Billy Summers

‘A flashpot, right. That’s Frankie’s responsibility. Five seconds after that, no more than ten, one’s going to go off behind the news and stationery shop on the corner. That’s Paulie Logan. People are going to start beating feet. You’ll join them, just one more office guy wanting a quick look at what happened and then wanting to get the hell out. You hook around the corner. The DPW truck will be there. Reggie will have the back doors open. I’ll be behind the wheel. In you go and change into a coverall as fast as you can. Clear?’

It always was. Billy doesn’t need a last-minute tutorial. ‘Yes. Just one thing, Dana.’

‘What might that be?’

‘I’ve got stuff to do to get ready, and once I start doing it, there’s no going back. Are you sure it’s gonna be tomorrow?’

Dana starts to speak, to say of course, but Billy shakes his head.

‘Think before you say anything. Think hard, because if something changes, this deal goes south, I’m gone and Joel Allen is still using his lungs. So … are you sure?’

Dana Edison looks closely at Billy, perhaps re-evaluating. Then he smiles. ‘As sure as I am that the sun rises in the east. Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ Edison heads back to the outer office, walking that springy walk. His manbun looks like a dark red doorknob. At the door, he turns and regards Billy with eyes that are bright and blue and expressionless. He says, ‘Don’t miss.’ Then he’s gone.

Billy goes back into his writing room and stares at the frozen cribbage game. He’s thinking that Dana Edison said nothing about a possible warehouse fire in Cody, and he certainly would have if he knew about it. He’s also thinking about the possibility that if he went with Nick’s plan, he really might end up in a ditch on a country road with a hole in his forehead. If that were to happen, he guesses Edison would be the one to put it there. And who would end up with the owing million-five? Nick, of course. Billy would like to believe that’s paranoid, but after Edison’s visit it seems a little more likely. Surely the thought has at least crossed Nick’s mind, despite their long association. Pinch off Ken Hoff, pinch off Billy Summers, and everyone walks away clean.

Billy closes down his computer. Writing his story has never felt so far away. Hell, today he can’t even play cribbage.

9

On his way home he stops at Ace Hardware and buys the last thing he needs: a Yale padlock. When he arrives at his house – his last night here – there’s a piece of paper on the top step of the porch, held down with a rock. He slides his laptop case off his shoulder, picks up the paper, sits, studies it, and thinks this is a curtain call he could have done without. It’s a crayon drawing, obviously made by a child, but one who shows at least some talent. How much is impossible to tell, because the artist is currently only eight years old. At the bottom she has signed her name: Shanice Anya Ackerman. At the top, in capital letters: FOR DAVE!

The picture is of a smiling little girl with dark brown skin and bright red ribbons decorating her cornrows. In her arms is a pink flamingo, from whose head floats a series of hearts. Billy looks at it for a long time, then folds it and puts it in his back pocket. He has gotten himself into a box he never dreamed of. He would give anything, two-million-dollar payout included, to be able to turn the calendar back three months, to that hotel lobby where he sat reading Archie’s Pals ’n’ Gals and waiting for his ride. And when Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan came in, he would tell them to make his apologies to Nick, he’s changed his mind. But there’s no going back now, only forward, and when he thinks of Dana Edison perhaps stopping by this neighborhood to ask questions, maybe even putting those small neat hands of his on Shanice’s shoulders, Billy presses his lips together so tightly that they disappear. He is in a box and all he can do is shoot his way out.

CHAPTER 10

1

Thursday morning. The day of. Billy gets up at five. He eats toast with a glass of water to wash it down. No coffee. No caffeine of any kind until the job is done. When he shoulders the 700 and looks through the Leupold scope, he wants his hands perfectly steady.

He puts his toast plate and the empty water glass in the sink. Lined up on the table are his four cell phones. He takes the SIM cards from three of them – the Billy-phone, the Dave-phone, the burner – and microwaves the cards for two minutes. He dons an oven glove, picks out the charred remains, and grinds them up in the garbage disposal. The three SIMless phones go in a paper bag. He adds the Dalton Smith phone, the Yale lock, and the plain gray gimme cap he wore to Pearson Street when he dropped off the Dalton Smith gear and watered Beverly’s plants.