Billy Summers

He opens the back door of his car and takes a paper grocery bag from the seat. Crammed inside are the parachute pants and the silk jacket with the Rolling Stones lips on the back. This pair isn’t gold, although the gold ones are Colin White’s favorites. After some interior debate, Billy has decided that would be a little too flashy. The ones he ordered from Amazon are black with gold sparkles. He’s sure Colin would adore them.

Billy has a story ready in case – unlikely but always possible – Irv asks him why he’s coming to work with a grocery bag, but Irv is talking to several fine-looking ladies from Business Solutions and just gives him a distracted wave as Billy signs in and heads for the elevators.

In his office he opens the bag, rummages beneath the clothes, and takes out a sign he bought at Staples from a rack of them. It says SORRY CLOSED. A pair of sad cartoon faces flank the message. There’s white space for a brief explanation beneath. Billy uses a Sharpie to print NO WATER USE 4 OR 6. He waves the sign in the air a few times, not wanting his message to smudge, then places it back in the bag. He adds the long-haired black wig, then puts the bag in the closet.

At his desk, he transfers the Benjy story to a thumb drive. Once that’s done, he uses a suicide program to destroy everything on the MacBook Pro. It stays here. His fingerprints are all over it and everything else in this place, after all this time he’d miss some no matter how much he wiped, but that’s okay. Once he takes the shot and sees Joel Allen lying dead on the courthouse steps, Billy Summers will cease to exist. As for his personal lappie … he could kill that one as well, leave it, and use one of the cheap new AllTechs at Pearson Street, but he doesn’t want to. This one is coming along for the ride.

8

An hour later there’s a knock on the outer door. He answers it, once more expecting Ken Hoff, maybe with a case of cold feet, and once again he’s wrong. This time it’s Dana Edison, one of the imported hard boys from Nick’s Vegas team. He’s not dressed in his DPW coverall today. Today he’s Mr Nondescript in dark slacks and a gray sportcoat. He’s a little man, bespectacled, and at first glance you might think he belongs in Phil Stanhope’s accounting office at the other end of the hall. Take a closer look and you might – especially if you were a Marine – see something different.

‘Hey there, fella.’ Edison’s voice is low and polite. ‘Nick wanted me to have a word with you. Okay if I step in?’

Billy stands aside. Dana Edison breezes through the outer office in his neat brown loafers and into the small conference room that serves as Billy’s writing studio. Not to mention his shooter’s overlook. Edison moves with lithe confidence. He glances briefly at the table, where Billy’s personal lappie is open with a half-played cribbage game in progress, then looks out the window. Tracing the line of fire Billy has traced himself many times over the summer. Only now summer is over and there’s a snap in the air.

It’s good that Edison gives him a little time, because here Billy has gotten used to being a pretty smart guy named David Lockridge and might have slipped. But when Edison turns back to him, Billy has his dumb self face on: eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar. Not enough to make him look like the village idiot, just enough so he looks like a man who might believe Zola is one of Superman’s archenemies.

‘You’re Dana, right? I met you at Nick’s.’

He nods. ‘Also seen me and Reggie tooling around in that little city truck, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Nick wants to know if you’re all ready for tomorrow.’

‘Sure.’

‘Where’s the gun?’

‘Well …’

Dana grins, showing teeth as small and neat as the rest of him. ‘Never mind. But it’s close, right?’

‘You bet.’

‘Got a glass cutter for that window?’

A stupid question, but that’s okay. He’s supposed to be a stupid man. ‘Sure.’

‘You don’t want to use it today. The sun shines on this side of the building all afternoon and someone might see the hole.’

‘I know that.’

‘Yeah, I suppose you would. Nick says you were a sniper. Got some kills in Fallujah, yeah? How was that?’

‘Good.’ It wasn’t. Neither is this conversation. Having Edison in this room is like having let in a small and very compact storm cloud.

‘Nick wanted me to make sure you’re straight on the plan.’

‘I’m straight.’

Edison stays on message. ‘You take the shot. Five seconds later, no more than ten, there’s going to be a hell of a big bang from behind that café over there.’

‘A flashpot.’