Billy Summers (16 page)

It's all worrisome, but as he pulls into his driveway, he sees one thing that's good: his lawn looks terrific.

Through most of August Billy slept well. He drifted off to sleep thinking of nothing except what he would write the following day. There were only a few dreams of Fallujah and the houses with the green garbage bags fluttering from the palm trees in their courtyards. (How had they gotten up there?
Why
were they up there?) It was no longer his story, it was Benjy's story now. Those two things had begun to drift apart, and that was all right. He had once watched an interview with Tim O'Brien on YouTube, O'Brien talking about
The Things They Carried
. He said fiction wasn't the truth, it was the way to the truth, and Billy can now understand that. Especially when it came to writing about war, and wasn't that what his story was mostly about? Kissing in that ruined Mercedes with Robin Maguire, aka Ronnie Givens, had only been a truce. Most of the rest was fighting.

Tonight, with summer past and autumn on the come, he lies awake, troubled. Not by the gun in the golf bag. He's thinking about the job he's agreed to do with the gun. As a rule he never goes further than the two basics: taking the shot and getting out of Dodge. This time it's different, and not just because it's the last
time he plans to take a life for pay. It's different because it has a smell, the way Hoff's breath had a smell when he snared Billy in that clumsy and unexpected embrace.

Somebody got in touch with Hoff, he thinks, then realizes that's not so.
Nobody
got in touch with Hoff, because Hoff is a nobody. He may
think
he's a somebody, with his real estate developments and his movie theaters and his red Mustang convertible, but he's just a big fish in a small pond, and not really that big, either. And this is a big deal. Lots of people are getting paid. Hoff himself, for one. Some of his debts are paid already, and he seems to think all of them will be cleared after Joel Allen goes down. Then there's Nick, and the troops Nick has fielded for this op. They are not squad strength, but almost. And maybe it is a squad. There could be more Nick hasn't told him about.

Nobody got in touch with Hoff. Somebody got in touch with
Nick
, and told him to bring Hoff on board. Billy remembers thinking, the first time he met with Hoff at the Sunspot Café, that Nick and Hoff must be affiliated. Now he's one step from being positive that's not true. Hoff wanted a casino license but didn't get one. Would that have happened if he were tight with Nick, who knows how to finagle such things? A casino was a license to print money, after all, and Hoff needs money.

Is the somebody behind this the same somebody who gave Hoff a heads-up about that putative warehouse fire in Cody? Maybe. Probably.

And consider Joel Allen, now incarcerated in Los Angeles. He's in protective custody, presumably as snug as a bug in a rug. He has a lawyer fighting extradition. Why, when Allen must know he'll be shipped back here eventually? It's not because the food is better in LA County. Is he buying time? Trying to make a deal with the somebody who set all this mishegas in motion, maybe using his lawyer as the go-between?

The somebody must know Allen will be sent back here
eventually, and when he gets here, Billy Summers will put him down before he can trade what he knows. The somebody must know there's a risk Allen has an insurance policy—pictures, recordings, maybe a written confession to something (Billy can't imagine what). Only the somebody must feel the risk has to be taken, and that it's an acceptable one. The somebody could be right. Probably is. Guys like Allen don't take out insurance policies; guys like Allen feel invulnerable. He may be good at the paid hits, but the crimes that have gotten him in his current barrel of shit were crimes of impulse.

Besides, Mr. Somebody may feel he has no choice. Whatever the secret is, it's bad. Allen can't be allowed to find himself standing trial in a death penalty state. Not with something hot he can trade.

Billy starts to drift into sleep. Before he goes under his last thought is of Monopoly, about how you try to stop the slide into bankruptcy by selling your properties one by one. It rarely works.

As he's getting into his car the next morning, Corrie Ackerman cuts across her lawn and his. She's got a brown bag, and something inside it smells delicious.

“I made cranberry muffins. Shan and Derek both get hot lunch at school, but they like a little something extra. I had these two left over. They're for you.”

“That's really nice,” he says, taking the bag. “Are you sure you don't want to save at least one of them for Jamal when he comes home?”

“I did put one by for him, but I want you to eat both of these, you hear?”

“I think I can carry out that mission,” Billy says, smiling.

“You've lost weight.” She pauses. “You're okay, right?”

Billy looks down at himself, surprised. Has he lost weight? It
seems he has. A hole in his belt that used to go unused is now in service. Then he looks back at her. “I'm fine, Corrie.”

“You look healthy enough, but that isn't what I meant. Or not all I meant. Is your book going okay?”

“Gangbusters.”

“Then maybe you just need to eat more. Healthy stuff. Greens and yellow vegetables, not just take-out pizza and Taco Bell. In the long run, bachelor food is worse than booze. You come to dinner tonight. Six o'clock. I'm making shepherd's pie. I load in the carrots and peas.”

“That sounds good,” Billy says. “As long as I'm not putting you out.”

“You're not, and I need to say thank you. You have been very good to my kids. Shanice's crush on you got even bigger when you won her that flamingo.” She lowers her voice, as if imparting a secret. “She changed its name from Frankie to Dave.”

As he drives toward downtown, Billy thinks of Shan changing her flamingo's name and feels happy because she did that and shame because the name is, after all, a lie.

That afternoon he leaves Gerard Tower and strolls a couple of blocks toward Pearson Street. He stops briefly to look into a narrow alley where there are a couple of dumpsters. He thinks it will do. He U-turns to the parking garage.

Later, on his way back to Midwood, he stops at the Walmart. Since coming to Midwood, he's always stopping here, it seems. As he stands in line at the checkout with his shopping basket, he thinks again about packing this job in. Just disappearing. Only Nick would come after him, and not just looking for a refund of the considerable sum that's already been paid on account. Billy is good at disappearing,
but Nick wouldn't stop hunting. He'd start by sending a hardball to question Bucky Hanson, and that questioning would be rough, because Nick would figure if anyone had a line on Billy Summers's whereabouts, it would be his broker in New York. Bucky might end up without fingernails. He might end up dead. He deserves neither.

Nick would also send guys, probably Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan, to the neighborhood. The Fazios and the Raglands would be questioned. So would Jamal and Corrie. Maybe the kids? That was unlikely, grown men talking to kids attracted unwanted attention, but just the thought of those two questioning Shan and Derek makes him queasy.

There are two other things. He has never run out on a job, that's number one. Joel Allen has it coming, that's number two. He's a bad person.

“Sir? You're next.”

Billy comes back to the Walmart checkout lane. “Sorry, I was woolgathering.”

“No worries, I do it all the time,” the checkout girl says.

He empties his carry-basket. There are bright green golf head covers with things like POW! and WHAM! printed on them, a gun cleaning kit, a set of wooden kitchen spoons, a big red bow with HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it in glitter, a light jacket with the Rolling Stones logo on the back, and a child's lunchbox. The checkout girl beeps the lunchbox last, then holds it up for a better look.

“Sailor Moon! Some little girl is going to love this!”

Shan Ackerman would love it, Billy thinks, but it's not for her. In a better world it would be.

That night, after dinner with the Ackermans (Corrie's shepherd's pie is delicious), he goes down to his basement rumpus room and
slides the gun out of the golf bag. It's an M24, as specified, and it looks okay. He breaks it down, laying the pieces out on the Ping-Pong table, and cleans each one, over five dozen in all. He finds the telescopic sight in one of the golf bag's two zipper pockets. In the other pocket is a magazine, which holds five rounds of ammunition: Sierra MatchKing Hollow Point Boat Tails.

He will only need one.

When he enters the Gerard Tower lobby the next morning at quarter to ten, the strap of the golf bag is over his left shoulder. He has come in purposely late so that most of the business-gerbils will be running on their wheels. Irv Dean, the elderly security guy, looks up from his magazine—today it's
Motor Trend
—and gives him a grin. “Goin on a golf adventure, Dave? Oh for the life of a writer!”

“Not me,” Billy says. “I think it's the most boring game in the universe. These are for my agent.” He shifts the bag so Irv can see the big bow on the side, with its glittery letters. It's over the side pocket that now holds a loaded magazine instead of a couple of dozen tees.

“Well that's pretty damn nice of you. Expensive present!”

“He's done a lot for me.”

“Uh-huh, I hear that. Only Mr. Russo doesn't exactly look cut out for the golf course.” Irv holds his hands out in front of him, indicating Giorgio's enormous front porch.

Billy is ready for this. “Yeah, he'd probably drop dead of a heart attack by the third hole if he was walking, but he's got a custom golf cart. He told me he learned the game in college, when he was a lot slimmer. And you know what, the one time he talked me into going out on the course with him, he put a drive on that ball you wouldn't believe.”

Irv gets up and for a cold moment Billy thinks the old guy's cop reflexes have fired one last time and he means to inspect the clubs, which would save Joel Allen's life and maybe end Billy's. Instead he turns sideways and claps both hands to his own not inconsiderable hindquarters. “This is where the power comes from.” Irv smacks himself again for emphasis. “Right here. You ask any NFL lineman or home run hitter. Ask José Altuve. Five-six, but he's got an ass like a brick.”

“That must be it. George sure does have one hell of a boot.” Billy straightens one of the green club covers. “Irv, you have a good day.”

“You do the same. Hey, when's his birthday? I'll get him a card or something.”

“Next week, but he may not be here. He's out on the west coast.”

“Palm trees and pretty girls by the swimming pool,” Irv says, sitting down. “Nice. You staying late tonight?”

“Don't know. Have to see how it goes.”

“Oh for the life of a writer,” Irv says again, and opens his magazine.

In his office, Billy pulls off one of the green club covers—it's the one that says SLAM! Sticking out of the Remington's barrel is a curtain rod he hacksawed to the right length. Taped to the end of the rod is the bowl of a wooden serving spoon. With the green club cover snugged down over it, it looks enough like the head of a golf club to be one. He takes out the stock, barrel, and bolt of the 700. Then he pushes two of the clubs aside so he can remove the lunchbox, which is wrapped in a sweater to muffle any clinks and clunks. Inside are the smaller components—bolt plug, firing pin, ejector pin, floor-plate latch, all the rest. He puts the disassembled gun, plus the five-shot magazine, the Leupold scope, and a glass cutter,
in the overhead cabinet between the office and the little kitchenette. He locks it and puts the key in his pocket.

He doesn't even try to write. Writing is done until this shit-show has been put to bed. He pushes aside the MacBook on which he's writing his story and opens his own. He types in the password, just a jumble of numbers and letters he's memorized (there's no giveaway sticky note hidden somewhere with the password written on it), and opens a file titled THE GAY BLADE. Said gay blade being Colin White of Business Solutions, of course. Listed there are ten flamboyant outfits Billy has observed Colin wearing to work.

There's no way of predicting which one Colin will be wearing on the day Joel Allen is delivered to the courthouse, and Billy has decided it doesn't matter. Not just because people believe their eyes even when their eyes are telling lies, but because it has to be the parachute pants. Sometimes Colin tops them with a wide-shouldered flower power shirt, sometimes with a tee that says QUEERS FOR TRUMP, sometimes with one of his many band shirts. It doesn't matter because the Colin people see will be wearing a jacket on top with the Rolling Stones lips logo on the back. He's never seen Colin in a jacket of any kind, not during the hot summer just past, but such a garment is certainly in his wheelhouse. And if the day of the shooting is hot, as fall weather tends to be here, the jacket will still be all right. It's a fashion statement.

When Nick's men in the fake DPW truck see Billy running past without stopping to get in, they won't think
Billy Summers is taking off
; they'll get a glimpse of the parachute pants and the shoulder-length black hair and think
There goes that fag in one of his flashy outfits, running for the hills
.

He hopes.

Still using his own laptop, Billy goes shopping on Amazon, specifying next-day delivery.

A week passes. He keeps expecting to hear from Giorgio, but there's nothing. On Friday evening he invites his neighbors over for a backyard barbecue, and for awhile afterward he, Jamal, and Paul Ragland play three-way pass in Billy's backyard while the kids play tag, ducking under Paul and Jamal's throws, which are sizzling. Even though the glove Jamal found for Billy is a well-padded catcher's mitt, his hand is still stinging as he does up the few dishes. That's when his phone rings.

He goes to the David Lockridge one first, but it's not that one. Then to the Billy Summers phone, but it's not that one, either. Which leaves the one he didn't expect to ring at all. It has to be Bucky in New York, because he's the only one who has the Dalton Smith number. But as he picks it up off the Welsh dresser in the living room, he realizes that's not true. It was on the form he filled out for Merton Richter, the real estate agent, and he also gave it to Beverly Jensen, his upstairs neighbor.

“Hello?”

“Hi, neighbor.” It's not Beverly; it's her husband. “How's Alabama?”

For a moment Billy has no idea what Jensen is talking about. He's frozen.

“Dalton? Did I lose you?”

It clicks into place. He's supposed to be in Huntsville, installing a computer system for Equity Insurance. “No, I'm here. How is it? Hot, that's how it is.”

“Weather okay otherwise?”

Billy has no clue how the weather is in Huntsville, probably pretty much like here but who knows. If he'd had the slightest fucking idea Don Jensen might call, he'd have checked. “Nothing special,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

Well, we were wondering just who the hell you really are, he imagines Don saying. That fake belly might fool most people, but my wife spotted it from the get-go.

“I tell you what,” Don says, “Bev's mother took a turn for the worse yesterday and died this afternoon.”

“Oh. I'm very sorry to hear that.” Billy actually is sorry. Maybe not “very,” but at least “sort of.” Beverly is no Corrie Ackerman, but she's okay.

“Yeah, Bev's pretty broken up about it. She's in the bedroom, packin and bawlin, bawlin and packin. We're flyin to St. Louis tomorrow, then gotta rent a car at the airport and drive to this little shitsplat town called Diggins. It's not just the buryin, there's a bunch of affairs that need windin up. Gonna be there awhile.” Don sighs. “I hate the expense, but some lawyer of hers gonna read the will on Tuesday, and I think there might be some money in it for us. That's how he sounds, but you know lawyers.”

“Cagey,” Billy says.

“That's right, cagey. Still, Annette was what you call a savin soul, and Bev's her only kid.”

“Ah.”

“We're apt to be there awhile is why I'm callin. Bev wanted to know if it'd be okay for me to put a key to our place under your door. When you get back from Bama, it'd be a favor if you'd check our fridge and water Bev's spider plant and her Busy Lizzie. Crazy about those things, even gives em names, do you believe it?
If you're gonna be gone longer than a week, that's a head-scratcher. We don't know many people around here.”

Because there
aren't
many people around there, Billy thinks. He also thinks this is good. Better than good, a fantastic stroke of luck. He'll have the Pearson Street house entirely to himself, unless the Jensens come back before Joel Allen leaves California.

“If you can't do it…”

“I can and I'll be happy to. How long do you think you'll be gone?”

“No way of telling. At least a week, maybe two. I got a leave of absence from work. Without pay, accourse, but if there's money in it…”

“Right. I get it.” Better and better. “And no problem on the plants. I expect to be back soon, and for quite awhile this time.”

“That's great. Bev told me to tell you that you can have anything out of the fridge you want. Better it gets used up than have it spoil, she says. Course, the milk may be gone, anyway.”

“Yes,” Billy says. “I ran into that problem myself. You have a safe trip.”

“Thanks, Dalton.”

“You bet,” Billy says.

That night Billy lies in bed with his hands under the pillow, looking up at the misty oblong of yellowish light on the ceiling, thrown by the streetlight in front of the Fazios'. He keeps forgetting to get curtains. He thinks about doing it and then it slips his mind. Maybe now, with nothing to do but wait, he'll remember.

He hopes the waiting period will be short, not just because Don and Beverly being gone is so convenient but because the hours spent in Gerard Tower are going to hang heavy without Benjy's
story to work on. Fallujah comes next, and Billy knows some of what he wants to say, some of the brilliant details he wants to capture. Those shredded garbage bags caught in the palm trees, blowing in the hot wind like flags. How the muj showed up in taxis to battle the Marines, piling out of them like clowns out of the little car at the circus. Only the circus clowns don't pile out guns up. How boys in 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg T-shirts served as ammo runners, darting through the rubble in their battered Nikes or Chuck Taylors. How a three-legged dog with half a human hand in its mouth went trotting through Jolan Park. Billy can see the white dust on that dog's paws so clearly.

The pieces are there, but no way he can put them together until this job is done. According to William Wordsworth, the best writing is about strong emotion recalled in tranquility. Billy has lost his tranquility.

Finally he slips into sleep, but the soft ding-dong of an arriving text awakens him at some dark hour. Ordinarily he might have slept through it, but now all his sleep is thin, with dreams that are mere wisps. It was always that way in the suck.

Three phones are lined up and charging on his nightstand: Billy's, Dave's, and Dalton's. It's the screen of his own that's lit up.

DblDom: Call me.
There follows a number with a Las Vegas area code.
DblDom
is the Double Domino, Nick's casino hotel. In Billy's time-zone it's three o'clock. In Vegas, Nick is probably just preparing to turn in.

Billy calls. Nick answers and asks how Billy's doing. Billy says he's doing fine except for it being three o'clock in the morning.

Nick laughs cheerfully. “Best time to call, folks are always home. I just got word that our friend will probably be coming your way next Wednesday. It would have been Monday, but he's got a little case of food poisoning, probably self-administered. His ride will take him to his hotel, where he'll spend the night. You follow?”

Billy follows. Allen's hotel will be the county jail.

“The next morning he'll be over your way for the A. You know what I mean?”

“Yes.” The arraignment.

“Did our redhaired friend get you what you wanted?”

“Yes.”

“It's okay?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Your agent will send you one more text, then you're on standby. After, you leave on your vacation. Got all that?”

“Yes,” Billy says.

“You'll want to pay the bill on this phone and any other you've been using. Follow me?”

“Yes,” Billy says. The way Nick keeps asking him if he's getting it is tiresome, but also good. Nick still thinks he's talking to a fellow whose brains are permanently on the dimmer switch. Destroy the Billy Summers phone, destroy the David Lockridge phone, destroy any burner phones he may have picked up along the way, roger that. The phone he'll keep is the one Nick doesn't know about.

“We'll talk down the line,” Nick says. “Keep your phone for awhile if you want, but trash the text I sent you.” And he's gone.

Billy deletes the text, lies down, and is asleep in less than a minute.

It's a cool weekend. Fall, it seems, is finally arriving. Billy can see the first few dashes of color in the trees on Evergreen Street. There's Monopoly on Sunday afternoon, Billy playing against three kids with half a dozen more kibitzing around the board. The dice are usually his friend but not today. He rolls three doubles and winds up in jail on three consecutive turns, a statistical freak almost up there with picking all six Mega Millions numbers. He hangs in long enough for
two of his opponents to go broke and then loses to Derek Ackerman. When the bank has taken his last mortgaged property, the kids all crow and pig-pile him, chanting
loser-loser-vodka-boozer
. Corrie comes downstairs to see what all the ruckus is about and yells through her laughter to get off him, let the man breathe.

“You got smoked!” Danny Fazio shouts gleefully. “You got smoked by a
kid
!”

“I did,” Billy says, laughing himself. “If I'd gotten all of the railroads instead of going to jail—”

Shan's friend Becky blows a raspberry at him and they all laugh some more. Then they go upstairs and eat pie in the living room, where Jamal is watching a baseball playoff game. Shan sits next to Billy on the couch, holding her flamingo in her lap. In the seventh inning, she goes to sleep with her head resting on Billy's arm. Corrie asks him to stay for supper, but Billy declines, saying he might catch an early movie. He's been hankering to see
Deadly Express
.

“I saw the previews for that one,” Derek says. “It looks scary.”

“I eat lots of popcorn,” Billy says. “It keeps me from being scared.”

Billy doesn't go to the movie but listens to a podcast review of it as he drives across town to the parking garage where his Ford Fusion awaits. Always safe, never sorry. He drives the Fusion to 658 Pearson Street and stows his Dalton Smith gear in the closet. Then he goes upstairs and waters Bev Jensen's spider plant and Busy Lizzie. The spider plant is going great guns, but the Busy Lizzie looks pretty wilted.

“There you go, Daphne,” Billy says. The little sign in front of the Busy Lizzie so identifies her. The spider plant is named—who knows why—Walter.

Billy locks up and leaves the house, wearing a gimme cap to cover his non-blond hair. Also sunglasses, although it's now almost dark. He returns the Fusion, drives his Toyota back to Midwood, watches some TV, goes to bed. He falls asleep almost immediately.

On Monday afternoon there's a knock on his door. Billy opens it with a sinking heart, expecting Ken Hoff, but it's not Hoff. It's Phyllis Stanhope. She's smiling, but her eyes are red and puffy.

“Take a girl to dinner?” Just like that. “My boyfriend dumped me, and I need some cheering up.” She pauses, then adds: “My treat.”

“No need of that,” Billy says. He has an idea where this might lead, and it's maybe not such a good idea, but he doesn't care. “Happy to pick up the tab, and if you really don't like that, we can go dutch again.”

But they don't go dutch. Billy pays. He thinks she may have decided to celebrate the end of her affair by sleeping with him, and the three screwdrivers she downs—two before dinner and one during—only cement the idea. Billy offers her the wine list but she waves it away.

“Never mix, never worry,” she says. “That's from—”

“
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
” Billy finishes, and she laughs.

She doesn't eat much of her dinner, says it was kind of a nasty breakup scene, part one in person and part two on the phone, and she's just not that hungry. What she really wants are those drinks. They may not be going dutch, but she needs some dutch courage for what comes next, which now seems not just possible but inevitable. And he wants it. It's been a long time since he's been with a woman. As Billy pays the check with one of his David Lockridge credit cards, he thinks of the kids piling on him and chanting
loser-loser-vodka-boozer
. And here, only a day later, is that very vodka boozer, a loser in love.

“Let's go to your place. I don't want to go to mine and look at his aftershave on the bathroom shelf.”

Well, Billy thinks, you can look at the aftershave on mine. You can even use my toothbrush.

When they get to the yellow house on Evergreen Street, she takes an appraising look around, compliments him on the
Doctor Zhivago
poster he bought in a downtown junkshop, and asks him if he has anything to drink. Billy has a six in the fridge. He asks her if she wants a glass, and Phil says she'll drink it right out of the can. He brings two into the living room.

“I thought you were off alcohol for the duration.”

He shrugs. “Promises were made to be broken. Besides, I'm off the clock.”

They have barely opened them when she says “It's hot in here” and starts unbuttoning her blouse. The beers will be open on the coffee table in the morning, flat and barely tasted.

The sex is good, at least for Billy. He thinks for her, too, but with women it's hard to tell. Sometimes they'd just like you to stop trying so hard and get off so they can go to sleep, but if she's faking it's a good fake. There comes a point, just before he can hold back no longer, when she makes an
mmmm
sound against his shoulder and digs in with her nails almost hard enough to bring blood.

When he rolls over to his side of the bed, she gives him a pat on the shoulder as if to say
good boy
. “Please don't tell me that was a mercy fuck.”

“It wasn't, believe me,” he says. “I won't ask you if it was a revenge fuck.”

She laughs. “You better not.” Then she rolls over on her side, away from him. Five minutes later she's snoring.

Billy lies awake for awhile, not because she's snoring—they're ladylike snores, almost like purring—but because his mind won't turn off. He thinks her turning up the way she did and then coming home with him is like something out of a Zola novel, where every character has to be fully used and make one final appearance, like a curtain call. He hopes his own story isn't over, but guesses this part of it almost is. If he finishes his job and collects his pay,
some new life (maybe as Dalton Smith, maybe as someone else) will begin. Maybe a better life.