“Youdon’t know that,” I say.
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
I wait now. I can always tell with him when there’s more coming.
There is.
“I stopped to see Sam Wylie on my way to pick you up,” he says. “At least I got the truth out of her.”
“And what truth might that be, you don’t mind me asking?”
“That this is last call for you,” Jimmy Cunniff says. “And they’re not going to know if these new drugs are working until they do.” He pauses and then adds, “If they do.”
We ride for a few minutes in a silence so thick it makes me want to open a window.
“Well,” I finally say, “so much for my privacy rights.”
“When I’m the private detective,” he says, “they don’t apply.”
“Mind if we listen to some music before we change the subject?”
“Yeah, I do mind.”
“Okay, be like that,” I say, leaning forward a little so that, when he gives me a sideways glance, he can see that I’m smiling.
“Sometimes you forget I’monlylike that,” he says.
There is another long silence until Jimmy says, “Once and for all, you gotta tell your client to find another lawyer.”
I lean forward even more, so he can see the big smile that has now crossed my face, just because there’s not a thing in the world I can do to stop it.
“There is no other lawyer in his right mind who will take this case,” I say.
TWENTY
BY THE EARLY EVENING Jimmy and I have made up enough to be seated at the end of the tavern he owns on Main Street in Sag Harbor.
“I don’t want to relitigate the conversation we had in the car,” I say to him now.
“Litigate to your heart’s content,” he says. “You were lying. And I was right about you quitting this case and our asshole client once and for all.”
“That’s very open-minded of you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says.
I sip some club soda. I’m off real cocktails, because of my drug cocktail, until further notice, even though that makes me feel more out of place here than a vegan.
“I don’t want you to start yelling all over again and scare the customers,” I say. “But you’re not allowed to be more angry about me having cancer than I am. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Jesus H. Christmas trees,” he says. “I know you think you get to make the rules, about just about everything. But what youdon’tget to do is tell me what I’m allowed to feel about your being sick.”
“Before I came over, you promised to be nice,” I say. “This is nice?”
“Like my mother used to say,” Jimmy tells me, “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
“Your mother was full of shit,” I say.
I finally get a laugh out of him.
