He turns to face me. “Body’s already gone, Janie. But you want to go inside, anyway, have a look around?”
“No,” I say.
Thinking again about all the times I was drawn here, knowing I was acting crazy but knowing that Martin was inside, even after he’d hurt me the way he had.
I tell Craig Jackson now about Rob Jacobson’s conversation with Sonny, Rob passing on Sonny’s message that I had now been warned. Then I take out my phone and show him the first text, the one that says the same goddamn thing. Jackson takes my phone, uses it to send the text, and the photograph of Martin, to his own phone.
“One to the head, one to the chest,” Jackson says, staring at my screen.
“We saw,” Jimmy says.
“Whoever Sonny’s guy is, he’s very predictable,” I say.
We all stand there on the sidewalk in silence now, in the reflection of the flashing lights of the cruisers. I’m still not quite sure why I’m here. I knew the body would be long gone by the time Jimmy and I arrived. But somehow I had to be here for Martin, even though I was too late.
“There’s one more thing,” Jackson says. “Like the cherry on top of the ice cream.”
He takes his phone back out and shows me the screenshot he found when he opened the laptop on Martin’s desk.
The image is the online preview of what I’m sure is going to be the front page ofNewsday’s print edition, probably on the trucks already.
It features a picture of Sonny Blum on the witness stand and me in front of him, pointing a finger like I’m pointing a gun at him.
The headline reads this way:
MOB SCENE
ONE HUNDRED SEVEN
NEITHER ONE OF US is even considering sleep when we get back out to Long Island, so instead of my house Jimmy drives me to his bar, unlocks the front door, and makes coffee for the two of us.
“You need full-time security,” he says.
“No,” I say, “youdo. And maybe Ben. Or even Rip the dog. For reasons only Sonny knows, and maybe God Herself, Sonny wants Rob Jacobson to beat this rap. And he knows I’m still his best option to make that happen. The old bastard wants to torture me, not kill me.”
“Whoever this shooter is,” Jimmy says, “he’s very good.”
“And has done everything except hire a skywriter to let us know it’s the same guy doing all these killings.”
“Maybe he killed those two families for Sonny, too.”
“But why?” I ask.
“Like he ever needs a reason,” Jimmy says.
He tells me he could take a walk over to Jack’s and get us muffins.
I tell him I’m fine.
“Like hell you are,”
“I feel responsible,” I say. “So shootme.”
“Cut the shit,” Jimmy says. “This was as inevitable as the freaking tide.”
“I should have taken Martin more seriously.”
“You didn’t take him seriously all the other times he was in over his head and he came to you for money,” Jimmy says. “Nobody shot him those times.”
