Page 124 of The Hamptons Lawyer

It takes him about forty minutes to drive over from the bar, but he gets there right on time, nine o’clock. He knows enough to leave his gun and his phone in the car. He is wearing a windbreaker, jeans, old sneakers, and a Yankee cap that has more years on it than the sneakers, one he bought on the last night the Yankees played a game at the old Yankee Stadium. God, he loved that place. The new one, on the north side of 161st, reminds him more of a giant outdoor shopping mall with a baseball diamond in place of fancy chain stores.

Blum’s house is a classic Hamptons saltbox, positionedhigh up and well back from the road and in line with a terrific bay view.

Two of Blum’s foot soldiers, built like jeeps, are waiting for Jimmy by the front door. Jimmy puts his hands high, almost in surrender, as he approaches them, lets them pat him down.

“Clearly not your first rodeo,” one of them says.

“Is there really such a thing as a first rodeo?” Jimmy asks.

Sonny Blum is wearing the same jacket he wore to Jimmy’s house, and the same pants, with what appear to be the same stains on them. He is in the kind of leather BarcaLounger from which Jimmy’s old man used to watch baseball; only his looks a lot newer and more expensive than the one Jimmy remembers from the apartment in the Bronx.

Blum points to the couch.

“Sit,” he says. Then with a trembling hand he points at Jimmy’s Yankee hat. “You still root for them?”

“You can take the boy out of the Bronx,” Jimmy says.

“I’m so old I remember when they used to make the World Series every year,” Blum says. “No shit, can you even remember the last time they made it?”

“Vaguely.”

Blum says, “I’d offer you a drink but you’re not staying.”

“Glad we cleared that up.”

“So what’s so important you needed this sit-down?”

“I think I’m pretty close to figuring out who killed the Carsons,” Jimmy says.

“Talk to me.”

Jimmy has rehearsed his answer on the way over here and delivers it now, telling Blum that from everything he knows, it can only be Jacobson’s son, Eric. Or Edmund McKenzie, once Rob Jacobson’s asshole buddy in high school. Or maybe even both. For all the tap dancing he’s doing, this part is true. Or itmightbe true. Because the more Jimmy thinks about it, the more he keeps coming back to the two of them, just because they’re the two who seem to hate Jacobson the most.

Jimmy doesn’t have any new information, or real proof, at least not yet. But the old man sitting across from him doesn’t know that.

“Can you nail this down?” Blum says when Jimmy finishes.

“Soon.”

“You know, I could just have them both killed and tell myself that was God’s way of sorting all of this shit out.”

“You want to know what went down,” Jimmy says. “Ineedto know. Let me handle this.”

“Don’t bother me again until you have.”

Jimmy nods. “Ask you something before I go?” he says to Blum.

“You can ask,” Blum says. “Don’t mean you get an answer.”

Jimmy says, “Why do you care so much whether Jacobson goes down for this or not? You ever plan to explain that to me?”

“Maybe someday,” Blum says. “Just not tonight.”

“Did Bernstein tell you about leaving my partner’s ex-husband alone?”

Blum tries to laugh, but it turns into coughing.

“When Pierre pays up, then I’ll leave him alone,” Blum says.