Jimmy
JIMMY IS BACK AT his bar after having left court early, tracking Rob Jacobson’s car as Jacobson makes his way east. When he sees that Jacobson is approaching downtown East Hampton, Jimmy tells Kenny, who’s working a double shift behind the bar today, that he might see him later and not to steal too much while he’s gone.
“Too late,” Kenny says.
He hasn’t called ahead because he wants to surprise Jacobson, have him be at least a little bit off balance when Jimmy asks him what he wants to ask him, once and for all.
He is slowly pulling up Jacobson’s street when he sees the girl up ahead, making her way up the front walk to the rental house and then walking right through the door without knocking or ringing the bell, barely breaking stride.
Jimmy keeps driving, passing the house, almost not believing his eyes.
But only almost.
It isn’t Halloween yet, but the girl walking toward the house looks as if she’s come directly from cheerleading practice.
SEVENTY-TWO
JIMMY TURNS THE CAR around and comes back, stopping two driveways up from Jacobson’s.
There he waits.
When he finally does walk in, also without announcing himself, he sees they haven’t made it upstairs yet, but they are getting after it, all over each other on the couch. Jacobson must have opened the wine bottle on his coffee table before she arrived.
He’s already managed to get her sweater off.
It’s then that the girl notices Jimmy standing there.
“Hey!” she yells, and immediately wriggles away from Jacobson, trying to cover up as she does, nearly knocking over the wine bottle.
Jacobson tries to play it cool, as if Jimmy showing up this way is somehow just part of the scene.
“Sorry, Cunniff,” he says casually. “Threesomes aren’t Shauna’s thing.” He exaggerates a wink at the girl. “At least not yet.”
It isn’t the first time Jimmy has imagined himself putting a bullet in this guy, put everybody out of their misery in the process.
“Your probation officer would be so pleased,” Jimmy says.
“Whatever,” Jacobson says. “Thanks for stopping by. Now get the hell out of my house.”
Jimmy walks over to the girl’s maroon sweater withEHHSon the front, casually picks it up off the floor, and tosses it at her. The skirt, he notices, is gray. Maroon and gray. The East Hampton High School colors. School spirit. Rah rah rah.
“I stay,” Jimmy says. “But she goes.”
Jimmy turns to the girl and says, “You’re the one who needs to get the hell out of his house.”
Shauna is frozen in place, as if unsure what to do, wearing just a bra from the waist up, with the sweater now sitting there on her lap.
Jimmy takes out his phone, points it at the two of them, and says, “Smile.”
“Shauna,” Jacobson says, “you stay right where you are.”
“Fine with me,” Jimmy says. “But the kid ought to know that it will take me about twenty minutes, tops, to find out who she is, who her parents are, what their contact information is. After that I text them this picture of their little girl.”
The color drains from the girl’s face, just like that. She stands up and pulls the sweater over her long brown hair and, without saying another word or looking back, grabs her purse and heads for the door.
“Call me?” Jacobson calls after her.
The girl turns around.
