Billy Summers

We passed the Lighthouse Museum and the left turn came up less than a hundred yards further on. It was full dark now. Somewhere off to the right was the sound of the ocean. A crescent moon flicked through the trees. Alice leaned over, fussed briefly with my wig, then sat back. We didn’t talk.

The numbers on Montauk Highway started at 600, for reasons probably only known to town planners who had long since gone to their final rewards. I was surprised that the houses, although well-kept, were mundane. Most were ranches and Cape Cods that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Evergreen Street. There was even a trailer park. A nice one with carriage lamps and gravel lanes, granted, but a trailer park is a trailer park.

The Montauk Farm Store, really just a jumped-up produce stand, was dark and shuttered. There were a few lonely pumpkins in a pyramid by the door and a few more in the back of an old stakebed truck with 4-SALE soaped on one side of the windshield and RUNS GOOD on the other.

Alice pointed at a mailbox beyond the store. ‘That’s it.’

I slowed. ‘Last chance. Are you sure? If you’re not we can turn around.’

‘I’m sure.’ She was sitting ramrod straight, knees together and hands clasped on the strap of her purse. Eyes straight ahead.

I turned onto a piece-of-shit dirt track marked with a sign reading PRIVATE WAY. It became clear almost at once that the dirt track was camouflage to deke curious tourists. Over the first hill it became a tar road wide enough for cars to pass each other comfortably. I crept along using my high beams, thinking that this was my second trip to the estate of a bad man. I hoped this one would be quicker and more efficient.

We rounded a curve. Ahead of us, a slatted wooden gate six or seven feet high blocked the road. There was a talk-box on a concrete pillar, lit by a metal-shaded light. I pulled up to it, rolled down my window, and thumbed the button. ‘Hello?’

I thought (Alice and Bucky concurred) that trying for an Irish lilt might be disastrous. And there was no reason why Byrne had to have one, not if he’d lived his whole life in New York.

Meanwhile, the box on the post wasn’t talking back to me.

‘Hello? This is Steve Byrne. Darren’s cousin, yo? I got something for Mr K.’

More silence, giving me – Alice too, from the look of her – reason to think something had gone wrong and we weren’t going to get in. Not this way, anyhow.

Then the box crackled and a man said, ‘Get out of the car.’ Flat and toneless. It could have been a cop’s voice. ‘You and the young lady both. You’ll see an X in front of the gate, right in the middle. Stand there and look to your left. Stand close together.’

I looked at Alice and she looked at me, wide-eyed. I shrugged and nodded. We got out and walked to the gate. The X, maybe once blue but now faded to gray, was on a concrete square. We crowded together on it and looked left.

‘Up. Look up.’

We looked up. It was a camera, of course.

I could hear a faint voice murmur something, then whoever was holding down the intercom button in the house – Petersen, I assumed – let go and there was only silence. No wind, and too late in the year for crickets.

‘What’s happening?’ Alice asked.

I didn’t know, but thought it probable they were listening, so I told her to shut up and wait. Her eyes widened, but then she got it and said, ‘Okay, sir’ in a meek little voice.

The intercom clicked and the voice said, ‘I see a bulge on the left side of your jacket, Mr Byrne. Are you armed?’

That was one hell of a good camera. I could say no and the barrier would no doubt stay closed, no matter how much Klerke wanted the girl. ‘Yeah, I’m carrying,’ I said. ‘For protection only.’

‘Take it out and hold it up.’

I took out the Glock and held it up to the camera.

‘Put it at the base of the intercom post. You won’t need protection here and no one will steal it. You can pick it up on your way out.’

I did as I was told. The aerosol can was much smaller, so there was no bulge on that side of the jacket, and if I could immobilize the man who belonged to the intercom voice, Klerke would be no problem. Or so I hoped.

I started back to the concrete square, but the voice from the intercom stopped me. ‘No, Mr Byrne. Stay where you are, please.’ There was a pause and then the voice said, ‘Actually I want you to take two steps back. Please.’

I took two steps back toward the car.

‘Now one more,’ the voice said, and I understood. They wanted me off-camera. Klerke wanted to size up the merchandise and decide if he really wanted to buy, or to send us on our way. There was a faint whine from the camera. I looked and saw the lens was now protruding. Zooming the image.

I thought the voice would next ask Alice to show the camera what was in her purse, and the Sig would end up at the base of the intercom post along with the Glock, but that wasn’t it.

‘Lift your skirt, young lady.’

Petersen’s voice, but it would be Klerke looking. Avid eyes in wrinkled sockets.