Another pause. This one is longer than the first, punctuated by another blast of a car horn.
“Sonny Blum,” he says.
NINETY-ONE
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 whodoesn’towe 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.
