“I don’t care whether it was or not,” he says.

  He hasn’t changed his tone, or raised his voice, doesn’t sound angry, or confrontational, or as if he’s looking to pick a fight. But I’ve seen this set to his whole impressive self before, eyes and expression and even body language. The old boxer who once told me he knew everything in the ring except when to stop coming.

  “Morelli threatened everybody. You talk all the time about risk and reward in this business. We need to be done taking risks, no matter how hard we want to go at these people. They’ve already gotten to you more than once. They got to Ben. They got to Brigid. They got to me again. We’re out.”

  “I’m not stopping,” he says. He’s still staring across Division Street. “Not even if you fire me.”

  “Come on,” I tell him. “Nobody’s talking about firing you. Are you kidding? I’d fire myself before I’d fire you.”

  We both sip coffee. He’s back to looking at me. Still completely calm. Sometimes with him that’s not necessarily a good thing.

  “I’m just telling you how it is,” Jimmy says. “One of these people killed my partner. Or knows who killed my partner. They killed the DA who brought us in on the Carson case. I can’t let that go.”

  What comes out of him next comes out in a harsh whisper.

  “You should know me well enough by now to know that I don’t let shit go.”

  “Even if it puts us all in danger?”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Janie? We’re already in danger.”

  I can’t remember the two of us ever having a real argument. We have disagreements all the time, though rarely on the big things. But he never gets genuinely angry with me.

  Until now.

  “I’m not telling you to let anything go,” I say. “I’m asking you, Jimmy.”

  ONE HUNDRED TWO

  Jimmy

  HE DOESN’T CALL JANE for a couple of days. She doesn’t call him. Longest they’ve gone since she was in Switzerland.

  Jimmy does get a call from Detective Craig Jackson a couple of nights later, almost two in the morning, Jackson knowing how little Jimmy sleeps. He’s calling because he’s still trying to help Jimmy out. And because Craig Jackson didn’t let shit go, either.

  “I think I got a lead on who Champi and Licata were answering to,” Jackson says.

  Jimmy can hear the excitement in his voice, like he’s giving off sparks at his end.

  “Don’t tell me. It was Salvatore.”

  “Bigger.”

  The next morning Jimmy is sitting with Lieutenant Paul Harrington, the kind of boss he wished he had with the cops, at the Sip ’N Soda in Southampton, just down from Town Hall. It’s a place out of the past, including Jimmy’s, 1960s or earlier, with its old-fashioned counter and fountains and homemade ice cream and tiled floor. They’re at a small table outside, facing 27A. Harrington has apologized to Jimmy for not meeting him earlier, but one of the perks of retirement is being a late sleeper for the first time in his life.

  “You’re telling me that Jackson told you that Sonny Blum himself was running these guys?” Harrington asks.

  “Word for word, practically.”

  Harrington laughs. “Have you seen any of the videos of the poor bastard from a few years ago? One time they found him wandering one of the streets near that fortress he lives in, over there in Garden City, wearing what looked like one of Vincent the Chin’s old bathrobes. Remember that poor bastard? Mr. Vincent Gigante himself. Brother of a priest. Not that it helped him much when his brain turned to oatmeal.”

  Harrington is having an honest-to-Christ egg cream because they still serve them at Sip ’N Soda. For the life of him, Jimmy can’t remember the last time he saw somebody with an egg cream in front of them.

  “My opinion?” Harrington says. “Just thinking out loud here? I think somebody is trying to send you down a rabbit hole.”

  Jimmy’s quiet now, watching the light traffic pass by in front of them. Maybe he should have gone for an egg cream. He used to love them as a kid, sitting in places like this on the Grand Concourse.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Jimmy says. “Maybe Salvatore and Licata got stupid at the end the way Champi did and pissed off the wrong people.”

  Harrington takes out the straw and licks the end of it. “You know what they say, detective. The jails aren’t full of smart people.”

  “Maybe I should have looked harder at Blum before this,” Jimmy says. “His name did keep popping up.”

  “Maybe so. We always suspected Sonny had to own cops to stay clear of the cops, even if he was out in Long Island. Maybe he owned some of ours, too.”

  “You mentioned the Chin before,” Jimmy says, as he waves off Harrington’s attempt to grab the check. “He only got by with faking he was crazy until they finally nailed his ass on racketeering and conspiracy once and for all.”

  “Died in prison.”

  “Maybe I can arrange for Sonny to do the same,” Jimmy says.

  They’re quiet again. Two old cops, a long way from the big city, both of them still not ready to let go. Both of them still wanting to get the bad guys.

  “You’re really going after him?” Harrington asks.

  “Hard.”

  “Even if it gets you killed?”

  “Maybe I’m the crazy one,” Jimmy says.

  “Whatever you need from me,” Harrington says. “You remember that. If Blum was buying cops, I want a piece of that old man, too.”

  ONE HUNDRED THREE

  I FINALLY GIVE IN and call Jimmy, trying to act as if nothing has gone sideways with us. Avoidance isn’t one of my greatest skills. But I can do it with the best of them when I’m avoiding a major conflict with my best friend.

  I just innocently ask what he’s doing.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Wouldn’t I be the best judge of what I want to know?”

  “Not today, counselor.”

  He ends the call. I want to call right back and press him. But I know better. And know enough to give him room, whether I like it or not. Know I have to wait for him to make the next move, or the next call, whether I like that or not.

  What is this, high school?

  From the time I hired him, I’ve known he’s never been much for chain of command. But it doesn’t matter with our partnership, and our friendship. We’re equal partners in this, always have been. Whatever he has going on right now, whatever is going on between us, requires patience on my part. Something else not high up in my skill set.

  I’m trying to get Brigid to move in with me, just for the time being. She says she’s fine where she is and will continue to be fine as long as I do what Nick Morelli told me to do, and back the hell off from him, and Eric Jacobson, and Edmund McKenzie.

  “We have a deal on that, right?” she asks.

  “Everybody seems to want to be making deals with me these days. Why should my sister be any different?”

  “Just do your job,” she says, “and focus on defending Rob.”

  “You know I can multitask with the best of them.”

  “What I know,” my sister says, “is that you have a gift, a genius even, for pissing people off. But now I’ve seen with my own eyes that these are people you don’t want to piss off. And I’m asking you to please not.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “So we do have a deal, correct?”

  “Sure.”

  “That didn’t sound very convincing.”

  “I try to save my convincing for court, sis.”

  I don’t tell her that what she wants from me probably doesn’t matter in the end if Jimmy Cunniff isn’t going to stop pushing. And he’s made much more of a career pissing people off, good guys and bad guys, than I ever have.

  It’s why we make a good team.

  We both have always treated taking even one step back like it was some kind of felony.

  I keep telling myself to do what Brigid wants me to do and focus on the trial. I know I’m ready for it. My two interns are at full throttle on the kind of trial prep I’ve always prided myself on doing but simply haven’t had the energy for this time, even when I’m not in the chemo chair. And I know what I’ve always known, anyway, that as much as you need all the information you can bring with you into a courtroom, everything changes when the bell rings. Jimmy Cunniff has always said I’m not one of those people who looks like a million damn dollars in practice. He says I always save it for the game.

  One of my law school kids, Estie, asked the other day if I’ve thought about hiring a jury consultant.

  “Already did,” I told her. “Me.”

  After I’ve spoken to Brigid, I sit at the kitchen table for a couple of hours, trying to work, Rip at my feet. But as hard as I try, even into the early evening, I can’t get out of my head the image of Nick Morelli pressing his gun against my sister’s face. She told me that when she opened the door and saw him pointing the gun at her she was wearing her Duke hat. He made her take it off. He wanted her to be bald and at her most vulnerable. As if walking her back into her own house at gunpoint hadn’t made her feel vulnerable enough.

  Brigid kept telling me that if she was willing to let that go then I should be, too.

  But I’m not her, never have been. She’s the one with the same gentle nature that our mother always had, to her dying day. Not me.

  I’m more like my father.

  Who is owed a posthumous favor, by persons unknown.

  He was the one who taught me, from the first time I played hockey, not to let the other girl get the first punch in. He was the one who told me, when I beat up those mean kids, how proud of me he was.

  “My girl,” he said that night, before going off to work at the bar.

  Now somebody has threatened to shoot my sister and has done that with me in the room.

  I put down my pen and turn over my yellow legal pad and put my notes back into their manila folder.

  Jimmy Cunniff isn’t the only one who doesn’t let shit go.

  I go and get the keys to the car.

  And my gun.

  ONE HUNDRED FOUR

  I STOP BY THE Bell & Anchor first, since the menu scribbled with “Boom” and left in my car came from the restaurant.

  If it wasn’t Eddie McKenzie or Eric Jacobson or both of them, I’m going to lose a bet with myself.

  Jake the host tells me that neither McKenzie nor Eric have been back since the night I was there with Dr. Sam Wylie. I show Jake a picture of Nick Morelli and ask if he’s ever seen Morelli with either McKenzie or Eric Jacobson.

  He takes a long look at Morelli’s face, hands it back.

  “With Eric a few times, most definitely.”

  “Recently?”

  “Not sure the last time I saw them together,” he says. “But he’s been here.”

  “Call me the next time you see him, too.”

  He asks how Jimmy is doing. I say, cranky as hell. Jake grins and says it’s been Jimmy’s natural state for as long as he’s known him.

  “Same,” I say.

  My options from here are limited, and I know that. I have no earthly idea where Morelli is living these days. No idea where Eric Jacobson might be living. I could drive over to the house in Montauk where Jimmy followed Dave Wolk that night. But Jimmy drove past there a few days ago and said the place looked deserted.

  I do know, however, where Edmund McKenzie lives.

  All I’ve got.

  So I drive to Southampton now. Jimmy has told me the house number on Gin Lane. When I arrive, I see no Tesla parked in the driveway.

  But the lights are on inside. A lot of them. I park on the street, so as not to make any noise pulling up the gravel driveway. As I walk up on the grass behind the house, I can hear music, loud, but probably not loud enough to bother Edmund McKenzie’s rich neighbors.

  I stay close to the side of the house as I make my way around it, finally stopping when I reach the corner.

  And there on the back patio are Eric Jacobson and Nick Morelli.

  Side by side in lounge chairs. A pitcher of what looks like margaritas on the table between them. Highball glasses in their hands. Jacobson says something. Morelli laughs, reaches over with his free hand and slaps Eric Jacobson five.

  They’re facing the far end of the property, acting as if they own the place.

  Maybe they used to hang like this when they were jacking these kinds of houses for fun and profit.

  Not worrying about getting caught once they disarmed the alarms, which Eric Jacobson tells me is a piece of cake for him.

  I don’t recognize the song or the band, but that’s happening to me more and more.

  Now Morelli says something and Eric Jacobson is the one laughing his head off.

  I’m very quiet coming from behind them as I make my way across the patio. Neither one of them notices me until I rack the slide of the Glock 27 for effect, the harsh sound making both of them jump.

  When Nick Morelli turns, it’s the barrel of my gun against the side of his face.

  “I forgot to mention something the other night,” I tell him.

  ONE HUNDRED FIVE

  MORELLI, STARING STRAIGHT AHEAD, trying to keep his head still, reaches over and carefully puts his glass on the table after I tell him to be extremely careful.

  Eric Jacobson, not nearly as cool as he was when he was the one with the gun, is staring wide-eyed at Morelli and me as he reaches over to put down his own glass.

  “You be careful, too, junior,” I say.

  Now they know how it feels to get ambushed.

  “You are making a huge mistake,” Morelli says in a soft voice.

  “Then I’m making progress, tough guy,” I say. “I used to marry my mistakes.”

  “We both know you’re not going to shoot me in the head,” he says.

  “Nope. I’m not. But if you make a single sudden move, or maybe if you even annoy me, it will be one of your kneecaps.”

  To Eric Jacobson I say, “Turn off the music.”

  “I have to go into the house to do that.”

  “The remote is sitting right there. And if you’re considering making what would be a huge mistake of your own, you probably know by now what a good shot I am with an air rifle, and from a much greater distance than this. Was it you or Morelli or both of you at the trail the other night, by the way?”

  “Keep your mouth shut, Eric,” Morelli says.

  Jacobson picks up the remote and hits a button and the music stops. Carefully puts it back on the table. We can all hear the ocean now.

  Morelli suddenly tries to lean back in his chair and swipe at my gun at the same time, the dumb bastard. I move back just enough to swing the Glock and hit him with it on the side of his head above his ear.

  Old habits.

  Never let the other guy get the first swing.

  “Tough is still the one with the gun, right, Eric?” I ask.

  Morelli is bleeding over the ear as I step back from him.

  “Where’s your buddy McKenzie?” I ask.

  Jacobson starts to say something. Morelli looks at him and gives a quick shake to his head.

  “Away,” Morelli says.

  “Permanently, or just temporarily?”

  “Away,” Morelli repeats.

  “Who sent you two after me?”

  Again Morelli gives a quick look to Jacobson and shakes his head. The alpha dog. Maybe like Uncle Bobby was.

  I raise the Glock and point it at the tip of his nose. Like that’s the bullseye in the center of the target. It was my father who first taught me how to shoot in high school, not that I’d need to be much of a shot now if he tries anything else.

  “If I tell you that, I’m as good as dead,” Morelli says. “We both are.”

  “She’s going to find out eventually,” Jacobson says.

  “I told you to shut up, Eric!”

  The moon above us is as bright as it possibly could be, the sky full of stars. It really is quite beautiful back here, underneath the kind of sky that always seems to get bigger the closer you get to the water. I hear the waves, and the sound of night birds.

  “I told you to back off, but you just don’t listen,” Morelli says.

  “I’m actually a terrific listener once you get to know me.”

  “I left your sister’s house assuming we had an understanding.”

  “Actually, we do,” I tell him. “I am going to back off, just like you asked. But before I do, I just needed to take this one last big step forward.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve just got a few questions before we all go our separate ways. Starting with this one: What did you mean about my father?”

  He puts his hand to his ear and sees the blood on it when he pulls it away. “I need to put something on this.”

  “When I’m gone. Now what did you mean about somebody owing my father a favor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit you don’t know.”

  “Listen to me if you’re such a good listener. All I knew was that I was supposed to deliver that message. Tell you that nothing more will happen as long as you backed the hell off. Only now you go and pull something like this.”

  I have no idea how much either one of them will tell me, even at the other end of my gun. And they both really do know I’m not here to shoot them dead.

  What they don’t know is whether I’m bluffing about making them walk with limps for the rest of their lives.

  Eric Jacobson casually reaches for his glass. No good can possibly come of that.

  I turn and fire and shatter the glass, the sound of the gun going off as loud as a thunderclap, not missing his hand by much. But missing it. From close range, I really am a great shot.

  I hope I haven’t scared the neighbors.

  “You crazy bitch!” Jacobson yells.

  “Boy,” I tell them both, “I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that one.”

  I step back a little more, to make it seem as if the gun is now pointed at both of them.

  “Our business is now concluded,” I say, “just like Nick here wanted. But now it’s the two of you who need to back off.”