SOMEHOW, AND AGAINST ALL odds, I’m still a member in good standing of the people who haven’t lost their hair in the chemo club.

  At least not yet I haven’t.

  Doesn’t mean I won’t. Still having my hair isn’t some kind of marker that I’m winning my cancer battle. Or that I won’t end up back in Switzerland someday, maybe in the next room over from my sister.

  Doesn’t make me less of a cancer patient than she is.

  I just still don’t look like one, even when I’m having the worst week of chemotherapy I’ve had yet. Which I am. By the end of every session, and by the time I leave the Phillips Center in Ben Kalinsky’s car, I feel sicker than I did the day before. When I get home every day I lie down on my couch and struggle to get off it until it’s time to try to keep food down or try to sleep. Ben keeps offering to stay after he drops me off. I keep telling him that as much as I love him, and I do love him dearly, right now I’m only fit company for Rip the dog.

  “Because your dog doesn’t keep asking you how you’re feeling?”

  “Because he doesn’t need to ask.”

  I try to work on the trial in the brief intervals when I’m not feeling sick. But I can’t focus for very long on the work that’s still ahead of me, the case making my head spin ever more because of the DNA evidence against Rob Jacobson, the neighborhood security video, from more than one house, of my horny client leaving the Carson house on multiple occasions in the middle of the day.

  That’s the short list.

  The rest of the things on the list only make me feel sicker than I already do.

  No help at all is that some of the blood that was found on the scene is AB, the rare type that just happens to belong to Rob Jacobson himself.

  I’ve promised myself I won’t change my mind again about staying on the case, that I won’t go back on my word. But there are times this week when I want to.

  As much as I want to live, sometimes I’m so sick right now I feel as if I want to die.

  After what has blessedly been my last treatment, at least for the time being, I’m right back on the couch, trying to watch a Mets game, and there is a knock on the door.

  I’m too weak and too tired to even stop for the Glock in the front hall on my way to answer it. If McKenzie and Eric Jacobson are here to kill me, I may just let them tonight.

  It’s Brigid.

  She’s wearing a blue Duke baseball cap to cover a bald, wigless head. She looks thinner than ever.

  But she’s smiling like, well, Brigid.

  And having her in front of me makes her even more beautiful to me than ever.

  “You look like crap,” she says.

  NINETY-SEVEN

  Jimmy

  THOMAS MCKENZIE LIVES ON Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton. The father has more ocean frontage than the son. And his place is much, much bigger.

  Jimmy decides to just show up, not give him the same courtesy of calling ahead he gave to Chief Paul Harrington.

  What’s McKenzie going to do, kick him out of his fund?

  A tall redhead in a white bikini that covers so little of her that Jimmy wonders what the point is of wearing it answers the door. Jimmy could never guess in a million years what brand the bikini is, or how much that little swatch of material costs. But her body, as Mickey Dunne used to say, is by God.

  She’s very young. Too young? Jimmy’s not sure what that even means anymore.

  He flashes the badge he keeps in his glove compartment, one out of his endless collection of badges. Never leave home without at least one.

  “Tommy,” she calls over her shoulder. “There’s a policeman here to see you.”

  “Don’t worry, kid,” Jimmy tells her. “If you’re carrying a fake ID, I don’t want to know where you keep it.”

  Maybe all these rich old bastards like them young. Rob Jacobson’s father did, when he was a lot younger than McKenzie is now.

  McKenzie appears a minute later. He’s wearing cargo shorts and a faded polo shirt of indeterminate color and is holding what appears to be a five-o’clock-somewhere margarita. He hands his glass to the girl and pats her on the ass as she walks past.

  “Relax, Chelsea,” McKenzie says. “Not only isn’t he a real cop, he doesn’t even play one on television.”

  “Whatever,” she says.

  “Why don’t you go take a dip?”

  “I just got out.”

  “Get back in and I’ll be there in time to watch you get back out.”

  She walks away. McKenzie watches her go. So does Jimmy. And has to admit. It really is some ass.

  “Not going to ask me in?” Jimmy asks McKenzie.

  “No.”

  “Curious about why I’m here?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  Jimmy plows ahead.

  “I realized I’ve got a few more questions about you and the late Anthony Licata. And the late Robinson Jacobson.”

  “And that, Mr. Cunniff, is your problem. I’ve already given you more of my time than you deserve. And said more to you than I should have in the first place.”

  Behind him, Jimmy sees Chelsea dive into the pool. He feels a little sad, knowing he won’t get the chance to watch her get out of the pool.

  McKenzie starts to shut the door.

  Jimmy holds it open with his hand.

  “What I’m starting to wonder is just how many clients like you Licata and his partner used to have. And just how big a business it was for them.”

  McKenzie pushes his sunglasses to the end of his nose, so Jimmy can see his eyes. They’re blue, but not much more than the color of spit.

  “I told you at my office. My business relationship with Mr. Licata ended a long time ago.”

  “But what if it didn’t?” Jimmy says.

  His hand is still on the door.

  “What if it just went on and on and on, every time you had a problem with your son you dialed him up? 1-800-ANTHONY. Or maybe it was a problem of your own, maybe with one of your Chelseas?”

  McKenzie smiles now. It’s not much more than a twitch of his thin lips.

  “You really have no clue about what you’ve gotten yourself into,” he says. “Do you?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “You’re out of your depth, and so is the lawyer lady,” McKenzie says. “Do you know what can happen to people like that, whether I once had a business relationship with them or not?”

  “Help me out.”

  “Sometimes they end up at the bottom of the ocean.”

  McKenzie pushes his sunglasses back up his nose. He could as easily have been talking about getting himself another drink. Or another girl. The threat came out of him that casually.

  “One last thing before I go.”

  “Before I call the real police and tell them you’re harassing me?”

  “What if your son not keeping it in his pants is an inherited trait?”

  Then Jimmy lets McKenzie slam the door.

  NINETY-EIGHT

  I INVITE BRIGID TO join Dr. Ben and me for dinner at Rowdy Hall, which had just moved to Amagansett from East Hampton and was within walking distance of my house.

  “Two patients at dinner are one too many,” my sister says. “I looked it up in the cancer rule book.”

  I’m feeling better now that I’ve put three or four days between me and the end of chemo. Having Brigid back, even in her own diminished state, makes me feel even better. And as close to her as I’ve felt in a long time.

  Maybe ever.

  Something else that’s making me feel stronger, and more energized? I’m little more than a week out from jury selection. If this really is going to be my last trial—for a long time and, who knows, maybe forever—I’m determined to go out with a bang.

  Figure of speech.

  Ben is having a Rowdy Burger. I’ve gone with the best Fish & Chips on the entire East End. While we eat, we’re talking again about Jimmy’s visit to Thomas McKenzie, and what McKenzie said about people ending up dead in the water.

  “Are you convinced they’re both dead,” Ben asks, “even though they haven’t found the bodies?”

  “I don’t know how either of them could have survived unless they got into the water before the boat blew and could swim like Michael Phelps.”

  I tell him what McKenzie said, basically about us being in over our heads.

  “You still could walk away, you know,” Ben says.

  “You know better than that.”

  “We’ve talked about this before,” he says. He has the sweetest eyes, a perfect fit for this sweet, sweet man. “None of this is worth dying over, not when you’re fighting this hard to live.”

  I feel myself squeezing his hand, harder than I meant. “I need to know.”

  It comes out far more fiercely than I had intended, surprising even me.

  “Sorry for the outburst,” I say.

  “Don’t be sorry on my account,” Ben says, and smiles at me again with those eyes, before I tell him that we’re done talking about bad guys tonight, I’m still out on a date with one of the good guys.

  More likely the best guy.

  We are about to look at the dessert menu when he gets a call. A golden retriever belonging to a tennis pal of his was hit by a car in the Springs. The dog is being rushed to Ben’s office. Ben tells the person he’s on his way.

  I got lazy and drove us here. So I drive him to his office. He calls his nurse on the way.

  “We never close,” he says.

  I remind him that’s my line.

  I’m on my way home from Ben’s office, just turning onto my street, when Brigid calls. “Can you come over?” she asks.

  She’s not calling from the Meier Clinic this time with chemo news. She’s only a few miles away, at the western end of Amagansett. But it’s another time when I don’t like the sound of her voice, not even a little bit.

  “Are you okay?”

  There’s a pause.

  “Just hurry,” she says. “Please.”

  NINETY-NINE

  BRIGID’S HOUSE, THE ONE she shared with her husband until she didn’t, is an old-fashioned Hamptons saltbox, with a white picket fence around her front lawn. Her new Audi is in the driveway.

  The lights are on inside.

  I knock on the front door, just to signal that I’m here, before trying the handle.

  “It’s open.”

  She’s sitting on the couch. No ballcap covering her bald head tonight. Maybe she doesn’t bother when she’s alone. She told me when I invited her to dinner with Ben and me that she didn’t want to put her hair on.

  Somehow, as frail as she is, she’s still beautiful, at least to me.

  Just not alone.

  Sitting across from her, cradling what looks like a .22 pistol in his lap, is Nick Morelli.

  “Long time, no see,” he says.

  Then he waves at me with the gun, telling me to shut the door and take a seat next to my sister, there are things we need to discuss.

  ONE HUNDRED

  “IT’S GOING TO BE okay,” I say to Brigid when I’m next to her on the couch.

  Morelli is no longer pointing the gun at me. Or us. But it’s still in his hand.

  “That’s entirely up to you,” he says to me. “The part about it being okay.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any point in telling you that I’m sorry about your uncle Bobby,” I say.

  “There’s no point, because you’re not. And I’m not.”

  Brigid’s living room feels smaller than ever, the air thick with an almost kinetic combination of her fear and my fear for her. And my own anger about Morelli bringing her into this.

  Nothing to be done about that now, because nothing ever changes. It’s like Jimmy always says: the one with the gun is the tough one.

  My own voice is what sounds thick as I ask him, “What do you want?”

  “Eric was supposed to deliver a message to you. But you clearly didn’t get that message. Or just refused to get it, being the stubborn bitch that you are.”

  There’s no reason for me to reply to that. Mostly because he’s pretty much nailed it.

  I give Brigid a quick, sidelong glance. She’s staring at Morelli in his black T-shirt, black jeans, black boots. Black eyes. Her face is the color of tissue paper. Her hands are clasped on her lap, tightly, the knuckles as white as the rest of her.

  “Who sent you here?”

  “My boss.”

  “I thought your uncle was your boss.”

  “You still just don’t get it.” He sighs. “You still don’t know what you just do not goddamn know.”

  “Enlighten me then.”

  “Why I’m here,” he says, “is to try to get through to you for the last time.” He shrugs and grins. “Do I have your attention now?”

  The note on Martin that night had said the same thing.

  “Undivided.”

  My sister’s breathing is shallow next to me, forced, harsh.

  I’m the reason he’s in her house.

  I brought him into her life.

  I did this.

  “There’s been a change in our business model, I guess you could call it,” Morelli says. “At this point, we have no problem with you defending Eric’s dad, as long as you leave the rest of it alone. Leave us alone, before we close this thing down for good.”

  “Close what down, you don’t mind me asking?”

  He picks up the gun, points at me, squints as if aiming it across the short distance between us.

  But puts it back down as quickly as he lifted it.

  “Does it really matter at this point?”

  “To me it does.”

  “Yeah,” he says, “it would matter to you. Wouldn’t it?”

  I arch my back, as if stretching it, placing my hands in the small of my back.

  Feeling my own gun back there, stuck into the back of my jeans.

  How does Jimmy like to put it?

  Just in case the ball goes up.

  “All you have to do is tell your partner to stop bothering people and stop asking questions about shit that has nothing to do with you defending Eric’s sack-of-shit father. Then nobody else has to die, Eric and I ride off into the sunset like the cowboys we are.”

  “What about your friend McKenzie? Does he ride off with you?”

  Morelli gives me a sly look, as if he’s got a secret. “I sure do hope nothing happens to him!” he says, his voice suddenly brightening.

  He nods at me. “This is a deal you should take, while it’s still on the table.”

  “If I don’t?”

  “Jane!” my sister says plaintively.

  Morelli gets up, walks over to Brigid, and gently lays his gun against her cheek. She seems to shrink inside herself but is too frightened to lean away from him.

  He slowly moves the gun up and down, as if he’s using it to caress her.

  “Then the next one to go is her,” he says. “And then maybe all the other people you care about after her. And that dog of yours. For the last time, stop bothering people you shouldn’t be bothering, about shit that happened a long time ago and has nothing to do with you.”

  “Why not just kill me?” I ask. “Joe Champi was ready to.”

  “Champi was out of control. If you hadn’t shot him, I would have had to.”

  “But you won’t shoot me.”

  “My boss says no, as long as you finally get the message,” he says. “He says he owes a guy a favor. And for the time being, you’re still the favor.”

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “Your father.”

  I hear the sharp intake of breath from Brigid. Or maybe it was my own.

  “What did you just say?”

  “All I’m going to say.”

  Morelli backs toward the door, the gun still in his hand, all the way out of my sister’s house, gently closing the door in front of him.

  I think about going after him, getting my gun out and firing a couple of shots in the air just to scare the hell out of him tonight the way he scared Brigid. But I don’t. My sister has been through enough. We both have.

  I try to put my arm around her. But she leans away from me now, as if I’m the one she doesn’t want touching her.

  “You’re going to do exactly what he asked you to do,” she says. “You’re going to defend Rob and then you’re going to let God sort out the rest of it.”

  “What about what he just said about Dad?”

  My fragile sister, my beautiful fragile sister, looks at me.

  “Dad’s dead,” she says. “How about working on keeping us alive?”

  ONE HUNDRED ONE

  BRIGID AGREES TO COME back to my house and spend the night. I give her my room and take the fold-out bed from the sofa in my office.

  In the morning I meet Jimmy at Jack’s in Sag Harbor. Jimmy orders a regular coffee. After sleeping only a couple of hours, at most, waiting across the rest of the night to hear my alarm triggered, I’ve ordered an espresso-and-coffee mix called Mad Max.

  “Can you see any possible connection between your father and any of these scum buckets?” Jimmy asks.

  “He was a Marine. He was a bartender my whole life until he dropped dead in the bar one day. He grew up in Hell’s Kitchen with a lot of kids who could have gone either way. He met a lot of people in his life, on both sides of the line, is what I’m saying.”

  “Now somebody in this thing of ours owes him a favor, from way back.”

  “At least according to Morelli.”

  “Your sister wants you to walk away, which means she wants both of us to walk away.”

  “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” I say. “It’s time for us to stop chasing our tails and focus on the trial and let God sort out the rest of it.”

  I see Jimmy staring across the street as a couple of uniformed cops from the Sag Harbor station wave at him before they get into their cruiser and head up Division Street. By now I’m convinced that Jimmy Cunniff knows the name and rank of every cop on the South Fork, and what they like to order at his bar.

  He turns and looks back at me.

  “Gotta give you a hard no,” he says.

  “It wasn’t a request, Jimmy.”