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JIMMY CALLS ME AT five thirty in the morning, not apologizing, telling me he knew I would be awake.

It’s still dark outside, but I’m already dressed in sweats and a hoodie and about to take Rip to the beach for a run after I feed the beast. But I’m not telling Jimmy Cunniff that.

“How did you know this wasn’t going to be the one morning when I wasn’t up this early?” I ask.

“You’re always up,” he says.

“Carpe diem,” I say.

“Seize this,” he says.

“So what’s up, since we both clearly are?”

He says he needs to tell me about a visitor he had the night before.

“Okay, I’ll bite.”

“Sonny Blum,” Jimmy says.

“Good one.”

“I’m telling you, Sonny Blum paid me a visit.”

“Did he have Elvis with him?”

“Jane, I’m serious.”

“Sonny Blum, at your house.”

“In the flesh, though I have to say it’s pretty saggy flesh at this point.”

“And you’re just getting around to telling me this now?”

“It was late after he left and I didn’t want to wake you, on the outside chance you were sleeping for once,” he says.

I tell him then that Rip and I are practically on our way to Indian Wells and to get his ass over there.

“Sonny Fucking Blum,” I say, but he’s already ended the call.

The wind is coming hard and loud off the water, hard enough to keep blowing Jimmy and Rip and me sideways as we head in the direction of Atlantic Beach, though I’m doubtful we will make it all the way there.

I know I have to leave for court early this morning, because I need to make a stop at Sam Wylie’s office.

It’s because of another stop I made on my way back from Mineola yesterday afternoon, one only Sam and my oncologist, Mike Gellis, knew about.

Now that I’m back from Switzerland, they’re my own personal medical dream team, the firm of Wylie and Gellis.

Jimmy is telling me on the beach, without commercial interruption, about everything Blum said after Jimmy walked in and found him on the living room couch.

Including that he wants to hire Jimmy.

I say, “Okay, now what’s the punch line?”

“No punch line.”

“He tells you he wants to hire you and you both somehow manage to keep a straight face?”

“He did,” Jimmy says. “And we did.”

“And how did he take it when you turned him down?”

“Well, see, that’s the thing. I didn’t.”

Then he adds, “Per se.”

I stop walking. Jimmy and Rip keep going until they realize they’ve left me behind. Then they both turn around and come back.

“Let me see if I have this straight,” I say. “You’re considering a side job with a known killer?”

He grins. “You did.”

He moves out of range before I can kick him. “Just kidding,” he says. “We’re currently only working for an alleged killer.”

“Cunniff,” I say, “you tell me right now that you’re messing with me and you really did turn him down.”

“Relax,” he says. “I did. But I might also have mentioned that I wouldn’t be averse, going forward, to sharing information with him if it gets us both to where we want to go.”

“Aren’t you the guy,” I ask him, “who keeps saying that everything in this case, even before it was our case, seems to run through him?”

“I still think it does,” Jimmy says. “But maybe not the murders.”

He raises his voice again, but maybe not just to be heard over the wind and the waves.

“I need to know who did it!” he says.

“And we, you and me, need to win this case,” I say. “Please keep in mind that’s still job one.”

“I want it all,” Jimmy says, “and so do you.”

“Did it occur to you that he might be playing you?”

Jimmy winks at me. Or at least tries. It always looks more to me like an eye tic. “What if I’m the one playing him?” he asks.

Rip has run toward the dunes and come back with a stick in his mouth. Jimmy throws it back in that direction, the wind getting him a good carry.

“I’ve got a better what-if,” I tell him. “What if you end up crossing your new friend and it gets us killed?”

“You’re not dying,” Jimmy says.

“Really.”

“I won’t allow it,” he says.

I tell him that remains to be seen, and then tell him about the stop I need to make in Southampton, and why I need to make it.

“I’m going with you,” he says. “And don’t tell me not to.”

I smile at my partner.

“One more thing you won’t allow,” I say.