Page 19

“WHOA,” I QUIETLY SAY again to Jimmy Cunniff, who sounds more upset, and looks more upset, than he did the day I told him I had been diagnosed with cancer. “Where’s this coming from, partner?”

He is suddenly driving way too fast, nearly rear-ending a car in front of us in the passing lane as he hits the accelerator.

Norma Banks once told me that when she’s trying to read potential jurors, she studies “micro expressions.” But nothing about Jimmy’s face is micro, not the obvious signs of strain, most noticeably the red dots that appeared on his cheeks.

If I didn’t know better—if I didn’t know him better—I might think he was about to do something I’ve never seen him do.

Cry.

“You need to slow down,” I say softly. “And not just in this car.”

He does slow the car now, gets his breathing under control. When he finally speaks again, at least he’s stopped shouting.

“We had a deal, okay?” he says to me. “Actually, we have a lot of deals, you and me, none of them written down, all of them understood. But at the head of the list, A No. 1, like they say in the song, is that we do not lie to each other. Ever. ”

“When did I lie?”

“When you tried to put a smiley face on this shit and make me think you’re getting better,” he says, “when we both know you’re not.”

“ You don’t know that,” I say.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

I wait now. I can always tell with him when there’s more coming.

There is.

“I stopped to see Sam Wylie on my way to pick you up,” he says. “At least I got the truth out of her.”

“And what truth might that be, you don’t mind me asking?”

“That this is last call for you,” Jimmy Cunniff says. “And they’re not going to know if these new drugs are working until they do.” He pauses and then adds, “If they do.”

We ride for a few minutes in a silence so thick it makes me want to open a window.

“Well,” I finally say, “so much for my privacy rights.”

“When I’m the private detective,” he says, “they don’t apply.”

“Mind if we listen to some music before we change the subject?”

“Yeah, I do mind.”

“Okay, be like that,” I say, leaning forward a little so that, when he gives me a sideways glance, he can see that I’m smiling.

“Sometimes you forget I’m only like that,” he says.

There is another long silence until Jimmy says, “Once and for all, you gotta tell your client to find another lawyer.”

I lean forward even more, so he can see the big smile that has now crossed my face, just because there’s not a thing in the world I can do to stop it.

“There is no other lawyer in his right mind who will take this case,” I say.