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I hear a voice in the distance, an announcer calling the names of riders and horses to assemble at the Grand Prix ring. I know it’s thoroughbred racing they call the sport of kings. But that’s what it feels like here. Kings and queens.
And me.
And Bobby Salvatore.
“You think you know me, but you really don’t,” he says. “You think you know where I figure in all this, but you don’t.”
“So educate me.”
He smiles. “My education, at I guess what you could call the school of hard knocks, came from a man named Sonny Blum.”
“You still work for Blum? I heard you’d moved on long ago.”
“I did. But before I did, he taught me well.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And one of the things he taught me was to understand where you fit in the grand scheme of things. That no matter how big you think you are, there’s always somebody bigger. Like Sonny, for example.”
I was about to thank him for his crash course in the mob but thought better of it. Our date was going so well.
“What do you really want to tell me?” I ask, even though there’s so much more I want to ask him.
In the next moment, he reaches over with a big hand and gently strokes my cheek. His touch makes my skin crawl. I want to recoil. Or give him a good slap. But I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. And the last thing I want to do at theHampton Classic, with media everywhere and a cell phone in every hand, is make a scene.
He takes his hand away as quickly as he put it there, then leans down to whisper in my ear.
“It’s not me you’re after,” he says. “No matter how much you want it to be.”
SIXTY-FIVE
Jimmy
JIMMY AND BEN KALINSKY alternate days of driving Jane to Southampton and sitting with her in the hospital, three hours at a time, the chemo drugs this round seeming to knock her down more than they ever have before. It only serves to piss her off more than ever before, since she’s trying to keep working. Still in contact with the two young kids she’s hired for Jacobson’s trial, Estie and Zoe, who are doing their level law-student best to come up with alternative theories about who could have murdered the Carson families. The same game as always on their side of things. My guy didn’t do it but here’s somebody who could have.
These days Jane is feeling so punk she’s even starting to second-guess herself for moving the trial date up, complaining that she’s not going to be ready.
Something else to piss her off.
Jimmy Cunniff would rather wrestle a grizzly than spend a whole lot of time going back and forth on shit like this with cranky Jane.
But he sits there and holds her hand while the drugs are pumped into her. He doesn’t bring a book. He doesn’t make calls or listen to music. He is totally present for her.
“You need to be getting better,” he says.
“When does that happen, doctor?”
Then apologizes almost as quickly as she’s snapped at him.
“You know you don’t ever have to apologize to me.”
Another mistake.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
Jimmy smiles at her and squeezes her hand and says, “Did we get married and I wasn’t informed?”
That gets him a small smile in return. After that she closes her eyes and lets the drugs do their job without further comment. Neither one of them can believe she still has her hair. Minor miracle. But neither one of them talks much about that, for fear of jinxing things with the hair gods.
