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Jimmy

JIMMY GETS A CALL from a former criminal informant of his, a weasel he hasn’t heard from in years and, until tonight, one Jimmy thinks might be dead by now, just going off the laws of probability for snitches like him.

But it turns out he’s still among the living, still going by just one name, Blue.

“Remember me?” Blue asks.

“How’d you get this number?” Jimmy asks him back.

“That’s how you greet a long-lost friend?”

“Lost, maybe. Never a friend.”

“But still a giver,” Blue says. “So do you want to know what really happened to Bobby Salvatore or not?”

Salvatore was a longtime bookie for Sonny Blum, and someone who kept wandering in and out of the Rob Jacobson case until somebody blew up his boat.

“How’d you know that I’m interested in Salvatore at all?” Jimmy asks.

“Because,” Blue says, “even if my hearing isn’t what it used to be, I do still manage to hear things now and then.”

“So what have you heard and what is it going to cost me?”

“This one is on the house,” Blue says. There’s a brief hesitation at his end before he adds, “until maybe I need to call in a favor down the road.”

Then he gives Jimmy what he has and who he has, which is why the next afternoon Jimmy Cunniff is at Café Luxembourg, 70th and Amsterdam, always one of his favorite lunch spots in Manhattan, seated across a table from a slick young guy named Jeb Bernstein.

According to Blue, Bernstein has taken over Salvatore’s book, despite the fact that Bernstein has been denying that fact up and down since he and Jimmy sat down.

“If you’re not with Sonny,” Jimmy says, “and not in the dirtbag line of succession due to Bobby’s untimely passing, then please explain something to me, kid: Why are you here?”

There is a brief flicker of amusement in Bernstein’s eyes, as if they’re both in on the same joke.

But Jimmy sees wariness in the eyes, too.

He knows this look, having sat just like this across from a lot of smart guys deciding how much they want to tell him, or maybe just how much they think he’ll believe.

“Why am I here?” Bernstein says, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. “Boy, who hasn’t asked themselves an existential question like that at some point in their lives?”

“That an answer?”

“That a serious question, Jimmy?”

Bernstein doesn’t look like someone who belongs in Bobby Salvatore’s former line of work.

He frankly looks like what he’s told Jimmy he is, a former MBA from NYU who went to work in the National Football League office not long after getting his master’s.

Spent a few years after that working at the sports book at Caesars in Las Vegas. Then a year at Bally’s Atlantic City.

“And now,” he says, “I have worked my way back to the big, bad city.”

Bernstein is slowly working on a Virgin Mary that has a lot going on in it, huge celery stalk and olives and even a jalapeno, salt and pepper around the rim of the glass. Jimmy is sipping black coffee.

“Why did you agree to meet with me?” Jimmy asks him.

“I like famous people,” he says. “And, boy, are you and Jane Smith famous now. When you reached out to me, I thought, ‘Wow, a chance to sit down with a real celebrity.’”

“Cut the shit,” Jimmy says.

“You first,” Jeb Bernstein says.

Jimmy looks around the room. It’s a good New York room. He remembers seeing the actor Liam Neeson here a couple of times. Back in the old days, somebody’d told him, Neeson had a place in the neighborhood.

“I have a source,” Jimmy says, “and a pretty good one, who swears that despite your denials, you are now moving up fast in Sonny Blum’s organization.”

“Who’s Sonny Blum?” Bernstein asks innocently.

Jimmy nods. “The last guy who tried to fade me with a line like that ended up getting his house shot up like it was the toll booth in The Godfather .” Jimmy grins at him. “Since we are speaking of godfather types.”

“You need better sources, Jimmy.”

There’s something about the way he says his name that makes Jimmy want to reach across the table and give him a good smack.

“I’m in real estate,” Bernstein says.

“For what,” Jimmy says, “burial plots?”

“Yours or mine?” Bernstein asks, not missing a beat.

“I wasn’t aware that Sonny Blum’s interests ranged to real estate,” Jimmy says.

“That sounds like something you should take up with Mr. Blum.”

“I would,” Jimmy says. “But he’s a hard man to get a hold of.”

“You seem to know more about him, and his interests, than I do,” Bernstein says.

“Maybe you should google him,” Jimmy says.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, or if I’ve wasted your time,” Bernstein says. “But it sounds as if you should really be talking to Mr. Blum, and not me.”

“I will eventually,” Jimmy says.

“You sure about that?” Bernstein asks.

“Very.”

Jimmy stands.

“Wait,” Bernstein says. “You’re not staying for lunch? I hear the cheeseburger here is practically, well, to die for.”

Jimmy leans down now, both palms flat on the table, his face close to Bernstein’s. He can hear and feel the area around them suddenly get much quieter, as if someone in Café Luxembourg has hit a mute button.

“Kid,” Jimmy says, “you’re not going to last a year with Sonny Blum.”

Bernstein doesn’t lean back, or flinch even slightly, just keeps his eyes (almost more black than blue) locked on Jimmy’s.

“Wanna bet?” Bernstein says.