Page 82 of Hard to Kill

“That I’m done.”

SIXTY-SIX

BEFORE I GET OUT of the car Jimmy says, “If you quit, the terrorists win.”

“Watch me,” I say.

“You’re always telling me that it’s lawyering that makes you feel most alive.”

“Only now I feel as if it might kill me and everybody I care about. Starting with you.”

He starts to open his door. I tell him I don’t need help getting into the house.

“You’re just having a bad day,” Jimmy says.

“They’reallstarting to feel like bad days. Ben could have died because of me.Again.You could have died on me.Icould have died because of me.”

I come around to his side of the car. He’s got his window down. He tells me he’d never try to talk me out of something I really want to do.

“I’ll have your back until somebody does take me out,” he says. “But I’ll just leave you with this: I’ve always said that you should never make a big decision when you’re drunk or tired. I think we can add being on chemo to that list.”

I walk toward the front door, trying to will myself intolooking stronger than I feel. Unlock the door. Disable the alarm. I never used to set it during the day. Now I do. Another reaction to all the bad days I’ve had recently. Jimmy has redone the system yet again, telling me that even the Army Corps of Engineers couldn’t get past it, much less a punk-ass bitch like Eric Jacobson.

When I see Rip the dog standing there waiting for me in the front hall, tail wagging, I can’t help but smile. But when I crouch down to scratch his ears, a wave of dizziness comes over me.

So I lie down on the floor, telling myself I’ll stay there until the feeling passes.

My dog lies down next to me.

“I’ll tell him I’m quitting in the morning,” I say to Rip the dog.

We both go to sleep right where we are. It’s dark out when I finally awaken and find out I slept through Jimmy’s call from Esposito, about the body.

SIXTY-SEVEN

Jimmy

THE SURFBOARD ABOUT THIRTY yards away from the body, the lifeguards long gone, it would have looked like some kind of early-evening surfing accident at Ditch Plains Beach in Montauk if not for the bullet somebody had put in the middle of Dave Wolk’s forehead, center cut.

“This the guy who tried to run you over?” Esposito says.

“One and the same.”

Esposito and Chief Larry Calabrese are sharing the scene, even though it’s technically Calabrese’s jurisdiction. So they’re playing nice, which is why Calabrese waited for Jimmy to arrive before allowing the body to be bagged.

“Big-ass storm blew through here about seven o’clock,” Esposito says. “Everybody on the beach cleared out. A couple of kids in search of big-ass waves found him, freaked, called 911.”

“This was an execution,” Jimmy says.

He thinks about the way his old partner, Mickey Dunne, took one to the forehead in the Bronx, the murder still unsolved, Jimmy still certain Mickey had died at the hands of Joe Champi, Jacobson’s former fixer, the one Jane took out.

How many people connected to this thing are going to die?

Esposito walks Jimmy away as the ME’s people bag the body.

“I gotta ask, just on account of you having history with this guy.”

“I’ve been with Jane all day.” Jimmy doesn’t tell him where or why. “You can ask her. I’d just dropped her off at her house when I got your call.”

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