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THE BIG-ASSED HOUSE, OVERLOOKING Mecox Bay in Water Mill, is only a few miles from where Paul Harrington, once the head dirty cop of Sonny Blum’s squad of dirty cops, lived and died.

By now Jimmy and Esposito have called Jane to tell her what they’ve got and who they’ve got and where they’re going, before heading to the Southampton Town Police to pick up an arrest warrant.

“This one we do by the book,” Esposito says. “This arrest ain’t getting tossed the way Harrington’s was.”

“Gee, I sure hope they don’t resist,” Jimmy says from the passenger seat.

“Wouldn’t that be a crying fucking shame?” Danny Esposito says.

Jimmy smiles to himself. This is what it was like in the old days, with his partner Mickey Dunne, sitting in the front seat of the car and closing in on something big.

Looking to close something, period.

There is one car parked in the driveway, the one with the tracking device that led them straight here.

They drive a quarter mile or so up the street and park, then walk back to the house. By now they both have their guns out.

“You think they’ll be armed?” Esposito says, sounding almost hopeful.

“Probably,” Jimmy Cunniff says quietly. “Armed and stupid.”

Jimmy says he’ll go around to the back. He tries the back door and finds it unlocked. As he eases himself into the kitchen, he hears rock music coming from the front of the house.

Jimmy keeps his Glock out in front of him as he silently makes his way through the kitchen and into a small dining room, betting on it being just the two of them inside.

He stops before he gets to the open door at the far end of the dining room and sees the two of them, facing each other on matching couches, a giant bottle of Tito’s vodka on the coffee table between them, the bottle set in a crystal ice bucket. Nothing but the best for these rich assholes.

Jimmy feels his heart beating so loudly inside his chest he’s afraid they might hear it from the living room, even over the music coming out of the speakers.

It is at this moment that Danny Esposito comes through the front door and appears in the foyer, his own Glock pointed straight at them.

“Eric Jacobson and Edmund McKenzie,” he announces, “you are both under arrest for the murders of Hank Carson, Lily Carson, and Morgan Carson.” He pauses just long enough for them to process that before he adds, “You worthless sacks of shit.”

McKenzie doesn’t move right away. Neither does Jacobson.

“You’re the sack of shit if you don’t have a warrant,” McKenzie says.

He even takes a sip of vodka.

“Don’t say another word,” Eric Jacobson says to McKenzie. “Not another fucking word.”

“You don’t tell me what to do,” McKenzie says.

Then, to Esposito, McKenzie says, “What, you think you got proof?”

Esposito grins his crooked grin.

“I got the two of you on the one camera you didn’t disable that night, asshole,” Danny Esposito says.

Jimmy moves in from the dining room, behind them and out of their range of vision, without announcing himself, gun steady in front of him.

Armed and stupid.

He’s got his eyes on McKenzie, but that’s not what distracts him now, and distracts Danny Esposito.

It’s Eric Jacobson standing suddenly, putting his hands out as if for them to be cuffed, saying, “Let’s get this shit over with.”

As he does, McKenzie quickly leans over and reaches for a gun that Jimmy hasn’t spotted near the ice bucket, and neither did Esposito.

McKenzie grabs the gun and rolls forward, trying to get underneath the coffee table, before firing off two shots at Danny Esposito, the first one blowing a hole into a painting behind him. The second hits the ceiling.

“Fuck you!” Edmund McKenzie yells as he comes up and aims at Danny again.

Jimmy and Danny both fire on McKenzie before he can get off another shot; the simultaneous gunshots sound like a single bomb going off. Eric Jacobson dives for cover. The bullets hit McKenzie center mass, like two bullets grouped neatly inside the bull’s-eye of a target at the Maidstone Gun Club.

Like Jimmy and Danny are competing with each other, the way Jimmy and Jane do.

Jimmy fires again, hitting McKenzie again, pretty much in the same grouping, firing the last shot for the Carsons.

Maybe for the kid most of all.

On this night the blood, a lot of blood, on him and on the expensive carpet and on the couch, belongs to Edmund McKenzie.

They hear Eric Jacobson say, “I want a lawyer.”

“The best one’s taken,” Jimmy says as Esposito leans over to cuff him. “Pity.” Eric Jacobson remains prone on the carpet, hands behind his back.

Jimmy goes over and kneels next to McKenzie, who he can see is dying.

Just not yet.

And, as it turns out, still in love with the sound of his own voice.