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“Trying to quit,” he says. “But at least now I know I owe this woman, whoever the hell she is, a good slap.”
Before I can respond, he grins. “Sorry, I know that sounds politically incorrect,” Jimmy says. “Actually, I meant two slaps.”
“A lot of bad people out there, JC. Circling us like buzzards.”
“And multiplying like rabbits,” he says.
I tell him that it must be the bourbon making him mix his metaphors. Then ask how he’s going to get around after I drop him in North Haven, since I know the last thing he’s going to do is take it easy. He says he’s going to try to sleep for a couple of hours, then call a buddy who runs the Hertz place at the little East Hampton Airport and rent a car, and put it on Rob Jacobson’s tab.
“Then what?” I ask after helping him up and into the Prius, giving him a pillow to put between him and the door.
“Then you don’t want to know.”
“Try me,” I say.
“I’m about to get woke, or die trying,” he says. “W-O-L-K.”
“Even with broken ribs.”
“It will make it more of a fair fight when I catch up with him.”
“What if that woman is with him?”
“All the better,” Jimmy says.
FORTY-NINE
SAM WYLIE AND I are at a restaurant we both like, Highway, on 27 in Wainscott. The place sits in front of the VFW post, and standing guard from across the parking lot is a venerable World War II tank. Highway features an interesting menu and a good bar crowd on most nights.
“I do believe there’s a couple of studs at the bar checking us out,” Sam says.
She’s dressed up more than I have, in a silk summer dress she informs me she bought at J. McLaughlin in Bridgehampton for the occasion. She’s clearly had her hair done, no point in me asking, it’s there for the whole room to observe. She’s not Dr. Sam tonight. More glam Sam.
“They’re too young and we’re too old,” I tell her.
“Speak for yourself,” she says. She turns and smiles at them. They raise their glasses in response.
“Don’t encourage them, unless you’re considering adopting them.”
“Just because I’m married doesn’t mean I can’t check out men the way I used to when we’d go bar hopping,” Sam says. “Remember the time—”
“No.”
“That sounds like plausible deniability.”
“Doesn’t sound like,” I say.“Is.”
We both order white wine. We have an understanding that tonight we’re not going to talk about my condition, the resumption of chemo in a couple of weeks, none of it or any of it. I don’t tell her about what happened to Jimmy, because he wants to keep the circle tight for now as he tries to track down Wolk and figure out who the woman shooter is.
When the wine is delivered, Sam raises her glass. “To better days.”
“When?”
We both drink. When we put our glasses down, neither one of us making a move to look at the menu, she says, “Tell me about Martin. Leave nothing out. Take as much time as you want. My darling husband says I have no curfew tonight.”
I describe the scene at the house when I walked in and found Martin with Ben, tell her why Martin was out here, how he’d ended up at the same dinner party with Rob Jacobson’s old classmate Edmund McKenzie and a bookie whose name keeps popping up for Jimmy and me.
“I’m sure the bookie person and the other person are fascinating to you,” Sam says. “But Martin is the one who fascinates me.”
