Never mind that I almost called Jimmy to cancel. I arrived at the range, trying to act more energetic than the creature that inspired my mother’s childhood nickname for me: Hummingbird. He worries enough about me already, telling me every chance he gets that I’m going to get better, and that even if I die, it will be over his own dead body.
He stops reracking the targets and gives me a long look, as if he’s getting ready to interview a perp. “Tell me somethingstraight, even if you are a lawyer,” he says, as if reading my mind, something he does with annoying frequency. “You sure you got another trial in you?”
“No doubt.”
“No bull is what I was hoping for,” he says.
“You should know better than anyone that the code never changes with me,” I say. “Live to work, work to live.”
I don’t add,or die trying. Frankly, I don’t like playing that game, either.
He wins a round, the sixth, when I finally miss. But I come back and beat him one last time, because we both know I’m not leaving on a loss.
“Rematch?” Jimmy asks.
“As much as I would like to beat your butt all the livelong day, I’ve got to get to the courthouse to meet with my new jury consultant, remember?”
Across an undefeated career in court, I’ve hardly ever used jury consultants. Certainly not for Rob Jacobson’s first trial, where he was acquitted.
Now he’s about to stand trial in Nassau County, next one over from Suffolk. Different county, but same charge: the shooting deaths of an entire family—father, teenage daughter, and her mother, whom Jacobson had known back in high school.
This time around, the evidence against him is even worse. Katherine Welsh, the new Nassau County district attorney, is leading the prosecution. Just two days ago, on the eve of jury selection, we were informed of a piece of evidence that had magically, like a baby being left on the estimable Ms. Welsh’s doorstep, shown up at her office: a time-stamped photograph of our client leaving the victims’ house the night of the murders.
I pleaded with Judge Michael Horton for a continuance, to allow me and Jimmy time to investigate; bless his heart, he gave us two weeks. That same day, I broke down and hireda jury consultant. Just being realistic, this might turn out to be the last big case of my career and to win it, I was going to need all the help I could get.
“So you’re still going to meet with Queen Elizabeth?” Jimmy says.
It’s what he’s taken to calling the consultant, a woman named Norma Banks. Norma admits to being eighty-three, but I think she’s dropped a few years the way people drop excess pounds.
“Come on, I know she’s old,” I tell Jimmy. “But she’s not dead.”
“Yet,” he says. “I was you, I’d drive fast to Mineola, just to be on the safe side.”
THREE
IT’S A HIKE TO the courthouse, just under eighty miles. I once mentioned to Jimmy that a trip across Long Island should be measured not in miles, but dog years.
“Don’t ever say that in front of Rip,” Jimmy said, “on account of how far he is past his sell-by date.”
Rip is my dog. I really did think he was a goner when I took him in as a stray and named him “R.I.P.” Now, because of tender loving care from the man of my dreams—Dr. Ben Kalinsky, who happens to be the top veterinarian on the South Fork—Rip shows signs of outliving us all.
It’s actually kind of funny. Eight months after being told I had a year to live, starting another round of chemo so soon before the start of my next trial, gallows humor has pretty much become my default position.
I promised Norma Banks I would meet her at the Supreme Court building, Nassau County, at eleven o’clock, traffic on the Long Island Expressway and Northern State permitting. She’s taking the Long Island Rail Road from New York Penn Station. Her apartment in the West Village is not far from mine, though when she moved in Nixon was president. Or maybe FDR.
The SiriusXM channel devoted to Billy Joel, a good Long Island boy, is now back by popular demand, but I switch toDoctor Radio, where I keep hoping to hear news of a cure for my cancer, neck and head.
The dream of scooping my oncologist isn’t feeling so realistic today, so I tune out the doctors and go back to rock ’n’ roll. As shitty as I feel, I’m ready to put this last round of chemo in the rearview mirror, as if I were recovering from a bad breakup, or a midlife crisis. I need my focus to be squarely on the upcoming trial.
Judge Michael Horton—I keep wanting to call him Jordan, because he reminds me of Michael Jordan, and is almost as tall, having been a shooting guard in college himself—knows what I’m dealing with, no reason to keep it a secret from him.
He hasn’t told the media that my “situation” was another factor in his decision to delay the trial. And District Attorney Katherine Welsh didn’t contest the continuance, to her credit. I’m more than happy to accept their help on this particular matter. Just not their sympathy, theirs or anybody else’s.
It’s worth mentioning that Katherine, who’s both Harvard undergrad and Law, is younger than I am, taller, prettier, and, as far as I know, healthy as a horse.
That bitch.
Only now jury selection is staring me in the face, even as I’m pulling out of a brutal round of chemo—something else I think should be measured in dog years, mostly because it makes me sick as one.
