Page 38 of The Hamptons Lawyer

I lean over the roof and put up a hand to stop him.

“And don’t try coming after me,” I say, “unless that hacker friend of yours can do another get-around on your bracelet.”

“We need to talk this through,” he says.

“You know, it’s funny, Rob,” I say. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying, because the shit you keep pulling like this just keeps shouting at me.”

I shake my head.

“I keep asking myself why I’m still with you,” I say. “Everybody I know keeps asking me why I’m still with you. And I am now officially tired of trying to come up with any kind of answer that makes sense.”

“Like I said,” he says. “I’m innocent.”

“Are you?” I say.

As I pull out from behind McGoey’s Maserati, I can see him at the end of the driveway, waving frantically for me to come back.

Still talking.

I drive around for a few minutes, first up to Atlantic Beach, then back to Indian Wells.

Then back into the driveway behind the Maserati, back into the house.

Rob Jacobson and McGoey are where I left them when I walk back through the front door without knocking. They both look genuinely surprised to see me, but they ought to, since I sold my exit like I was Meryl Streep.

“I was just fucking with you, Rob,” I say. “And my second chair here. You both ought to know I don’t quit, even when I’m the one defending a world-class scumbag. It’s just one more thing that makes me the best.”

“I knew you’d come to your senses,” Jacobson says. “It’s like I’ve told you from the start. We’re a team, Janie.”

I sigh. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?” I ask. “Only people I like get to call me that.”

“You and Iaregoing to make a great team,” McGoey adds.

“What do you think this is, Mc-gooey,” I say to him, “a dating app?”

Then I turn my attention back to my once and future client.

“You knowwhyI’m not quitting?” I tell him. “Because I want to be there in the courtroom, standing right next to you, when you go down for murder this time.”

“But you never lose,” Rob Jacobson says.

“First time for everything,” I say.

THIRTY-THREE

NORMA BANKS AND I are standing outside the courthouse in Mineola, the first wave of juror interviews for Katherine Welsh and I set to begin in less than half an hour in front of Judge Michael Horton, who, from what I’ve seen so far, seems to think he might be the son of God.

Norma has dressed up for the occasion, or at least her personal version of dressing up, in a pretty blue maxi dress and blue sneakers almost the same pale shade as the dress. She may have had her hair done, there seem to be a few more curls today, but I can’t be certain of that and am afraid to ask. She has lit a new cigarette off the one she’d just finished.

“You’re sucking on those things like you think the judge is going to send you to the chair,” I say.

“The world was a better place when smoking indoors wasn’t treated like a crime against humanity,” she says.

“Yes,” I tell her, “those certainly were the days.”

She narrows her eyes. “You sure you’re ready for this?” she asks. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like shit.”

I mention to her that I’ve been getting a lot of that lately, and why would anyone possibly take a comment like that the wrong way?