Billy Summers

Nick returns from Vegas in mid-August. He calls Billy and tells him to arrive at the McMansion after dark, an instruction Billy hardly needs. They sit down to a late dinner at nine-thirty. There’s no help – Nick cooks himself, veal parmigiana, not great but the Pinot Noir is good. Billy takes only a single glass, mindful of the drive back.

Frankie, Paulie, and the new guys, Reggie and Dana, are in attendance. They praise the meal extravagantly, including the dessert, which is a supermarket poundcake garnished with either Cool Whip or Dream Whip. Billy knows the taste. He ate his share as a kid on Friday nights at the Stepenek house, which he and Robin and Gad – plus other assorted inmates – called the House of Everlasting Paint.

That place is on his mind a lot these days. Robin, too. He was crazy for that girl. Soon he will be writing about her, although he’ll change her name to something similar. Rikki, or maybe Ronnie. He’ll change all the names, except maybe for the one-eyed girl.

Most of Nick’s crew, the guys Billy thinks of as the Vegas hardballs, have names ending in -ie, like characters in a Coppola or Scorsese movie. Dana Edison is different. He’s a redhead with a tight little manbun in back to make up for what he’s lost in front – his forehead looks more like a runway. Frankie Elvis, Paulie, and Reggie are muscular boys. Dana is slight, and looks out at the world through rimless spectacles. At first glance you might take him to be inoffensive, a Mr Milquetoast, but the eyes behind the specs are blue and cold. Shooter’s eyes.

‘No word on Allen yet?’ Billy asks when the meal is finished.

‘As a matter of fact, there is.’ Then, to Paulie: ‘Don’t you light that fuckin stinkbomb in here, there’s a no-smoking clause in the lease. Violation is cause for immediate termination plus a thousand-dollar fine.’

Paulie Logan looks at the cheroot he’s taken from the pocket of his pink Paul Stuart shirt like he doesn’t know where it came from and puts it back with a muttered apology. Nick turns back to Billy.

‘Allen is gonna be in court the Tuesday after Labor Day. His lawyer will try for another continuance. Will he get it?’ Nick lifts his hands, palms up. ‘Maybe, but what I’m hearing from my friends in LA is this judge is a grumpy old cunt.’

Frank Macintosh laughs, then stops and crosses his arms over his chest when Nick frowns at him. Nick has been in a shitty mood most of the night. Billy thinks he wants to be back in Vegas, listening to some oldtimer – Frankie Avalon, maybe Bobby Rydell – sing ‘Volare.’

‘They tell me this has been a rainy summer here, Billy. That true?’

‘It comes and goes,’ Billy says, thinking of his lawn in Midwood. It’s as green as the felt on a new pool table. Even the grass in front of 658 Pearson looks better, and the brick jaw of the train station across the street is hidden by high-sprouting weeds.

‘When it comes, it comes hard,’ Reggie says. ‘Not much like Vegas, boss.’

‘Can you make the shot in the rain?’ Nick asks. ‘That’s what I want to know. And I want the truth, not some optimistic bullshit.’

‘Unless it’s pouring cats and dogs, sure.’

‘Good. Good. We’ll hope the cats and dogs stay home. Come in the library with me, Billy. Want to talk to you a little more. Then you can go home and get your beauty rest. You guys find something to do. Paulie, if you smoke that thing outside, don’t let me find the butt on the lawn tomorrow.’

‘Okay, Nick.’

‘Because I’ll look.’

Paul Logan and the three Vegas imports troop out. Nick takes Billy into a room lined floor to ceiling with books. Cunning little spotlights shine down sprays of light on leatherbound sets. Billy would love to browse those shelves – he’s pretty sure he sees the complete works of both Kipling and Dickens – but that’s not the sort of thing the Billy Nick knows would do. The Billy Nick knows sits in a wingback chair and gives Nick his best wide-eyed receptive look.

‘Have you seen Reggie and Dana around?’

‘Yes. Once in awhile.’ They drive a DPW panel truck. Once they were parked at the curb in front of the Gerard Tower, where the food trucks roost at lunchtime. They were fiddling with a manhole cover. Another time he saw them on Holland Street, kneeling down and shining their lights into a sewer grate. They were wearing gray coveralls, city gimme caps, work boots.

‘You’ll see them more. They look okay?’

Billy shrugs.

Nick returns it with an impatient look. ‘What does that mean?’

‘They looked okay.’

‘Not attracting any special attention?’

‘Not that I saw.’

‘Good. Good. The truck’s in the carriage house here. They don’t take it out every day, at least not yet, but I want people to get used to seeing them cruising around.’

‘Blending into the scenery,’ Billy says with his best dumb self smile.

Nick points a finger gun at him. It’s his trademark, Billy knows, probably picked it up from some Vegas lounge act, but Billy doesn’t care for having even a make-believe gun pointed at him. ‘Exactly right. Hoff deliver your weapon yet?’

‘No.’

‘You seen him?’