CHAPTER 21

When he pulls in, Alice is waiting for him at the head of the space where the old truck was parked. She hugs him as soon as he’s out of the car, really throws herself into it. No hesitation. He hugs back the same way. When that’s done, he’s partly amused and partly saddened by her first question, because it comes from a young woman who is now living in an outlaw frame of mind.

‘Is that car safe to drive? We won’t be stopped by the police? ’

‘It’s safe. The vehicle tracker was already disabled. Which didn’t surprise me. ’ Also the owner is dead and Nick isn’t going to call the cops. He would have far too much to explain. And Billy now has information that could blow him and his whole operation sky-high.

‘I packed everything. There wasn’t much. ’

‘Okay. Let’s go. While we’re driving, you can make us a reservation at a motel in Wendover. That’s just over the Utah state line. ’

Alice looks around at their current lodgings. ‘I’m not sure the kind of places we’ve been staying have websites. Maybe, but …’ She shrugs.

‘Book us into a chain. The Dalton Smith name is still clean and the pressure’s off. Nobody is going to be looking for us. ’

‘Are you sure? ’

Billy thinks about it and decides he is. The last thing he said to Nick was for once in your life be honorable, and he thinks that Nick, who was sure he was going to die in his man-cave, will do that. At least for awhile. There’s something else, as well. If Billy succeeds in getting to Klerke, Nick Majarian will be off the hook, and quite possibly with the six-million-dollar bounty in one of his numbered accounts.

Meanwhile, Alice is looking up at him and waiting.

‘I’m sure. Let’s go. ’

It’s a long story, but it’s a five-hour drive to Wendover and that will be plenty of time for Billy to tell her what he knows and what he’s deduced. But before they roll, he powers up his phone and googles Roger Klerke. The thumbnail biography says he was born in 1954, which makes him sixty-five, but in the accompanying photo he looks at least ten years older. He’s pasty, balding, wrinkled, jowly. His eyes are bright little animals living in sagging pockets of flesh. It’s the face of hard living and indulgence.

‘He’s the man behind this whole shit-show, ’ Billy says, and hands her his phone.

She types and sweeps with her finger as Billy pulls out and heads for the 15. She bends over the phone, brushing her hair impatiently away from her face. ‘Holy crap. According to Wikipedia, he practically owns the world, at least media-wise. ’

Billy again thinks back to his first meeting with Ken Hoff, the two of them sitting at an umbrella-shaded table outside the Sunspot Café, right across from the building where Billy would eventually take the shot. Hoff with a glass of wine, Billy with a diet soda, Hoff broadcasting a slightly desperate vibe even then. Although along with it, like a fraternal twin, was the mindset that had gotten him in so much trouble and was about to get him in even more. It was the core belief, maybe inculcated in childhood, that he was the star of a movie called The Fabulous Life of Ken Hoff, and no matter how bad things got, in the end he would come out with the girl, the gold watch, and everything.

‘Newspapers, websites, a movie studio, two streaming services …’

‘And TV, ’ Billy says. ‘Don’t forget that. Including Channel 6 in Red Bluff, the only station that got footage of the courthouse killing. ’

‘Are you thinking—’

‘Yes. ’

‘Fuck, ’ Alice says softly.

I’m a little bit tight this year, wasn’t that what Hoff said? Cash flow problems since I bought into WWE, but three affils, how could I say no?

‘He owns World Wide Entertainment, ’ Alice says. ‘That’s a network plus about twelve cable channels. One of them is that news station that loves Trump. There’s this bunch of rabid commentators—’

‘I know the ones you’re talking about. ’

He’s seen WWE News 24, everybody has. It plays all the time in hotel lobbies and airport terminals. Billy sometimes stops for a few minutes to absorb some rightwing pundit’s bilge, then either moves on or changes to one of the movie channels if he has access to the controller. He had no idea they franchised local TV stations, though. Had no idea (at least at first) what Hoff was talking about and didn’t care. He hadn’t thought it was important. But it was. Very. It was how Hoff got into this. It was why the Channel 6 news crew didn’t go chasing the fire in Cody. It was how Ken Hoff ended up dead in his own garage.

‘This guy wanted you to kill Joel Allen? This guy? He’s old. And rich. ’

Yes, Billy thinks. Old and rich and used to being emperor. Ken Hoff had only thought he was starring in a movie. Roger Klerke really has been. He’s the man who thinks he deserves everything, and that it should not just be brought to him but that it should be served to perfection. Which included film footage of Joel Allen’s death.

And I was the waiter, Billy thinks.

‘Tell me what happened at Promontory Point. ’

Billy does as she asks, skipping over only what Nick told him before Billy sent him into his safe room like a bad kid grounded and confined to his bedroom. When he finishes, she says, ‘You did what you had to do. ’

This is true, but it’s the verdict of a young woman barely old enough to buy a legal drink. He’s sure Ken Hoff thought the same. ‘Yes, but it was wrong choices that got me to the point where I had to do it. ’

‘That old lady, ’ Alice says, and shakes her head. ‘Amazing. Do you think she’ll be all right? ’

‘Not if her son dies. ’

She gives Billy a look he’s actually glad to see. If she feels safe enough to be pissed at him, she’s probably still getting down the road to being all right. ‘Don’t you think she bears some of the responsibility for the job he was doing? Working for a gangster? ’

Billy can’t answer that.

‘Now tell me what you’re leaving out. What the gangster told you. Tell me why. ’

They’re on the Interstate now. The shadows are starting to lengthen. The game between the Giants and the Cardinals will be over. One team won and the other team didn’t. A clean-up crew will be on its way to Promontory Point. Billy’s got the cruise control pegged just below seventy.

‘Nick hired Joel Allen to do a killing, but Nick was just the go-between. He even told me that, although he called himself the agent. It was Roger Klerke who wanted the job done, and paid millions for it. They met on an island in Puget Sound and struck the deal there. ’

‘Who did he want killed? ’

‘His son. ’

Alice jumps like a person startled by a slamming door. ‘Peter, Paul, something like that! He was supposed to take over from his father! ’

‘It was Patrick, ’ Billy says. ‘You knew? ’

‘Just kinda-sorta. Because my mother has News 24 on all the time. ’

Alice’s mom and probably seventy per cent of the cable-watching news junkies in America, Billy thinks.

‘I’d mostly leave the room, I hate that drivel but it’s not worth arguing about with her. Only it was like their top story for almost a week, even ahead of Trump. ’ She looks at him. ‘Now I know why. Klerke owns News 24. ’

‘Correct. ’

‘They said it was a gang thing and Patrick Klerke got mistaken for somebody else. ’

‘It was no gang thing and no mistake. Klerke’s apartment was in a building with all sorts of security. A gangbanger never could have gotten past the gate guard, let alone into the building. Plus no one heard the shot. Allen must have used a potato-buster. ’

‘A what? ’

‘A silencer. ’

‘24 was all over the cops to catch the guy but they never did. Because by then Allen was probably out of town. ’

‘Sure, over the hills and far away, ’ Billy agrees. ‘And if he hadn’t shot those two men because he lost big at poker, he’d probably still be over the hills and far away. Maybe even then, if he hadn’t gone back to LA and mistaken some lady writer for a hooker. ’

‘Why would Klerke … his own son? Why? ’

‘I can only tell you what Nick told me. There’s probably more to it, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time. ’

‘Because of that man’s mother. Marge. ’

‘Yes, Marge. I knew she’d head for the main gate, I had to believe she knew the code to open it, and I left the gate guard—’

‘Sal. ’

‘Right, him. I left him with his shotgun. So I only had time for the abridged version. ’

‘Then tell me that. ’

‘Klerke was old. Not old old, but old for his age and with a host of medical problems. He needed to name a successor – to keep his board happy, I guess – and most people expected it would be Patrick, the elder son. But Patrick was a heavy drug user and a party animal who used to get through his yearly stipend before the end of April and come to daddy on the first of May, begging for more. ’

Alice smiles. ‘He maybe should have gone to his mother. They can be a softer touch. ’

‘Patrick’s mother died of an overdose. Pills. Or maybe it was suicide. Maybe even murder. Klerke’s divorced from the younger son’s mother. That’s Devin. ’

‘I think he was on TV, too. Made a statement or something. ’

Billy nods. ‘What Nick told me reminded me of the story of the grasshopper and the ant, with the addition of a father smart enough to tell the difference. Patrick was the grasshopper. Devin, his younger brother by four years, was the ant. Industrious and smart. Nose to the grindstone. Shoulder to the wheel. Klerke called his sons together and told them his decision. Patrick was furious. As far as he was concerned, he was the one with the brilliant ideas to move WWE forward and his brother was nothing but an office drone. ’

Billy thinks of the mean little eyes in the photograph and imagines Klerke saying something delicate like You picked up most of your brilliant ideas from your libtard hip-hop wannabe friends while you were snorting dope. However he put it, he’d driven his older son into a rage. In most cases it would have been an impotent rage, but Roger Klerke had an Achilles heel, and Patrick either knew about it then or found out shortly thereafter.

‘I don’t know how he knew about it, Nick didn’t tell me. Maybe he didn’t know, either. Maybe Patrick got a clue from someone in his lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-foolish circle of friends. Maybe he overheard something. But he wasn’t entirely dumb, because he was able to follow the dots to a certain small house outside of Tijuana. ’

‘A whorehouse. ’

‘Not exactly. It was privately funded by Klerke himself, Nick said, for his exclusive use. He paid tribute money, a lot of it, each year to the Fé lix brothers, who basically run the Tijuana Cartel. There may have been certain other inducements, as well. Money laundering would be my guess. It doesn’t matter. Nick said Klerke never brought friends, because word gets around. ’

‘Was Patrick doing business with the cartels? ’ Alice asks. ‘Moving dope for them? There’s a word for it. ’

‘Muling, ’ Billy says. ‘He might have been. ’

‘He could have heard about it from one of them. That might have been his loose end. ’

Billy pats her shoulder. ‘That’s good. We’ll never know for sure, but it makes more sense than the hearing-it-from-a-friend idea. ’

She smiles at the compliment, but only a little. She knows where this is going, Billy thinks. A girl a little less intelligent might not, a girl who hadn’t been recently raped might not, but this girl checks both boxes.

‘Klerke has a taste for young girls. ’

‘How young? ’ she asks.

‘Nick said thirteen or fourteen. ’

‘Jesus. ’

‘It gets worse. Do you want to hear? ’

‘No, but tell me anyway. ’

‘There was at least one occasion – he told Nick it was only one, for what that’s worth – when there was a girl who was a lot younger. ’

‘Twelve? ’ Her face says that no matter how much of a shit that jowly old lizard may be, she wants to believe that’s the limit of his depravity.

‘According to Klerke she was no more than ten, and Patrick had the pictures to prove it. What Roger Klerke told Nick at their meeting on that island was that he was “pretty drunk and just wanted to see what it was like. ”’

‘Dear God. ’

‘The rest of it is as simple as dominos falling over. Patrick had the pictures on a thumb drive. Swore they existed nowhere else, that the man who took them was dead and buried in the desert. He told his father that he wanted to be CEO. He also wanted a transfer of most of his father’s voting stock, which would render meaningless any objections the board might have to the new direction he wanted to take WWE in. He wanted his brother – “my asshole brother” is what he called him, according to Nick – transferred to the Chicago offices, which I guess in the media business is like Siberia. He wanted those changes effective as of January 1, 2019, and he wanted it all in writing. Then and only then would he turn over the flash drive with the pictures. ’

‘How could Klerke be sure there weren’t more pictures? ’

Billy shrugged. ‘Maybe there were. In any case, what choice did he have? And Patrick must have been at least bright enough to know that if the pictures came out, the company stock would tank no matter who was CEO. ’

Alice thinks that over and says, ‘Like mutually assured destruction. In a way. ’

‘I guess. What I know from Nick is that Klerke agreed, and once his lawyer had a letter announcing his intentions to basically retire and turn the company over to his older son, and once that letter was published in the board minutes, Patrick gave the thumb drive to his father. Who destroyed it. Patrick never foresaw his father going to Nick Majarian and hiring a man to kill him. His imagination just didn’t stretch that far. ’

‘It isn’t the grasshopper and the ant. More like a Shakespeare play. One of the bloody ones. ’

‘With Patrick dead, when Klerke steps down – given his health it won’t be long – Devin will take over. ’

He pulls into a service area, because the Mitsubishi needs gas and because his throat is dry and he wants a cold drink. Alice checks out the Quik-Pik shelves and uses the restroom while he pays. When she gets back into the car she’s crying.

‘I’m sorry. ’ Her purchases are in a little white bag. She takes out a pack of Kleenex, wipes her nose, and tries on a smile. ‘But while I was in the bathroom I made us a reservation at the Ramada Inn in Wendover. It’s supposed to be nice. ’

‘Good. And you don’t have to be sorry. ’

‘I keep thinking about that horrible man with a child. He deserves to die. ’

Billy thinks, that’s the plan.

By the time he finishes – again weaving what he knows from Nick into what he deduced on his drive back from Promontory Point – some of the cars on the highway are showing headlights.

‘Klerke told Nick he wanted the best man for the job, a guy who’d do it and get away clean and not talk about it afterward. Nick said he knew a guy—’

‘You? ’

‘He said he thought of me first, but never even went to Bucky with it. He said he was pretty sure I wouldn’t do it because Patrick Klerke was maybe not bad enough to fit my scruples. He put it to Allen as an ordinary cleaning job. ’

‘That’s what he called it? Cleaning? ’

‘Yes. The figure they settled on was eighty thousand dollars, twenty before and the rest after. Basically the same method of payment I was promised, but on a smaller scale. ’

Alice is nodding. ‘He didn’t want Allen to know what a big deal this was. How much was involved. ’

‘Sure. Nick felt okay about it, because Allen was what I always pretended to be, just your basic mechanic who fixed problems with a gun instead of socket wrenches and a timing computer. He gave Allen photos of Patrick’s apartment building, photos of the apartment itself, the code to the service entrance, the car exchange after the job was done, anything he might need to do the job clean and quick. ’ Billy pauses. ‘Nick didn’t tell me all that, but I’ve worked for him before. I knew the drill. What he didn’t tell Allen was why and Allen didn’t ask. ’

‘But he asked Patrick, didn’t he? Before he killed him. ’

Billy thinks that over. ‘It’s possible, but it seems unlikely for a guy like Joel Allen. He’d be a lot more likely to just do the job. No conversation, just point and shoot. ’

‘Maybe Patrick offered him the thumb drive in exchange for …’ Alice stops. ‘Except he couldn’t, could he? He didn’t have it. Thought he was home free once his appointment was announced to the board. ’

‘Nick doesn’t know what happened, and Allen can’t tell us how he found out about Roger Klerke and the kid in Tijuana, but I have an idea. Allen was told to make it look like a robbery, maybe committed by some fellow user who met Patrick along the Los Angeles drug trail. He was told to take any money or jewelry he found. He was supposed to toss the jewelry, watches and gold chains and shit like that, but he could keep the money as a little bonus. So after he killed Patrick he searched the place and might have found a picture, maybe more than one, that Patrick kept in reserve. At least one that showed his father’s face nice and clear while he was … doing what he was doing. Does that make sense? ’

Alice nods hard enough to make her hair bounce. ‘I bet it happened just that way. Even if the picture or pictures were in a safe, Allen could have been given the combination with the rest of his background info. Would he really have recognized the man in the picture? ’

Based on what he knows about Joel Allen, Billy doesn’t see him as the sort of guy who watched the WWE business channel or read the Bloomberg report. ‘Probably not at first, but it wouldn’t have taken him long to find out. A few Google searches would have shown him that he’d killed the son of a billionaire who also happened to be a pedophile. ’

Alice’s eyes are intent. She’s totally into this now. Billy thinks again that a rinky-dink business school in Red Bluff would have wasted a lot of potential. And hairdressing school? Forget it.

‘So this paid killer, this mechanic, this cleaner, had two things worth money – that the father was almost certainly the one who paid to have the son killed, and the father also raped a child. Because he “just wanted to see what it was like. ”’ Some of the light goes out of her eyes when she says that.

‘I doubt if he tried to turn what he knew into cash, although he might have down the line. He would’ve known that blackmailing someone as rich and powerful as Roger Klerke would be a tremendous risk. I think he kept it as a hole card. Which he eventually had to play not for money but because of his own stupidity. ’

Double stupidity, Billy thinks, if you count in the lady writer.

‘Almost like he wanted to be caught, ’ Alice says. ‘Some repeat killers do. ’ She rewinds what she’s said and puts a hand on his wrist. ‘Ones without a moral code, I mean. ’

Is that what you call it? Billy wonders.

‘I doubt if Allen wanted to get caught. And if he was able to figure out what made that picture such a valuable commodity, I guess he wasn’t completely stupid, either. ’

‘If he wasn’t completely stupid, why kill that man over a poker game? And why attack that woman in LA? ’

Well, Billy thinks, Allen believed the poker game guy was cheating. And the lady writer pepper-sprayed him. But neither of those things goes to the heart of Alice’s question.

‘My guess? Simple arrogance. Do you want to stop somewhere for dinner? ’

She shakes her head. ‘Let’s drive straight through and eat when we get there. I want to hear the rest. ’

Billy feels surer about this part even though it’s still mostly guesswork. After Allen was arrested for assault and attempted rape in LA, he must have known he’d be connected almost immediately with the murder and attempted murder back east in Red Bluff. There was a lively trade in cell phones in the county lockup, most of them burners. Allen could have gotten hold of one, called Nick, and said that if he had to go back to Red Bluff and stand trial for murder in a death penalty state, a very rich man, initials RK, was probably going to spend the rest of his life in jail, possibly getting buggered by Harvey Weinstein. And if anything happened to Allen in LA lockup, RK was going to be very, very sorry.

‘Nick got in touch with Roger Klerke. Klerke – almost certainly through an intermediary – hired an expensive lawyer to fight extradition. Nick and Klerke had another meeting at that island and laid out any number of possible scenarios. I imagine they had the expensive legal talent on speed-dial. If so, he would have told them what Nick probably knew already, that he could draw out the extradition fight for quite awhile, but in the end Allen was going to be put on a plane and sent back to face trial. Because first-degree murder trumps aggravated assault. ’

‘That’s when Majarian hired you. ’

‘Around then, yes. To get me placed where I could eventually take the shot. By then Allen was out of gen-pop because he’d been attacked. By arrangement, I’d guess. Maybe his idea, probably his lawyer’s. Either way he wound up having his own private accommodation while the extradition fight was ongoing. He met regularly with the expensive lawyer, who told him everything was under control. Or would be, once he was back east. Either an escape would be arranged, along with a completely new identity, or certain wheels would be greased, certain witnesses would be bribed, certain key evidence would disappear, and Allen would walk free as himself. ’

‘And he had no reason to doubt it. ’

Billy shakes his head. ‘Guys like Allen doubt everything. But he had no choice. ’

‘What about the picture? Or pictures? His hole card? ’

‘I think both Nick and Klerke had people looking for that all the time the extradition fight was going on. That was one reason why the extradition fight was going on. And I think they eventually found it, or them. All I know for sure is that no federal marshals have turned up to arrest Roger Klerke. ’

‘Maybe we’ll turn up first, ’ Alice says.

Billy hates that pronoun, but he doesn’t correct it. He only has a ghost of a plan, and when it comes more into focus, maybe he can leave Alice out of it. He remembers what Bucky said: She’s in love with you and she’ll follow you as long as you let her and if you let her you’ll ruin her.

‘Ohhh, look – it’s a palace! ’ So says Alice when they pull into the Wendover Ramada Inn at quarter of nine that Sunday night. ‘I mean, compared to the last three motels. ’

Their adjoining rooms are far from palatial, but they’re nice, and the hallway carpet looks as if it’s been vacuumed recently.

‘Will you be able to sleep? ’ she asks.

‘Yes. ’ He doesn’t actually know if that’s true.

Her eyes are fixed on his. ‘I’ll sleep with you, if you want. ’

Billy thinks of Roger Klerke’s taste for the young ones – on at least one pestiferous occasion a very young one – and shakes his head. ‘It’s a kind offer and much appreciated, but better not. ’

‘Are you sure? ’

Still looking directly at him, and is he tempted? Of course he is.

‘Thank you, Alice, but no. Will you be able to sleep? ’

‘Will we be back at Bucky’s tomorrow? ’

‘Should be. ’

‘Then I’ll be able to sleep. I like him. He’s, you know, safe. ’

Billy isn’t sure she’d feel that way if she knew even half the deals Elmer ‘Bucky’ Hanson has been involved in over the years, but he knows what she means and thinks she’s right. She and Bucky have made a connection.

‘Goodnight. ’ He kisses her for the first time, on the corner of the mouth.

‘Goodnight. Oh, and here. ’ She hands him the white Quik-Pik bag. ‘Baby oil and Handi Wipes. Clean off as much of that goop as you can, then get in the shower. You won’t get it all, but you can get most of it. ’ She goes to the door, uses her keycard, then turns back. ‘And leave a good tip, because more of it will come off on the sheets. ’

‘Okay. ’ He wouldn’t have thought of that himself, although he probably would have tomorrow, when he looked at the bed.

She starts to go in, then looks at him over her shoulder. Her face is solemn but calm. ‘I love you. ’

Billy doesn’t even think of lying. He tells her he loves her, too, then goes into his room.

He calls Nick. He’s not sure Nick will answer, but he does.

‘Who’s this? ’ And then, without waiting for a reply: ‘Is it you? ’

‘It’s me. Are you getting things right there? ’

‘They will be by tomorrow. ’

‘I didn’t cool anybody that I didn’t have to. ’

A long pause with just the sound of breathing. Then Nick says, ‘I know. ’

‘What’s up with Frank? ’

‘In the hospital. His mother called my pet medic. Doc Rivers sent a private ambulance. She went with him. ’

‘That’s a hard woman. ’

‘Marge? ’ Nick gives a short laugh. ‘You don’t know the half of it. ’

I believe I do, Billy thinks. If I’d hit her in the back of the head with that Glock instead of Frank, it probably would have bounced right off.

‘Is our fat friend still in the land of the living? ’

‘He was as of an hour ago when I called to tell him about what happened. He said I should have taken you more seriously. I said I thought four made guys – plus Marge – was pretty serious. Why do you ask? ’

‘Did he procure for Mr K when he came to Vegas? It seems like the kind of job you’d delegate to him. ’

‘You are a lot smarter than I thought, ’ Nick says, as if talking to himself. ‘Smarter than anybody thought. Except maybe for Pigs. ’

‘Did he or didn’t he? ’

‘Well, yeah. Kinda. Pigs’d get with Judy Blatner when he knew K was coming. They’d go over her picture books, try to find one he’d like. Ten, twelve years ago he woulda wanted two, but his stamina’s declined. He ain’t what you’d call a gentleman, but he does prefer blondes. ’

‘And they have to be young. ’

‘Well duh, ’ Nick says. ‘But the girls he went with in Vegas were never under eighteen. Judy’s been around a long time and runs a legal escort service. That means she can’t say the girls are for sex, but she doesn’t have to. Everyone knows. She steers clear of jailbait, though. Like it was poison. Which it is. ’

The thought of that jowly toad even with a girl Alice’s age makes Billy’s stomach turn. ‘When he wanted jailbait he crossed the border. ’

‘True. ’

‘I want the fat man’s number. Will you give it to me? ’

‘Are you going after Mr K? ’

He is, but he’s not going to say so even on a burner phone and believing Nick makes sure his personal phone is whistle clean. He only reiterates his request for Giorgio’s number. Nick gives it to him.

‘Will he talk to me? ’

‘If I tell him to. If I say you’re going to keep it business. He never would have gone along with this if he didn’t need to do something that would force him to change how he’s been living. If you want to blame someone, blame me. I didn’t need to lose two hundred pounds so the docs would give me a new liver. Like I told you, the money blinded me. ’

Billy thinks it’s as honest a confession as Nick will ever give anyone. ‘Tell him I’m going to keep it business. Joel Allen is water under the bridge. ’

‘When should I tell him to expect your call? ’

‘Not tonight, maybe not for awhile. When’s the transplant scheduled? ’

‘It’s not, and won’t be until December at least. Pigs has got to drink a lot of protein shakes and eat a lot of kale between now and then. ’

‘All right. ’ Billy tucks the cell number into his Dalton Smith wallet, behind his Dalton Smith credit cards. ‘Take care of yourself, Nick. ’

‘Wait. ’

Billy waits, curious about what else Nick has to say.

‘It was never because K didn’t want to pay you the million-five. That’s pocket change to him. It was because he insisted you be hit once the job was done. Said he wasn’t going to make the same mistake he made with Allen. You get that, right? ’

‘Yes. ’ And Nick went along with it. He gets that, too.

‘Does your Edward Woodley name still work? The account in Barbados? ’

‘Yes. ’ Although it’s been dormant except for token deposits and withdrawals since 2014 or 2015.

‘Check it tomorrow. Thank God you didn’t kill Mark Abromowitz. He ain’t great and he ain’t made, but he’s what I got since Pigs went to SA. All I can transfer right now and be safe is three hundred thousand, but I’ll put in more when I can. You’ll eventually get your million-five. ’

For once in your life be honorable, Billy told him when he gave Nick back his life, and damned if the man isn’t trying, in the only way he knows how. Money.

‘You’re not going to say thank you and I don’t need you to, ’ Nick says. ‘You’re a good workman, Billy. You did the job. ’

Billy pushes END CALL without saying goodbye.

He cleans himself up with the wipes and baby oil as well as he can, then showers until the brown water running down the drain is mostly clear. But he still gets more smeg on the two bath towels he uses to dry off.

Alice asked him if he’d be able to sleep and he said yes, but for a long time he can’t. The time he spent at Promontory Point – probably only an hour, maybe even less, but it seemed like five – keeps running through his mind. Especially going for Edison. The flying splinters. The flushing toilet.

I thought four made guys was pretty serious, Nick said, but Sal the gate guard never got the Mossie off his shoulder, Frank never turned around, and Reggie wasn’t carrying, had to go for the boss’s hideout gun instead. Only Dana Edison was serious; he took his gun into the crapper with him. And Marge, of course. She was very serious, and she had seen through his disguise almost immediately.

Leave a good tip for the housekeeper, he thinks. Leave a twenty.

He rolls over and is on the edge of sleep when something comes to him that he doesn’t like and he rolls on his back again, staring up into the darkness. No, he doesn’t like it at all. He left Shan’s picture of Freddy the Flamingo – aka Dave the Flamingo – taped to the dash of that old truck. He had time to take it but it never even crossed his mind. All he wanted right then was to get the fuck gone.

Forget it, he tells himself. It means nothing.

This may be true, but it doesn’t help. Because it is – was, he guesses that’s the correct tense now – pink like the baby shoe in Fallujah. The one he didn’t have when they were ambushed in the Funhouse. He has lost another good luck charm. He can tell himself that’s nothing but superstition, no different than folks believing there were ghosts in that old hotel in Sidewinder that burned, but it makes him feel bad. All else aside, that picture was made for him out of love.

Go to sleep, asshole, Billy thinks.

He finally does but wakes up in the dead ditch of the morning, mouth dry, hands clenched. The dream was so vivid that at first he’s not sure if he’s in a Ramada Inn or his Gerard Tower office. He was working on his story and it must have been early days, because he was still writing in his dumb self persona. There came a knock at the door. He answered it, expecting Ken Hoff or Phil Stanhope, more likely Hoff. But it was neither of them. It was Marge, in the big blue dress she was wearing when he approached the Promontory Point service entrance. Only instead of a sombrero she had a Vegas Golden Knights gimme cap jammed down over her hair and instead of a trowel she’d got Sal’s Mossberg.

‘You forgot the flamingo, you fucking fuck, ’ she said, and raised the shotgun. The barrel looked as big as the entrance to the Eisenhower Tunnel.

I pulled out of the dream before she could fire, Billy thinks as he walks to the bathroom. While he pees he thinks of Rudy Bell, aka Taco Bell. Bad dreams were common currency in Iraq, especially during the battle for Fallujah, and Taco believed (or said he believed) that if you died in a nightmare, you could actually die in your rack.

‘Frightened to death, my man, ’ Tac said. ‘What a way to go, huh? ’

But I got out of this one before she could pull the trigger, Billy thinks as he trudges back to bed. She was a piece of work, though. Made Dana Edison with his prissy little manbun look like a street-corner hood.

The room is cold, but he doesn’t bother turning on the heater because it will probably rattle – motel wall units always rattle. He snuggles under the blankets and goes to sleep almost at once. There are no more dreams.

Alice votes for fried egg sandwiches from a drive-thru instead of a sitdown breakfast because she wants to get on the road right away. ‘I want to see the mountains again. I really love them, even though I had to gasp for air until I got used to the altitude. ’

Billy smiles and says, ‘Okay, let’s go. ’

Shortly after they cross the Colorado line, Billy hears his laptop give a single ding-dong chime for the first time in … he can’t remember how long. Maybe years. He pulls over at the next turnout, gets it out of the back seat, and opens it. The ding-dong means he’s gotten an email from one of his several blind accounts, this one woodyed667@gmail. com. The message is from Travertine Enterprises. It’s an outfit he’s never heard of, but he has no doubt who’s behind it. He double-clicks and reads.

‘What? ’ Alice asks.

He shows her. Travertine Enterprises has put three hundred thousand dollars in the account of Edward Woodley at the Royal Bank of Barbados. The only notation is ‘For services rendered. ’

‘Did that come from who I think it came from? ’ Alice asks.

‘No doubt, ’ Billy says. They get rolling again. It’s a beautiful day.

They get to Bucky’s place around five in the afternoon. Billy has called ahead from Rifle with an ETA along with a head-ups about their new ride, and Bucky’s standing in the dooryard waiting for them. He’s dressed in jeans and a fleece jacket, looking nothing at all like the man who used to live and work in New York. Maybe he’s his better self out here, Billy thinks. He knows that Alice is.

She’s out of the car almost before Billy can come to a stop. Bucky holds his arms wide and shouts ‘Hey, Cookie! ’ She runs into them, laughing as he enfolds her.

Look at that, Billy thinks. Would you look at that.

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