CHAPTER 11

The basement apartment’s one window is covered by a length of burgundy cloth. Billy pushes it aside on its rod and sits down, thinking again that the apartment is like a submarine and this window is his periscope. He stays on the couch for fifteen minutes, arms folded across his chest, waiting for the Transit van to come back. It may even stop if Dana, who is no fool, decides the place might be worth checking out. Unlikely, when there are several rundown neighborhoods ringing the central city, but not impossible.

Billy has become more and more sure if they find him they mean to kill him.

Billy has no handgun, although it would have been simple enough to get one. There are gun sales in the area almost every day of the week, it seems. Not that he would have set foot in the building where the sale was being held when he could have bought a reliable piece in the parking lot for cash, no questions asked. Something simple, a. 32 or. 38 that could be easily concealed. It wasn’t forgetfulness in that case, he just hadn’t foreseen a situation where he might need one.

Although, he thinks, if you changed the plan without telling Nick, you must have foreseen something.

If they do come back – paranoid, but within the realm of possibility – what could Billy do about it? Not much. There’s a butcher knife in the kitchen. And a meat fork. He could use the meat fork on the first one in, and he knows that would be Reggie. The easy one. Then Dana would do him.

When fifteen minutes have passed and the bogus DPW truck hasn’t returned, Billy decides they have either moved on to another part of the city, maybe to check out the house on Evergreen Street, or have gone back to the McMansion to await further orders from Nick. He closes the curtain, shutting out the view, and looks at his watch. It’s twenty to eleven. How the time flies when you’re having fun, he thinks.

Channels 2 and 4 are broadcasting the usual morning drivel, but with crawls about the shooting and the explosions running across the bottom of the screen. The real motherlode is Channel 6, where they have trashed their morning shows to go live at the scene. They’ve got the goods to do that because someone in their news department dispatched a crew to the courthouse to cover Allen’s arraignment, and didn’t send them to Cody when the warehouse fire broke out. It might have been neglect or outright laziness, you didn’t wind up as the head of news in a small border south city like Red Bluff because you were Walter Cronkite, but whoever was in charge is going to look mighty wise in retrospect.

ONE DEAD, NO REPORTED INJURIES IN COURTHOUSE CATASTROPHE, reads the chyron at the bottom of the screen. The correspondent in the red dress is still doing her thing, although she’s now doing it on the corner of Main Street, because Court Street has been closed off. It looks to Billy like the city’s entire police force is down there, plus two forensics vans, one from the state police.

‘Bill, ’ the reporter says, presumably speaking to the anchor back in the studio, ‘I’m sure there’ll be a press conference later, but as of now we have no official word to pass on. We do have eyes on the scene, though, and I want to show you something that George Wilson, my incredibly brave cameraman, spotted just a few minutes ago. George, can you show that again? ’

George raises the camera, centers it on Gerard Tower, then zeroes in on the fifth floor. There’s hardly any shake in the image even at maximum zoom, and Billy can’t help admiring that. Cameraman George stood his ground when the shit hit the fan, kept his head when those all about him were losing theirs, he got footage that will no doubt go national, and thanks to his sharp eyes he’s probably just a step and a half behind the police at this point. He could have been a Marine, Billy thinks. Maybe he was. Just another jarhead bullet-sponge over there in the suck. For all I know, I could have passed him on what we called the Brooklyn Bridge, or hunkered down beside him in the Jolan graveyard while the wind blew and the shit flew.

The Channel 6 viewing audience, Billy among them, is treated to the image of a window with a shooter’s loophole cut into it. The sunglare on the glass helps, just as Dana said it would.

‘That is almost certainly where the shot came from, ’ the reporter says, ‘and we should know very soon who was using that office. The police may know already. ’

The picture switches to Bill in the studio. He’s looking suitably grave. ‘Andrea, we want to run your original story again, for people who may have just joined the broadcast. It’s really extraordinary. ’

They go to the video. Billy sees the SUV approaching with its blues alight. The door opens and the portly sheriff gets out. He has big ears, almost Clark Gable size. They seem to be anchoring his ridiculous Stetson. Andrea approaches, holding out the mic. The courthouse cops move in, but the sheriff holds up an imperious hand to stop them so she can ask her question.

‘Sheriff, has Joel Allen confessed to the murder of Mr Houghton? ’

The sheriff smiles. His accent is as southern as grits and collard greens. ‘We don’t need a confession, Ms Braddock. We’ve got all we need to get a conviction. Justice will be done. You can count on that. ’

The reporter in the red dress – Andrea Braddock – steps back. George Wilson centers his camera on the opening door of the SUV. Out comes Joel Allen, like a movie star popping out of his trailer. Andrea Braddock steps forward to ask another question but backs off obediently when the sheriff raises his hands to her.

You’ll never make the jump to the bigtime like that, Andrea, Billy thinks. You have to push, girl.

He leans forward. This is the moment, and it’s fascinating to see it from another angle, a different perspective. He hears the shot, a liquid whipcrack of sound. He doesn’t see the damage the bullet does, the editor in the Channel 6 video room has blurred it out, but he sees Allen’s body fly forward and hit the steps. The picture joggles and dips as Cameraman George goes into his reflexive crouch, then steadies again. After holding on the body for a moment, the camera pans to the widebody cop who’s looking up to find the source of the shot.

Then, boom! From up the street behind the Sunspot Café. There are screams. Wilson turns his magic eye in that direction to show fleeing pedestrians (Andrea Braddock among them, there’s no way to miss that red dress) and the smoke billowing out from between the Sunspot and the neighboring travel agency. Andrea starts to come back – Billy has to give her points for that – and then the second flashpot goes off. She cringes, whirls in that direction, takes a look, then jogs back to her first position. Her hair is disheveled, her mic pack is hanging by its cord, and she’s out of breath.

‘Explosions, ’ she says. ‘And someone has been shot. ’ She gulps. ‘Joel Allen, who was to be arraigned for the murder of James Houghton, has been shot on the courthouse steps! ’

Everything she’s got to say from then on will be anticlimactic, so Billy zaps off the TV. By tonight there will be interviews on Evergreen Street with people he knew in his Dave Lockridge life. He doesn’t want to see those. Jamal and Corinne won’t allow cameras anywhere near the kids, but Jamal and Corinne would be bad enough. And the Fazios. The Petersons. Even Jane Kellogg, the boozy widow from down the street. Their anger would be bad, their hurt and bewilderment worse. They’ll say they thought he was okay. They’ll say they thought he was nice, and is it shame he’s feeling?

‘Sure, ’ he tells his empty apartment. ‘Better than nothing. ’

Will it help if Shan and Derek and the other kids find out that their Monopoly buddy shot a bad guy? It would be nice to think so, but then there’s the fact that their Monopoly buddy shot the bad guy from cover. And in the back of the head.

He calls Bucky Hanson and gets voicemail. It’s what Billy expects, because when UNKNOWN CALLER comes up on his screen (Bucky knows better than to put Dalton Smith in his contacts), Bucky won’t answer even if he’s there and thinks it’s his client calling from a hick town in the border south.

‘Call me back, ’ Billy tells Bucky’s voicemail. ‘ASAP. ’

He paces the shotgun-style apartment, phone in hand. It rings less than a minute later. Bucky doesn’t waste time, and he doesn’t use names. Neither of them do. It’s an ingrained precaution, even if Bucky’s phone is secure and Billy’s is clean.

‘He wants to know where you are and what the hell happened. ’

‘I did the job, that’s what happened. He only needs to turn on the TV to see that. ’ Billy touches one of his back pockets with his free hand and feels a Dave Lockridge shopping list there. He has a tendency to forget them after he’s finished Krogering.

‘He says there was a plan. It was all set up. ’

‘I’m pretty sure a set-up is what it was. ’

There’s silence as Bucky chews this over. He’s been in the brokerage business for a long time, never been caught, and he’s not dumb. At last he says, ‘How sure? ’

‘I’ll know one way or another when the man pays the balance. Or when he doesn’t. Has he? ’

‘Give me a break. This thing only went down a couple of hours ago. ’

Billy glances at the clock on the kitchen wall. ‘More like three, and how long does it take to transfer money? We’re living in the computer age, in case you forgot. Check for me. ’

‘Wait one. ’ Billy hears clicking computer keys twelve hundred miles north of his basement apartment. Then Bucky comes back. ‘Nothing yet. Want me to get in touch? I’ve got an email cutout. Probably goes to his fat sidekick. ’

Billy thinks of Ken Hoff, looking desperate and smelling of mid-morning booze. A loose end. And he, Billy Summers, is another.

‘You still there? ’ Bucky asks.

‘Wait until three or so, then check again. ’

‘And if it’s still not there, do I email then? ’

Bucky has a right to ask. A hundred and fifty thousand of Billy’s million-five payday belongs to Bucky. A very nice bundle, and tax free, but there’s a drawback. You can’t spend money if you’re dead.

‘Do you have family? ’ In all the years he’s worked with Bucky, this is a question Billy has never asked. Hell, it’s been five years since he was face to face with the man. Their relationship has been strictly biz.

Bucky doesn’t seem surprised at the change of subject. This is because he knows the subject hasn’t changed. He’s the one link between Billy Summers and Dalton Smith. ‘Two ex-wives, no kids. I parted company with the last ex twelve years ago. Sometimes she sends me a postcard. ’

‘I think you need to get out of the city. I think you need to catch a cab to Newark Airport as soon as you hang up. ’

‘Thanks for the advice. ’ Bucky doesn’t sound mad. He sounds resigned. ‘Not to mention for royally fucking up my life. ’

‘I’ll make it worth your while. The man owes me one-point-five. I’ll see you get the one. ’

This time Billy reads the silence as surprise. Then Bucky says, ‘Are you sure you mean that? ’

‘I do. ’ He does. He feels tempted to promise Bucky the whole fucking thing, because he no longer wants it.

‘If you’re right about the situation, ’ Bucky says, ‘you could be promising me something your employer doesn’t mean to deliver. Maybe never meant to deliver. ’

Billy thinks again of Ken Hoff, who could almost have PATSY tattooed on his forehead. Did Nick think the same of Billy? The idea makes him mad, and he welcomes the feeling. It beats the hell out of feeling ashamed.

‘He’ll deliver. I’ll make sure of it. In the meantime, you need to get over the hills and far away. And travel under a different name. ’

Bucky laughs. ‘Don’t teach your grampy how to suck eggs, kiddo. I’ve got a place. ’

Billy says, ‘I guess I do want you to send a message through your email cutout. Write it down. ’

A pause. Then: ‘Give it to me. ’

‘“My client did the job and disappeared on his own, period. He’s Houdini, remember, question mark. Transfer the money by midnight, period. ”’

‘That it? ’

‘Yes. ’

‘I’ll text you when I hear, okay? ’

‘Okay. ’

He’s hungry, and why not? He hasn’t had anything but dry toast, and that was a long time ago. There’s a package of ground beef in the fridge. He peels open the plastic wrap and smells it. It seems all right, so he dumps half a pound or so into a skillet with a little bit of margarine. While he stands at the stove, chopping up the meat and stirring it around, his hand happens on that shopping list in his back pocket again. He takes it out and sees it’s not a shopping list at all. It’s Shan’s drawing of her and the pink flamingo, once named Freddy and now named Dave, although Billy guesses it won’t stay Dave for long. It’s folded up but he can see the red crayon ghosts of the hearts rising from the flamingo’s head toward hers. He doesn’t unfold it, just sticks it back in his pocket.

He’s laid in supplies for his stay and the cupboard beside the stove is full of canned goods: soup, tuna fish, Dinty Moore Beef Stew, Spam, SpaghettiOs. He takes a can of Manwich and dumps it over the simmering beef, sploosh. When it starts to bubble, he sticks two slices of bread into the toaster. While he waits for them to pop up, he takes Shan’s picture out of his pocket. This time he unfolds it. Ought to get rid of this, he thinks. Tear it up, flush it down the john. Instead he folds it and puts it in his pocket again.

The toaster pops. Billy puts the slices on a plate and spoons Manwich over them. He gets a Coke and sits down at the table. He eats what’s on the plate, then goes back for the rest. He eats that, too. He drinks the Coke. Then, as he’s washing out the skillet, his stomach knots up and he starts making a chugging sound. He runs to the bathroom, kneels in front of the bowl, and throws up until everything is in the toilet.

He flushes, wipes his mouth with toilet paper, flushes again. He drinks some water, then goes to his periscope window and looks out. The street is empty. So is the sidewalk. He guesses it’s often that way on Pearson Street. There’s nothing to see but the empty lot with the signs – NO TRESPASSING, CITY PROPERTY, DANGER KEEP OUT – guarding the jagged brick remnants of the train station. The abandoned shopping cart has disappeared but the men’s undershorts are still there, now caught on a bunch of weeds. An old Honda station wagon passes. Then a Ford Pinto. Billy wouldn’t have believed there were still any of those on the road. A pickup truck. No Transit van.

Billy closes the curtain, lies down on the couch, closes his eyes, and falls asleep. There are no dreams, at least that he can remember.

His phone wakes him up. It’s the ringtone, so Bucky must have news too detailed to put in a text. Only it’s not Bucky. It’s Bev Jensen, and this time she’s not laughing. This time she’s … what? Not crying, exactly, it’s more like the sound a baby makes when it’s unhappy. Grizzling.

‘Oh hi, hello, ’ she says. ‘I hope I’m not …’ A watery gulp. ‘… not bothering you. ’

‘No, ’ Billy says, sitting up. ‘Not at all. What’s wrong? ’

At that the grizzling escalates into loud sobs. ‘My mother is dead, Dalton! She really is! ’

Well shit, Billy thinks, I knew that. He knows something else. She’s drunk-dialed him.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss. ’ In his muzzy state that’s the best he can do.

‘I called because I didn’t want you to think I was a horrible person. Laughing and carrying on and talking about going on a cruise. ’

‘You’re not going? ’ This is a disappointment; he was looking forward to having the house to himself.

‘Oh, I guess we will. ’ She gives a morose sniff. ‘Don wants to and I guess I do, too. We had a little bit of a honeymoon on Cape San Blas – that’s on what they call the Redneck Riviera – but since then we haven’t been anywhere. I just … I didn’t want you to think I was dancing on Momma’s grave, or anything. ’

‘I didn’t, ’ Billy says. This is the truth. ‘You had a windfall and you were excited. Perfectly natural. ’

At this she lets go completely, crying and gasping and snorkeling and sounding like she’s on the verge of drowning. ‘Thank you, Dalton. ’ It comes out Dollen, like her husband. ‘Thank you for understanding. ’

‘Uh-huh. Maybe you ought to take a couple of aspirin and lie down for awhile. ’

‘That’s probably a good idea. ’

‘Sure. ’ There’s a soft bing. It has to be Bucky. ‘I’ll just say goodb—’

‘Is everything good there? ’

No, Billy thinks. Everything is mega fucked up, Bev, thanks for asking. ‘Everything’s fine. ’

‘I didn’t mean it about the plants, either. I’d feel terrible if I came back and found Daphne and Walter dead. ’

‘I’ll take good care of them. ’

‘Thank you. Thank you so very, very, very, very much. ’

‘You’re very welcome. I have to go, Bev. ’

‘Okay, Dollen. And thank you very, very, v—’

‘Talk soon, ’ he says, and ends the call.

The text is from one of Bucky’s many communication aliases. It’s brief.

bigpapi982: No transfer of funds yet. He wants to know where you are.

Billy texts back under one of his own communication aliases.

DizDiz77: People in hell want ice water.

He scrambles some eggs and heats some tomato soup for supper, and this time he’s able to keep it down. When he’s finished he puts on the six o’clock news, tuning to the NBC affiliate because he doesn’t want or need to watch the Channel 6 video again. An ad for Liberty Mutual is followed by his own picture. He’s in his Evergreen Street backyard wearing a smile and an apron that says NOT JUST A SEX OBJECT, I CAN COOK! Others in the background have had their faces blurred out, but Billy knows them all. They were his neighbors. The photo was taken at the barbecue he had for the folks on the street, and he’s guessing it came from Diane Fazio because she’s always clicking pix, either with her phone or her little Nikon. He notes that his grass (he still thinks of it as his) looks damn good.

The super beneath the picture says WHO IS DAVID LOCKRIDGE? He’s pretty sure the cops already know. Computer fingerprint searches are lickety-split these days, and his dabs are on file from his Marine days.

‘This is the man police believe is responsible for the brazen assassination of Joel Allen on the courthouse steps, ’ one of the two anchors says. He’s the one who looks like a banker.

The other anchor, the one who looks like a magazine model, picks up the narrative. ‘His motive is a mystery at this point, and so is his method of escape. Police are certain of one thing: he had help. ’

I didn’t, Billy thinks. It was offered and I turned it down.

‘Seconds after the rifle shot, ’ says the banker anchor, ‘there were two explosions, one across from the shooter’s location in the Gerard Tower, and the other from behind a building on the corner of Main and Court Streets. According to Chief of Police Lauren Conlee, these weren’t high explosive devices but rather flash-bangs of the sort used at fireworks shows and by some rock and roll bands. ’

Magazine model anchor picks it up. Why they go back and forth like that Billy doesn’t know. It’s a mystery. ‘Larry Thompson is on the scene, or as close to it as he can get, because Court Street is still blocked off. Larry? ’

‘That’s right, Nora, ’ Larry says, as if confirming he’s really Larry. Behind him is yellow police tape, and around the courthouse the misery lights on half a dozen cop cars are still flashing. ‘Police are now working under the assumption that this was a carefully planned mob hit. ’

Nailed that one, Billy thinks.

‘At her press conference today, Chief Conlee revealed that the suspected shooter, David Lockridge – probably an alias – has been in place since early summer, using a unique cover story. Here’s what she had to say. ’

Larry Thompson is replaced with a clip of the chief’s press conference. Sheriff Vickery, he of the ridiculous Stetson, isn’t in attendance. Conlee starts in with the story about how the shooter (she doesn’t bother calling him the suspect) pretended to be writing a book, and Billy turns the TV off.

Something is gnawing at him.

Half an hour later, while Billy is in the Jensens’ second-floor apartment, spritzing Daphne and Walter, he comes to a decision. He had no plans to leave his basement apartment on the day of the shooting, had in fact planned to stay there for several days, maybe even a week, but things have changed, and not for the better. There’s something he needs to know, and Bucky can’t help him with it. Bucky did his job, and if he’s smart, he’s now on a plane getting his ass out of the fallout zone. If there is fallout, that is. Billy still can’t be sure he’s not just jumping at shadows, but he has to find out.

He goes back downstairs and dons his Dalton Smith disguise, this time inflating the fake pregnancy belly almost to full and not neglecting the horn-rimmed glasses with the clear glass lenses, which have been waiting on the living room bookshelf with his copy of Thé rè se Raquin. It’s deep dusk now, he has that going for him. Zoney’s is relatively close, and that’s also on his side. What he doesn’t have going for him is the possibility that Nick’s guys are still combing the streets, Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan in one vehicle, Reggie and Dana in another, and it won’t be the Transit van this evening.

But Billy feels it’s a risk worth taking, because they’ll certainly believe he’s in hiding by now. They may even think he’s left the city. And if they should happen to cruise by him, the Dalton Smith rig should work. Or so he hopes.

He’s decided he needs a burner phone after all, and he doesn’t beat himself up for having thrown away a perfectly good one that morning. Only God can foresee everything, and it’s not on a level of stupidity like almost leaving that alley wearing his Colin White gear. In work like Billy’s – wetwork, not to put too fine a point on it – you make your plan and hope the stuff you don’t foresee won’t show up to bite you in the ass. Or put you in a little green room with an IV in your arm.

I can’t get nailed, he thinks. If I do, those fucking plants are going to die.

Everything in the sad little strip mall is closed except for the Zoney’s convenience store, and Hot Nails is never going to re-open at all. The windows are soaped over and there’s a legal notice of bankruptcy taped to the door.

Two Hispanic dudes checking out the Beer Cave are the only other customers. There’s a stack of boxed FastPhones between the display of energy shots and the one holding fifty different varieties of snackin’ cakes. Billy grabs a phone and takes it to the checkout. The woman who got stuck up, Wanda something, isn’t behind the counter. It’s a Middle Eastern-looking dude instead.

‘That it? ’

‘That’s it. ’ As Dalton Smith, he tries to speak in a slightly higher register. It’s another way of reminding himself of who he’s supposed to be.

The clerk rings him up. It comes to just under eighty-four dollars, with a hundred and twenty minutes thrown in. It would have been as much as thirty bucks cheaper at Walmart, but beggars can’t be choosers. Besides, in Wally World you have to worry about face recognition. It’s everywhere now. This place has video cams, but Billy’s betting they recycle every twelve or twenty-four hours. He pays cash. When you’re on the run – or in hiding – cash is king. The clerk wishes him a nice night. Billy wishes him the same.

It’s now dark enough that the few cars he meets are running with headlights, so he can’t see who’s behind them. There’s an urge, or maybe it’s an instinct, to drop his head each time one approaches, but that would look furtive. He can’t pull down the brim of the gimme cap, either, because he’s not wearing it. He wants the blond wig to do its thing. He’s not Billy Summers, the man both the police and Nick’s hardballs are looking for. He’s Dalton Smith, a small-time computer geek who lives on the po’ side of town and has to keep pushing his hornrims up on his nose. He’s overweight from eating Doritos and Little Debbies in front of a computer screen and if he puts on another twenty or thirty pounds, his walk will become a waddle.

It’s a good disguise, not overdone, but he still breathes a sigh of relief when he closes the foyer door of 658 behind him. He goes downstairs, turns off the overhead light, and pushes back the curtain of his periscope window. No one is out there. The street is deserted. Of course if he’s been spotted, they (it’s Reggie and Dana he’s thinking of, not Frankie and Paulie or the police) could be moving in from the back, but there’s no sense worrying about what you can’t control. Doing that is a good way to go crazy.

Billy closes the narrow curtain, turns the light back on, and sits in the room’s single easy chair. It’s ugly, but like many ugly things in life, it’s also comfortable. He puts the phone on the coffee table and looks at it, wondering if he’s thinking straight or just indulging in paranoia. In many ways paranoia would be better. Time to find out.

He frees the phone from its box, puts in the battery, and plugs it into the wall to charge. Unlike his previous burner, it’s a flip phone. Kind of old-school, but Billy likes it. With a flip phone if you don’t like what somebody is saying, you can actually hang up on them. Childish, maybe, but strangely satisfying. Charging doesn’t take long. Thanks to Steve Jobs, who got pissed when he couldn’t use a device the second he took it out of the box, off-the-rack devices like this come with a fifty per cent charge already cooking inside.

The phone wants to know what language he prefers. Billy tells it English. It asks if he wants to join a wireless network. Billy says no. He plugs in the minutes he paid for, making the necessary call to FastPhone HQ to finish the transaction. His minutes are good for the next three months. Billy hopes by then he’s on a beach somewhere and the only phone in his possession is the one that goes with his Dalton Smith credit cards.

Home and dry. That would be nice.

He tosses the phone from hand to hand, thinking about the day Frank Macintosh and Paul Logan took him to the house in Midwood, a trip he now wishes he had never taken. Nick was there to greet him, but not outside. Billy thinks of his first visit to the rented McMansion, Nick once more there to greet him with open arms, but again not outside. Next he thinks of the night Nick told him about the flashpots and pitched his getaway plan – Just get in the back of the van, Billy, relax and take a ride to Wisconsin. There had been Champagne to start and Baked Alaska to finish. A service couple, probably local and maybe married, cooked the meal and served it. Those two had seen Nick, but as far as they knew, he was a businessman from New York who was down here to do some kind of deal. He gave the woman some money and they were on their way.

Back and forth goes the burner phone. Right hand to left, left hand to right.

I asked Nick if Hoff was going to plant the flashpots, Billy thinks, and what did he say? What did he call him? A grande figlio di puttana, wasn’t it? Which meant son of a bitch, or son of a whore, or maybe motherfucker. One of those, and the exact translation hardly mattered. What did matter was what Nick said next: I’d be sad if that was your opinion of me.

Because the grande figlio di puttana was the designated patsy. It was Hoff who owned the building the shot came from. Hoff who procured the gun and now the police had it and they’d already be trying to trace it back to the point of sale. And if they got there – make that when they got there – what would they find? Probably an alias if Hoff had any sense at all, but if the cops showed the seller Hoff’s picture, there goes your ballgame. Ken winds up in a hot little interrogation room, willing to make a deal, eager to make a deal, because he believes that’s what he does best.

Except Billy’s betting that Ken Hoff is never going to get to the little room. He’s never going to talk about Nikolai Majarian because he’s going to be dead.

Billy got that far weeks ago, but the six o’clock news has taken him to a conclusion he should have reached sooner, and might have if he’d spent a little less time playing Monopoly with the Evergreen Street kids and taking care of his lawn and eating Corinne’s cookies and schmoozing with his neighbors. Even now what he’s thinking seems impossible, but the logic is undeniable.

Ken Hoff and David Lockridge weren’t the only ones who were out front.

Were they?

Billy texts Giorgio Piglielli, aka Georgie Pigs, aka George Russo, the big literary agent. He uses an alias he knows Giorgio will recognize.

Trilby: Text me back.

He waits. There’s no response, and that’s fucked up because there are two things Giorgio always keeps close at hand: his phone and something to eat. Billy tries again.

Trilby: I need to talk to you right away. Billy considers, then adds: The contract specified payment on publication day, right?

No dots to say Giorgio is reading his texts or composing a reply. Nothing.

Trilby: Text me.

Nothing.

Billy flips the phone closed and puts it on the coffee table. The worst thing about Giorgio’s silence is that Billy’s not surprised. There really is a dumb self, it seems, and what it hasn’t realized until the job has been done and it’s too late to go back is that Giorgio has been out front right along with Ken Hoff. Giorgio was with Hoff when they entered the Gerard Tower to show Billy his writer’s studio on the fifth floor. And it wasn’t Giorgio’s first visit to the building, either. This is George Russo, you met him last week, Hoff had said to Irv Dean, the security guy.

Is Giorgio back in Nevada? And if so, is he chowing down and drinking milkshakes in Vegas or buried somewhere in the surrounding desert? God knows he wouldn’t be the first. Or the hundredth.

They’ll trace Giorgio back to Nick even if he’s dead, Billy thinks. The two of them have been a team since forever, Nick in charge and Georgie Pigs as his consigliere. Billy doesn’t know if that’s what they really call a guy like Georgie or just something the movies made up, but for sure that’s what the fat man has been to Nick: his go-to guy.

Only not since forever, because the first time Billy worked for Nick – it was the third time he assassinated a man for pay – was in 2008, and Giorgio wasn’t there. Nick handled that one by himself. He told Billy there was a rape-o working some of the smaller clubs and casinos on the edge of town. The rape-o liked older women, liked to hurt them, finally went overboard and killed one. Nick found out who he was and wanted a pro from out of town to take care of the guy. Billy, he’d said, had been recommended. Highly.

When Billy came to Vegas the second time, Giorgio was not only there, he did the deal. Nick came in while they were talking, gave Billy a manly hug and a few pats on the back, then sat in the corner sipping a drink and just listening. Until the very end, that was. That second job was less than a year after the first one, the rape-o. Giorgio said the target this time was an independent porno filmmaker named Karl Trilby. He showed Billy a picture of a man who looked eerily like Oral Roberts.

‘Trilby like the hat, ’ Giorgio said, then explained when Billy pretended not to know what he was talking about.

‘I don’t shoot people just because they make movies of people fucking, ’ Billy had said.

‘What about people who make movies of guys fucking six-year-olds? ’ Nick had said, and Billy had done the job because Karl Trilby was a bad person.

Billy did three more jobs for Nick, five in all not counting Allen, almost a third of his total. Excluding the dozens of hajis in Iraq he had taken down, that is. Sometimes Nick was there when the offer was made and sometimes he wasn’t, but Giorgio always was, so him being on the scene for the Allen job at least part of the time hadn’t struck Billy as odd. It should have. Only now does he realize it was very odd.

Nick has deniability as long as Giorgio keeps quiet; Nick can say sure I know the guy, but if he did this it was his own deal. I knew nothing about it. Even if the cook and the woman server from that first dinner put him with Giorgio and Billy, which is unlikely, Nick can shrug and say he was there to talk to Giorgio on casino business, the license on the Double Domino was coming up for renewal. And the other guy? As far as Nick knows, just a pal of Giorgio’s. Or maybe a bodyguard. Quiet guy. Said his name was Lockridge but otherwise didn’t say much at all.

When the cops ask where Nick was when Allen got hit, he can say he was in Vegas and produce plenty of witnesses to back his alibi. Plus casino security footage. That stuff doesn’t get recycled every twelve or twenty-four hours; that stuff gets archived for at least a year.

If Giorgio keeps quiet. But would he stick to that omertà shit if he was the one getting extradited? If he was the one facing the possibility of lethal injection as an accessory to first-degree murder?

Georgie Pigs can’t talk if he’s under five feet of desert, Billy thinks. It’s the great rule when it comes to things like this.

He stops tossing the phone from hand to hand and texts Giorgio one more time. Still no response. He could try texting or phoning Nick, but even if he reached him, could he trust anything Nick might say? No. The only thing Billy can trust is a million-five transferred to his offshore account, then transferred again, through electronic jiggery-pokery, to another one that Dalton Smith can access. Bucky would do that part when he gets to wherever he’s decided to go, but only if the money is there to transfer.

Tonight Billy can do nothing more, so he goes to bed. It isn’t even nine o’clock, but it’s been a long day.

He lies with his hands beneath the pillow in that ephemeral cool pocket, thinking it doesn’t make sense. No way does it.

Ken Hoff yes, okay. There’s a certain breed of fast-dealing small-city sharpie who believes that no matter how deep the shit, someone will always throw him a rope. These are the broad-smiling, firm-handshaking hustlers in Izod polos and Bally loafers who could have come with self-involved optimist stamped on their birth certificates. But Giorgio Piglielli is different. He’s eating himself to death, sure, but so far as Billy can tell, in most other ways he’s a hard-eyed realist. And yet he’s all over this thing. Why is that?

Billy lets it go. He drops into sleep and dreams of the desert. Not the one in the suck, though, where everything smells of gunpowder, goats, oil, and exhaust. The one in Australia. There’s a huge rock out there, Ayers Rock it’s called but its real name is Uluru, a word that’s spooky even to say, one that sounds like wind around the eaves. A holy place for the aboriginal people who saw it first. Saw it, worshipped it, but never presumed to think they owned it. They understand that if there’s a God, it’s God’s rock. Billy has never been there, but he’s seen pictures of it in movies like A Cry in the Dark and magazines like National Geographic and Travel. He would like to go there, has even daydreamed about moving to Alice Springs, which is only a four-hour drive from Uluru, where the Rock raises its improbable head. Living there quietly. Writing, maybe, in a room filled with sunshine and a little garden outside.

His two phones are on the night table beside the bed. He has turned them off, but when he wakes up around three A. M., needing to empty his bladder, Billy touches the power button on each of them to see if anything’s come in. There’s nothing from Giorgio on the burner, which doesn’t surprise him. He doesn’t expect to hear from the fat man again, although he supposes that in a world where a conman can get elected president anything is possible. There is a message on the Dalton Smith phone, though. It’s a news push from the local paper. Prominent Businessman Commits Suicide.

Billy uses the bathroom, then sits on the bed and reads the story. It’s brief. The prominent businessman is, of course, Kenneth P. Hoff. One of his Green Hills neighbors was jogging by and heard a gunshot that seemed to have come from Hoff’s garage. This was around seven P. M. The neighbor called 911. The police arrived and found Hoff dead behind the wheel of his car, which was running. There was a bullet hole in his head and a revolver in his lap.

There will be a longer, more detailed story later today or maybe tomorrow. It will recap Hoff’s business career. There will be the usual shocked quotes from his friends and business associates. There will be references to ‘current financial troubles’ but no details, because other local movers and shakers, still very much alive, wouldn’t care for that. His ex-wives will say nicer things about him than they surely told their divorce lawyers, and at the funeral they’ll show up in black and dab their eyes with tissues – carefully, to protect their mascara. Billy doesn’t know if the paper will say the car he was found in was a red Mustang convertible, but he’s sure it was.

Hoff’s connection to the Allen shooting, surely the motive for his suicide, will come later.

The story won’t report the coroner’s likely supposition, that the depressed man decided to kill himself by inhaling carbon monoxide, got impatient, and blew his brains out instead. Billy knows that isn’t how it went down. The only thing he doesn’t know is which of Nick’s hardballs administered the killshot. It could have been Frank or Paulie or Reggie or someone he hasn’t even met, possibly an import from Florida or Atlanta, but it’s hard for Billy to see anyone but Dana Edison with his bright blue eyes and dark red manbun.

Did he march Hoff into the garage at gunpoint? Maybe he didn’t need to, maybe he just told Hoff they were going to sit in his car and talk about how the situation was going to be resolved, and to Hoff’s benefit. A self-involved optimist and designated patsy might buy that. He sits behind the wheel. Dana sits in the passenger bucket. Ken says what’s the plan. Dana says it’s this and shoots him. Then he turns on the engine, leaves through the back door, and rides away, silently, in a golf cart. Because that’s what Green Hills is, a golf course with condos.

Maybe it didn’t go down exactly that way, and maybe it wasn’t Edison, but Billy’s pretty sure he’s got the picture in broad strokes. Which leaves Giorgio, the last piece of unfinished business.

Well, no, Billy thinks. There’s me.

He lies down again, but this time sleep eludes him. Some of it is the way the old three-story house creaks. The wind has picked up, and without the railway station to block it, that wind blows straight through the vacant lot and across Pearson Street. Every time Billy starts to drift, the wind hoots around the eaves, saying Uluru, Uluru. Or there’s another creak that sounds like a footstep on a loose board.

Billy tells himself a little insomnia doesn’t matter, he can sleep the whole day away tomorrow if he so chooses, he won’t be going anywhere for awhile, but the early morning hours are such long hours. There’s too much to imagine, none of it good.

He thinks he will get up and read. He has no actual books except for Thé rè se Raquin, but he can download something to his laptop and read in bed until he gets sleepy.

Then he has another idea. Maybe not a good idea, but he’ll be able to sleep. He’s sure of it. Billy gets up and takes Shan’s drawing out of his pants pocket. He unfolds it. He looks at the smiling girl with the red ribbons in her hair. He looks at the hearts rising from the flamingo’s head. He remembers Shan going to sleep next to him in the seventh inning of that playoff game. Her head on his arm. Billy puts the picture on the night table with his two phones and is soon asleep himself.

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