Page 18 of Hard to Kill

“I’m told you and Rob were close once.”

“Werebeing the operative word. You want to know how close we are now? Fuck him, that’s how close.”

“What happened to a beautiful friendship?”

McKenzie checks his phone again. “Long story.”

Jimmy leans forward, grinning at him. “Actually, Eddie, I just now learned the story. Or at least the good parts about how he got you in a frame for a rape you say he committed. Do I have that right?”

“As rain.” He drinks. “What other interesting things have you heard about me?”

“That you were going to get him back even if it took the rest of your life.”

McKenzie brightens. “Like framing him for a triple homicide, or even two? Well, wouldn’t that be a dream? Listen, I was actually kind of a hot-shit science whiz when I was still at Princeton. But that was before I went back to my two real majors: drinking and girls.”

“What really did happen that day at Jacobson’s place when that girl died, along with Jacobson’s old man?”

“You mean what do Ithinkmight have happened after I was long gone? I think Rob went crazy and killed them both and then the scene got staged by a cop who went on his payroll that day and didn’t get off till he was the one who got shot to death by that lawyer you work for.” He grins. “Whew, a mouthful like that makes me thirsty.”

He drinks.

He’s no longer grinning when he puts his glass back down.

“You think you know so much about me, Cunniff. You don’t know jack shit. Or whoIknow. Or what happens if I make a call about you thinking you can come here and jam me up like this.”

Before Jimmy can respond, a young woman about half Mc-Kenzie’s age, if that, appears at the table, wearing something Jimmy would call a dress if there were more of it.

“Amber,” McKenzie says.

“Eddie,” she whines. “I would have been here already if you sent the car like you promised.”

McKenzie acts as if he hasn’t heard and stands. So does Jimmy.

“Now beat it,” McKenzie says to him. “Before I make that call.”

Jimmy thinks about grabbing him by the lapels of the skinny, too-short blazer he’s wearing and bouncing him into the wall. But there’s no point, at least not tonight. Jimmy doesn’t want to be the one on Page Six tomorrow morning for busting up Edmund McKenzie and the Bemelmans Bar.

He’s on his way out the door when McKenzie calls out to him. “Hey, Cunniff.”

Jimmy makes a half turn.

“How many times are the two of you going to let him get away with murder? Asking for a friend.”

FOURTEEN

Jimmy

WHEN HE’S GOTTEN OUT of the city and is finally flying up the LIE, Jimmy has finally calmed down, knowing how close he’d come to bouncing McKenzie around, even in a bar full of cell phone cameras.

What he had done, though, before McKenzie knew it was happening, was get him up and out of his chair and into the small lobby between Bemelmans and the Café Carlyle, where Bobby Short used to play the piano in the old days.

Out there, nobody around except the girl in no clothes, Amber, making bird noises, Jimmy put McKenzie up against the wall.

“You got any other smart comments you want to make?” Jimmy had said to him, their faces close enough that he could smell the whiskey on McKenzie’s breath.

“You have no idea what a mistake you’re making,” McKenzie said.

An older couple walked through the door from Madison Avenue, took one look at them, and left.

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