Billy Summers

Only not since forever, because the first time Billy worked for Nick – it was the third time he assassinated a man for pay – was in 2008, and Giorgio wasn’t there. Nick handled that one by himself. He told Billy there was a rape-o working some of the smaller clubs and casinos on the edge of town. The rape-o liked older women, liked to hurt them, finally went overboard and killed one. Nick found out who he was and wanted a pro from out of town to take care of the guy. Billy, he’d said, had been recommended. Highly.

When Billy came to Vegas the second time, Giorgio was not only there, he did the deal. Nick came in while they were talking, gave Billy a manly hug and a few pats on the back, then sat in the corner sipping a drink and just listening. Until the very end, that was. That second job was less than a year after the first one, the rape-o. Giorgio said the target this time was an independent porno filmmaker named Karl Trilby. He showed Billy a picture of a man who looked eerily like Oral Roberts.

‘Trilby like the hat,’ Giorgio said, then explained when Billy pretended not to know what he was talking about.

‘I don’t shoot people just because they make movies of people fucking,’ Billy had said.

‘What about people who make movies of guys fucking six-year-olds?’ Nick had said, and Billy had done the job because Karl Trilby was a bad person.

Billy did three more jobs for Nick, five in all not counting Allen, almost a third of his total. Excluding the dozens of hajis in Iraq he had taken down, that is. Sometimes Nick was there when the offer was made and sometimes he wasn’t, but Giorgio always was, so him being on the scene for the Allen job at least part of the time hadn’t struck Billy as odd. It should have. Only now does he realize it was very odd.

Nick has deniability as long as Giorgio keeps quiet; Nick can say sure I know the guy, but if he did this it was his own deal. I knew nothing about it. Even if the cook and the woman server from that first dinner put him with Giorgio and Billy, which is unlikely, Nick can shrug and say he was there to talk to Giorgio on casino business, the license on the Double Domino was coming up for renewal. And the other guy? As far as Nick knows, just a pal of Giorgio’s. Or maybe a bodyguard. Quiet guy. Said his name was Lockridge but otherwise didn’t say much at all.

When the cops ask where Nick was when Allen got hit, he can say he was in Vegas and produce plenty of witnesses to back his alibi. Plus casino security footage. That stuff doesn’t get recycled every twelve or twenty-four hours; that stuff gets archived for at least a year.

If Giorgio keeps quiet. But would he stick to that omertà shit if he was the one getting extradited? If he was the one facing the possibility of lethal injection as an accessory to first-degree murder?

Georgie Pigs can’t talk if he’s under five feet of desert, Billy thinks. It’s the great rule when it comes to things like this.

He stops tossing the phone from hand to hand and texts Giorgio one more time. Still no response. He could try texting or phoning Nick, but even if he reached him, could he trust anything Nick might say? No. The only thing Billy can trust is a million-five transferred to his offshore account, then transferred again, through electronic jiggery-pokery, to another one that Dalton Smith can access. Bucky would do that part when he gets to wherever he’s decided to go, but only if the money is there to transfer.

Tonight Billy can do nothing more, so he goes to bed. It isn’t even nine o’clock, but it’s been a long day.

8

He lies with his hands beneath the pillow in that ephemeral cool pocket, thinking it doesn’t make sense. No way does it.

Ken Hoff yes, okay. There’s a certain breed of fast-dealing small-city sharpie who believes that no matter how deep the shit, someone will always throw him a rope. These are the broad-smiling, firm-handshaking hustlers in Izod polos and Bally loafers who could have come with self-involved optimist stamped on their birth certificates. But Giorgio Piglielli is different. He’s eating himself to death, sure, but so far as Billy can tell, in most other ways he’s a hard-eyed realist. And yet he’s all over this thing. Why is that?