Billy Summers

When the lunch trucks arrive, Billy goes down for a taco and a Coke. Jim Albright, John Colton, and Harry Stone – The Young Lawyers, like characters in a TV show or a Grisham novel – wave him over and ask him to sit with them, but Billy says he wants to eat at his desk and do a little more work.

Jim raises a finger and recites, ‘No man on his deathbed ever said “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” Oscar Wilde, just before he passed into the great beyond.’

He could tell Jim that Oscar Wilde’s last words are actually reputed to have been Either that wallpaper goes or I do, but he just smiles.

The truth is he doesn’t want to spend time with these guys now that the job is almost here, not because he doesn’t like them but because he does. And Phil seems to have taken the day off. He hopes she’ll take Wednesday and Thursday off too, but that’s probably too much to hope for.

His Dalton phone starts to ring just as he re-enters his office. It’s Don Jensen.

‘Dollen my man! You back?’

‘I am.’

‘How you doon? How’s Daffy and Woller?’

‘All three of us are fine. How are you?’ In the bag is how Don is from the sound of his voice, even though it’s just a little past noon.

‘Man, I’ve never been better.’ Better comes out bear. ‘Bevvie, too. Say hi, Bevvie!’

Distant but perfectly audible because she’s yelling, Beverly says, ‘Hi there, honey-bunny!’ And shrieks with laughter. So she’s been drinking, too. Not exactly in mourning, either of them.

‘Bevvie says hi,’ Don says.

‘Yes, I heard her.’

‘Dollen … buddy …’ He drops his voice. ‘We’re rich.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Lawyer read the will this morning and Bevvie’s mom left her everything. Stocks and bank accounts. Almost two hunnert thousand dollars!’

In the background Bevvie cheers, and Billy can’t help but smile. She may be in mourning again when she sobers up, but right now these two apartment dwellers in one of the city’s not-very-desirable neighborhoods are celebrating, and Billy can’t blame them.

‘That’s great, Don. Really great.’

‘How long you gonna be home this time? That’s why I’m callin, Dollen.’

‘Probably quite awhile. I’ve got a new contract for—’

Don doesn’t wait for him to finish. ‘Good, that’s good. You keep waterin Daffy an Woller, because … you know what?’

‘What?’

‘Guess!’

‘Can’t guess.’

‘Gotta, my computer compadre, gotta!’

‘You’re going to Disneyland.’

Don laughs so loudly that Billy pulls the phone away from his ear with a little wince, but he’s also still smiling. A good thing has happened to decent people, and no matter what his own situation happens to be, he has to like it. He wonders if Zola ever wrote a development similar to this. Probably not, but Dickens, now—

‘Close, Dollen, close. We’re goin on a cruise!’

In the background, Beverly whoops.

‘You gonna be around for a month? Maybe even six weeks? Because—’

At this point, Beverly snatches the phone, and Billy once more has to hold it a couple of inches away to spare his overtaxed eardrum. ‘If you’re not, just let em die! I can afford new ones! A whole greenhouse!’

Billy has time to offer her both condolences and congratulations, then it’s Don again.

‘And when we get back, we’re movin. No more scenic view of that fuckin vacant lot across the street. Not that I’m dissin your apartment, Doll. Iss the one Bevvie always wanted.’

Bev cries, ‘Not anymore!’

Billy says, ‘I’ll water Daphne and Walter, don’t worry about that.’

‘We’ll pay you for it, Mr Computer Geek Plant Sitter! We can afford to!’

‘No need. You’re good neighbors.’

‘You too, Dollen, you too. Know what we’re drinkin?’

‘Maybe Champagne?’

Billy once more has to hold the phone away from his ear. ‘You hit the goddam nail on the goddam head!’

‘Don’t overdo it,’ Billy says. ‘And give Beverly my best, you hear? Sorry for her loss but glad for your gain.’

‘I will, for sure. Thanks a million, buddy.’ He pauses, and when he speaks again he sounds almost sober. Awed. ‘Two hundred thousand dollars. Do you believe it?’

‘Yes,’ Billy says. He ends the call and sits back in his office chair. He’s getting a lot more than two hundred K, but he thinks Don and Beverly Jensen are really the rich ones. Yes sir, really the rich ones. Sentimental but true.

7

The next morning, as he’s turning into the parking garage around the corner from Gerard Tower, his David Lockridge phone chimes with a text. He waits until he’s parked on the fourth level, then reads it.

GRusso: The check is on the way.

Billy doubts it, it’s only six-thirty on the west coast, but he understands that the check will be on the way soon enough. Allen is coming, probably on a commercial flight handcuffed to one of this city’s detectives or a state cop, and that’s good. Time to get the show on the road. Overtime.