According to Esposito, Parsons’s gambling only turned up because his name turned up in another Suffolk County investigation. “You can’t turn on the television these days,” he points out, “and not be bombarded with commercials about that DraftKings shit.”

  “I actually found myself wondering, all this time after Parsons kicked,” Esposito continues, “if Elise might have put a pillow over his head before he blew any more of what she stood to inherit.”

  “So he was betting big.”

  “To the end, and with both hands,” Esposito says. “But that’s only partly what I drove out to tell you.”

  “You may have noticed, and maybe against all odds, that you now have my undivided attention.”

  “The name Artie Shore ring a bell?”

  Hank Carson’s bookie. Lieutenant in Bobby Salvatore’s operation. As in mob operation. The same Artie Shore who shot himself in Garden City after Jimmy and Jane first started looking into the murders of Hank Carson and his wife and daughter. Shot himself with Jimmy on the other side of his door, trying to get inside. Artie died knowing things Jimmy wanted to know.

  “You know I know who Artie Shore is.”

  “What you don’t know is that Artie was Carl Parsons’s bookie, too.”

  “Which means that old man Parsons was doing business with the mob, too,” Jimmy says.

  “Small world, isn’t it?” Esposito says.

  Jimmy tells Esposito that his beer is most definitely on the house now, as he finally does get around to clinking his glass against Danny Esposito’s.

  Finally, and with a flourish, Esposito takes a folded-up piece of paper out of his wallet and smooths it out on the bar in front of Jimmy.

  “What’s this?”

  “This, my friend, is Artie’s old client list,” Esposito says. “Or at least as much of it as we could put together after the fact.”

  There’s one other name on it besides Carl Parsons that Jimmy recognizes.

  Jumps right off the page, like they say.

  Edmund McKenzie.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  BRIGID INFORMS ME THAT she is flying back to Switzerland, to the Meier Clinic, tonight.

  If I wasn’t so scared and angry at her truly awful news, I’d ask her if she’s looked into the two of us signing up on their family plan.

  But I am scared and angry.

  For both of us.

  So, I don’t make any jokes because there is nothing funny about this.

  It’s an aggressive form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma for Brigid, by the way.

  “The official name, in my current circumstances, is refractory lymphoma,” she says.

  “I know what they call it, Brigid. I’ve done as much research on your cancer as I have my own. If this is a course in cancer, I’m passing with flying colors.”

  I smile at her. It’s taken a while, but we’ve both finally stopped crying.

  If only for now.

  “It’s also known as relapsed lymphoma, when it comes back,” I continue.

  “Look at you,” Brigid says. “And Dad always called me the smart one.”

  Brigid is separated from Chris, who used to be the principal at Pierson High and is now a headmaster at some fancy prep school in Connecticut. They separated during Rob Jacobson’s first trial once he found out about the affair between Brigid and Rob. Brigid says she called Chris last night to tell him about her return visit to Meier. He offered to go with her. As hurt as he is—he’s told me how she hurt him—he still loves her.

  People love Brigid even when they don’t.

  “Mom’s cancer killed both her and Pop in the end, like they both got hit with the same bullet,” I say now. “That’s not going to happen to us, sis.”

  She smiles back at me, but it’s a forced smile made out of hardly anything at all. It’s still enough to make me remember why she wasn’t just the smart one, but also the pretty one, when we were growing up.

  The pretty one even now, as thin as she is.

  “I’ll drink to that,” she says.

  Inside the house, I open a bottle of white wine, because I can’t think of one good reason not to.

  We both drink. Rip is next to Brigid on the couch. She’s stroking his neck. He looks blissful. Rip loves her, too.

  “We’re both beating this,” I say. I grin. “Even if it kills us.”

  “You know that makes no sense.”

  “Totally.”

  “But unfortunately, sister Jane, you can’t beat up my illness—or yours—the way you used to beat up the mean girls bothering me in grade school.”

  “I still hate those bitches.”

  Brigid laughs now, until just like that, she’s crying again. We both are, all over again.

  Her plane, the same United flight I took, leaves at eight. I’ve offered to drive her, but she says she’s already booked a car from East Wind and it’s picking her up around four.

  I ask if the doctors at Meier have given her any sense of how long she’ll be over there.

  “Until the fuckers get it right this time.”

  That gets a laugh out of me. Brigid always does when she drops an f-bomb.

  Once she’s gone, I cook dinner for myself. Nothing exotic tonight, no degree of difficulty, no showing off for Ben, just pasta with an array of vegetables from Balsam Farms.

  When I’ve cleaned up, I put Rip the dog into the car and we drive to Indian Wells Beach. I hope that nobody will be shooting at me tonight, it’s been enough of a monumentally shit day already.

  It’s cold and windy for this time of year, so even with a lot of light left in the sky, the beach is empty in both directions.

  I throw a tennis ball for Rip. He even brings it back to me a few times, as if he’s an emotional support dog tonight, and senses I needed all the support I can get.

  I keep picturing Brigid waving to me from the front seat of the town car—she still gets carsick if she sits in the back—the way she waved good-bye to me from Dad’s car the day they drove to Duke before the start of her freshman year.

  Despite the wind, the water is surprisingly calm. I’m not. My sister was supposed to be getting better. Only now she’s not.

  It is no longer in dispute that God is officially starting to pile on.

  I walk down to the water’s edge. Standing out here in the magic light between night and day, the shore and the water, always seems better here than anyplace else.

  It’s time for another talk with God.

  “Okay, Missy,” I say, knowing She can hear me perfectly over the soft sound of the wind and waves. “You’re the one starting to act like a mean girl now.”

  Rip and I head back toward the car. Before we get to the parking lot, I stop and look up at the sky one last time.

  “Don’t make me come up there,” I say.

  THIRTY-SIX

  AFTER BRIGID LEAVES, I spend two days in the house, most of that time in bed.

  Not just a reaction to her cancer.

  A reaction to mine, too.

  More mine than hers in this case.

  It happens occasionally, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, nothing I can take. I just have to wear it. Either the drugs aren’t working the way they’re supposed to. Or they’re working too well. Whatever the reason, I get knocked down and feel the fight go right out of me, at least temporarily.

  It’s a reminder, even after any stretch when I do start to feel better, about what’s going on inside me.

  The elephant in the room.

  The whole herd of elephants in the room.

  The medical definition, you can look it up if you want to, of my current condition: absolute crap.

  Rip is always right next to my bed, or the couch, occasionally staring up at me to see if I’m still breathing. Probably thinking back to when we met, and he was supposed to play the part of sick dog.

  Ben Kalinsky has been in Boston for a veterinary convention, due back tonight. I haven’t told him how lousy I’ve been feeling, because even with his expertise at treating sick dogs, he’s far away.

  I’ve told Jimmy, because I tell Jimmy pretty much everything, even more than I tell Ben. Even when I don’t tell Jimmy things, he usually seems to know anyway. He says it was the same way with his cop partners, all the way back to Mickey Dunne.

  Brigid says she’ll call from Meier when she knows more. I’m honest enough with myself to know that I am at least partly feeling the way I’m feeling because of her, because of how much I hate what she’s about to go through all over again.

  Jimmy calls from the city, after spending the last two nights at my apartment on Christopher Street in the West Village. He says he has a new dirtbag update.

  “On McKenzie?”

  “Joe Champi.”

  “Tell me he’s still dead.”

  “Very much so,” Jimmy says. “But it turns out he had a partner from back in the day.”

  “Another dirty cop?”

  “Yup. Name of Anthony Licata. King of the dirtbags, from what I’m told. I’ll tell you all about him when I get there.”

  I tell him if it’s going to be too late, we can do it in the morning. He says he won’t be that late, he’s about to break his own speed record once he gets off the LIE at Exit 70.

  As soon as I hang up, Rob Jacobson calls.

  “Since the night of my beach walk, the court wouldn’t give me another furlough even when I told them I wanted to drop in on my lawyer,” he says.

  “I didn’t like you dropping in even before you were wearing the ankle bracelet,” I say.

  Rip starts barking as if he knows who I’m talking to.

  “I think I can help you.”

  “Have you cured cancer since I was over at your house?”

  “You told me to get serious, and that’s what I’m doing. I think I can help you solve this.”

  “This? I’m afraid you’re going to have to be a lot more specific than that, Rob. Which case?”

  “All of them.”

  I wait for him to drop a funny line on me. Or one he thinks is funny. But he doesn’t.

  “What if it’s all one thing?” he asks.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jimmy

  JIMMY IS NEARLY TO Amagansett when Jane calls to tell him she’s making the short drive over to Jacobson’s rental house.

  Jimmy tells her he’ll meet her there. Jimmy knows Jacobson prefers meeting with Jane alone, but Jimmy’s convinced Jacobson has the hots for her, whether or not he’s ever verbalized that. Even the idea of them together gives Jimmy the creeps.

  “Somebody take another shot at him?” Jimmy asks.

  “I’m sure he would have mentioned it.”

  “Can’t blame me for being a dreamer,” Jimmy says.

  She looks more tired than usual when Jacobson lets him in, as if she needs getting out of the house about as much as she needs a hole in the head. But she’s here, and Jimmy knows why.

  Because she’s Jane.

  “Rob seems to think that everything that’s happened and keeps happening might all be connected.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Jimmy says. “Connected to his sorry ass.”

  Jimmy sees Jacobson start to say something, then swallow it. It has been a while since Jacobson went out of his way to piss Jimmy off.

  “Listen,” Jacobson says. “I know you don’t like me, or like working for me. But we’re still on the same team here.”

  “Even though I keep asking myself who chose up these sides,” Jimmy says. “And for the record, how were we all on the same team when you knew Joe Champi was ready to take her out one day when he left the big house you used to live in?”

  “I couldn’t control him. Nobody could!”

  “So you were just going to let Jane put him out of your misery.”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Jane says, sounding like a referee. “So, before I fall asleep in this chair, Rob, why don’t you explain why you got me over here?”

  “I think the whole thing actually runs through Eddie Mc-Kenzie,” he says.

  He talks for a long time then about McKenzie, how he was like a little brother Jacobson bullied. About how obsessed Mc-Kenzie was with him, wanting everything Jacobson wanted, starting with girls in high school. And how obsessed McKenzie became later after the kid he treated like his hero set him up on the rape.

  “So he waits all this time and starts killing people just to frame you?” Jimmy asks him.

  “In a word? Yes,” Jacobson says calmly.

  “So he’s the mastermind of a conspiracy as complex as the plan to get bin Laden?” Jane asks. “Seriously?”

  “I’m not saying he did it by himself,” Jacobson says. “But I’ve done some checking.”

  “Leave the investigating to us, hotshot,” Jimmy says.

  Jacobson ignores Jimmy and turns to Jane. “May I finish?”

  She nods. “Proceed.”

  “So, I asked around and found one more thing that scared the shit out of me, as if that was even possible after I nearly got my ass shot off.”

  “What did you find out?” Jane asks.

  “Not what as much as who,” Jacobson says. “Turns out there was a guy who was a body man for Eddie and his old man, the way Joe Champi was for my dad and me. I just never knew until now.”

  “A fixer, you mean,” Jane says.

  She throws a nod at Jimmy.

  “The guy who jumped me talked about fixing things, and for us to not go around trying to unfix them,” Jimmy says.

  “Licata is his name.” Jacobson is looking at Jimmy now. “Ex-cop. You ever hear of him?”

  “As a matter of fact, I think I ran into him not long ago,” Jimmy says.

  “Where?” Jacobson asks.

  “My house.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRD STRAIGHT DAY OF my latest round of chemo. The new Phillips Family Cancer Center in Southampton is right there on Route 27, before you make the hard left toward Water Mill. Locals, not just New York people, needed a first-rate place like it out here.

  I consider myself both.

  The good news is that once I’m done for the day, I don’t get hooked up again for three more weeks.

  Ben Kalinsky came with me the first two days, spent both nights with chemo-weak me back at my house. But I’m driving myself for treatment, and when I get home I’m cooking dinner for two.

  “How do you know you’re going to be up to that?” Ben asks.

  “We’ve gone over this.”

  “Of course,” he says. “You’re Jane Effing Smith. How could I ever forget a thing like that?”

  I power through my three hours in the chair. When I get home, I go over the presentation I’m making to Judge Killer Kane in two days, asking that the trial date be moved up. Way up. Without asking her if she can help out a girl with cancer. There’s already enough drama surrounding this case. I don’t need to provide any more for social media and the tabloids that are still standing.

  I can see the headlines now:

  CANCER-STRICKEN LAWYER FIGHTS OWN DEATH SENTENCE.

  I don’t put it out there because I don’t want anybody’s pity. I just want to win, the sooner the better.

  I text Jimmy when I’m leaving Phillips, a little after five, to tell him I’m stopping by the bar on my way back to Amagansett. I know he’ll be there, as the bar is the closest thing he has to an office, especially when there’s hardly anybody around to bother him in the afternoon.

  I’ve decided that I’m going to celebrate being off the needle for the next three weeks by stopping by and letting him treat me to a shot of his very best whiskey, Midleton Very Rare, before I go home and cook up dinner for Dr. Ben and me, nothing particularly elaborate tonight, just teriyaki salmon with a tomato-and-zucchini casserole on the side. A choice of red or white wine.

  You only live once.

  I’m nearly to Sag Harbor, having gone past Elise Parsons’s old house, when Jimmy calls and asks how close I am, there’s somebody he wants me to meet when I get to the bar.

  When I walk in, I see that he apparently wants me to meet Jesus, much sooner than I’d anticipated.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE BAR IS CROWDED because it’s one of Jimmy’s happy hours, drinks half price for the after-work crowd until six o’clock, even though it always seems to be a soft deadline once he gets to the top of the hour. Jimmy and his guest are at Jimmy’s normal post, far end of the bar. There is some kind of late-afternoon ball game going on. Not the Yankees. But in Jimmy’s view, any baseball is better than none.

  “This is Dave Wolk,” Jimmy says when I get to them.

  I grin.

  “Are you by any chance related to the son of God?”

  He grins. “Not even by virgin birth.”

  “Actually, Dave’s a thief,” Jimmy says.

  “Reformed,” Wolk corrects him.

  “There’s an old football coach who used to say you are what your record says you are,” Jimmy tells him.

  Wolk grins again. “Well, then I’m not an adult thief, put it that way.”

  There’s a distinct laid-back, surfer-dude vibe to him. Long hair, beard, deep tan. Dark eyes. Tall even sitting down. In his twenties, I’m guessing. MAIN BEACH T-shirt, cargo shorts, sandals.

  “I’m Jane,” I say, and put out my hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Jane.” Before I can do anything about it, he slides off his stool, ignores my outstretched hand, and hugs me.

  “Dave a friend of yours?” I ask Jimmy.

  “Call it a relationship that’s suddenly evolving,” Jimmy says. “It has come to my attention that Dave here broke into Elise Parsons’s house a few months ago, even if he didn’t get pinched for it.”

  “Allegedly broke in,” Wolk says. He shrugs. “And none of the missing jewelry was ever found, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “You just said you were reformed,” I tell him.

  “I might’ve had a slip.” Another grin. “Allegedly,” he adds.

  “Fascinating,” I say.

  Jimmy asks if I want that shot. I tell him I’ll wait. I’m interested to hear why Jimmy wanted me to meet this guy.

  “As it turns out,” Jimmy says, “Dave seems to have had a history of B&Es when he was still trying to find himself as a teenager.”