Billy Summers

He stands in the doorway for a few moments, laptop slung over one shoulder, looking around. This isn’t home, he hasn’t really had a place he could call home since Officer F.W.S. Malkin drove him away from 19 Skyline Drive in the Hillview Trailer Park (and that wasn’t much of one, especially after Bob Raines killed his sister), but he guesses this place has been close.

‘Well okay then,’ Billy says, and goes out. He doesn’t bother to lock the door. No need for the cops to break it down. Bad enough that they’ll assuredly trample all over the lawn he worked so hard to bring back.

2

Billy doesn’t drive to the parking garage. The parking garage is done. At five to six he parks on Main Street a few blocks from the Gerard Tower. Plenty of curbside spaces at this hour and the sidewalk is deserted. His laptop is over his shoulder. The paper bag is in his hand. He leaves the keys in the Toyota’s cup holder. Maybe somebody will steal it, although that’s not actually necessary. Neither is dropping the three dead cell phones through three different sewer grates, always checking his surroundings to be sure he’s not observed. It’s what they called ‘policing up the area’ in the Marines. After he drops the third one, he checks to see if he brought Shan’s drawing of her and the flamingo. The one whose name has been changed to Dave. It’s there. Good. It’s a keeper.

He cuts down Geary Street, walks a block away from Gerard Tower, and comes to the alley he scoped out. After again checking to make sure he’s unobserved (also that there’s no inconvenient wino sleeping it off in there), Billy enters the alley and crouches behind the second of two dumpsters. Trash pickup day in this city is Friday, so both are full and reeking. He stows his laptop and the gray gimme cap behind the dumpster, then scavenges a bunch of packing paper and covers them.

This part worries him more than taking the shot. Do you call that irony? He doesn’t know. What he knows is that he doesn’t want to lose the lappie any more than he wants to lose the copy of Thérèse Raquin he was reading when he came to this city (the book is safely stowed at 658 Pearson). Lucky charms are what they are. Like the baby shoe he carried during Operation Vigilant Resolve and most of Phantom Fury.

The chances of someone coming down this alley, looking behind the dumpster, lifting the garbage-bespattered packing paper, and stealing his laptop are small, and they’d never be able to crack the password, but the object matters. He can’t bring it, though, because he can’t leave Gerard Tower with it slung over his shoulder. He has seen Colin White with his phone, and a couple of times he’s shown up for lunch still wearing the headset that must just about be a part of him, but Billy has never seen him with a laptop.

He gets to Gerard Tower at twenty past six. This street dead-ending at the courthouse will be a hive full of worker bees later on, but now it’s a graveyard. The only person he sees is a sleepy-eyed woman putting out the breakfast specials signboard in front of the Sunspot Café. Billy wonders if the flashpot is already in place behind it, then dismisses the thought. The flashpots are not his problem, nor is the fire Ken Hoff promised out in Cody. Billy will take the shot no matter what. It’s his job, and with his bridges burning one by one behind him, he means to do it. There’s no other choice.

Irv Dean isn’t at the security stand, and won’t be until seven, maybe seven-thirty, but one of the building’s two janitors is buffing the lobby floor. He looks up as Billy goes to the card reader to record his entry, just like a good boy should.

‘Hey, Tommy,’ Billy says, heading for the elevators.

‘What’re you doing here so early, Dave? God isn’t even up.’

‘I’ve got a deadline,’ Billy tells him, thinking what an apt word that is for today’s business. ‘I’ll probably be here until God goes back to bed.’

That makes Tommy laugh. ‘Go get em, tiger.’

‘That’s the plan,’ Billy says.

3

He takes the two paper bags down to the fifth-floor men’s room. He stows his Colin White disguise, not neglecting the wig of long black hair (maybe the most important part), in the trash basket by the washbasins, then covers it with paper towels. The sign and the padlock go on the door. The key goes in his pocket, along with Dalton’s phone and the Benjy Compson flash drive.