Page 94 of Hard to Kill
Now here they were, breathing the same air, Harrington treating him like they were still members of the same club.
There are a couple of chairs set at a table in the middle of the lawn. They go sit in them. Jimmy goes into more detail about Licata and Champi and why he’s still getting after it even though Champi is gone.
“It was me who put Internal Affairs on Licata, when I had him in the 24th,” Harrington says. “Before he left the building, I made the prick hand his gun and badge to me. To the end he’s telling me I had him all wrong. Still calling me Lieu like we were buddies. Champi must’ve seen the handwriting on the wall and got his own ass out while the getting was good. Before the two of them began their exciting careers in the private sector.”
“Could Champi have staged that crime scene with Jacobson’s old man?”
Harrington runs through his white hair a hand gnarled like an old baseball catcher’s right hand. “Who better than a detective, especially one who learned the ropes from me? But as hard as we looked—as hard asIlooked—there just wasn’t enough to believe any other doer than the old man.”
Harrington offers Jimmy a beer. Jimmy says no thanks. Harrington walks slowly back up the hill to the house, comes back with a can of Corona.
He sits down, takes a sip of beer, and suddenly slams the can down on the table, beer spilling out of the top.
“I fucking hate those bastards,”he says.“I fucking hate dirty cops and they were as dirty as I ever encountered.”
His face is red, and his chest is heaving.
“That badge is supposed to mean something,” he says, lowering his voice now.
“I know,” Jimmy says, keeping his own voice low, not wanting to set him off again.
It’s back to being quiet out here, even as close to the road as the house is. Jimmy wonders if maybe it gets too quiet for retired lieutenant Paul Harrington, his wife gone, after having spent his whole adult life in the barrel.
“I think Licata or Champi shot my old partner,” Jimmy says. “And if it was one of them, I can’t let that go and still live with myself.”
“Mickey Dunne,” Harrington says. “Your partner. I heard what happened to him. Crying shame.”
Jimmy nods. “And one or both of them made Gregg McCall, that Nassau DA, disappear without a trace along the way. Something else my gut tells me.”
“It ever wrong, your gut?”
“Rarely.”
Harrington drinks more beer.
“Promise me something,” he says now to Jimmy. “If it was Licata, and you do finally put him down, call me when you’ve finally got him by the balls.”
Jimmy salutes. “Yes, sir,” he says.
“That badge is supposed to mean something,” Harrington says. “And he used it like a goddamn credit card.”
SEVENTY-SIX
I AM SITTING WITH Jimmy at one end of Jimmy’s bar.
The Mets game starts a little after seven o’clock and Jimmy allows me to watch on the nearby TV.
“You’re sweet,” I tell him.
“Lower your voice if you’re gonna talk shit like that.”
It’s the day after our walk to the beach with Rob Jacobson. Today has been good.
Brigid phoned me from Meier to say that the treatments are working. The doctors are guardedly optimistic—far from proclaiming her to be back in remission, but recommending she extend her stay.
I can hear gratitude in her voice. My sister seems almost as grateful that her health is stabilizing as she is that Rob Jacobson remains my client.
“I believe you partially did it for me,” she says.