Page 3 of Below Deck - Love Under Lockdown

“Listen to me if you’re such a good listener. All I knew was that I was supposed to deliver that message. Tell you that nothing more will happen as long as you backed the hell off. Only now you go and pull something like this.”

I have no idea how much either one of them will tell me, even at the other end of my gun. And they both really do know I’m not here to shoot them dead.

What they don’t know is whether I’m bluffing about making them walk with limps for the rest of their lives.

Eric Jacobson casually reaches for his glass. No good can possibly come of that.

I turn and fire and shatter the glass, the sound of the gun going off as loud as a thunderclap, not missing his hand by much. But missing it. From close range, I really am a great shot.

I hope I haven’t scared the neighbors.

“You crazy bitch!”Jacobson yells.

“Boy,” I tell them both, “I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that one.”

I step back a little more, to make it seem as if the gun is now pointed at both of them.

“Our business is now concluded,” I say, “just like Nick here wanted. But now it’s the two of you who need to back off.”

“That’s what you came here to tell us?” Morelli says.

I nod. “And to tell you that if you choose not to back off, and if either one of you, or anybody you work with, or for, goes near my sister or Jimmy Cunniff or my boyfriend, I will find you both again. And the next time I will shoot you dead.”

“If you live that long,” Morelli says.

Some drops of blood have landed on the shoulder of his white T-shirt.

“I could have done it tonight and told the cops you both attacked me,” I say. “So if you think about it, maybe you guys are the ones who owe me a favor now.”

“My ass,” Morelli says.

“Well put.”

I keep the Glock pointed at them as I slowly back my way across the patio. When I get to the corner of the house, I stop.

“Boom,” I say.

ONE HUNDRED SIX

Jimmy

SONNY BLUM’S NAME KEEPS coming up, here and there, has from the beginning. Jimmy Cunniff knows why and knows maybe he should have red-flagged it sooner. Bobby Salvatore worked for Blum before going out on his own, if not with Sonny’s approval, at least with his consent. Gambling was never a big part of Sonny’s operation.

Loan sharking sure was, though, and bad girls, and extortion, and forcing his way into legitimate businesses, and all-around racketeering, and the ever-popular waste management companies. Maybe Sonny didn’t view Salvatore as a competitor, or threat, until maybe he did.

Jimmy was so fixed on Champi, and then Licata, the immediate threats, that he never paid enough attention to Blum over there on the edges of this thing, maybe because he bought into the notion that the old man was supposed to be drooling on himself.

None of the mob cops could pinpoint the time when Bobby Salvatore went off on his own. Maybe Salvatore was allowed to go off on his own because Sonny Blum was getting a cut of his profits, was a partner to him the way Salvatore was with somebody like Allen Reese. Maybe they were all in bed together, in one big landfill-type pile.

The last time there were any pictures of Blum, or any video, was when he was seen walking down Seventh Street in Garden City in his bathrobe, mumbling to himself, a few miles from a mansion that the guys from Organized Crime Control said was as well guarded as the White House.

But maybe Detective Craig Jackson’s intel was wrong about Sonny Blum being the one behind the curtain. Maybe Blum’s mind really has turned to oatmeal, and he isn’t capable of masterminding anything these days beyond trips to the bathroom.

But there are still all these connections.

“Lot of pearls,” Mickey Dunne used to say when they’d be working a case that threatened to turn their brains to mush. “Our job is to make a necklace out of them.”

It’s Jimmy’s job now, because he isn’t going to let Mickey Dunne’s murder stay in Open Unsolved forever. So Jimmy has been working the phones hard the past few days. Gone back to the city for face-to-face time with some of his OCC contacts. Because Sonny Blum is from the Island, Danny Esposito has been working with his Organized Crime task force.