CHAPTER 10

Thursday morning. The day of. Billy gets up at five. He eats toast with a glass of water to wash it down. No coffee. No caffeine of any kind until the job is done. When he shoulders the 700 and looks through the Leupold scope, he wants his hands perfectly steady.

He puts his toast plate and the empty water glass in the sink. Lined up on the table are his four cell phones. He takes the SIM cards from three of them – the Billy-phone, the Dave-phone, the burner – and microwaves the cards for two minutes. He dons an oven glove, picks out the charred remains, and grinds them up in the garbage disposal. The three SIMless phones go in a paper bag. He adds the Dalton Smith phone, the Yale lock, and the plain gray gimme cap he wore to Pearson Street when he dropped off the Dalton Smith gear and watered Beverly’s plants.

He stands in the doorway for a few moments, laptop slung over one shoulder, looking around. This isn’t home, he hasn’t really had a place he could call home since Officer F. W. S. Malkin drove him away from 19 Skyline Drive in the Hillview Trailer Park (and that wasn’t much of one, especially after Bob Raines killed his sister), but he guesses this place has been close.

‘Well okay then, ’ Billy says, and goes out. He doesn’t bother to lock the door. No need for the cops to break it down. Bad enough that they’ll assuredly trample all over the lawn he worked so hard to bring back.

Billy doesn’t drive to the parking garage. The parking garage is done. At five to six he parks on Main Street a few blocks from the Gerard Tower. Plenty of curbside spaces at this hour and the sidewalk is deserted. His laptop is over his shoulder. The paper bag is in his hand. He leaves the keys in the Toyota’s cup holder. Maybe somebody will steal it, although that’s not actually necessary. Neither is dropping the three dead cell phones through three different sewer grates, always checking his surroundings to be sure he’s not observed. It’s what they called ‘policing up the area’ in the Marines. After he drops the third one, he checks to see if he brought Shan’s drawing of her and the flamingo. The one whose name has been changed to Dave. It’s there. Good. It’s a keeper.

He cuts down Geary Street, walks a block away from Gerard Tower, and comes to the alley he scoped out. After again checking to make sure he’s unobserved (also that there’s no inconvenient wino sleeping it off in there), Billy enters the alley and crouches behind the second of two dumpsters. Trash pickup day in this city is Friday, so both are full and reeking. He stows his laptop and the gray gimme cap behind the dumpster, then scavenges a bunch of packing paper and covers them.

This part worries him more than taking the shot. Do you call that irony? He doesn’t know. What he knows is that he doesn’t want to lose the lappie any more than he wants to lose the copy of Thé rè se Raquin he was reading when he came to this city (the book is safely stowed at 658 Pearson). Lucky charms are what they are. Like the baby shoe he carried during Operation Vigilant Resolve and most of Phantom Fury.

The chances of someone coming down this alley, looking behind the dumpster, lifting the garbage-bespattered packing paper, and stealing his laptop are small, and they’d never be able to crack the password, but the object matters. He can’t bring it, though, because he can’t leave Gerard Tower with it slung over his shoulder. He has seen Colin White with his phone, and a couple of times he’s shown up for lunch still wearing the headset that must just about be a part of him, but Billy has never seen him with a laptop.

He gets to Gerard Tower at twenty past six. This street dead-ending at the courthouse will be a hive full of worker bees later on, but now it’s a graveyard. The only person he sees is a sleepy-eyed woman putting out the breakfast specials signboard in front of the Sunspot Café. Billy wonders if the flashpot is already in place behind it, then dismisses the thought. The flashpots are not his problem, nor is the fire Ken Hoff promised out in Cody. Billy will take the shot no matter what. It’s his job, and with his bridges burning one by one behind him, he means to do it. There’s no other choice.

Irv Dean isn’t at the security stand, and won’t be until seven, maybe seven-thirty, but one of the building’s two janitors is buffing the lobby floor. He looks up as Billy goes to the card reader to record his entry, just like a good boy should.

‘Hey, Tommy, ’ Billy says, heading for the elevators.

‘What’re you doing here so early, Dave? God isn’t even up. ’

‘I’ve got a deadline, ’ Billy tells him, thinking what an apt word that is for today’s business. ‘I’ll probably be here until God goes back to bed. ’

That makes Tommy laugh. ‘Go get em, tiger. ’

‘That’s the plan, ’ Billy says.

He takes the two paper bags down to the fifth-floor men’s room. He stows his Colin White disguise, not neglecting the wig of long black hair (maybe the most important part), in the trash basket by the washbasins, then covers it with paper towels. The sign and the padlock go on the door. The key goes in his pocket, along with Dalton’s phone and the Benjy Compson flash drive.

Halfway back to his office, he has a nasty thought. There were a few moments on his way here when he lost focus, his mind on Shan’s drawing instead of staying where it belonged, on this morning’s preparations. Has he dropped the Dalton Smith phone into a sewer instead of one of the others? The idea is so terrible that in that moment he’s positive that’s just what he did, that when he reaches in his pocket he’ll find the Billy-phone, or the Dave-phone, or that useless burner. If so, he can replace it, his Dalton Smith credit cards are all good, but what if Don or Beverly Jensen should call on the day or two before FedEx can deliver a new one to 658 Pearson? They’ll wonder why he’s out of touch. It might not matter, but it might. Good neighbors, grateful neighbors, might even call the police and ask them to check his basement apartment to make sure he’s okay.

He grasps the phone, and for a moment just holds it, feeling like a roulette player afraid to look at the wheel and see which color the little ball has landed on. The worst thing – worse than the inconvenience, even worse than the potential danger – is knowing he was careless. He let his thoughts slip to the life that’s now behind him.

He brings the phone out of his pocket and breathes a sigh of relief. It’s the one that belongs to Dalton. He’s gotten away with one potential mistake. He can’t make another. The fates are unforgiving.

Quarter of seven. Billy goes to the local paper on his Dalton Smith phone and uses a Dalton Smith credit card to get behind the paywall. The front page headline has to do with the upcoming state elections, but near the bottom of the page, what would have been below the fold in the old days of actual newspapers, there’s a headline reading ALLEN TO BE ARRAIGNED, CHARGED WITH HOUGHTON MURDER. The story begins, ‘After a protracted extradition fight, Joel Allen will finally have the first of many days in court. Prosecutors plan to charge him with first-degree murder in the slaying of James Houghton, 43, and assault with intent to kill in the near-fatal shooting of …’

Billy doesn’t bother with the rest, but he sets his phone to receive news alerts from the paper. He sits at the desk in the outer office and prints a note on a page torn from one of the Staples pads that have otherwise never been used. WORKING UNDER DEADLINE, PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB, it reads. He tapes it to the door and locks the door from the inside.

He takes the pieces of the Remington 700 from the overhead cabinet and lays them out on the table where he’s done his writing. Seeing them there, like an exploded schematic in a firearms manual, brings back Fallujah. He pushes the memories away. That’s another life that’s behind him.

‘No more mistakes, ’ he says, and puts the rifle together. Barrel, bolt, the extractor and ejector spring, the butt plate and butt plate spacer, all the rest. His hands move swiftly and almost of their own accord. He thinks briefly of that poem by Henry Reed, the one that begins Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday, we had daily cleaning. He pushes that away, too. No more thinking of little girls’ pictures this morning and no poetry. Later, maybe. And maybe later he will write. Now he has to keep his mind on his business and his eyes on the prize. That he no longer cares much about the prize doesn’t matter.

The scope comes last, and once again he uses the sighting app to make sure it remains accurate. True-down, they used to say. He runs the bolt three times, adds a drop or two of oil, and runs it again. There’s no need of this when he only intends to fire once, but it’s how he was taught. Last, he loads the magazine and cycles the bolt to move the killing round into the chamber. He lays the weapon with care (but no reverence, not anymore) on the table.

He uses a thumbtack, a length of string, and a Sharpie to trace a circle two inches in diameter on the window. He crisscrosses it with masking tape, then starts in with the glass cutter. His phone chimes softly while he’s going round and round, but Billy doesn’t even pause. It takes him awhile because the glass is thick, but in the end the circlet of glass comes out as neatly as the cork from a wine bottle. A breath of cool morning breeze slips in through the hole.

He checks his phone and sees he’s gotten a text alert from the newspaper. Warehouse fire in Cody, a four-alarm job. Looking out the window, Billy can see a pillar of black smoke. He doesn’t know where Ken Hoff got his information, but it was bang on the money.

It’s now seven-thirty, and he is as ready as he can be. As ready as he needs to be, he hopes. He sits down in the chair where he has done his writing, hands clasped loosely in his lap, and waits. As he waited in Fallujah, high up and across the river from the Internet café run by the Arab who tattled on the Blackwater contractors and set off a firestorm. As he did on a dozen rooftops, listening to gunfire and garbage bags rattling in palm trees. His heartbeat is slow and regular. There are no nerves. He watches the traffic pick up on Court Street. Soon all the parking spaces will be full. He watches customers enter the Sunspot Café. A few sit outside, where Billy sat months ago with Ken Hoff. A Channel 6 news truck comes lumbering up the street, but it’s the only one. Either the warehouse fire has drawn away the others, or Joel Allen isn’t a big priority. Probably both, Billy thinks. He waits. The time passes. It always does.

The Business Solutions crew starts arriving at ten to eight, some carrying go-cups. They’ll be hard at it by eight-fifteen, dunning folks who are over their heads in debt, translucent shades dropped over the big windows to discourage them from looking away from their work for even a few seconds. Some stop on their way to the lobby doors to stare at the pillar of black smoke rising over the courthouse from out Cody way. Colin White is among them. No coffee in a go-cup for him; he’s got a can of Red Bull. Today he’s wearing tie-dyed bellbottoms and a blaze orange T-shirt. Nothing like the outfit Billy’s hidden away, but in the confusion it shouldn’t matter.

More people arrive, but in this under-occupied building, not that many. Most are headed for the courthouse. At eight-thirty, Jim Albright and John Colton come down Court Street and cut across the plaza. They are carrying big boxy briefcases. And behind them, Phyllis Stanhope. Her fall coat has come out of its closet hibernation for the first time. It’s scarlet, making Billy think of Little Red Riding Hood. He has a brief and vivid memory of her looking down at him, urging him deeper as he brushes her nipples with his thumbs. He pushes it away.

There are twelve people on the fifth floor, not counting Billy himself – five in the lawyers’ office and seven in the accounting office. The people in the lawyers’ office may or may not hear the shot, but Billy is counting on them hearing the bang when the first flashpot goes off. There will be a short pause as they look at each other, asking what was that, and then they’ll hurry across the hall to the Crescent Accounting Service, because those are the windows facing Court Street. By then the second flashpot will have gone off. They’ll crowd together and look out, trying to decide what has happened and what they should do. Go down or stay put? There will be differing opinions. He thinks it may be as long as five minutes before they decide to go down, because they have a high vantage point and all the hoohaw is either across the street, at the courthouse, or up on the corner at the news and stationery store. Billy won’t need five minutes. Three should do it, maybe only two.

His phone chimes with another news push. The warehouse fire has spread to a nearby storage facility, and fire crews from other districts are on their way. Route 64 will be closed until at least noon. Motorists are advised to use State Road 47A. At five to nine, another push announces that the fire is being brought under control. So far there are no reported injuries or fatalities.

Billy is now sitting in front of the window with the Remington across his knees. The day is clear as a bell, the rain Nick fretted about hasn’t happened, the breeze is no more than a refreshing breath, the Channel 6 film crew is all set and ready to record for News at Noon, so where is the star of the show? Billy expected Allen to be delivered in a county sheriff’s vehicle rather than in the perp bus, and on the dot of nine, at which time he’d be escorted to a holding room until the judge was ready for him, but it’s now five past and there’s no sign of any official vehicle arriving from the county jail on Holland Street.

Ten past and still nothing. The breakfast crowd at the Sunspot is clearing out. Soon the woman in charge, no longer sleepy-eyed, will take in the signboard with the breakfast specials and replace it with the one for the lunch specials.

Quarter past nine and the smoke billowing above the courthouse seems to be thinning. Billy is starting to wonder if there’s been a glitch. By twenty past he’s sure of it. Maybe Allen’s sick, or has made himself sick. Maybe somebody has attacked him in county. Maybe he’s in the infirmary, or even dead. Maybe he’s pretended to go mental in order to delay the arraignment. Maybe he actually has gone mental.

At nine-thirty, as Billy is considering his exit options – disassembling the gun will be step one, no matter what – a black SUV with COUNTY SHERIFF on the side glides onto Court Street. Blue lights are flashing on the roof and inside the grill. The small Channel 6 film crew, which has been lounging around, snaps to attention. A woman in a short dress the exact same red as Phil’s fall coat steps out of the TV truck. She’s holding a microphone in one hand and a small mirror in the other, to check her appearance. The mirror heliographs bright morning sun Billy’s way and he turns his head to avoid the dazzle.

Two cops, walkies in hand, emerge from the courthouse and trot down the stone stairs as the SUV stops at the curb. The front passenger door opens and a portly man in a brown suit and a ridiculously large white Stetson gets out. A uniformed cop gets out on the driver’s side. The TV crew is filming. The reporter starts to approach the portly man, who is surely the county sheriff. No one else would dare to wear a Stetson like that. The courthouse cops move to block the reporter, but the portly man beckons her forward. She asks a question and holds the mic to him for his reply. Billy can guess the gist of it: we know how to handle dangerous men like this, justice will be done, vote for me next November.

The reporter has her sound bite and takes a step back. The portly man turns to the SUV. The back door opens and another uniformed cop gets out. This one’s an XL widebody. Billy raises the Remington to port arms, watching and waiting. The driver joins the widebody. They turn to the open door and now Joel Allen emerges. Because it’s just the arraignment and there’s no jury to impress, he’s wearing an orange DOCC coverall instead of civvies. His hands are cuffed in front of him.

The reporter wants to ask Allen a question, probably something insightful like did you do it, but this time the portly man pushes out his hands at her. Allen is grinning at her and saying something. Billy doesn’t need the scope to see that.

The humungous cop takes Allen by the elbow and turns him to the courthouse steps. They start their climb. Billy slides the barrel of the Remington through the hole in the glass. He snugs the butt plate into the hollow of his shoulder and puts his elbows on his slightly spread knees, for a shot like this all the support he needs. He looks into the scope and the scene down there jumps close. He can see the creases in the portly man’s sunburned neck. He can see the keyring jingling and bouncing on the humungous cop’s belt. He can see a tuft of Allen’s light brown hair sticking up in the back. Billy will put the slug right through that cowlick and into the brain beneath. Into the secret Allen’s been keeping, the one he’s been hoping is his Get Out of Jail Free card.

This time the flash of memory is the kids pig-piling on him when Derek beat him in that last Monopoly game. He banishes it. Now it’s just him and Allen. They are the only ones in the world. It comes down to this. Billy pulls in an easy breath, holds it, and takes the shot.

The force of the slug frees Allen from the grip of his cop minder. He flies forward with his arms out and hits the steps. The front of his skull gets there before the rest of him. The portly sheriff runs for cover, losing his ridiculous cowboy hat. The woman reporter also beats feet. The camera guy crouches reflexively but holds his ground. So does the widebody cop. The Dixie-fried Marine sergeant who signed Billy up would have loved both those guys. Especially the widebody, who takes one glance at Allen and then whirls, pulling his gun and looking for the source of the shot. This guy’s got his shit together, and he’s quick, but Billy has already withdrawn the 700. He drops it on the floor and goes into the outer office.

He peeks into the hall and sees no one. The first flashpot goes off. It’s a good loud bang. Billy takes off, sprinting all-out for the men’s, pulling the key from his pocket as he goes. He turns it in the base of the Yale lock and just as he slips inside the bathroom, he hears raised, excited voices from the far end of the hall. The Young Lawyers, plus their paralegal and their secretary, are headed across to Crescent Accounting, right on schedule.

Billy bends over the trash basket, tosses aside the paper towels, and grabs the components of his disguise. He yanks the parachute pants on over his jeans, pulls the drawstring, granny-knots it. There’s no fly to zip. He puts on the Rolling Stones jacket. Then, looking in the washbasin mirror, he dons the wig. The black hair only falls halfway down the nape of his neck, but it obscures his forehead to his eyebrows and the sides of his face.

He opens the men’s room door. The hall is empty. The lawyers and accountants (Phil among them) are still gawking at the confusion below. Soon they will decide to exit the building, and at least some of them will take the stairs because they are too many for the elevator, but not yet.

Billy leaves the bathroom and starts down the stairs. He can hear commotion below him, plenty of it, but the flight between four and three is empty. The people on those floors are still gawking out the windows. Not on the second floor, though, that’s all Business Solutions, and even without the translucent shades they wouldn’t have the panoramic view offered by the street-facing windows higher up. He can hear them clumping down the stairs, babbling as they go. Colin White will be among them, but no one should notice he now has a doppelgä nger, because Billy will be behind them and nobody is going to be looking back. Not this morning.

Billy pauses just above the second-floor landing. He stands there until the thundering herd has dried up, then continues down to the first floor, behind a man in khaki cargo shorts and a woman in unfortunate plaid slacks. For a moment he’s forced to stop, probably because there’s a jam-up in the door giving on the first-floor lobby. This makes him nervous, because folks from the upper floors will soon be coming down these stairs. Some of them will be people from five.

Then the crowd gets moving again, and five seconds later – while Jim, John, Harry, and Phil are still looking out from high above, Billy hopes – he’s in the lobby. Irv Dean has abandoned his post. Billy can see him on the plaza, easy to pick out in his blue security vest. Colin White in his bright orange shirt is also easy to pick out. He’s got his phone raised, taking video of the confusion: cops running up the street toward the smoke billowing from between the Sunspot Café and the travel agency next door, cops and bailiffs shouting for people to go back into the courthouse and shelter in place, people running down from more smoke on the corner, yelling their heads off.

Colin isn’t the only one taking video. Others, apparently feeling that a raised iPhone makes them invulnerable, are doing the same. But they are the minority, Billy sees as he steps outside. Most people just want to get away. He hears someone yell Active shooter! Someone else is shouting They bombed the courthouse! Another bawls Armed men!

Billy cuts across the plaza to the right, onto Court Street Place. This short tree-lined diagonal will take him to Second Street, which runs behind the parking garage. He’s not alone, over three dozen people are ahead of him and at least that many behind him, all using this route away from the chaos, but he’s the only one who pays attention to the DPW Transit van parked at the curb. Dana is behind the wheel. Reggie, dressed in the regulation city coverall, is standing by the back door and scanning the crowd. Most of those fleeing Court Street are talking on their phones. Billy wishes he could pretend to do the same, but the Dalton Smith phone is in his jeans, under the parachute pants. A missed opportunity, but you can’t think of everything.

He knows better than to drop his head because Dana or Reggie might notice that (more likely Dana), but he moves up beside a plump woman who is panting and holding her pocketbook to her breasts like a shield. As they approach the van, Billy turns his head to her and raises his voice in an approximation of Colin White’s when Colin’s doing his I’m-the-gayest-of-them-all shtick. ‘What happened? Oh my God, what happened? ’

‘Some kind of terrorism thing, I think, ’ the woman replies. ‘Jesus, there were explosions! ’

‘I know! ’ Billy cries. ‘Oh my God, I heard! ’

Then they’re past. Billy risks one quick look over his shoulder. He has to make sure they aren’t looking at him. Or coming after him. They’re not. More people than ever are now using Court Street Place to get away; they crowd the sidewalk. Reggie is scoping them hard, standing on his tiptoes, trying to catch sight of Billy. Presumably Dana is, too. Billy speeds up, leaving the plump woman behind, weaving around others. Not quite race-walking, but almost. He turns left on Second Street, left again on Laurel, then right on Yancey. The exodus is behind him now. A young guy on the street grabs Billy by the shoulder, wanting to know what the hell is going on.

‘I don’t know, ’ Billy says. He shakes free and walks on.

Behind him, sirens rise in the air.

His laptop is gone.

Billy yanks out the packing paper, now splattered with globs of Chinese food from the overflowing dumpster, and uncovers nothing but old cobblestones. His mind sideslips back to Fallujah and the baby shoe. To Taco saying You keep that thing safe, brah. He kept it tied to his belt loop by the laces, bouncing against his hip with the rest of the things he carried. That they all carried.

He doesn’t need the fucking laptop, he has the flash drive with Benjy’s story on it, Rudy ‘Taco’ Bell and the others still unwritten but waiting in the wings. He can go on once he gets to the basement apartment. There’s nothing on the lappie to connect him to his Dalton Smith life, even if someone, some supergeek out of a movie, could crack the password. The only connection to his Dalton Smith life besides the Jensens is Bucky Hanson, and he has only communicated with Bucky on a phone that no longer exists.

So let it go. No choice and no loss.

But it feels like such bad luck. Such a bad omen. Almost like a final summation of a shit job he should have known better than to take.

He pounds his fist against the side of the dumpster hard enough to hurt and listens to the sirens. Right now he’s not worried about police, they are all headed to the courthouse, where some major clusterfuck is going down, but he has to worry about Reggie and Dana. Once they get tired of waiting, they’ll either conclude Billy’s gotten trapped in Gerard Tower or that he’s crossed them up. They can’t do anything if he’s still in the building, but if he’s decided to abandon the plan and strike out on his own, they can start cruising the streets and looking for him.

It’s not like the baby shoe, Billy thinks. And hell, the baby shoe wasn’t magic either, just magical thinking. The shit that happened after I lost it means nothing. Fortunes of war, baby, and so is this. Someone found the lappie and stole it, it’s gone, and you have to get under cover before that Transit van shows up, rolling slow.

He thinks of Dana Edison’s sharp little eyes behind those rimless spectacles. Billy got past those eyes once and doesn’t want to risk giving the man a second chance. He has to get to the basement apartment on Pearson Street, and fast.

Billy gets to his feet and hurries to the mouth of the alley. He sees a few cars but no Transit van. He starts to turn right, then freezes, amazed and disgusted at his own stupidity. It’s as if the dumb self has become his real self. He was just about to head for Pearson Street still wearing the wig, the Rolling Stones jacket, and the fucking parachute pants. Like wearing a neon sign saying CHECK ME OUT.

He runs back down the alley, stripping off the wig and jacket as he goes. Behind the dumpster again, he frees the waistband granny knot holding up the idiotic parachute pants, pushes them down, and steps out of them. He squats and bundles everything together. He shoves the bundle as deep as he can under the crumpled heaps of bespattered packing paper … and touches something. It’s hard and thin. Can it be the brim of a gimme cap?

It is. Did he really push it that far behind the dumpster? He tosses it aside and reaches in deeper, leaning his shoulder against the dumpster’s rusty side, the smell of Chinese food a miasma. His outstretched fingers brush something else. He knows what it is and can’t believe it. He stretches further, his cheek now against the dumpster’s rusty side, and grasps the handle of his laptop case. He pulls it out and looks at it unbelievingly. He could swear he didn’t push it in that far, but it seems he did. He tells himself it’s nothing like thinking he threw away the wrong phone, nothing at all like that, but it is.

Agreeing to be in this city so long was a mistake. Monopoly was a mistake. Having a backyard barbecue was a mistake. Knocking over those tin birds in the shooting gallery? Mistake. Having time to think and act like a normal person was the biggest mistake of all. He’s not a normal person. He’s a hired assassin, and if he doesn’t think like who and what he is, he’ll never get clear.

He uses a relatively clean swatch of the packing paper to wipe off the hat and the laptop case. He slings the strap over his shoulder and pulls on the gimme cap, which was once clean and is now grimy. He goes to the head of the alley and peers out again. A cop car comes squalling around the next corner, lights and siren. Billy pulls back until it passes. Then he heads out, walking briskly toward Pearson Street and the apartment building across from the demolished railway station. He thinks of Fallujah again, the endless sweeps through the narrow streets with the baby shoe bouncing against his hip. Waiting for the patrol to be over. Wanting to go back to the relative safety of the base a mile outside of town, where there would be hot food, touch football, maybe a movie under the desert stars.

Nine blocks, he tells himself. Nine blocks and you’re home and dry. Nine blocks and this particular patrol is over. No movie under the stars, that was Billy Summers, but Dalton Smith has both YouTube and iTunes on one of his AllTech computers. No violence, no explosions, just people doing zany things. Plus kissing at the end.

Nine blocks.

He has done seven of those blocks, and the more modern part of the city is behind him, when he sees a city Transit van roll across an intersection ahead. Billy supposes it could be another DPW Transit, they all look the same, but it’s moving slow, almost coming to a stop in the middle of West Avenue before speeding up again.

Billy has stepped into a doorway. When the van doesn’t return, he starts walking again, always looking ahead for cover should it return. If they come back and see him, he’s probably going to be dead. The closest thing he has to a weapon are the keys on his keyring. Unless, of course, Nick was playing straight with him all along. In that case he might get no more than a harsh tongue-lashing, but he has no intention of finding out. Either way, he has to keep going if he wants to get to the apartment building.

He pauses at the intersection, looking in the direction the Transit van went. He sees nothing but a few cars and a UPS truck. Billy trots across the street, head lowered, helpless not to think of Route 10 in Fallujah, also known as IED Alley.

He turns onto Pearson, jogs one final block, and there’s his building. He has to cross the street to get to it, and he feels an insane itching on his right shoulderblade, as if someone – it would be Dana, of course – is zeroing the sight of a silenced pistol in on it. The near-constant wind that blows across the rubble-strewn vacant lot sends a coupon fold-in sheet from the local newspaper against one of his ankles and Billy gives a little skip of surprise.

He hurries along the frost-heaved walk of 658, then up the steps. He looks over his shoulder for the Transit van, sure he’ll see it, but the street is deserted. The sirens are all behind him, like the rest of his David Lockridge life. He tries one key and it’s wrong. He tries another and that one is wrong, too. He thinks of the phone he could have lost and the laptop he could have lost, the way he lost the baby shoe.

Easy, he thinks. Those are your Evergreen Street keys, you never took them off your keyring, so chill out. You’re almost home free.

The next one opens the foyer door. He steps inside and closes it. He looks out through a ragged mesh of lace curtain, maybe Beverly Jensen’s work. He sees nothing, sees nothing, sees a crow land on some of the jagged rubble across the street, sees the crow take off, sees nothing, sees a kid on a trike with his mother walking patiently beside him, sees another sheet of newspaper go cartwheeling across the patched pavement, has time to think the patched pavement of Pearson Street, and then he sees the Transit van, going slow. Billy holds perfectly still. He can see through the mesh, but Reggie in the passenger seat can’t see in. He might notice a sudden movement behind the lace curtain, though. Billy thinks the other one certainly would.

The Transit van moves on. Billy waits for its brake lights to flash. They don’t, and then it’s out of sight. He’s not sure he’s safe, but he thinks he is. Hopes. He goes downstairs and lets himself into the apartment. Not home, just a place to hide, but for the time being that’s good enough.

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