Billy Summers

So that’s who the missing man is, Billy thinks. Reggie’s DPW partner. The little redhead with the dork knob who talked smack to me in the Gerard Tower. Maybe not the guy who got rid of Ken Hoff, but Billy thinks there’s a good chance that he was. Of course it’s Edison, because every character in a story must be used at least twice: Dickens’s rule. And Zola’s.

He doesn’t come out.

‘Come on, Dana!’ Nick calls. ‘It’s okay!’

No answer.

‘He armed?’ Billy asks Nick.

‘What, are you kidding? You think when I invite friends over to watch a football game they come strapped?’

Billy says, ‘I think we’re going to find out about that. Nick, do your two friends there on the floor understand that I can shoot? That it’s what I do?’

‘He can shoot,’ Nick says. His normal olive complexion has gone yellow. ‘He learned it in the Marines. Sniper.’

‘I’m going to go over to the bathroom and convince Dana to come out. I guess you can’t run, Reggie, but you still could, Mr Abromowitz. Do it and I’ll kill you. Same goes for you, Nick.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Nick says. ‘We’ll work this out. I just have to explain why—’

Billy tells him again to shut up and goes around the couch. Nick is now back to him, an easy head shot if Billy needs to take it. Reggie and the accountant are blocked by the couch, but Reggie has a shattered ankle and he doesn’t think Abromowitz the family man is going to be a problem. It’s Dana Edison he’s concerned with.

He stands beside the pinball machine closest to the closed door. He says, ‘Come on out, Dana. If you do that, you might live. Otherwise, no.’

Billy doesn’t expect a reply and doesn’t get one.

‘Okay, coming in.’

Like hell I am, he thinks, but he bends, reaches forward, and grabs the doorknob. The second he rattles it Edison fires four times, the shots so rapid Billy can hardly differentiate them. It’s a thin door and there are no holes, only wood flying in big splinters. Billy senses movement behind him but doesn’t look. Nick and Abromowitz may be on the run, but neither is going to run into Edison’s field of fire to tackle him, any more than that pair of mokes would have run into the Funhouse to try and rescue Johnny Capps.

Edison will expect Billy to hesitate if he’s still alive so he doesn’t. He steps in front of the splintered door and pumps half a dozen rounds into it. Edison shrieks. There’s a clatter and then – only reality can serve up such absurdities – the toilet flushes.

From the corner of his eye, Billy sees Abromowitz heading to the first floor in a series of gazelle-like leaps. Billy has no idea what Nick is up to but he’s not following Abromowitz up the stairs and this is the wrong time to check further. He raises a foot and kicks the remains of the door beside the lock. It flies open. Dana Edison is lying across the toilet, bleeding from the head and throat. His own Glock is lying in the shower along with his little rimless spectacles. He apparently struck the toilet’s flush lever when he went down. His eyes roll up to look at Billy.

‘Doc … tor …’

Billy looks at the blood spilling down the side of the toilet. A doctor isn’t going to help Dana. Dana has bought that place they call the farm. Billy bends over him, gun in hand. ‘Do you remember the last thing you said to me when you came to my office in the Gerard Tower?’

Edison makes a hoarse huffing sound. A spray of blood comes out with it.

‘I do.’ Billy puts the muzzle of the Glock against Edison’s temple. ‘You said “Don’t miss.”’

He pulls the trigger.

5

When he comes out Reggie is on his knees in front of the couch. Billy can see the top of his head. He sees Billy and raises a small silver pistol that must have been stashed under one of the cushions. Nick wasn’t unarmed after all. Billy puts two rounds through the back of the couch before Reggie can fire and Reggie flops backward out of sight. Billy goes to the couch in three running steps and peers over. Reggie is on his back, the gun on the rug beside one of his outstretched hands. His eyes are open and starting to glaze.

You should have settled for the shattered ankle, Billy thinks. Doctors might have been able to fix that.

Something falls over deeper in the man-cave. Glass shatters and there’s a curse – ‘M’qifsh Karin!’ Billy hurries that way, bent low. The lights in the area beyond the TV room are off, but Billy can see Nick in the gloom. His back is turned. He’s pushing buttons on a lighted keypad beside a steel door. There’s a billiards table in this adjoining room, and a few vintage slot machines, and a rolling bar that’s lying on its side in a glitter of broken glass and the eye-watering smell of spilled whiskey.

Nick stabs frantically at the buttons, still cursing in Albanian or whatever language he learned as a child and has otherwise forgotten. He only stops when Billy tells him to quit it and turn around.