Hard to kill, p.11
Hard to Kill, page 11
“It was an interesting and eclectic group around the table,” Martin says.
“Now I’m happy for all of you.”
I’ve heard about the colorful parties Allen Reese and his wife throw, featuring everybody from rappers to hard-core Republicans like them to jocks to the hot TikTokers.
“Have you ever been to one of their parties?” Martin asks. “It sounds like anybody out here who’s anybody does eventually.”
“I don’t hang with people like the Reeses,” I say. “I defend them.”
He chuckles. Too cool to laugh.
“Is there a point to this story, Martin? Ben and I need to have dinner and then get to bed.”
Take that.
“Two of the guests said they knew you, and to send along their best,” Martin says. “I thought they might have come together.”
“Names please?”
“One was named Edmund McKenzie,” he says.
I sit up a little straighter.
“The other?”
“Bobby Salvatore.”
Jimmy’s right.
The world just keeps getting smaller.
And perhaps more dangerous.
“Martin,” I say. “You suddenly have my undivided attention.”
Another smile. “I didn’t have it before?”
“Finish the story, Martin.” It’s a tone I’m sure he remembers along with everything else from our marriage.
“Allen Reese said something odd: that Mr. Salvatore was his bookie. I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.”
“He likely wasn’t joking.”
“So it was even more of an eclectic group than I first thought,” Martin says.
Quietly Ben Kalinsky says, “You have no idea.”
“Before Mr. Salvatore left, I asked if he was really Allen’s bookie.”
“What did he say?”
“He said problems were his specialty,” Martin says. “I asked if that meant solving them or creating them. He smiled and said, ‘Both.’”
FORTY-FOUR
Jimmy
HIS FACE IS BURNING, bleeding he’s sure from the shattered windshield. But there’s no time to check.
He’s just happy nothing has hit him in the eyes, and that he can still see.
He’s below the dashboard when a second bullet comes thudding into the leather behind the steering wheel.
No point in calling 911. Pinned down and taking fire, Jimmy knows he’s outnumbered and maybe outgunned and tries to figure out how not to remain a sitting goddamn duck.
The third shot doesn’t come, at least not right away.
Maybe she’s waiting to see if he’s been hit.
Or for him to show himself again.
For all Jimmy knows, she’s in the dunes, circling around and closing in on the Jetta right now.
Jimmy doesn’t know if Wolk has a gun of his own or is just hunched down below his own dashboard, waiting for the woman to finish the job.
Not knowing where the shooter is, Jimmy unlatches the passenger door, using it for cover now. Then he’s the one rising up from behind it, firing one shot, then another, and then two more after that, not aiming at anything in particular. He can’t see the woman. He’s just providing cover for himself, even as he’s blinded by the Corolla’s high beams.
Now the woman fires again and hits the door.
Jimmy leans out to the side, trying to refocus her gaze if only for an instant, then puts a bullet of his own into the Corolla’s windshield, and hears it shatter.
And hears Wolk scream.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Get down, you fool,” the woman shouts.
Two more bullets hit Jimmy’s passenger door.
Jimmy doesn’t know what kind of gun she has. Or how many rounds it has in it. But Jimmy is shit sure he’s got seventeen rounds in the Glock if he needs them.
He waits.
If you’re a cop for even a day of your life, you’re good at waiting, even in a firefight like this.
Jimmy is about to put his gun back over the top of his door again when he hears the other guy make the next move.
The Corolla’s engine ignites. High beams still on.
Jimmy fires again, then again, as he sees the car in motion, the crazy bastard gunning it, the roar of the engine filling the distance between them as Wolk drives straight for the Jetta.
Jimmy’s surprised at the pickup.
From zero to me.
FORTY-FIVE
MARTIN LEAVES FIRST. ONCE he’s gone, Ben doesn’t even raise the possibility of spending the night.
The man I love now and the man I used to love were both in one room with me and somehow I felt as alone as I ever had in my life.
Dr. Sam has given me pills to help me sleep when and if I need them. But I don’t take them. Or reach into the kitchen cabinet for the bottle of Jameson.
To process the events of the evening, I walk Rip, lock up the house, set the alarm. My Glock 27, the new one Jimmy got me for Christmas for being both naughty and nice, is in the top drawer of my nightstand. Ben saw it there one night and asked if I thought I needed the gun to protect me from him.
“Other way around,” I told him.
I think about Martin now. Not only out here, but in the same room with Edmund McKenzie and Bobby Salvatore before he was in the same room with me.
I think about Bobby Salvatore, hiding in plain sight at an Allen Reese party. The same Allen Reese whom my client called his sworn scumbag worst enemy.
As tired as I am, it’s almost too much to process.
The only sound in the bedroom is Rip snoring softly on the throw rug at the end of the bed.
Sure, at least he can go right to sleep after a night like this.
Finally, perhaps by the grace of God—about time She gave a girl a break—I’m asleep and dreaming. In this one, my mother is with me again. Only I’m the one in the bed and she’s sitting next to me, holding my hand.
Then she’s leaning forward, close to my ear. She has something important to say, something she’s been waiting my whole life to tell me.
Before she can, the moment is shattered by a ringtone and I’m wide awake all over again.
Rip is sitting up now. I can see his head over the foot of the bed, and he’s wide awake, too, and panting.
It’s my phone. I’ve finally ditched the Boston College fight song and gone with a normal ringtone.
At first, I can’t hear the voice at the other end of the line.
Then I realize it’s Jimmy.
“You… need… need to come get me.”
“Jimmy, what happened?”
“A lot.”
He tells me where he is before the line goes dead.
FORTY-SIX
THE PASSENGER-SIDE DOOR FROM Jimmy’s Jetta is on the ground next to the car when I get to the dirt road just past the entrance to Napeague Harbor.
When I walk around to the front of the car, Glock in my hand, I see that the windshield is mostly gone and when I look inside, I see the broken glass on the front seat.
The tan-colored leather is bloodstained.
I yell Jimmy’s name and wait.
Nothing.
I walk up the road, dunes on either side of me.
“Jimmy Cunniff, you told me to come, now where the hell are you?”
I often get mad when I’m as scared as I am right now.
“Jimmy?”
I turn around and look at the car. Windshield gone. Door on the side of the road. Bullet holes in the door.
If Jimmy has been shot, it would be the third time since we took on Rob Jacobson as a client, which has to be some kind of record.
Where is he?
I jog back to my car and get the flashlight that I keep in the glove compartment along with my gun, and go back to his car, pointing the flashlight at the ground near the detached door.
The trail of blood begins there.
FORTY-SEVEN
Jimmy
WOLK’S CAR DOESN’T HIT Jimmy’s head-on, he’s going for the door Jimmy was using for cover, obviously hoping Jimmy is still behind it.
When Jimmy realizes that Wolk isn’t bluffing, that he’s not going to stop or even slow down, he dives underneath the Jetta, feeling the impact, hearing the screech of metal-on-metal, and tries to crawl all the way to the other side as the Jetta gets spun around, the front wheels hitting the right side of his chest, and he worries that the car is about to roll over on top of him.
He manages to get out from underneath, the Glock somehow still in his hand. Screw it. He’s going down firing. He comes up and puts the gun on top of the convertible roof and starts firing at Wolk’s car again, not sure whether they’re going to stop or keep going.
This time he hits the back windshield and shatters that, and then Jimmy is running for the dunes in case the crazy bastard turns around and comes back.
He trips and lands on ribs that he’s sure are busted or at least cracked, manages not to scream.
It’s finally quiet then.
He manages to raise himself up, sees the taillights of the Corolla now as Wolk puts the car back on the highway and heads east.
Maybe she didn’t try to finish the job and was counting shots and wasn’t sure how many rounds Jimmy had left.
Jimmy touches his face and feels the blood, not just from the windshield now, but from when his face hit the rocks and dirt as he dove under the car.
His chest feels like it’s been hit with all the worst body blows he ever took in the ring. But he gets his phone out and manages to call Jane before he passes out.
The light shining on his face is what wakes him up.
Jane standing over him.
“Does that white light mean this is heaven?” Jimmy asks.
“You wish,” she says.
She sits down next to him in the dirt then, leaning over to kiss him on the forehead before telling him she needs to call 911.
“No,” he says.
FORTY-EIGHT
JIMMY’S CAR HAS BEEN towed by a friend of theirs, Lenny Morrell, who owns a gas station on Springs Fireplace Road. By now I’ve driven Jimmy—at his request—to the office of Dr. Ben Kalinsky, who has X-rayed Jimmy and taped up his three cracked ribs, cleaned and bandaged the worst cuts to his forehead, and told him it’s a miracle he doesn’t need stitches.
When Ben tells Jimmy he’s really going to need to take it easy for a few days, they both hear me snort.
“I’m sure you both have your reasons for not calling the police,” Ben says.
“I don’t want them to be the ones who find the guy driving the car,” Jimmy says, “or Annie Oakley.”
I grin at Ben. “He’s always been very inner-directed.”
“And extremely inner banged up,” Ben says.
“I’ve already filed a report with a cop,” Jimmy says. “Me.”
I drive us back to my house, after Ben points out once again what a full and interesting life I’m leading. The sun is up by now. I tell Jimmy I have some pain pills he can borrow. I’ve been hoarding my own for a while. He says it only hurts when he laughs, and since none of this seems particularly funny, he’ll be fine.
What I do give him is coffee enhanced by a healthy shot of the Kentucky Owl Straight Bourbon I keep in the house for him. It’s not as pricey as Pappy Van Winkle. But not cheap, either.
Jimmy drinks some of his bourbon-laced coffee. He picks the mug up with his left hand and then gently places it back on the table, making sure to take care with even the smallest moves. I’ve been there. I broke two ribs playing college hockey and for the next month was worried about taking deep breaths and became more afraid of coughs and sneezes than I was of snakes.
Jimmy has awakened Detective Craig Jackson, asking him to find out anything and everything he can about Anthony Licata, and if he might have a female partner now that Joe Champi is among the departed.
Jimmy has the call on speaker.
“Anything else you need?” Jackson asks.
“You’ve always been a giver,” Jimmy says, and ends the call.
Jimmy carefully raises his mug to his lips and drinks.
“I like your triple shot better than the kind you get at Starbucks,” he says.
“Breakfast of former Golden Glove champions.”
We sit in silence. I’ve told him I’ll drive him home when he’s ready. He says not yet.
He coughs now, nothing he can do to stop it, and bends over in pain, which I can see only makes things worse.
“You’re supposed to be the sick one,” he says when he straightens up. “You know that, right?”
“You’re the one who keeps getting shot at.”
“Trying to quit,” he says. “But at least now I know I owe this woman, whoever the hell she is, a good slap.”
Before I can respond, he grins. “Sorry, I know that sounds politically incorrect,” Jimmy says. “Actually, I meant two slaps.”
“A lot of bad people out there, JC. Circling us like buzzards.”
“And multiplying like rabbits,” he says.
I tell him that it must be the bourbon making him mix his metaphors. Then ask how he’s going to get around after I drop him in North Haven, since I know the last thing he’s going to do is take it easy. He says he’s going to try to sleep for a couple of hours, then call a buddy who runs the Hertz place at the little East Hampton Airport and rent a car, and put it on Rob Jacobson’s tab.
“Then what?” I ask after helping him up and into the Prius, giving him a pillow to put between him and the door.
“Then you don’t want to know.”
“Try me,” I say.
“I’m about to get woke, or die trying,” he says. “W-O-L-K.”
“Even with broken ribs.”
“It will make it more of a fair fight when I catch up with him.”
“What if that woman is with him?”
“All the better,” Jimmy says.
FORTY-NINE
SAM WYLIE AND I are at a restaurant we both like, Highway, on 27 in Wainscott. The place sits in front of the VFW post, and standing guard from across the parking lot is a venerable World War II tank. Highway features an interesting menu and a good bar crowd on most nights.
“I do believe there’s a couple of studs at the bar checking us out,” Sam says.
She’s dressed up more than I have, in a silk summer dress she informs me she bought at J. McLaughlin in Bridgehampton for the occasion. She’s clearly had her hair done, no point in me asking, it’s there for the whole room to observe. She’s not Dr. Sam tonight. More glam Sam.
“They’re too young and we’re too old,” I tell her.
“Speak for yourself,” she says. She turns and smiles at them. They raise their glasses in response.
“Don’t encourage them, unless you’re considering adopting them.”
“Just because I’m married doesn’t mean I can’t check out men the way I used to when we’d go bar hopping,” Sam says. “Remember the time—”
“No.”
“That sounds like plausible deniability.”
“Doesn’t sound like,” I say. “Is.”
We both order white wine. We have an understanding that tonight we’re not going to talk about my condition, the resumption of chemo in a couple of weeks, none of it or any of it. I don’t tell her about what happened to Jimmy, because he wants to keep the circle tight for now as he tries to track down Wolk and figure out who the woman shooter is.
When the wine is delivered, Sam raises her glass. “To better days.”
“When?”
We both drink. When we put our glasses down, neither one of us making a move to look at the menu, she says, “Tell me about Martin. Leave nothing out. Take as much time as you want. My darling husband says I have no curfew tonight.”
I describe the scene at the house when I walked in and found Martin with Ben, tell her why Martin was out here, how he’d ended up at the same dinner party with Rob Jacobson’s old classmate Edmund McKenzie and a bookie whose name keeps popping up for Jimmy and me.
“I’m sure the bookie person and the other person are fascinating to you,” Sam says. “But Martin is the one who fascinates me.”
“You act like this is still high school.”
“As it should be.”
Sam leans across the table, trying to act conspiratorial. “Was it still there?”
“Was what still there?”
She grins. “What my grandmother used to call the old zookety-zook.”
“You want the truth?”
“You’re practically required to be truthful with your personal physician.”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Really. And even if I did still have feelings for him, which I don’t, they wouldn’t matter because I’m with Ben now. Who loves me for who I am, instead of what I’m not.”
“Who was it that said the heart wants what it wants?”
“Woody Allen,” I say. “You still want to play that particular card?”
We both laugh. It feels good, if fleetingly.
Then, almost in the next moment, I start to cry.
I wouldn’t do it in her office. But I’m doing it here. The tears come freely and in full force, nothing I can do to stop them, no point in even trying. Our waitress is on the way back to us, probably to tell us about the special. She turns right around and heads back toward the kitchen. My hands are pressed firmly on the table, as if I’m afraid to lose my balance or further lose control. Sam reaches across and covers them with her own.
I’m no longer making any noise, but my shoulders continue to rise and fall as I try to get enough air into me, and not make more of a scene than I already have.
“It’s okay, Jane,” Sam says softly. “It’s okay.”
My voice is practically a whisper.
“I want to live so much.”
We sit there like that, at the window table, her hands still over mine. I don’t know what the other people at Highway think, how many of them might recognize me from all the television airtime I’d gotten during Rob Jacobson’s first trial. For as long as I’ve known Sam, she’s always told me there’s nothing I can’t tell her, nothing I should hold back, no matter how private or personal.
