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Jimmy

JANE CALLED LAST NIGHT to tell him about her ex-husband—someone Jimmy has always considered to be a French lounge lizard even if he happens to own the lounge—being in deep with Sonny Blum.

“At this point,” Jimmy told her, “maybe it would be easier keeping a list of who doesn’t owe Sonny.”

“I’d just prefer he doesn’t add Martin’s name to a different kind of list,” she said.

“The one with the dead people on it.”

“Yeah,” Jane said. “That one.”

“Listen,” Jimmy told her. “He’s your ex, not your kid. He needs to figure this shit out for himself, like a big boy.”

Then Jimmy told her that against his better judgment, he would see what he could do about keeping Sonny Blum off Martin’s back, at least for the time being.

“Now that I think of it,” Jimmy said, “I might even have a way of making your boy useful, if I can keep him alive.”

“He’s hardly my boy,” she said.

“Figure of speech.”

Jimmy leaves at four thirty in the morning, knowing it’s the only sure bet to beat rush hour traffic into Manhattan. He texted Jed Bernstein before going to bed, telling him they needed to meet for coffee, as early as Bernstein could manage.

Bernstein texted back right away.

What if I don’t want to?

Jimmy wasted no time with his own response.

Wasn’t a request

This time Bernstein’s reply took longer, as if maybe he had to check his schedule.

9 a.m. Astor Court. At the St. Regis.

Jimmy told him he knew where the freaking Astor Court was and would see him there.

Now Jimmy is seated across from Bernstein in one of the most ornate breakfast places in town, muraled ceilings and low-hanging crystal chandeliers and $225 eggs Benedict, if you like your eggs Benedict with caviar.

Both Jimmy and Bernstein are wearing blue blazers.

Jimmy assumes that Bernstein’s is more expensive, unless Bernstein got his at Jos. A. Bank, too.

“You ever run into any of your bookie friends here?” Jimmy asks.

“I’m not a bookie,” Bernstein says.

“Sure,” Jimmy says.

“Believe what you want to believe.”

“I am curious about something, though,” Jimmy says. “What’s the next step up the ladder in Sonny’s operation—Shylock?”

Bernstein sips some of the oolong tea he’d made a big production of ordering.

“Is that meant to be an ethnic insult?” he says.

“Literary,” Jimmy says. “Merchant of Venice.”

Bernstein raises an eyebrow. “Wow. A literary former flatfoot.”

“Now who’s doing the insulting?”

Bernstein sips more tea. Jimmy watches him do it, thinking the guy is as neat with his mannerisms as he is with his clothes.

“You must want something from me,” Bernstein says, “or we wouldn’t be here.”

“I need to have another meeting with Sonny,” Jimmy says. “He can pick the time and the place. He can even stop by my house and surprise me, the way he did last time.”

“Very generous of you,” Bernstein says. “But I can’t make that happen.”

“Can’t?” Jimmy says. “Or won’t even make the ask?”

“Both,” Jed Bernstein says.

“Sonny told me he thinks we can help each other,” Jimmy says. “And I’ve come up with some information that he’s going to see as helpful.”

“Pass it along to me and I’ll pass it along to him.”

“Not happening,” Jimmy says.

Bernstein grins. “Because you can’t, or you won’t?”

“Both,” Jimmy says. “But what I can share with you is this: If Sonny finds out this information didn’t get to him because of you?” Jimmy shrugs. “Well, at that point I wouldn’t want to be you.”

Bernstein looks down at the menu in front of him. If he’s shocked by the price of the eggs Benedict, he manages to hide it.

He looks back at Jimmy and says, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Do it quickly,” Jimmy says.

“And you could have done all this with a phone call,” Bernstein says, “instead of driving all the way in here.”

“I like looking people in the eye,” Jimmy says. “It’s a cop thing.”

“Happy for you.”

“There is one other thing you can pass along to Sonny for me,” Jimmy says.

“And what’s that?”

“I want you to tell him that what happened to the real estate guy, and to that flower lady in Bridgehampton, can’t happen to Jane Smith’s ex-husband.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Jimmy smiles across the table at him. “See there, that’s why I like to look people in the eye, so I can decide for myself when they’re full of shit.”

Bernstein gives Jimmy a bored look.

Jimmy thinks: How many fake tough guys like this have I met in my life?

“Happy for you,” Bernstein says again. “Truly.”

Jimmy says, “Tell Sonny that if anything happens to Martin Elian, he and I are going to have a problem.”

Bernstein laughs. “You think you’re going to scare off Sonny Blum?”

“You think Sonny scares me?”

“Maybe not the old man himself,” Jed Bernstein says. “But there’s a guy who works for him who ought to scare the piss out of you.”