Page 31 of Hard to Kill

UNKNOWNCALLER.

“Cunniff,” Jimmy says into his phone.

“McKenzie,” the voice at the other end replies, as if trying to imitate Jimmy.

“Oh,” Jimmy says, “it’s the asshole who called my partner one today.”

“Just wanted to get her attention.”

“Well, let me get yours,” Jimmy says. “Stay away from her. Or the next time I see you I’ll swing you around by your nuts.”

McKenzie waits a beat before responding. “I’m just calling to tell you what athrillit was for me to finally meet Jane. I saw her leave the bar. Next time you talk to her, tell her I’d do her in a heartbeat.”

Jimmy calmly gets off his barstool and walks out the door. His eyes are searching Main Street, then farther, past Bay Street, to where the harbor begins.

No sign of Edmund McKenzie.

But he’s out here somewhere.

“Since you’re obviously in the neighborhood, why don’t you drop in and I can start bouncing you around right now?”

“Wow. The attitude. And here I was just trying to pay her a compliment. I would think she’d be happy that all the miles she obviously has on her wouldn’t be a deal breaker.”

“Fuck you.”

McKenzie just laughs.

“You and your partner need to know something, Cunniff, in case you don’t already.”

“And what might that be?”

“Things aren’t always what they seem.”

TWENTY-FIVE

JIMMY CUNNIFF LOVES LIBRARIES so much he’s now a board member at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor. As a kid in the Bronx he spent time at the one in Morris Park to stay out of trouble when his friends weren’t.

That seat on the board also has something to do with an old girlfriend who worked in real estate before realizing that Jesus would be back before Jimmy was ever going to propose to her. She moved away and married somebody else, but Jimmy remains on the board.

The annual Friends of Jermain fundraiser is one of the South Fork’s social events of the year. Jimmy, Dr. Ben, and I are in the packed auditorium at Pierson High School with people who in season turn up at every event wanting to be seen, hoping to be photographed forHamptonsmagazine, and generally congratulating each other for having money to give away to good causes like this one.

That I normally wouldn’t have been caught dead—even when I thought that was an appropriate choice of words—at a society event isn’t particularly surprising or meaningful to me.

But this is:

The room looks like a who’s who from Rob Jacobson’s first murder trial.

Rob Jacobson himself is home with his ankle bracelet. It’s been a few days since the bail hearing and I haven’t spoken to him or my sister, even knowing I’ll have to open the lines of communication with both of them eventually.

But Claire Jacobson, Rob’s soon-to-be ex, is keeping her distance on the other side of the auditorium. Otis Miller, whom I unintentionally outed during Rob’s first trial, is there with his partner. I’m blocked on his name but they’re chatting away with Gus Hennessy, Rob’s former friend and Claire’s onetime lover, who nearly torpedoed us during that first trial.

“The gang’s all here,” Ben Kalinsky says.

Jimmy snorts. “The Westies were a nicer gang than this.”

He points out the event’s chairperson, Elise Parsons, who finally outlived her elderly robber-baron husband but still lives for nights like this. Jimmy informs Ben and me that for years the relationship between Rob Jacobson and Elise Parsons has been an open secret in the Hamptons.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to talk about who hehasn’tslept with?” Ben asks. “Just to streamline things?”

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