“Good to know.”
“I want her alive, because I don’t want the kid to go down for this.”
“Kid,” Jimmy says. “You’re referring to Jacobson?”
Blum nods.
“Why is that?” Jimmy asks.
“I got my reasons.”
“You own a piece of him?”
“A piece?” Blum starts laughing again, and then the coughing is worse than before, the sound even more harsh this time around.
“I own him,” Sonny Blum says, “the way I owned his old man.”
He leans back into the couch, as if all this talking really has exhausted him. Jimmy takes a closer look at him.
People have feared this man for fifty years, maybe more than that.
Still fear him.
And he can’t even catch his breath.
Without being asked, Jimmy goes into the kitchen and comes back with a glass of water. Blum drinks some of it and hands him back the glass.
“Taking out a whole family, like that, was never my style,” Blum says. “People know that if you don’t pay what you owe me, you end up paying a different way. That’s how it works. How it’salwaysworked. But even if Carson hadn’t paid, I wouldn’t have touched the wife and the daughter.” Another little nod with the chin. “You may not believe me, but even I have rules.”
“A lot of people tied to that family are dead,” Jimmy says, “starting with the district attorney, McCall, who hired Jane and me to look into the murders in the first place.”
“I don’t kill cops and I sure as shit don’t kill DAs,” he says. “Like I told you, you can believe what you want to believe. But I do have a code.”
They sit in silence until finally Jimmy says, “Sonny, what the hell are you doing here, really?”
“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to set the kid up and have him go down for this,” Blum says. “But I don’t want that to happen and neither do you. It means we’re on the same side of this thing, whether you like it or not. And might even be able to help each other out.”
Jimmy feels another grin come over him.
“So that’s really why you came here?” Jimmy asks.
“Why I came here,” Sonny Blum says, “is because I want to hire you.”
SEVENTY-FIVE
JIMMY CALLS ME AT five thirty in the morning, not apologizing, telling me he knew I would be awake.
It’s still dark outside, but I’m already dressed in sweats and a hoodie and about to take Rip to the beach for a run after I feed the beast. But I’m not telling Jimmy Cunniff that.
“How did you know this wasn’t going to be the one morning when I wasn’t up this early?” I ask.
“You’re always up,” he says.
“Carpe diem,”I say.
“Seize this,” he says.
“So what’s up, since we both clearly are?”
