Page 109 of The Hamptons Lawyer

“It is,” I say. “I want you to reach out to Sonny and tell him you may have something for him.”

“But I don’t.”

“So you’ll be the one telling the first lie ofyourwhole life! If you can reach him, tell him you need to meet.”

“Then what?”

“Then slap him with that subpoena you’ve been carrying around and tell him he’s been fucking served.”

“Here’s one last thing I need to remind you about,” Jimmy says. “He says that if you even try to drag him into court he’ll kill us both.”

“Tell him to take a ticket,” I say, and wave at our waiter and tell him we want another round.

Jimmy turns to Danny Esposito.

“She does talk a good game, doesn’t she?”

“I really do think I love her,” Esposito says.

“Get in line,” Jimmy says.

EIGHTY-FIVE

BEN IS WAITING FOR me at my house when I get back from Fellingham’s, where the last thing I told Jimmy was not to do anything crazy with Sonny Blum.

“Nowyou tell me not to go crazy?” he said. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”

Ben has already walked and fed Rip and is watching a Knicks preseason game on television, a glass of red wine in his hand. He is one of those Knicks fans who keeps convincing himself that this is going to be their year. I keep telling him that I’m pretty sure there are meds he can take for that.

“Not human meds,” he says.

From the couch he smiles at me and says, “And how was your day, dear?”

I ask if he has heard about Allen Reese, and he says he has, he got an alert on his phone.

“You want to talk about that?” he asks.

“Eventually,” I say. “But there’s something else I’ve been waiting to tell you, but I wanted to wait until we were together.”

“Oh, shit,” he says. “You’re breaking up with me.”

“Nah,” I say, tossing my bag on the side table. “I’ve got too much time invested in you at this point.”

“That’s very practical of you,” he says, then pats the couch as a way of telling me to come sit next to him.

I do, close enough to him that Rip can’t even think about trying to insinuate himself between us.

“Okay,” he says, as we turn slightly to face each other. “What’s your big news?”

I take a deep breath.

“The big news of the day is that the tumor got smaller.”

He tilts his head just slightly to the side, and his eyes get bigger. Or maybe deeper.

“Would you mind terribly much repeating that?”

I do, then say, “I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”