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The Jewish Don, they called Sonny Blum in aTimespiece a few years ago. In the photographs they ran of the old man, he looks like a taller Mel Brooks.
Jimmy has turned the bar into his office tonight, laptop set up under the television set at his corner. He tried to call Jane a few hours ago but got sent straight to voicemail. Probably on a date with Ben Kalinsky.
“How ya doin’?” Jimmy hears now to his left.
He turns. A guy in a dark navy suit, white shirt, no tie, has taken the open stool next to him. Maybe in his forties, maybe a little older. Nice tan. That kind of beard stubble that somehow has been turned into a modern art form. Hair short on the side,a little bit of a fade on top, some gray in it. Small smile for Jimmy, from dark blue eyes that seem to match the suit.
“Do I know you?” Jimmy asks.
“Nah.”
“How can I help you then?” He points at the laptop. “Kind of working here.”
“I’m actually here to help you.”
The guy’s still smiling. Lot of teeth. He turns to Kenny Stanton and orders a Crown Royal, neat. When Kenny sets the glass down in front of him, he takes a small sip of it right away.
“Help me with what?” Jimmy says. “Or maybe I should ask, with who?”
“Sonny.”
ONE HUNDRED SEVEN
I SEE A MISSED call from Jimmy when I get home, but his phone is turned off when I try to hit him back.
I call Brigid then, wanting to be honest with her about where I’ve been and what I’ve done at Edmund McKenzie’s house, and what it might mean for both of us going forward.
I tell it all in a rush after she answers.
When I finish, there’s a long silence on her end. I can hear jazz playing softly in the background. One thing she did inherit from Jack Smith is her love of jazz.
“You never change, do you, Jane? You do what you want when you want, and to hell with what anybody else might want.”
“Not fair.”
“Fair? You told me you were going to leave all of this alone, becauseyoutoldmeit was the best way to keep me safe. But now I’m probably right back in the line of fire, aren’t I? Good work, sis. You’ve pissed them off and you’ve pissed me off.”
“We were already in the line of fire, both of us.”
Another silence, longer than the one before.
“I’m going away,” she says finally. “I’m going to get away from here and I’m going to get away from you.”
“Go where?” I ask.
“To save my marriage.”
Before I can respond she says, “I love you. I hope we both get better. But you really are a selfish bitch.”
She ends the call before I can tell her it’s the second time I’ve been called a bitch tonight.
It’s late on a Friday night. I try Jimmy again. Phone still off. But what I need to tell him about Nick Morelli and Eric Jacobson can wait until the morning. He’ll probably be as angry at me as I’ve made my sister. Maybe even angrier.
I try to do a little more work, jury selection a few days away. There was a time when this upcoming trial, on the heels of the first one, my client really on trial for another triple homicide, seemed all-consuming to me. But as hideous as these crimes are, more and more I’ve started to think that they’re just one element to a much bigger story.
Maybe Brigid is right. Maybe it was selfish of me to even go looking for those two punks tonight, much less roust them the way I did. But I’m tired of being threatened. I’m tired of being pushed around. I’ve never let anybody push me around, at least not for very long, all the way back to the mean girls. Martin did it for a while at the end of our marriage.
But I didn’t let him get away with it for long.
