Billy Summers

He doesn’t need the fucking laptop, he has the flash drive with Benjy’s story on it, Rudy ‘Taco’ Bell and the others still unwritten but waiting in the wings. He can go on once he gets to the basement apartment. There’s nothing on the lappie to connect him to his Dalton Smith life, even if someone, some supergeek out of a movie, could crack the password. The only connection to his Dalton Smith life besides the Jensens is Bucky Hanson, and he has only communicated with Bucky on a phone that no longer exists.

So let it go. No choice and no loss.

But it feels like such bad luck. Such a bad omen. Almost like a final summation of a shit job he should have known better than to take.

He pounds his fist against the side of the dumpster hard enough to hurt and listens to the sirens. Right now he’s not worried about police, they are all headed to the courthouse, where some major clusterfuck is going down, but he has to worry about Reggie and Dana. Once they get tired of waiting, they’ll either conclude Billy’s gotten trapped in Gerard Tower or that he’s crossed them up. They can’t do anything if he’s still in the building, but if he’s decided to abandon the plan and strike out on his own, they can start cruising the streets and looking for him.

It’s not like the baby shoe, Billy thinks. And hell, the baby shoe wasn’t magic either, just magical thinking. The shit that happened after I lost it means nothing. Fortunes of war, baby, and so is this. Someone found the lappie and stole it, it’s gone, and you have to get under cover before that Transit van shows up, rolling slow.

He thinks of Dana Edison’s sharp little eyes behind those rimless spectacles. Billy got past those eyes once and doesn’t want to risk giving the man a second chance. He has to get to the basement apartment on Pearson Street, and fast.

Billy gets to his feet and hurries to the mouth of the alley. He sees a few cars but no Transit van. He starts to turn right, then freezes, amazed and disgusted at his own stupidity. It’s as if the dumb self has become his real self. He was just about to head for Pearson Street still wearing the wig, the Rolling Stones jacket, and the fucking parachute pants. Like wearing a neon sign saying CHECK ME OUT.

He runs back down the alley, stripping off the wig and jacket as he goes. Behind the dumpster again, he frees the waistband granny knot holding up the idiotic parachute pants, pushes them down, and steps out of them. He squats and bundles everything together. He shoves the bundle as deep as he can under the crumpled heaps of bespattered packing paper … and touches something. It’s hard and thin. Can it be the brim of a gimme cap?

It is. Did he really push it that far behind the dumpster? He tosses it aside and reaches in deeper, leaning his shoulder against the dumpster’s rusty side, the smell of Chinese food a miasma. His outstretched fingers brush something else. He knows what it is and can’t believe it. He stretches further, his cheek now against the dumpster’s rusty side, and grasps the handle of his laptop case. He pulls it out and looks at it unbelievingly. He could swear he didn’t push it in that far, but it seems he did. He tells himself it’s nothing like thinking he threw away the wrong phone, nothing at all like that, but it is.

Agreeing to be in this city so long was a mistake. Monopoly was a mistake. Having a backyard barbecue was a mistake. Knocking over those tin birds in the shooting gallery? Mistake. Having time to think and act like a normal person was the biggest mistake of all. He’s not a normal person. He’s a hired assassin, and if he doesn’t think like who and what he is, he’ll never get clear.

He uses a relatively clean swatch of the packing paper to wipe off the hat and the laptop case. He slings the strap over his shoulder and pulls on the gimme cap, which was once clean and is now grimy. He goes to the head of the alley and peers out again. A cop car comes squalling around the next corner, lights and siren. Billy pulls back until it passes. Then he heads out, walking briskly toward Pearson Street and the apartment building across from the demolished railway station. He thinks of Fallujah again, the endless sweeps through the narrow streets with the baby shoe bouncing against his hip. Waiting for the patrol to be over. Wanting to go back to the relative safety of the base a mile outside of town, where there would be hot food, touch football, maybe a movie under the desert stars.

Nine blocks, he tells himself. Nine blocks and you’re home and dry. Nine blocks and this particular patrol is over. No movie under the stars, that was Billy Summers, but Dalton Smith has both YouTube and iTunes on one of his AllTech computers. No violence, no explosions, just people doing zany things. Plus kissing at the end.

Nine blocks.

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