Billy Summers

We stayed in New Jersey on the night of November 2. The following night we checked into the Riverhead Hyatt, fifty miles from Montauk Point. Giorgio had indeed made reservations from his fat farm prison in South America. Because he knew I had no Steven Byrne ID, I was reserved under the Dalton Smith name. And because this place was quite a bit more fancy-shmancy than the motels where we’d previously stayed, Alice had to show her new Elizabeth Anderson ID. Giorgio, maybe thinner but as sharp as ever, had also reserved a double room, prepaid, for Steven Byrne and Rosalie Forester. Klerke wouldn’t check, such chores were beneath him, but Petersen might. If the clerk told Petersen that Byrne and Forester hadn’t checked in yet, Petersen wouldn’t be too concerned. Pimps weren’t known for keeping regular schedules.

Before leaving the desk, I asked if there was a package for me. Turned out there was, from Fun & Games Novelties in Las Vegas. A nonexistent company, no doubt. Giorgio had ordered it at my request. I opened it in my room with Alice looking on. Inside was a small unmarked aerosol cannister about the size of a roll-on deodorant tube. No oven spray this time.

‘What is it?’

‘Carfentanil. In 2002, the Russians pumped a version of this into a theater where forty or fifty Chechen rebels were holding seven hundred people hostage. The idea was to put everyone to sleep and end the siege. It worked, but the gas was too strong. A hundred of the hostages didn’t just go to sleep, they died. I doubt if Putin gave a shit. This stuff is supposedly half-strength. It’s Klerke we’re after. I don’t want to kill Petersen if I don’t have to.’

‘What if it doesn’t work?’

‘Then I’ll do whatever I need to.’

‘We,’ Alice said.

*

November 4 was a long day. Days of waiting always are. Alice brought out her tank suit and swam in the pool. Later on we took a walk and ate a pickup lunch at a hotdog wagon. Alice said she wanted a nap. I tried to take one and couldn’t. Later, while she was re-styling the wig again to match the photo, she admitted she hadn’t been able to, either.

‘And I didn’t sleep much last night. I’ll sleep when this is over. Then I’ll sleep a lot.’

‘Fuck it,’ I said. ‘Stay here. Let me do this.’

Alice cracked a small smile. ‘And what would you say to Petersen when you showed up without the eight-thousand-dollar girl?’

‘I’ll think of something.’

‘You might not even get in. If you did, you’d have to kill Petersen. You don’t want to do that, and I don’t want you to do it. I’m going.’

So that was that.

*

We left at six. Alice had a picture of the estate from Google Earth and directions on how to get there on the GPS. This late in the season the traffic was light. I asked her if she wanted to stop at one of the fast food places on the outskirts of Riverhead and she gave a brittle laugh. ‘If I ate anything, I’d throw up all over my nice new dress.’

It was the boatneck, purple with tiny white flowers. She was wearing her new parka but not zipped, so the place where her cleavage began would show. There wasn’t much else up front because she was wearing a mid-length binder underneath instead of a bra. Her handbag was on her lap. The Sig was inside. I was wearing my new bomber jacket. The Glock was in one of the inside pockets. The aerosol can was in the other.

‘Montauk Highway makes a loop,’ she said. I knew that, I’d studied the layout on my laptop that afternoon when I couldn’t nap, but I let her talk. She was working on her nerves, trying to sand them down. ‘You go past the Lighthouse Museum and take your first left. Eos isn’t a seafront estate, he traded that for the view, I guess. I doubt if he water-skis or bodysurfs at his age, anyway. Are you scared?’

‘No.’ Not for myself, at least.

‘Then I’ll be scared for both of us. If you don’t mind.’ She consulted the map on her phone again. ‘It looks like number 775 is about a mile in, right after the Montauk Farm Store. That must be handy. For fresh veggies and all. You look good, Billy, Irish as all getout, and can you stop somewhere? I have to pee so bad.’

I stopped at a place called the BreezeWay Diner, about halfway between Riverhead and Montauk. Alice dashed inside and I thought about driving on without her. Everything Bucky had told me not to do with her – to her – I was doing. Soon she would be an accessory to the murder of a rich and famous man, and that would only be if things went right. If they didn’t, she might wind up dead. But I stayed. Because I needed her to get in, yes, but also because she had a right to decide.

She came out smiling. ‘That is so much better.’ And as I pulled back onto the highway: ‘I thought you might leave me.’

‘Never crossed my mind,’ I said. From the look she gave me I thought she knew better.

She straightened in her seat and tugged the hem of her dress to her knees. She looked like a prim and proper high school girl, the kind they don’t seem to make anymore. ‘Let’s do this.’

*