“It wasn’t me who sent Licata,” Harrington says.
Now Jimmy is the one who looks tired. “We heard you on the phone, remember?”
“I was just the messenger on that,” Harrington says.
“Taking orders from Sonny?”
“Who?” Harrington asks again.
“So now you’re the messenger again,” I say. “Telling us to lay off Eric Jacobson and Eddie McKenzie.”
“They still have value to us,” he says. “Your client does not.”
“Who’s ‘us’?” I ask.
Harrington stands. “We’re done here,” he says. “But we have a deal, correct?”
“No,” I say. “As a matter of fact, we don’t.”
“What?” he says.
“No deal.”
Then I put up a hand.
“What I meant to say is no deal, you sonofabitch.”
“That’s not what you said a few minutes ago,” Harrington says.
“Well, what can I tell you, Lieutenant? I lied.”
I smile at him one last time.
“So shoot me,” I say.
TWENTY-THREE
HARRINGTON GETS UP FROM the table and walks out of the bar without looking back at us.
“You believe him?” Jimmy asks.
“Which parts?”
“The murders,” he says. “Or should I say, the first ones?”
“Let’s say I don’tnotbelieve him, not to sound too doubly negative.”
“But say it’s true,” Jimmy says. “If it is, we are officially defending somebody who’s been murdering people since he was a teenager. And getting away with it.”
“Practice makes perfect?” I say.
Jimmy puts his face in his hands and rubs it with his fingers. When he looks back up at me his old cop eyes search my face hard.
“Gun to the head time,” he says.
“There must be a better way to put that.”
“I’m being serious.”
