“You don’t have to tip me,” Kenny says. “You’re already paying my salary, remember?”
“Excellent point,” Jimmy says, and picks up the twenty and replaces it with a fifty and leaves.
When he’s approaching his house, he sees the downstairs lights are on. Jimmy is sure he didn’t leave them that way. He’s always been a bit of a wing nut on conserving electricity, his parents having drummed that into him when he was growing up and there was barely enough money for his father to put food on the table in their small apartment in the Bronx.
Jimmy keeps going, past the house, slowly drives to the end of the street and parks there, shutting off the car and removing his gun from the glove compartment before he gets out.
He cuts across his next-door neighbor’s lawn and makes his way along the front of his house, ducking down as he passes the living room window.
Then he’s at the door, hand on the doorknob as he gives it a slow, gentle turn.
Unlocked.
He’s also sure he left it locked. He never forgets to do that.
Jimmy turns the handle, then he’s opening the door, stepping into the house, gun out in front of him.
The man is sitting there on his couch.
He looks at the gun in Jimmy’s hand, barely changing expression.
“You use that, better make sure you kill me with the first shot,” he says.
Then the man says, “You know who I am?”
“I do,” Jimmy says, lowering his weapon.
“We need to talk,” Sonny Blum says.
SEVENTY-FOUR
BLUM WEARS A TAN windbreaker that might have fit him at some point, but is now at least two sizes or more too big. Baggy khaki pants spotted with visible stains above the knees. Sneakers, more gray than white, with Velcro flaps designed so that men Sonny Blum’s age don’t have to tie them.
Jimmy’s unsure of Sonny Blum’s actual age, but sitting here in Jimmy’s living room, he looks older than the earth.
Wispy white hair, what little there is of it, sprays out in all directions. His skin is the color of dust. His hands, there in his lap almost as an afterthought, seem to be the oldest part of him. Signs of living as long as he has can be hidden—all but the hands.
“There was no car out front,” Jimmy says, taking a seat in the armchair across from him. “And I’m assuming you didn’t walk. So how did you get here, some kind of wiseguy Uber deal?”
“The guy I sent to your bar that time, Len Greene? Snappy little dude? He dropped me and then said he’d take the car to the next block over.”
“So I wouldn’t call the cops and have them run the plates as a professional courtesy?”
Blum shrugs. “Let an old man have some fun. I was just fucking around.”
“Len pick my lock?”
“He’s like one of those Swiss Army knives,” Blum says. “Got a lot of uses.”
“I’ll bet,” Jimmy says.
“You gonna put the gun away?”
“I’d tell you not to make any sudden moves,” Jimmy says, keeping his Glock 9 leveled at Blum, “but I’m guessing that ship has sailed.”
“I heard you were a funny guy,” Blum says.
It seems to take a lot of effort for him to get the words out. Jimmy is already leaning forward to hear him better. Blum’s eyelids look puffy, and there’s a yellow tint to his eyes.
