Page 15

FIFTEEN

Jimmy

WHEN HE COMES TO, he feels as groggy as he did after Joe Champi—or at least Jimmy always assumed it was Champi—jabbed him at the home of Gregg McCall, the Nassau County DA who’d hired Jane and Jimmy before disappearing for good.

Except it’s my goddamn house this time.

He can see enough, barely, to know they have him in his bedroom at the back of the house. It’s dark enough that he can make out shapes, just not faces. There’s a big guy to his right, the one who’s just said, “Rise and shine.” The woman, smaller, is to Jimmy’s left. Jimmy knows it’s a woman because he hears her say “You must be joking” when the guy asks if she’s sure Jimmy’s wrists are secure enough.

“You want to tell me what this is about,” Jimmy says. “I was hoping to turn in early.”

“And you did.”

“You have a name?” Jimmy says, turning his head just enough to face the guy.

Nothing.

“You and Champi have similar games. The two of you ever work together?”

“Funny story,” the guy says. “We started working together when we were involved in the same situation. Long time ago. Representing different interests.”

“Whose?”

Nothing.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your date?” Jimmy says.

Jimmy is bound to what he’s sure is one of his kitchen chairs. Before he even knows she’s on him, the woman hits him with what has to be a full wind-up slap across his face, nearly knocking the chair he’s bound to over on its side.

“Do we have your attention now?” the guy asks.

“What,” Jimmy says, “you got tired of sending texts and came here for a more hands-on approach?”

“Do you want a little more?” the woman asks.

“Not tonight, dear. I have a headache.”

The guy chuckles. “I told you he’s a funny bastard. Didn’t I tell you this guy is a funny bastard?”

“Is there a purpose to this visit?”

“Now that you mention it,” the guy says.

Jimmy thinks he even sounds a little like Champi. Older voice. Raspy. Some New York in it. Almost like he could have come out of Jimmy’s old neighborhood.

“I want you and your friend, when she gets back from Switzerland, to stop looking into things you don’t need to be looking into. We like things we fix to stay fixed.”

“You know about Switzerland?”

“Want to know which seat she sat in on the flight over?”

Jimmy feels his fingers losing circulation. Knocked out and tied up in his own home. First time for everything. If there were just one, Jimmy could try to bull-rush him, even with his hands tied behind him. But there’s two of them. And there are guys Jimmy was in the ring with who couldn’t hit as hard as this woman.

“You want to waste your time defending that asshole again, have at it. I kept telling Joe he wasn’t worth it, but Joe just didn’t want the gravy train to end. Either way, Jacobson’s going down this time.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

“He did it. I thought Joe told you that.”

“So what’s in this for you?”

“My business, not yours. Let the trial play out. Then you and the cancer patient go on and live happy lives. Hers will be shorter, of course. Just stay away from Eddie McKenzie, starting now.”

“Did McKenzie call you after I put him against the wall?”

Now the guy laughs hard enough that he starts coughing.

“You got no idea what you’re into. No wonder you busted out of the cops. You still don’t know what you don’t know.”

“I know you could have killed me tonight if you wanted,” Jimmy says.

“I need you around, to get her to come around.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Then she unfortunately dies of something other than cancer,” the guy says. “While you watch.”

He shoves Jimmy hard enough that the chair goes over and he ends up on his back. The guy laughs again and they leave him there.