Billy Summers

‘Wear it over that.’ She points to the fake belly. ‘It will look like you’re trying to hide your stomach. It’s what fat people do.’

6

The rain has let up but it’s still cold and he’s glad for the sweatshirt. He waits for a car to pass, splashing up water, then crosses the street to the vacant lot side. He sees the skid marks from the van. They’re not as long and dark as they would have been if the pavement had been dry. He drops to one knee, knowing what he’s looking for but not really expecting to find it. He does, though. He puts it in his pocket and re-crosses Pearson Street because the sidewalk on the vacant lot side was damaged by the machines the city brought in to demolish the train station. That was a year ago or more, judging by the way the vegetation has grown up, but nobody has bothered to fix the concrete.

He touches her lost earring as he walks. When the police take him, it will go in an evidence envelope, as will the rest of his possessions, and she’ll probably never get it back. Billy’s pretty sure she’ll drop a dime on him. Whether she believes he saved her life or not, she knows he’s a wanted killer, and she may also believe that she could be charged with aiding and abetting for not turning him in as soon as she gets a chance.

But no, Billy thinks. She’s a shy girl, a scared girl, and a confused girl, but she’s not a dumb girl. She could claim he kidnapped her and they’d believe her. Her phone won’t work even if she searches and finds it, but the Zoney’s convenience store is close and she can call the police from there. She’s probably there already and they’ll take him as he walks back from the drugstore. Cop cars with their misery lights flashing, one of them bouncing up over the curb in front of him, doors flying open even before the cruiser stops, cops getting out with guns drawn: Show your hands, get on the ground, face down, face down.

Then why did he do it?

Something about the dream he had last night, maybe – the smell of burned cookies. Something about Shan Ackerman, maybe, and the picture she drew for him of the flamingo. Maybe it even has something to do with Phil Stanhope, who will have told the police she went out with him because he seemed like such a nice man. A writer, maybe even one with a future, a star to which a working girl could hitch her wagon. Would she tell them she slept with him? If she leaves that part out, Diane Fazio won’t. Diane saw them leaving the house, even gave Billy a thumbs-up.

Maybe it has to do with all those things, but probably it just comes back to the simple fact that he couldn’t kill her. No way could he. That would make him as bad as Joel Allen, or the Las Vegas rape-o, or Karl Trilby, who made movies of men fucking kids. So he put on his fake wig and fake belly and plain glass spectacles and here he is, walking to a drugstore in the rain. Alice Maxwell not only knows he’s William Summers, she knows about Dalton Smith, the clean identity he had spent years building up.

Those assholes could have dumped her on another street, Billy thinks, but they didn’t. They could have dropped her further down Pearson Street, but they didn’t do that, either. He could blame fate, except he doesn’t believe in fate. He could tell himself everything happens for a reason, but that’s goofy bullshit for people who can’t face plain unpainted truth. Coincidence is what it was, and everything followed from that. From the moment they dumped the girl he might as well have become a cow in a chute, with nothing to do but trot with the others onto the killing floor. But it is what it is, as they also used to say in the sand, so what the fuck.

And there is one tiny glimmer of hope: she told him to put on the sweatshirt. It probably means nothing, just something she said to make him feel like she was a little bit on his side, but maybe it does.

Maybe it does.

7

The drugstore’s a CVS. Billy finds the morning-after pill in the family planning aisle. It costs fifty dollars, which he supposes is cheap compared to the alternatives. It’s on the bottom row (as if to be as hard to find as possible for bad girls who need it) and when he straightens up he gets a glimpse of wiry red hair two rows over. Billy’s heart jumps. He bends down again and straightens up again slowly, peering over the boxes of Vagisil and Monistat. It’s not Dana Edison, who he’s decided is the hardest of Nick’s hardballs. It’s not even a man. It’s a woman with her wiry red hair yanked into a ponytail.

Easy, he tells himself. You’re jumping at nothing. Dana and the others are long gone back to Vegas.

Well, maybe.