Billy Summers

‘It sure is. The good part is that I travel a lot, so I don’t have a lot. Seen more motels than I ever wanted to. Spending the rest of this week in Lincoln, Nebraska, then Omaha.’ Billy has found that if you lie about business travel to cities of secondary size and importance in the economic scheme of things, people believe you. ‘I’ve got a few more things to bring in, so if you’ll excuse me …’

‘Do you need help?’

‘No, I’m fine.’ Then, as if reconsidering: ‘Well …’

They go out to the Fusion. Billy gives her the three off-brand computers. With the boxes in her arms, she looks like a woman who delivers for Domino’s. ‘Gosh, I better not drop these, they’re brand new. And probably worth a fortune.’

They’re only worth about nine hundred dollars, but Billy doesn’t contradict her. He asks if they’re too heavy.

‘Pooh. Less than a laundry basket of wetwash. Are you going to set all of these up?’

‘As soon as I get the power on, yes,’ Billy says. ‘It’s how I do my business. Some of it, anyway. Most I outsource.’ Outsource is one of those impressive-sounding words that might mean anything. He hefts out the carton containing the TV. They go up the walk, through the open front door, down the stairs.

‘Come on up once you’re a little bit settled,’ Beverly Jensen says. ‘I’ll put on the coffee pot. And I can give you a doughnut, if you don’t mind day-old.’

‘I never say no to a doughnut. Thank you, Mrs Jensen.’

‘Beverly.’

He smiles. ‘Beverly, right. One more suitcase to bring in and then I’ll be with you.’

Bucky has sent Billy’s box, the one marked Safeties. Dalton Smith’s iPhone is in it, and once he’s unloaded the Fusion, Billy uses it to make some Dalton Smith calls. By the time he’s drunk a cup of coffee and eaten a doughnut in the Jensens’ second-floor apartment, listening with apparent fascination as Beverly tells him all about her husband’s problems with the boss at the company where he works, the power is on in his new place.

His below-ground den.

8

He’s at 658 until mid-afternoon, unpacking the cheap clothes, booting up the cheap computers, and shopping at the Brookshire’s a mile away. Except for a dozen eggs and some butter, he steers clear of perishables. Most of what he buys is stuff that will keep when he’s not here: canned goods and frozen dinners. At three o’clock he drives the leased Fusion back to the fourth level of Parking Garage, and after making sure he’s unobserved, removes the glasses and fake facial hair. Getting rid of the fake belly is an incredible relief, and he sees he’ll need to get some baby powder if he wants to avoid a rash.

He drives the Toyota back to Parking Garage #1, then returns to the fifth floor of the Gerard Tower. He doesn’t work on his story, and he doesn’t play games on the computer, either. He just sits and thinks. No rifle in the office, nothing more lethal than a paring knife in one of the kitchenette’s drawers, and that’s okay. It may be weeks or even months before Billy needs a gun. The assassination might not even happen at all, and would that be so bad? In monetary terms, yes. He’d lose one-point-five mill. As for the five hundred thousand he’s already been paid, would the person who ordered the assassination – the one Nick is go-betweening for – want the money back?

‘Good luck with that,’ Billy says. And laughs.

9

As he walks, plods, back to the parking garage, Billy is thinking about bigamy.

He’s never been married once, let alone to two different women at the same time, but now he knows how that must feel. In a word, exhausting. He’s getting his feet set in not just two different lives but three. To Nick and Giorgio (also to Ken Hoff, which he hates), he’s a gun for hire named Billy Summers. To the inhabitants of the Gerard Tower, he’s a wannabe writer named David Lockridge. Ditto the residents of Evergreen Street in Midwood. And now, on Pearson Street – nine blocks from Gerard Tower and four safe miles from Midwood – he is an overweight computer geek named Dalton Smith.

Come to think of it, there’s even a fourth life: that of Benjy Compson, who is just enough not-Billy so Billy can look at painful memories he usually avoids.

He started writing Benjy’s story on a laptop he’s pretty sure (no, positive) has been cloned because it was a challenge, and because it’s that fabled last job, but he now understands there was a deeper, truer reason: he wants to be read. By anyone, even a couple of Vegas hardballs like Nick Majarian and Giorgio Piglielli. Now he understands – he never did before, never even considered it – that any writer who goes public with his work is courting danger. It’s part of the allure. Look at me. I’m showing you what I am. My clothes are off. I’m exposing myself.

As he approaches the entrance to the parking garage, deep in these thoughts, there’s a tap on his shoulder that makes him jump. He turns and sees Phyllis Stanhope, the woman from the accounting firm.