Against The Odds (Anna Dawson #1) by Mara Jacobs

group, all anxious for his answer. “Botz picked up two of us, Schiller the other two, right?” The men all nodded, I leaned forward in my seat, setting my coffee cup down.
    Jimmy can be as full of shit as any gambler, but he’d been around, and seen a lot of stuff go down, and we all knew it.
    “They could have sent patrolmen around to get us. Hell, they could have called us down.”
    We looked amongst ourselves, no one really knowing where Jimmy was going with this.
    “They was lookin’ for reactions. Trying to see what we’d do when we heard the news that Danny was dead.”
    Still nobody said anything, so Jimmy continued. “And we now know we weren’t really needed to identify the body. And I don’t believe the cock and bull story they told me about finding my name on Danny’s body.”
    “That’s what they told me, too,” Ben said, as I nodded in agreement. Gus and Saul did as well.
    “They came and got us, told us the news, then had us sitting there for Christ knows how long…letting us stew about Danny. Not knowing if the other three were dead too.”
    “That’s right,” Saul said, in an almost accusing tone. Accusing of whom, I didn’t know.
    “It took so long to get me there because I made them wait for Hannah to come home,” Ben said.
    Jimmy shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but I was there a helluva long time before they rapped on the door and led me out into the hall…only to see the three of you.”
    “Me too,” Saul said. “And what was that all about, anyway? Getting us all in the hall like that?”
    “Reactions,” Jimmy said, and this time everyone began to slowly nod their heads, finally getting Jimmy’s drift.
    “We’re all suspects,” he said.
    Gus scoffed at that. Ben waved his hands in dismissal. Saul said something in Yiddish that I hadn’t picked up from Ben.
    But a different feeling came over the table, and we all drifted to silence, watching Jimmy eat, finishing our coffee.
    Thinking.
    If I ever saw him again, I was going to rip Jack Schiller a new one for the looks that passed between those four men in the next half hour.
    At first it was nothing, then an occasional glance at each other. And at some point, the looks had turned to questions.
    Did one of them kill Danny?
     
     
    “S o Ben,” I said on the drive home.
    “Yes?” His voice was quiet, tired. No wonder, it was now eight in the morning. I hadn’t been to bed and I wasn’t sure if Ben had either. If he had, he’d been awakened by Jack Schiller in the wee hours.
    It wasn’t unusual for me to be coming home at eight in the morning, but I knew this night had taken a toll on Ben.
    Would take an even harder toll in the upcoming days.
    “Danny and Moira were married for how long?”
    “Fifty-two years,” he answered, a small trace of pride in his voice.
      “And Saul? He was only married to Rachael, right, for, like forever?”
    “Twenty years,” Ben said, his face still to the window.
    “That’s all? The way he talks about her I thought it was longer.”
    “It was as long as she had.”
    Right, the love of Saul’s life had died and he’d never gotten over it.  
    “And Gus? Was it two wives or three?”
    Ben turned forward, a tiny smile on his face. “Gus has been married four times. Gus and women…” he put his hands up as if to explain, then threw them down into his lap. “Oy,” he summed up.
    “When was the last one?”
    “Oh, fifteen, twenty-years ago. Long before you and I met.”
      “And Jimmy? He never talks about his personal life. Or at least not when I’m around.”
    “Mmmm, Jimmy,” Ben said. I waited. “Jimmy and his wife split up when Jimmy’s son was a little boy. His gambling did them in,” he said, looking at me pointedly.
    I kept my eyes on the road, not answering.
    “His wife took the boy back east, remarried.”
    “Did Jimmy see his son very often?” I’d never heard Jimmy mention seeing his son in the ten years I’d known him.
    Ben shook his head.