NYPD the way Jimmy is, the guy Rob Jacobson called Uncle Joe. The guy who’d been a fixer for Jacobson from the time he was first cop on the scene when Jacobson’s father killed a teenage mistress named Carey Watson and then himself.

  Jimmy is convinced that it was Champi who made Nick Morelli’s boat come back without him that day. And who made Gregg McCall, the Nassau County DA, disappear after McCall hired Jimmy and me to look into the murder of the Carson family.

  Jimmy is also convinced that it was Champi who ambushed and murdered Jimmy’s old police partner, Mickey Dunne, after Mickey started looking too hard into Rob Jacobson’s past. Fixing for Jacobson until the end.

  Jimmy makes calls to his former NYPD contacts now, keeps making them after we arrive at my house. And keeps getting the same answer, that unless whoever sent the message is an idiot, it came from a burner phone.

  “So absolutely no way to trace where the text came from?”

  “Sure,” Jimmy says. “Right after we put a trace on where the wind comes from.”

  Rip the dog goes crazy when we arrive. Being a trained investigator myself, I have come to suspect that Rip likes Jimmy better than he likes me.

  But then most people do.

  We’re sitting on my back porch. Jimmy is throwing a tennis ball. Rip brings it back, every single time, as if he’s willing to do this until the end of time. He doesn’t bring it back quickly. The old boy has lost a step. Or two. But ask yourself: who hasn’t?

  “He doesn’t do that for me,” I say.

  “Must be a guy thing.”

  Jimmy throws the ball as far as he can. Off goes Rip.

  “I don’t get a lot of text messages from dead guys,” I mention to Jimmy.

  “Especially not ones that you made dead.”

  Jimmy is heading over to his bar from here. Dr. Ben Kalinsky is coming over in an hour to cook dinner for the two of us. Ben’s not a better cook than I am. He’s nicer.

  “Okay, Jimmy. Who sends me a text like that?”

  “Jacobson?”

  “Why? We both know he wants me to defend him again, even if he hasn’t asked yet.”

  “It is still my opinion that he’s batshit crazy.”

  “He’s locked up now until his bail hearing. You can get a burner into jail?”

  “Are you joking?” Jimmy says. “I’m surprised guys aren’t starting their own YouTube channels from jail.”

  I check my watch.

  “I’m sorry,” Jimmy says. “Am I boring you?”

  “Got a hot date. Need to take a shower, do my makeup. Then do hair, while I still have my hair.”

  Jimmy has his beer in his left hand. Keeps throwing the ball with his right. Rip keeps fetching it. Rip is supposed to be way past his sell-by date. But the old boy really is hanging in there.

  Like he’s beating the odds.

  My hero.

  “Whoever is messing with you,” Jimmy says, “which means messing with us, knows who Champi is. Or at least knows about him. Could whoever it is know what Champi knew?”

  I laugh now. “Are you shitting me? We don’t even know what Champi knew.”

  I take the ball from Jimmy and show off my arm. Nobody ever accused this particular girl of throwing like a girl. Rip chases it down to the end of the yard. Then he turns around, gives me a look.

  And drops it in front of Jimmy.

  Screw him. Game over. I put the ball on the table and leave it there. That’ll show him.

  Jimmy finishes his beer, then asks me one more time if I’m sure I saw who I thought I did in Mineola.

  I didn’t get that good a look at the guy, I tell him, but it sure looked like Nick Morelli to me.

  “Who knows, maybe it is a day for the walking dead,” Jimmy says.

  “Gee, there’s a lovely thought on which to build a night of romance.”

  “Too much information,” Jimmy says, and leaves.

  I’m on my way up the stairs to start getting ready for my date when there’s a knock on the door.

  When I open it, Jimmy’s standing there.

  “You forget something?”

  He wordlessly hands me his phone, so I can see the text on the screen.

  I still owe you 2 one.

  Uncle Joe

  I hand Jimmy back his phone, asking, “Who knew you could get cell service like this in hell?”

  SEVEN

  BEN COMES THROUGH THE door with a bottle of wine along with the lamb chops he’s going to grill, fingerling potatoes, a salad he gave in and bought premade at Citarella. When we’re settled in on the couch, Rip on the floor in front of us, wineglasses on the coffee table, Dr. Ben wants to know why I haven’t been answering his calls, and where the heck I’ve been all day. He really does say heck. And darn sometimes. And gosh. Me, I can swear like a champ. He hardly ever does. Part of his all-around niceness. He’s too good for me and keeps finding new ways to prove it.

  I don’t tell him about my visit with Dr. Sam. I do tell him about the trip to the courthouse.

  “Boy,” he says, “you sure know how to show yourself a good time.”

  “What can I tell you? I’m a complicated girl.”

  He leans over and kisses me. “And one who looks beautiful tonight, let’s get that on the record right now, counselor.”

  “Liar.”

  “Nope, I’m a doctor. Our motto is do no harm, especially not with flattery.”

  “Down boy.”

  “You talking to me? Or Rip?”

  He asks if I want him to heat up the grill. I tell him there’s no rush.

  “How did he seem? Jacobson, I mean.”

  “Worried, frightened. Maybe a little of both. He thought he was in the clear, and now this. I haven’t seen the evidence, but there must be enough to charge him.”

  “Will he get bail?”

  “With another charge like this right on top of his trial? I doubt it. And he’s a flight risk even if he does make bail.”

  We both sip wine.

  “But he’s not your problem, right?”

  “Totally not,” I lie.

  The Cabernet is Train Wreck. One of my favorites, appropriately enough.

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “You want to know the truth?”

  “Why I asked.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “But then you’re still not sure if he killed the Gates family, are you? Even though you got the acquittal.”

  “Even though.”

  He smiles at me. When he smiles at me like this, I feel as if my ability to breathe properly has been compromised. Something that seems to happen whenever I’m in the presence of this exceptionally good and exceptionally attractive man. With everything I’ve got going on, during the first trial and then its aftermath, I’ve got this vet in my life who makes me feel like a schoolgirl.

  I do manage to get some air into me.

  “I need to tell you something,” I say.

  He waits.

  Another deep breath.

  Out with it, girl.

  Tell him you’ve got cancer.

  It’s a minor miracle you’ve managed to keep it from him this long.

  So tell him, already.

  “I think I might want to defend Rob Jacobson again.”

  EIGHT

  AFTER DR. BEN IS up and out in the morning, Rob Jacobson calls from Nassau County Correctional. It’s still only eight o’clock. I’m actually surprised the call didn’t come earlier.

  “I need to see you as soon as possible.”

  “Want, or need?”

  “When it’s you, Janie, it’s usually both.”

  Ah. There’s the old Rob.

  “And just exactly what do you need to see me about?”

  Don’t make it easy for him.

  Fair’s fair.

  Nothing’s easy for me these days.

  “You’ve probably figured it out. But I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  He knows I’ll be there and so do I. It’s why he placed the call and why I answered it.

  When I’m finally in another jailhouse visitors’ room with Rob Jacobson two hours later, it occurs to me how little time has passed since Jimmy and I went to his house after I shot Joe Champi, and I played the recording I made before Champi died. The one where Uncle Joe told me that they’d just tried Jacobson for the wrong murders.

  Jacobson is uncuffed when he sits down across the table from me. I’ve already told the guard not to worry, I might not be at full strength these days, but had no doubt I could take the prisoner in a fair fight if necessary.

  “Look at us,” Jacobson says. “A team again.”

  “We were never a team, Rob. Our relationship, if you can even call it that, was strictly transactional.”

  He leans forward, as if his wrists were still cuffed, and clasps his hands in front of him.

  “I was set up.”

  “Not to put too fine a point on things, but for which murders?”

  “All of them.”

  “Tell it to your new judge. And your new lawyer.”

  He smiles now. I know from experience how hard it can be to knock the smile off Rob Jacobson’s face. I even tried, without success, to slap it off one time.

  “We’re still undefeated, you and me.”

  “Pretty small sample size.”

  “But one huge case.”

  I take a closer look at him than I had outside the courthouse. He definitely has lost weight. And a lot of what I once thought was a permanent tan. Or maybe they’ve taken away his bronzer. Hair a little grayer. Matching the color of his jumpsuit.

  “You could get me out of here at my bail hearing,” he says.

  “Howie the Horse’s problem. Not mine.”

  He leans forward a little more. I’m worried that if he gets any closer, he might try to kiss me.

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” he says.

  “Do people even still say that?”

  “I’m saying it. And asking you this: How much will it take for me to get you back?” He shrugs. “You have to know that’s why I asked you here.”

  “I do. Not exactly rocket science.”

  “But you still showed up.”

  “Maybe I’m just here for the begging.”

  “Won’t be any. And want to know why? Because I know you as well as you know me.”

  He nods at me before he leans back.

  “How are you feeling, by the way?”

  I hadn’t known that he knew about my cancer until after his acquittal. He and his dear friend Joe Champi both knew, as it turned out. Champi gave that up before he tried to kill me.

  “None of your business.”

  Another shrug. “Fair enough. So what do you think about my offer?” He grins. “You know you miss the rush of being in the game. You miss the thrill you got when you got me off.” Slight hesitation. “So to speak.”

  He’s right. But I’m not going to tell him that.

  “On that note,” I say, “time for me to go.”

  “So what’s your answer?”

  I stand.

  “I’ll get back to you,” I tell him when I’m at the door and the guard is opening it for me.

  “Oh, you’ll be back, all right,” Rob Jacobson says.

  “You’re that sure of yourself?”

  “All my girls come back sooner or later,” he says. “At least the ones who are still alive.”

  NINE

  I’M AT THE END of the bar with Jimmy, having already told him about my meeting with Jacobson. The Yankee game is on both television sets. No Mets tonight. It means Jimmy has pulled rank on me. But then he does own the place. There have to be some perks that go along with that.

  “You’re gonna do this, aren’t you? It doesn’t matter what I say to try to change your mind.”

  “Maybe I’ll be the one to change my mind while I’m away.”

  “No, you won’t. We both know you were gonna do it before they had the cuffs on him the other day, whether you gave him a firm answer today or not.”

  I point at the TV set closest to us. “Would you mind terribly putting on the Mets game?”

  “Yes, I would mind.”

  “Try to be the bigger man for once.”

  “Bigger man than you? Impossible.”