CHAPTER 4

The next day Billy hooks up his new MacBook in the office on the fifth floor and downloads a solitaire app. There are a dozen different versions. He opts for Canfield and rigs the computer to leave a five-second pause before each move. If Nick or Giorgio should choose to look in and monitor his activities (or maybe Frankie Elvis would be given that task), they will have no idea the computer is playing solo.

Billy goes to the window and looks out. Both sides of Court Street are lined with parked cars, many of them police cruisers. The umbrella-shaded tables outside the Sunspot Café are filled with people eating doughnuts and Danish. A few people are descending the wide courthouse steps, but a lot more are on their way up. Some trot, showing off their aerobic fitness. Others plod. Most of the plodders are lawyers, identifiable by their huge, boxy briefcases. Court will soon be in session.

As if to underline this, a small bus – once red, now wash pink – trundles slowly down the choked street, passes the steps, and stops outside the smaller door at the righthand end of the big stone building. The door of the bus folds open. A cop gets out, then a conga-line of prisoners in orange jumpsuits, then another cop. The jumpsuits perp-walk around the bus’s snub nose. The door of the employees’ entrance opens and the men in the jumpsuits go inside, where they’ll wait to be arraigned. Interesting, and worth filing away, but Billy believes Nick is right: when Allen comes, he’ll be escorted up the steps to the main entrance. Not that it matters. The shot will be almost the same either way. What’s important is that Court Street is a busy place during the working week. There may be fewer people out and about in the afternoons, but most arraignments take place in the morning.

You’ve always been fucking Houdini when it comes to disappearing after the hit, Nick said. By the time things start to settle, you’ll be long gone.

He’d better be, because disappearing is part of what they’re paying him for. A large part. Nick surely knows that using Billy has certain advantages if he botches the disappearance. He has no friends or relatives that can pressure him – or be used to pressure him – into giving up the name of his employer. And while Nick might consider Billy far from the brightest bulb in the chandelier, he knows his hired gun is smart enough to realize he can’t trade a name for a reduction to homicide in the second or manslaughter. When you shoot a man with a sniper rifle from the fifth floor of a building where you’ve been set up for weeks or months, there could be no argument about the charge. That’s premeditation in big red letters and only murder in the first would do.

Yet if Billy were caught there’s one offer the prosecution could make, and Nick would know that, too. This is a death penalty state. A smart DA might well offer Billy a shot at life in Rincon Correctional instead of the needle. If he talked. Billy supposes that if it came to that, he actually could still keep Nick out of it. He could name Ken Hoff, because Hoff wouldn’t live long if the cops grabbed Billy Summers coming out of Gerard Tower. Hoff might not live long in any case. When dealing with Nick Majarian’s ilk, patsies rarely did.

Billy might not live long even so, because safe is always better than sorry. He might fall down a flight of prison stairs with his hands cuffed behind his back. He might be stabbed in the shower with a sharpened toothbrush or have a bar of soap stuffed down his throat. He could hold his own against one guy, maybe even two, but faced with a posse of 88s or three or four widebodies from People Nation? No. And does he want to spend life in prison in any case? Also no. Better dead than caged. He guesses Nick knows that, too.

None of it will be an issue if he isn’t caught. He never has been, seventeen times he’s gotten away clean, but he’s never been faced with a situation like this one. It’s not like shooting from an alley with a car nearby to carry you away, the best route out of town carefully marked.

How did you disappear after you’d gunned a man down from the fifth floor of a downtown office building, with a shit-ton of city and county cops right across the way? Billy knows how it would work in a movie: the bad-guy shooter would use a sound-and-flash suppressor. That’s not an option in this case. The range is just a little too long, and he won’t get a second chance if he misses the first time. Also, there’s going to be the unmistakable crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier. A suppressor can do nothing about that. Billy has a personal issue, as well: he has simply never trusted potato-busters. Put a gadget on the end of a good rifle and you’re taking a risk of fucking up your shot. So it’s going to be loud, and while the source may not be immediately identifiable, when people stop cringing and look up, they’re going to see a window on the fifth floor from which a small circle of glass is missing. Because these windows don’t open.

The problems don’t daunt Billy. On the contrary, they engage him. The way the prospect of certain dangerous escapes – being chained up inside a safe and thrown into the East River, or dangling from a skyscraper in a straitjacket – no doubt engaged Houdini. Billy doesn’t have a whole plan yet, but he’s got a start. The parking garage was a little more loaded on the first two levels than Irv Dean had indicated, maybe today’s court docket is especially heavy, but by the time Billy got to Level 4, he had his pick of spots. Privacy, in other words, and privacy is good. Billy is sure Houdini would have agreed with that.

He goes back to the table, where the expensive Mac Pro is still playing Canfield. He powers up his own laptop and goes to Amazon. You can buy anything at Amazon.

A stretch of curb in front of Gerard Tower has been stenciled AUTHORIZED PARKING ONLY. At quarter past eleven a truck with a big sombrero on the side pulls up there. Below the sombrero, JOSE’S EATS. And below that, TODOS COMEN! People start leaving the building, trundling toward the truck like ants drawn to sugar. Five minutes later another truck pulls up behind the first. On the side of this one is a grinning cartoon boy woofing down a double cheeseburger. At eleven-thirty, while people are lined up for burgers and fries and tacos and enchiladas, a hotdog wagon appears.

Time to eat, Billy thinks. Also time to meet some more neighbors.

There are four people waiting for the elevator, three men and a woman. All are dressed for business and all look to be in their mid-thirties, the woman maybe even younger. Billy joins them. One asks if he’s the new writer in residence … as if Billy has supplanted an old one. Billy says he is and introduces himself. They do likewise: John, Jim, Harry, Phyllis. Billy asks what’s good down below. John and Harry suggest the Mexican wagon. ‘Excellent fish tacos, ’ John says. Jim says the burgers aren’t bad and the onion rings are A-plus. Phyllis says she has her face fixed for one of Petie’s chili dogs.

‘None of it’s haute cuisine, ’ Harry says, ‘but it beats brown-bagging it. ’

Billy asks about the café across the street and all four shake their heads. Such instant unanimity strikes Billy funny and he has to grin.

‘Stay away from it, ’ Harry says. ‘Crowded at lunch. ’

‘And the prices are high, ’ John adds. ‘I don’t know about writers, but when you work for a start-up law firm, you have to watch your nickels and dimes. ’

‘Lots of lawyers in the building? ’ Billy asks Phyllis as the elevator doors open.

‘Don’t ask me, ask them, ’ she says. ‘I’m with Crescent Accounting. Answer the phone and check tax returns. ’

‘Quite a few of us legal beagles, ’ Harry says. ‘Some on three and four, a few more on six. I think there’s a start-up architectural firm on seven. And I know there’s a photography studio on eight. Commercial stuff for catalogs. ’

John says, ‘If this place was a TV show, they’d call it The Young Lawyers. The big firms are mostly two or three blocks over, other side of the courthouse on Holland Street and Emery Plaza. We stay close and get crumbs from the big boys’ table. ’

‘And wait for the big boys to die, ’ Jim adds. ‘Most of the lawyers in the old-line firms are dinosaurs who wear three-piece suits and sound like Boss Hogg. ’

Billy thinks of the sign in front: OFFICE SPACE AND LUXURY APARTMENTS NOW AVAILABLE. It looked like it had been there awhile, and like Hoff, it had a certain whiff of desperation. ‘I’d guess your firm got a break on the lease. ’

Harry gives Billy a thumbs-up. ‘Bang. Four years at a price just north of incredible. And the lease will hold even if the guy who owns the building, Hoff’s his name, goes into Chapter 11. Ironclad. It gives us little fellas some time to get traction. ’

‘Besides, ’ Jim says, ‘a lawyer who gets screwed on his own lease agreement deserves to go broke. ’

The young lawyers laugh. Phyllis smiles. The doors open on the lobby. The three men forge ahead, intent on chow. Billy crosses the lobby with Phyllis at a more leisurely pace. She’s a good-looking woman in an understated way, more daisy than peony.

‘Curious about something, ’ he says.

She smiles. ‘It’s a writer’s stock in trade, isn’t it? Curiosity? ’

‘I suppose so. I’m seeing a lot of people dressed casual. Like them. ’ He points to a couple just approaching the door. The guy is wearing black jeans and a Sun Ra tee. The woman with him is in a smock top that declares her pregnant belly rather than hiding it. Her hair is pulled back in a careless ponytail secured with a red rubber band. ‘Don’t tell me those two are lawyers or architectural assistants. I guess they could be from the photography studio, but there’s a whole herd of them. ’

‘They work for Business Solutions on the second floor. The whole second floor. It’s a collection agency. We call them BS for a reason. ’ She wrinkles her nose as if at a bad smell, but Billy doesn’t miss the touch of envy in her voice. Dressing for success may be exciting at first, but as time passes it must become a drag, especially for women – the good hair, the good makeup, the click-clack shoes. Surely this nice-looking woman from the accounting firm on the fifth floor must from time to time think about how much of a relief it would be to just slop on a pair of jeans and a shell top, add a dash of lipstick, and call it good.

‘You don’t need to dress up when you spend the day working the phones in a great big open-plan office, ’ Phyllis says. ‘Your targets don’t see you when you’re telling them to cough up the cash or the bank will slap a lien on your house. ’ She stops just shy of the doors, looking thoughtful. ‘I wonder what they make. ’

‘I guess you don’t crunch their numbers. ’

‘You guess right. But keep us in mind if you hit big with your book, Mr Lockridge. We’re also a new firm. I think I’ve got a card in my purse …’

‘Don’t bother, ’ Billy says, touching her wrist before she can do any serious digging. ‘If I hit it big, I’ll just come down the hall and knock on your door. ’

She gives him a smile and an appraising look. There’s no engagement or wedding ring on her third finger left, and Billy thinks that in another life, this is when he’d ask her to come for a drink after work. She might say no, but that look, up from under her lashes, along with the smile, makes him think she’d say yes. But he won’t ask. Meet people, yes. Get liked and like in return, yes. But don’t get close. Getting close is a bad idea. Getting close is dangerous. Maybe after he retires that will change.

Billy gets a burger dragged through the garden and sits on one of the plaza benches with Lawyer Jim, whose actual name is Jim Albright. ‘Try one of these, ’ he says, holding out a fat onion ring. ‘Fucking delicious. ’

It is. Billy says he’s got to get some of those and Jim Albright says goddam right you do. Billy gets his rings in a little paper boat along with some packets of ketchup and goes back to sit with Jim.

‘So what’s your book about, Dave? ’

Billy puts a finger to his lips. ‘Top secret. ’

‘Even if I signed an NDA? Johnny Colton specializes in em. ’ He points to one of his colleagues, over by the Mexican wagon.

‘Not even then. ’

‘I admire your discretion. I thought writers loved to talk about what they’re working on. ’

‘I think writers who talk a lot probably don’t write a lot, ’ Billy says, ‘but since I’m the only writer I actually know, I’m really just guessing. ’ Then, and not entirely to change the subject, either: ‘Look at the guy over there at the hotdog wagon. That’s an outfit you don’t see every day. ’

The man he’s pointing to has joined some of his colleagues at the Mexican food wagon. Even among the other Business Solutions employees, this one stands out. He’s wearing gold parachute pants that take Billy back to his Tennessee childhood, when some of the would-be town sharpies wore such gear to the Friday night dances at the Rollerdome. Above it is a paisley shirt with a high collar, like the ones worn by British Invasion rock groups in old YouTube videos. The ensemble is finished off with a porkpie hat. From beneath it, lush black hair spills to his shoulders.

Jim laughs. ‘That’s Colin White. Quite the fashion plate, ain’t he? Gay as hell and cheerful as a Sunday afternoon in Paris. Most of the BSers stick to their own. Earning their beer and skittles by dunning people at the end of their financial rope doesn’t exactly make them popular and they know it, but Colin’s a regular social butterfly. ’ Jim shakes his head. ‘At least at lunch he is. I have to wonder what he’s like when he’s on the clock, hectoring widows and busted-up vets out of their last quarters and dimes. He must be good at the job, because there’s a lot of turnover at that company and he’s been here longer than I have. ’

‘How long is that? ’

‘Eighteen months. Sometimes Col comes to work wearing a kilt. Serious! Sometimes a cape. He’s also got a Michael Jackson outfit – you know, the cavalry officer deal with the epaulets and the brass buttons? ’

Billy nods. Colin White is currently holding a cardboard box with a couple of tacos in it. He stops to talk with Phyllis, and something he says causes her to throw back her head and laugh.

‘He’s a doll, ’ Jim says, with what sounds like genuine affection.

Phyllis strolls off and sits with a few other women. A couple of Colin White’s cohorts make room for him. Before sitting down, he puts one foot behind the other and executes a quick turn that would have done the Gloved One proud. Billy puts him at five-nine, five-ten at most. Another piece of the plan. Maybe. Level 4 in the parking garage, maybe more laptops, and now Colin White. A bird of rare plumage.

That afternoon he sets the Mac Pro to playing itself at cribbage, with a five-second delay before each Player 1 move. He also sets it so that Player 2 will beat Player 1 every time. That should hold any lookie-loos for an hour or so. Then he powers up his own Mac, returns to Amazon, and buys two wigs: a blond one with short hair and a black one with long hair. In other circumstances he would have these sent to a storefront mail drop, but on this job there’s no point, not when David Lockridge will be ID’d as the shooter before the sun goes down on the day it happens.

With the wigs taken care of, he puts one of the blank Staples notebooks beside his personal lappie and begins a virtual tour of houses and apartments for rent. He finds a number of possibles, but any boots-on-the-ground investigation will have to wait until he gets his goods from Amazon.

It’s only two o’clock when he finishes his virtual house-hunting, too early to call it a day. It’s time to actually start writing. He’s thought about this quite a lot. At first he assumed he would use his own machine for that. Using the Pro might mean his employer – and possibly his ‘literary agent’ – could be reading over his shoulder, which makes him think of the telescreens in 1984. Would Nick and Giorgio be suspicious if they looked in and didn’t see any copy? Billy thinks they would be. They wouldn’t say anything, but it might give them the idea that Billy knows more about snooping and hacking than he wants them to know.

And there’s another reason to write on the Pro, even though it may be bugged. It’s a challenge. Can he really write a fictionalized dumb self version of his own life story? Risky, but he thinks maybe he can. Faulkner wrote dumb in The Sound and the Fury. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, is another example. There are probably more.

Billy quits the automated cribbage game and opens a blank Word document. He titles it The Story of Benjy Compson – a nod to Faulkner he’s sure neither Nick nor Giorgio will tip to. He sits for several seconds, drumming his fingers on his chest and looking at the blank screen.

This is a crazy risk, he thinks.

This is the last job, he thinks, and types the sentence he’s been holding in his mind for just this occasion.

The man my ma lived with came home with a broke arm.

He looks at this for almost a minute, then types again.

I don’t even remember his name. But he was plenty mad. I guess he must have went to the hospital first because it was in a cast. My sister

Billy shakes his head and fixes it so it’s better. He thinks so, anyway.

He looks at what he’s written and thinks he can do this. More, he wants to do this. Before starting to write, he would have said Yes I remember what happened, but only a little. Only now there’s more. Even that short paragraph has unlocked a door and opened a window. He remembers the smell of burned sugar, and seeing smoke seep out of the oven, and the chip on the side of the stove, and flowers in a teacup on the table, and some kid outside chanting ‘One p’tater two p’tater three p’tater four. ’ He remembers the heavy clod-clod-clod of that man’s boots coming up the steps. That man, that boyfriend. And now he even remembers the name. It was Bob Raines. He remembers thinking when he heard that man use his fists on Ma, Bob is raining. Bob is raining on Ma. He remembers her smiling after and saying He didn’t mean it. And It was my fault.

Billy writes for an hour and a half, wanting to bolt ahead but holding himself back. If Nick or Giorgio or even Elvis is looking in, they must see the dumb self going slowly. Struggling for every sentence. At least he doesn’t have to deliberately misspell words; the ones the computer doesn’t correct automatically it underlines in red.

At four o’clock he saves what he’s written and shuts down. He finds he’s looking forward to picking up the thread tomorrow.

Maybe he’s a writer after all.

When he gets back to Midwood, Billy finds a note thumbtacked to his door. It’s an invitation to have ribs and slaw and cherry cobbler at the Raglands’ down the street. He goes because he doesn’t want to be seen as standoffish, but with no enthusiasm, expecting an after-dinner conversation over cans of suds having to do with commie college kids this and dirty immigrants that. He is stunned to discover that Paul and Denise Ragland voted for Hillary Clinton and can’t stand Trump, who they call ‘President Crybaby. ’ Proving once more, Billy supposes as he walks home, that you can’t judge a man by his wifebeater.

He’s already been sucked in by a Netflix show called Ozark and is ready to start the third episode when his cell phone – his David Lockridge cell – dings with a text. George Russo, ever the concerned agent, wants to know how his first day went.

DLock: Pretty well. I did some writing.

GRusso: Good to hear. We’ll make you a bestseller yet. Can you drop by Thurs night? 7 PM, dinner. N wants to talk to you.

Nick is still in town, then, and probably in Vegas withdrawal.

DLock: Sure. But no H.

GRusso: Absolutely not.

That’s good. Billy thinks he could live long and die happy if he never saw Ken Hoff again. He turns off the TV and goes to bed. He slips easily into sleep, and at some point just before dawn’s prologue, he slips just as easily into a nightmare. Which he will write down tomorrow, as Benjy Compson. Changing the names to protect the guilty.

The man my ma lived with came home with a broke arm. I guess he must have went to the hospital first because it was in a cast. My sister was trying to bake cookies and she burnt them. I guess she forgot to keep track of the time. When that man came home he was plenty mad. He killed my sister and I don’t even remember his name. He started yelling as soon as he came in. I was on the floor of the trailer, putting together a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle that when it was done would be 2 kittens playing with a ball of yarn. I could smell the booze he was drinking even with the smoke from the cookies and found out later he got into a fight at Wally’s Tavern. He must have lost because he had a black eye too. My sister

Catherine was her name, although that’s not the one he’ll use – almost but not quite. Catherine Ann Summers, just nine on the day she died. Blonde. Small.

My sister Cassie was at the table we ate off, coloring in her book. She would have turned 10 in 2 or 3 months and she was looking forward to being in 2 figures instead of just 1. 1 was 11 and suppose to be looking out for her.

The boyfriend was yelling and waving at the smoke which only just started before he came in, asking what did you do what did you do and Cathy

Billy deletes that fast, hoping nobody is looking right then.

Cassie said I was baking cookies I guess they burnt I am sorry. And he said you are a stupid little bitch I don’t believe how stupid you are.

He open the oven door and more smoke come out. If we had a smoke detector it would have gone off but we didn’t have one in our trailer. He picked up a dish towel and started flapping it at the smoke. I would have got up to open the outside door but it was open already. The boyfriend reached in to get that cookie sheet. He grab it with his good hand but the dish towel slipped and he burnt his hand and spilled those cookies that were in shapes I helped Cassie cut out and they went all over the floor. Cassie got down to pick them up and that’s when he started killing her. Or maybe it happened right away when he swatted her with that cast upside her head and she flew into the wall. Out like a light anyway but maybe still alive only then he started kicking her with these boots he always wore that my ma called motorhuckle boots.

Stop it your killing her I said but he didn’t stop until I said stop it you son of a bitch bully chickenshit fucker STOP HURTING MY SISTER. So then I went to tackle him and he push me down

Billy gets up and goes to the window of the office that is now – he supposes – his writing room. People are coming and going on the courthouse steps, but he doesn’t see them. He goes into the little kitchenette for a drink of water. He spills a bit of it because his hands are trembling. They don’t tremble when he’s going to take a shot, they are always stone-steady then, but they are now. Not a lot, but enough to spill some water. His mouth and throat are dry and he drinks down the whole glass.

It has all come back to him and it all makes him ashamed. He will leave what he has written about trying to tackle Bob Raines, because it puts a layer of heroic fiction over the truth, which is close to unbearable. He didn’t tackle Bob Raines while Bob Raines was kicking his sister and stepping on her and crushing her fragile chest on which no breasts would ever appear. Billy was supposed to take care of her. Take care of your sister was the last thing Ma always said when she left for her job at the laundry. But he didn’t take care of her. He ran. He ran for his life.

But it was in my mind even then, he thinks as he goes back to the table and the laptop. It must have been, because it wasn’t our room I ran for.

‘I ran for theirs, ’ Billy says, and picks up where he left off.

So then I went to tackle him and he push me down and I got up and ran down the trailer to their room at the end and slam the door behind me. He started pounding on it right away, calling me every name in the book and said if you don’t open this door right now Benjy you are going to be one sorry-ass motherfucker. Only I knew it didn’t matter if I opened the door or not because he’d do me like he did Cassie. Because she was dead, even a kid of 11 could see that.

Ma’s boyfriend use to be in the army and he kept his footlocker at the end of the bed with a blanket over it. I pushed the blanket off and open the footlocker. He had a padlock for it but hardly ever used it, maybe never. If he had’ve I wouldn’t be writing this because I would be dead. And if that gun of his hadn’t been loaded I would be dead but I knew it was because he kept it loaded in case of what he called burg-gurg-gurglers.

Burg-gurg-gurglers, Billy thinks. Christ, how it all comes back.

He bust in the door like I was pretty sure he would

Not pretty sure, Billy thinks, I knew. Because it was nothing but fiberboard. Cathy and I used to hear them going at it just about every night. In the afternoon, if Ma came home early. But that was another fiction he would leave.

and when he come in I was sitting with my back against the foot of the bed with his gun pointing at him. It was an M9X19 that took 15 Parabellum rounds. I didn’t know that then of course but I knew it was heavy and I held it in both hands against my chest. He said give that to me you useless piece of shit don’t you know kids ain’t supposed to play with guns.

Then I shot him, dead center mass. He just stood there in the doorway like nothing happen but I knew it did because I saw the blood fly out of his back. The M9 recoiled against my chest

Billy remembers making an uh sound. And burping. And later on he had a bruise there above his sternum.

and he fell down. I went over to him and said to myself that I might have to shoot him again. If I had to I would. He was my mother’s boyfriend but he was wrong. He was a bad guy!

‘Except he was dead, ’ Billy says. ‘Bob Raines was dead. ’

He thinks briefly of deleting everything he’s written, it’s awful, but saves it instead. He doesn’t know what anyone else might think, but Billy thinks it’s good. And good that it’s awful, because awful is sometimes the truth. He guesses he really is a writer now, because that’s a writer’s thought. É mile Zola might have thought the same when he was writing Thé rè se Raquin, or when Nana gets sick and all of her beauty rots away.

His face feels hot. He goes back to the kitchenette and splashes water on it, then stands bent over the little sink with his eyes shut. The memory of shooting Bob Raines doesn’t bother him, but it hurts to remember Cathy.

Take care of your sister.

Writing is good. He’s always wanted to do it, and now he is. That’s good. Only who knew it hurt so much?

The landline phone rings, making him jump. It’s Irv Dean, telling him he has a package from Amazon. Billy says he’ll come right down and pick it up.

‘Man, that company sells everything, ’ Irv says.

Billy agrees, thinking You don’t know the half of it.

It’s not the wigs; even with Amazon’s speedy delivery, those won’t come until tomorrow. What he’s got today would fit in the cubby over the doorway between the office and the kitchen, but Billy has no intention of stowing it there; all his Amazon swag is going back to the yellow house in Midwood.

He opens the box and takes out the things he ordered one by one. From Fun Time Ltd in Hong Kong is a box containing a mustache made of real human hair. Blond, like one of the wigs he’s ordered. It’s a little bushy; when the time comes he’ll trim it. He wants to disguise, not to stand out. Next is a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with clear lenses. These are surprisingly hard to find. You can buy reading glasses at any drugstore, but Billy’s vision is 20/10 and even slight magnification gives him headaches. He tries them on and finds the fit is a little loose. He could tighten the bows, but won’t. If they slide down his nose a bit, they’ll give him a scholarly air.

Last, the most expensive item, the piè ce de ré sistance. It’s a silicone pregnancy belly, sold by Amazon but made by a company called MomTime. It was expensive because it’s adjustable, allowing the wearer to look anywhere from six to nine months pregnant. It attaches with Velcro straps. Billy knows that these fake bellies are notorious shoplifting tools, big-box security personnel are told to be on the lookout for them, but Billy has not come to this small city to shoplift, and it won’t be a woman wearing it when the time comes.

That will be his job.

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