Billy Summers (21 page)

Billy closes the curtain, lies down on the couch, closes his eyes, and falls asleep. There are no dreams, at least that he can remember.

His phone wakes him up. It's the ringtone, so Bucky must have news too detailed to put in a text. Only it's not Bucky. It's Bev Jensen, and this time she's not laughing. This time she's… what? Not crying, exactly, it's more like the sound a baby makes when it's unhappy. Grizzling.

“Oh hi, hello,” she says. “I hope I'm not…” A watery gulp. “… not bothering you.”

“No,” Billy says, sitting up. “Not at all. What's wrong?”

At that the grizzling escalates into loud sobs. “My mother is dead, Dalton! She really is!”

Well shit, Billy thinks, I knew that. He knows something else. She's drunk-dialed him.

“I'm very sorry for your loss.” In his muzzy state that's the best he can do.

“I called because I didn't want you to think I was a horrible person. Laughing and carrying on and talking about going on a cruise.”

“You're not going?” This is a disappointment; he was looking forward to having the house to himself.

“Oh, I guess we will.” She gives a morose sniff. “Don wants to and I guess I do, too. We had a little bit of a honeymoon on Cape San Blas—that's on what they call the Redneck Riviera—but since then we haven't been anywhere. I just… I didn't want you to think I was dancing on Momma's grave, or anything.”

“I didn't,” Billy says. This is the truth. “You had a windfall and you were excited. Perfectly natural.”

At this she lets go completely, crying and gasping and snorkeling and sounding like she's on the verge of drowning. “Thank you, Dalton.” It comes out
Dollen
, like her husband. “Thank you for understanding.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe you ought to take a couple of aspirin and lie down for awhile.”

“That's probably a good idea.”

“Sure.” There's a soft
bing
. It has to be Bucky. “I'll just say goodb—”

“Is everything good there?”

No, Billy thinks. Everything is mega fucked up, Bev, thanks for asking. “Everything's fine.”

“I didn't mean it about the plants, either. I'd feel terrible if I came back and found Daphne and Walter dead.”

“I'll take good care of them.”

“Thank you. Thank you so very, very, very,
very
much.”

“You're very welcome. I have to go, Bev.”

“Okay, Dollen. And thank you very, very, v—”

“Talk soon,” he says, and ends the call.

The text is from one of Bucky's many communication aliases. It's brief.

bigpapi982: No transfer of funds yet. He wants to know where you are.

Billy texts back under one of his own communication aliases.

DizDiz77: People in hell want ice water
.

He scrambles some eggs and heats some tomato soup for supper, and this time he's able to keep it down. When he's finished he puts on the six o'clock news, tuning to the NBC affiliate because he doesn't want or need to watch the Channel 6 video again. An ad
for Liberty Mutual is followed by his own picture. He's in his Evergreen Street backyard wearing a smile and an apron that says NOT JUST A SEX OBJECT, I CAN COOK! Others in the background have had their faces blurred out, but Billy knows them all. They were his neighbors. The photo was taken at the barbecue he had for the folks on the street, and he's guessing it came from Diane Fazio because she's always clicking pix, either with her phone or her little Nikon. He notes that his grass (he still thinks of it as his) looks damn good.

The super beneath the picture says WHO IS DAVID LOCKRIDGE? He's pretty sure the cops already know. Computer fingerprint searches are lickety-split these days, and his dabs are on file from his Marine days.

“This is the man police believe is responsible for the brazen assassination of Joel Allen on the courthouse steps,” one of the two anchors says. He's the one who looks like a banker.

The other anchor, the one who looks like a magazine model, picks up the narrative. “His motive is a mystery at this point, and so is his method of escape. Police are certain of one thing: he had help.”

I didn't, Billy thinks. It was offered and I turned it down.

“Seconds after the rifle shot,” says the banker anchor, “there were two explosions, one across from the shooter's location in the Gerard Tower, and the other from behind a building on the corner of Main and Court Streets. According to Chief of Police Lauren Conlee, these weren't high explosive devices but rather flash-bangs of the sort used at fireworks shows and by some rock and roll bands.”

Magazine model anchor picks it up. Why they go back and forth like that Billy doesn't know. It's a mystery. “Larry Thompson is on the scene, or as close to it as he can get, because Court Street is still blocked off. Larry?”

“That's right, Nora,” Larry says, as if confirming he's really Larry. Behind him is yellow police tape, and around the courthouse the
misery lights on half a dozen cop cars are still flashing. “Police are now working under the assumption that this was a carefully planned mob hit.”

Nailed that one, Billy thinks.

“At her press conference today, Chief Conlee revealed that the suspected shooter, David Lockridge—probably an alias—has been in place since early summer, using a unique cover story. Here's what she had to say.”

Larry Thompson is replaced with a clip of the chief's press conference. Sheriff Vickery, he of the ridiculous Stetson, isn't in attendance. Conlee starts in with the story about how the shooter (she doesn't bother calling him the suspect) pretended to be writing a book, and Billy turns the TV off.

Something is gnawing at him.

Half an hour later, while Billy is in the Jensens' second-floor apartment, spritzing Daphne and Walter, he comes to a decision. He had no plans to leave his basement apartment on the day of the shooting, had in fact planned to stay there for several days, maybe even a week, but things have changed, and not for the better. There's something he needs to know, and Bucky can't help him with it. Bucky did his job, and if he's smart, he's now on a plane getting his ass out of the fallout zone. If there is fallout, that is. Billy still can't be sure he's not just jumping at shadows, but he has to find out.

He goes back downstairs and dons his Dalton Smith disguise, this time inflating the fake pregnancy belly almost to full and not neglecting the horn-rimmed glasses with the clear glass lenses, which have been waiting on the living room bookshelf with his copy of
Thérèse Raquin
. It's deep dusk now, he has that going for him. Zoney's is relatively close, and that's also on his side. What
he doesn't have going for him is the possibility that Nick's guys are still combing the streets, Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan in one vehicle, Reggie and Dana in another, and it won't be the Transit van this evening.

But Billy feels it's a risk worth taking, because they'll certainly believe he's in hiding by now. They may even think he's left the city. And if they should happen to cruise by him, the Dalton Smith rig should work. Or so he hopes.

He's decided he needs a burner phone after all, and he doesn't beat himself up for having thrown away a perfectly good one that morning. Only God can foresee everything, and it's not on a level of stupidity like almost leaving that alley wearing his Colin White gear. In work like Billy's—wetwork, not to put too fine a point on it—you make your plan and hope the stuff you don't foresee won't show up to bite you in the ass. Or put you in a little green room with an IV in your arm.

I can't get nailed, he thinks. If I do, those fucking plants are going to die.

Everything in the sad little strip mall is closed except for the Zoney's convenience store, and Hot Nails is never going to re-open at all. The windows are soaped over and there's a legal notice of bankruptcy taped to the door.

Two Hispanic dudes checking out the Beer Cave are the only other customers. There's a stack of boxed FastPhones between the display of energy shots and the one holding fifty different varieties of snackin' cakes. Billy grabs a phone and takes it to the checkout. The woman who got stuck up, Wanda something, isn't behind the counter. It's a Middle Eastern–looking dude instead.

“That it?”

“That's it.” As Dalton Smith, he tries to speak in a slightly higher register. It's another way of reminding himself of who he's supposed to be.

The clerk rings him up. It comes to just under eighty-four dollars,
with a hundred and twenty minutes thrown in. It would have been as much as thirty bucks cheaper at Walmart, but beggars can't be choosers. Besides, in Wally World you have to worry about face recognition. It's everywhere now. This place has video cams, but Billy's betting they recycle every twelve or twenty-four hours. He pays cash. When you're on the run—or in hiding—cash is king. The clerk wishes him a nice night. Billy wishes him the same.

It's now dark enough that the few cars he meets are running with headlights, so he can't see who's behind them. There's an urge, or maybe it's an instinct, to drop his head each time one approaches, but that would look furtive. He can't pull down the brim of the gimme cap, either, because he's not wearing it. He wants the blond wig to do its thing. He's not Billy Summers, the man both the police and Nick's hardballs are looking for. He's Dalton Smith, a small-time computer geek who lives on the po' side of town and has to keep pushing his hornrims up on his nose. He's overweight from eating Doritos and Little Debbies in front of a computer screen and if he puts on another twenty or thirty pounds, his walk will become a waddle.

It's a good disguise, not overdone, but he still breathes a sigh of relief when he closes the foyer door of 658 behind him. He goes downstairs, turns off the overhead light, and pushes back the curtain of his periscope window. No one is out there. The street is deserted. Of course if he's been spotted, they (it's Reggie and Dana he's thinking of, not Frankie and Paulie or the police) could be moving in from the back, but there's no sense worrying about what you can't control. Doing that is a good way to go crazy.

Billy closes the narrow curtain, turns the light back on, and sits in the room's single easy chair. It's ugly, but like many ugly things in life, it's also comfortable. He puts the phone on the coffee table and looks at it, wondering if he's thinking straight or just indulging in paranoia. In many ways paranoia would be better. Time to find out.

He frees the phone from its box, puts in the battery, and plugs it into the wall to charge. Unlike his previous burner, it's a flip phone. Kind of old-school, but Billy likes it. With a flip phone if you don't like what somebody is saying, you can actually hang up on them. Childish, maybe, but strangely satisfying. Charging doesn't take long. Thanks to Steve Jobs, who got pissed when he couldn't use a device the second he took it out of the box, off-the-rack devices like this come with a fifty per cent charge already cooking inside.

The phone wants to know what language he prefers. Billy tells it English. It asks if he wants to join a wireless network. Billy says no. He plugs in the minutes he paid for, making the necessary call to FastPhone HQ to finish the transaction. His minutes are good for the next three months. Billy hopes by then he's on a beach somewhere and the only phone in his possession is the one that goes with his Dalton Smith credit cards.

Home and dry. That would be nice.

He tosses the phone from hand to hand, thinking about the day Frank Macintosh and Paul Logan took him to the house in Midwood, a trip he now wishes he had never taken. Nick was there to greet him, but not outside. Billy thinks of his first visit to the rented McMansion, Nick once more there to greet him with open arms, but again not outside. Next he thinks of the night Nick told him about the flashpots and pitched his getaway plan—
Just get in the back of the van, Billy, relax and take a ride to Wisconsin
. There had been Champagne to start and Baked Alaska to finish. A service couple, probably local and maybe married, cooked the meal and served it. Those two had seen Nick, but as far as they knew, he was a businessman from New York who was down here to do some kind of deal. He gave the woman some money and they were on their way.

Back and forth goes the burner phone. Right hand to left, left hand to right.

I asked Nick if Hoff was going to plant the flashpots, Billy thinks, and what did he say? What did he call him? A
grande figlio
di puttana
, wasn't it? Which meant son of a bitch, or son of a whore, or maybe motherfucker. One of those, and the exact translation hardly mattered. What did matter was what Nick said next:
I'd be sad if that was your opinion of me
.

Because the
grande figlio di puttana
was the designated patsy. It was Hoff who owned the building the shot came from. Hoff who procured the gun and now the police had it and they'd already be trying to trace it back to the point of sale. And if they got there—make that
when
they got there—what would they find? Probably an alias if Hoff had any sense at all, but if the cops showed the seller Hoff's picture, there goes your ballgame. Ken winds up in a hot little interrogation room, willing to make a deal,
eager
to make a deal, because he believes that's what he does best.

Except Billy's betting that Ken Hoff is never going to get to the little room. He's never going to talk about Nikolai Majarian because he's going to be dead.

Billy got that far weeks ago, but the six o'clock news has taken him to a conclusion he should have reached sooner, and might have if he'd spent a little less time playing Monopoly with the Evergreen Street kids and taking care of his lawn and eating Corinne's cookies and schmoozing with his neighbors. Even now what he's thinking seems impossible, but the logic is undeniable.