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BLUM WEARS A TAN windbreaker that might have fit him at some point, but is now at least two sizes or more too big. Baggy khaki pants spotted with visible stains above the knees. Sneakers, more gray than white, with Velcro flaps designed so that men Sonny Blum’s age don’t have to tie them.

Jimmy’s unsure of Sonny Blum’s actual age, but sitting here in Jimmy’s living room, he looks older than the earth.

Wispy white hair, what little there is of it, sprays out in all directions. His skin is the color of dust. His hands, there in his lap almost as an afterthought, seem to be the oldest part of him. Signs of living as long as he has can be hidden—all but the hands.

“There was no car out front,” Jimmy says, taking a seat in the armchair across from him. “And I’m assuming you didn’t walk. So how did you get here, some kind of wiseguy Uber deal?”

“The guy I sent to your bar that time, Len Greene? Snappy little dude? He dropped me and then said he’d take the car to the next block over.”

“So I wouldn’t call the cops and have them run the plates as a professional courtesy?”

Blum shrugs. “Let an old man have some fun. I was just fucking around.”

“Len pick my lock?”

“He’s like one of those Swiss Army knives,” Blum says. “Got a lot of uses.”

“I’ll bet,” Jimmy says.

“You gonna put the gun away?”

“I’d tell you not to make any sudden moves,” Jimmy says, keeping his Glock 9 leveled at Blum, “but I’m guessing that ship has sailed.”

“I heard you were a funny guy,” Blum says.

It seems to take a lot of effort for him to get the words out. Jimmy is already leaning forward to hear him better. Blum’s eyelids look puffy, and there’s a yellow tint to his eyes.

“You don’t quit, I gotta hand it to you,” Blum says.

“Neither do you,” Jimmy says. “You still fucking with people by wandering around in a robe?”

“Too old, too tired,” Blum says. “And that old goombah, Gigante, his brother was a priest? He was more convincing than me.” He nods at Jimmy with his chin. “You didn’t buy that I was crazy?”

“Only like a fox.”

“Yeah, I still got it.”

“So to what do I owe the honor?” Jimmy asks.

“I came here to tell you, man to man, that you got me all wrong.”

Jimmy says, “Somehow I doubt that.”

“What I’m here to tell you is, I had nothing to do with those three people dying.”

“I’m told that Hank Carson owed you a lot of money,” Jimmy tells him.

“He did.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Jimmy says, “how much did the late Mr. Carson owe you?”

“A million, give or take a few thousand,” Blum says.

“Lot of money.”

“He’s lucky something unfortunate didn’t happen to him sooner,” Blum says. “Lucky for him he finally paid.”

Now he’s got Jimmy’s attention.

“You’re saying he wasn’t still to the bad with you when he died?”

“Paid up in full, to Bobby Salvatore, couple of days before he did die,” Blum says. “Maybe you’re not as much of a hot shit investigator as I heard you were.”

Blum shakes his head. Even that seems to require most of the strength he has in him. When he stops, his head falls a little to the side.

“It was supposed to be last call for the guy,” Blum says. “I sent Bobby thinking he was going to have to clip him. But Carson shocked the shit out of Bobby and shocked the shit out of me and paid in full.” He nearly smiles. “Still no problem in this world that a bag full of money can’t solve.”

The old man’s lips look cracked and dry. He licks them now.

“Carson told Bobby he didn’t want to die because of what he owed,” Blum says. “Then he pays up and dies anyway. Funny world, right?”

“Tell me again why you’re here,” Jimmy says.

“Your girl needs to keep my name out of her mouth at this trial,” he says, “before something happens to her.”

“In case you haven’t figured it out already, she scares about as easily as I do,” Jimmy says. “And she wants you to testify.”

Blum laughs, which then turns into a coughing fit.

“Something funny?” Jimmy asks.

“Yeah,” Blum says. “You thinking I give a rat’s ass what she wants.”

“I’ll pass your message along, though I’m not sure it will do any good.”

“I don’t want to have to kill her,” Blum says.

“Good to know.”

“I want her alive, because I don’t want the kid to go down for this.”

“Kid,” Jimmy says. “You’re referring to Jacobson?”

Blum nods.

“Why is that?” Jimmy asks.

“I got my reasons.”

“You own a piece of him?”

“A piece?” Blum starts laughing again, and then the coughing is worse than before, the sound even more harsh this time around.

“I own him,” Sonny Blum says, “the way I owned his old man.”

He leans back into the couch, as if all this talking really has exhausted him. Jimmy takes a closer look at him.

People have feared this man for fifty years, maybe more than that.

Still fear him.

And he can’t even catch his breath.

Without being asked, Jimmy goes into the kitchen and comes back with a glass of water. Blum drinks some of it and hands him back the glass.

“Taking out a whole family, like that, was never my style,” Blum says.

“People know that if you don’t pay what you owe me, you end up paying a different way.

That’s how it works. How it’s always worked.

But even if Carson hadn’t paid, I wouldn’t have touched the wife and the daughter.

” Another little nod with the chin. “You may not believe me, but even I have rules.”

“A lot of people tied to that family are dead,” Jimmy says, “starting with the district attorney, McCall, who hired Jane and me to look into the murders in the first place.”

“I don’t kill cops and I sure as shit don’t kill DAs,” he says. “Like I told you, you can believe what you want to believe. But I do have a code.”

They sit in silence until finally Jimmy says, “Sonny, what the hell are you doing here, really?”

“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to set the kid up and have him go down for this,” Blum says. “But I don’t want that to happen and neither do you. It means we’re on the same side of this thing, whether you like it or not. And might even be able to help each other out.”

Jimmy feels another grin come over him.

“So that’s really why you came here?” Jimmy asks.

“Why I came here,” Sonny Blum says, “is because I want to hire you.”