Page 12 of Hard to Kill

“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.”

That gets a laugh out of me. I reach for his bottle and take a sip of his Montauk Summer Ale.

“Hey,” he says.

I tell him not to worry, I’m not contagious.

“It really would make me feel better if I could watch the Mets.”

“You’re playing the sick card over aball game?” But he reluctantly points the remote at the set and switches to the Mets.

“So we’re doing this with Jacobson,” Jimmy says. “I’ll be a sonofabitch.”

“We’re both doing it.”

“You know and I know that Jacobson sent Joe Champi to kill you, whether he’ll ever admit that or not. Then we get to the fact how you’re the one who keeps telling me that you want Jacobson to be innocent of killing the entire damn Gates family because you don’t want to die thinking you got an acquittal for a guilty man.”

He realizes instantly that he had just put “dying” into play.

“I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”

“I know.”

“But you just said to me the other day that you still don’t know about this guy. Jacobson.”

“That I do know.”

“So explain to me, in a way I can understand, why we’re going back to work for him.”

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