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JIMMY TURNS THE CAR around and comes back, stopping two driveways up from Jacobson’s.

There he waits.

When he finally does walk in, also without announcing himself, he sees they haven’t made it upstairs yet, but they are getting after it, all over each other on the couch. Jacobson must have opened the wine bottle on his coffee table before she arrived.

He’s already managed to get her sweater off.

It’s then that the girl notices Jimmy standing there.

“Hey!” she yells, and immediately wriggles away from Jacobson, trying to cover up as she does, nearly knocking over the wine bottle.

Jacobson tries to play it cool, as if Jimmy showing up this way is somehow just part of the scene.

“Sorry, Cunniff,” he says casually. “Threesomes aren’t Shauna’s thing.” He exaggerates a wink at the girl. “At least not yet.”

It isn’t the first time Jimmy has imagined himself putting a bullet in this guy, put everybody out of their misery in the process.

“Your probation officer would be so pleased,” Jimmy says.

“Whatever,” Jacobson says. “Thanks for stopping by. Now get the hell out of my house.”

Jimmy walks over to the girl’s maroon sweater with EHHS on the front, casually picks it up off the floor, and tosses it at her. The skirt, he notices, is gray. Maroon and gray. The East Hampton High School colors. School spirit. Rah rah rah.

“I stay,” Jimmy says. “But she goes.”

Jimmy turns to the girl and says, “You’re the one who needs to get the hell out of his house.”

Shauna is frozen in place, as if unsure what to do, wearing just a bra from the waist up, with the sweater now sitting there on her lap.

Jimmy takes out his phone, points it at the two of them, and says, “Smile.”

“Shauna,” Jacobson says, “you stay right where you are.”

“Fine with me,” Jimmy says. “But the kid ought to know that it will take me about twenty minutes, tops, to find out who she is, who her parents are, what their contact information is. After that I text them this picture of their little girl.”

The color drains from the girl’s face, just like that. She stands up and pulls the sweater over her long brown hair and, without saying another word or looking back, grabs her purse and heads for the door.

“Call me?” Jacobson calls after her.

The girl turns around.

“Not happening,” she says. “This is too weird even for me.”

When she’s gone, Jimmy says to Jacobson, “You’re welcome.”

“For what? Pissing on the only good part of my day?”

“For maybe saving your life, you stupid shit.”

“You know, Cunniff,” Rob Jacobson says, “I still need to remind you from time to time that you work for me.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Get out,” Jacobson says.

“Not until we talk.”

“Talk about what?” Jacobson says. “By the way? She’s seventeen, in case you were wondering. The age of consent in this state.”

Jimmy’s phone is still in his hand. He holds it back up for Jacobson to see. “I’m sure that will be a great comfort to her father once he gets a look at his baby girl starting to undress for you.”

Jacobson calmly reaches for his glass and drinks some wine.

“I get the picture,” he says. “Okay? I get it. Now what’s so important that you felt the need to barge in on me like this.”

“I never asked you this straight up, but I’m asking you now,” Jimmy says. “Simple question, but needs to be asked: Did you kill those people?”

“Which people?” Jacobson says.

Jimmy shakes his head. He can’t believe he ever went to work for this guy without getting his shots first.

“There’s nothing me or anybody else can do about the Gates family, you already got tried and acquitted on that one,” Jimmy says. “You know I’m talking about the Carsons.”

Jacobson shakes his head in disbelief.

“No shit,” he says. “You’re asking me that now ?”

“Like I said. Just you and me. Straight up.”

“And if I say yes, what, you drive over to Jane’s house and tell her what I said and she quits me once and for all?

” Jacobson says. “I know her by now. Not as well as you. But I know her, which means I know that whatever she might say, the reason she’s still around is that she doesn’t believe I did it.

Or at least can’t make herself believe that I did. ”

“This isn’t about her,” Jimmy says. “This is me asking you.”

Jacobson grins his snarky grin, as if he can’t help himself from always falling back into the wise-ass pose.

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me,” he says.

Jimmy quickly crosses the room and lifts him up off the couch, then jerks Jacobson closer until they’re nose to nose.

“For once in your miserable life,” Jimmy says quietly, “look me in the eyes and tell me the truth.”

He grabs the guy’s sweater a little tighter.

“Did. You. Do. It?”

Jimmy’s not sure if what he’s seeing in Jacobson’s eyes now is fear. But it might be. Maybe Jimmy in this moment has finally made him feel cornered like the sewer rat that he is.

“I didn’t do it,” he says.

Jimmy lets him go, then shoves him back down into the couch.

“Then who did?” he asks.

“You want to know the truth?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says, “surprise me.”

“I think Eddie McKenzie killed them all,” he says.