Page 143 of Hard to Kill

“How?” Jimmy asks.

“Proof…”

“What kind of proof, Licata?”I can hear the urgency in Jimmy’s voice, both of us knowing Licata is running out of time.

“Insurance… case he ever tried to screw me…”

Licata’s eyes are rolling back.

Jimmy leans down closer to him and speaks so softly I can barely make out what he’s saying under the wind roaring louder and harder than ever through the Walking Dunes.

“Proof on who?” Jimmy says.

I hear Licata say “The…” His voice trails off. Everything nearly gone now, like his life is spilling out into the dunes along with all the blood.

Then all I can hear Licata saying back to Jimmy is this:

“Who.”

Jimmy leans down close to Licata now and I can see Licata trying to say something more, but nothing comes out, and then his head falls back and his eyes close and he’s still.

“Shit,” Jimmy says.

He sits down next to Licata, still holding his gun. I step away and make the call to 911 on my phone. Maybe ten minutes later, we hear the first sirens in the distance.

We’re still sitting there when we hear Licata’s phone.

While Jimmy goes into the side pocket of Licata’s down vest for the phone, I walk back to where the woman, Mei, was shot.

But she’s disappeared.

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN

Jimmy

THEY DON’T FINISH WITH the town police and the county police until it’s past four in the morning. Jane and Jimmy drive into East Hampton after that to formally give their statements. Chief Larry Calabrese is waiting for them. Jimmy tells Calabrese what he needs when he and Jane are finished.

Calabrese says he’ll do his best.

Jimmy doesn’t tell him about the phone but promises Jane he’ll hand it over to the police later.

Jane drives Jimmy back to her house. Jimmy gets into his car and heads back home to Sag Harbor and wakes up Detective Craig Jackson. Craig Jackson: who has turned into the kind of wingman that Mickey Dunne was. Another old dog with a bone.

Jackson and Jimmy commence working the phones, starting with Anthony Licata’s burner. Jackson says he’s going to wake some people up, screw ’em, this shit matters to him now, too, and get as many phone logs as he can, both numbers, at this time of the morning.

At seven thirty, time to put a bow on this before word of the shootings gets out, so Jimmy drives over there.

He’s clearly shocked to see Jimmy standing there when heopens the front door, looking as if Jimmy woke him up. But then he told Jimmy he likes to sleep late.

Jimmy uses the same raspy voice he’d used when he answered Licata’s phone at the Walking Dunes, and had done a damn good impression of Anthony Licata, if he did say so himself, his voice muffled just enough by the wind and bad cell service out there.

“You asked me over the phone if it was done,” Jimmy says to retired lieutenant Paul Harrington. “Well, you are.”

Harrington opens his mouth and closes it.

It’s a caught look that Jimmy knows well. A look that all cops know. Harrington has just never been behind it, until now.

“You probably wondered why he had the call on speaker,” Jimmy says. “But when I saw it was you calling him to ask if Janie and me were dead, I wanted her to hear it too, her being an officer of the court and all.”