“He likes you because your arm hasn’t fallen off yet.”
McGoey turns to face me. “How about you? Do you like me?”
“TBD,” I say. “At least for as long as I’m still around.”
“You’re too hard to kill,” he says.
“Something else that’s TBD.”
We go over our witness list.
“I see Sonny Blum isn’t on here.”
“Not yet.”
“But how can you call him if you can’t find him?”
“I’ve got Jimmy Cunniff looking for him, is how.”
“Still not going to be easy,” he says, “not even for Jimmy.”
“My father always told me that the easy jobs don’t pay very well.”
“So you’re sure you can serve him?”
“Yes, she lied,” I tell Thomas McGoey.
“Music to my ears.”
“I’ve only spoken to Jimmy about this,” I say. “But the real reason I want to get old Sonny on the stand is because he’s the one I really plan to put on trial for the murder of the Carson family. Bobby Salvatore worked for him. Hank Carson was in the hole tohim.And, on a slightly more personal note, it’s his goons who have tried to kill me on more than one occasion.”
I smile at him again. “So at the very least, I owe him a good beating.”
“You know how dangerous he is.”
“Almost as dangerous as I am,” I say.
McGoey is on his way back to Quogue, and I tell myself I’m going to work on the opening statement for a couple more hours. But I’m suddenly so tired that I turn on a baseball game from a past postseason that does include my Mets, lie down on the couch, and promptly fall asleep. The ball game ends up watching me.
I am awakened by my phone.
When I grab it off the coffee table I seeESPOSITOon the screen.
“I got the results,” he says.
“Talk to me.”
“You want the good news first, or the bad news?”
“Surprise me.”
“Actually,” Danny Esposito says, “there is no good news.”
FORTY-SEVEN
ROB JACOBSON’S RENTAL HOME is, as we like to say on the South Fork, on the south side of the highway. It means he’s living closer to the ocean than where I am, on my own side of the highway.
Jacobson’s lady friend, at least of the moment, is just leaving when I show up unannounced following my phone conversation with Danny Esposito.
