Billy Summers (18 page)

“No.”

“Okay.” Edison heads back to the outer office, walking that springy walk. His manbun looks like a dark red doorknob. At the door, he turns and regards Billy with eyes that are bright and blue and expressionless. He says, “Don't miss.” Then he's gone.

Billy goes back into his writing room and stares at the frozen cribbage game. He's thinking that Dana Edison said nothing about a possible warehouse fire in Cody, and he certainly would have if he knew about it. He's also thinking about the possibility that if he went with Nick's plan, he really might end up in a ditch on a country road with a hole in his forehead. If that were to happen, he guesses Edison would be the one to put it there. And who would end up with the owing million-five? Nick, of course. Billy would like to believe that's paranoid, but after Edison's visit it seems a little more likely. Surely the thought has at least crossed Nick's mind, despite their long association. Pinch off Ken Hoff, pinch off Billy Summers, and everyone walks away clean.

Billy closes down his computer. Writing his story has never felt so far away. Hell, today he can't even play cribbage.

On his way home he stops at Ace Hardware and buys the last thing he needs: a Yale padlock. When he arrives at his house—his last night here—there's a piece of paper on the top step of the porch, held down with a rock. He slides his laptop case off his shoulder, picks up the paper, sits, studies it, and thinks this is a curtain call he could have done without. It's a crayon drawing, obviously made by a child, but one who shows at least some talent. How much is impossible to tell, because the artist is currently only eight years old. At the bottom she has signed her name: Shanice Anya Ackerman. At the top, in capital letters: FOR DAVE!

The picture is of a smiling little girl with dark brown skin and bright red ribbons decorating her cornrows. In her arms is a pink flamingo, from whose head floats a series of hearts. Billy looks at it for a long time, then folds it and puts it in his back pocket. He has gotten himself into a box he never dreamed of. He would give anything, two-million-dollar payout included, to be able to turn the calendar back three months, to that hotel lobby where he sat reading
Archie's Pals 'n' Gals
and waiting for his ride. And when Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan came in, he would tell them to make his apologies to Nick, he's changed his mind. But there's no going back now, only forward, and when he thinks of Dana Edison perhaps stopping by this neighborhood to ask questions, maybe even putting those small neat hands of his on Shanice's shoulders, Billy presses his lips together so tightly that they disappear. He is in a box and all he can do is shoot his way out.

Thursday morning. The day of. Billy gets up at five. He eats toast with a glass of water to wash it down. No coffee. No caffeine of any kind until the job is done. When he shoulders the 700 and looks through the Leupold scope, he wants his hands perfectly steady.

He puts his toast plate and the empty water glass in the sink. Lined up on the table are his four cell phones. He takes the SIM cards from three of them—the Billy-phone, the Dave-phone, the burner—and microwaves the cards for two minutes. He dons an oven glove, picks out the charred remains, and grinds them up in the garbage disposal. The three SIMless phones go in a paper bag. He adds the Dalton Smith phone, the Yale lock, and the plain gray gimme cap he wore to Pearson Street when he dropped off the Dalton Smith gear and watered Beverly's plants.

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.

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.

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.

Halfway back to his office, he has a nasty thought. There were a few moments on his way here when he lost focus, his mind on Shan's drawing instead of staying where it belonged, on this morning's preparations. Has he dropped the Dalton Smith phone into a sewer instead of one of the others? The idea is so terrible that in that moment he's positive that's just what he did, that when he reaches in his pocket he'll find the Billy-phone, or the Dave-phone, or that useless burner. If so, he can replace it, his Dalton Smith credit cards are all good, but what if Don or Beverly Jensen should call on the day or two before FedEx can deliver a new one to 658 Pearson? They'll wonder why he's out of touch. It might not matter, but it might. Good neighbors,
grateful
neighbors, might even call the police and ask them to check his basement apartment to make sure he's okay.

He grasps the phone, and for a moment just holds it, feeling like a roulette player afraid to look at the wheel and see which color the little ball has landed on. The worst thing—worse than the inconvenience, even worse than the potential danger—is knowing he was careless. He let his thoughts slip to the life that's now behind him.

He brings the phone out of his pocket and breathes a sigh of relief. It's the one that belongs to Dalton. He's gotten away with one potential mistake. He can't make another. The fates are unforgiving.

Quarter of seven. Billy goes to the local paper on his Dalton Smith phone and uses a Dalton Smith credit card to get behind the paywall. The front page headline has to do with the upcoming state elections, but near the bottom of the page, what would have been
below the fold in the old days of actual newspapers, there's a headline reading ALLEN TO BE ARRAIGNED, CHARGED WITH HOUGHTON MURDER. The story begins, “After a protracted extradition fight, Joel Allen will finally have the first of many days in court. Prosecutors plan to charge him with first-degree murder in the slaying of James Houghton, 43, and assault with intent to kill in the near-fatal shooting of…”

Billy doesn't bother with the rest, but he sets his phone to receive news alerts from the paper. He sits at the desk in the outer office and prints a note on a page torn from one of the Staples pads that have otherwise never been used. WORKING UNDER DEADLINE, PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB, it reads. He tapes it to the door and locks the door from the inside.

He takes the pieces of the Remington 700 from the overhead cabinet and lays them out on the table where he's done his writing. Seeing them there, like an exploded schematic in a firearms manual, brings back Fallujah. He pushes the memories away. That's another life that's behind him.

“No more mistakes,” he says, and puts the rifle together. Barrel, bolt, the extractor and ejector spring, the butt plate and butt plate spacer, all the rest. His hands move swiftly and almost of their own accord. He thinks briefly of that poem by Henry Reed, the one that begins
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday, we had daily cleaning.
He pushes that away, too. No more thinking of little girls' pictures this morning and no poetry. Later, maybe. And maybe later he will write. Now he has to keep his mind on his business and his eyes on the prize. That he no longer cares much about the prize doesn't matter.

The scope comes last, and once again he uses the sighting app to make sure it remains accurate.
True-down
, they used to say. He runs the bolt three times, adds a drop or two of oil, and runs it again. There's no need of this when he only intends to fire once, but it's how he was taught. Last, he loads the magazine and cycles the bolt
to move the killing round into the chamber. He lays the weapon with care (but no reverence, not anymore) on the table.

He uses a thumbtack, a length of string, and a Sharpie to trace a circle two inches in diameter on the window. He crisscrosses it with masking tape, then starts in with the glass cutter. His phone chimes softly while he's going round and round, but Billy doesn't even pause. It takes him awhile because the glass is thick, but in the end the circlet of glass comes out as neatly as the cork from a wine bottle. A breath of cool morning breeze slips in through the hole.

He checks his phone and sees he's gotten a text alert from the newspaper. Warehouse fire in Cody, a four-alarm job. Looking out the window, Billy can see a pillar of black smoke. He doesn't know where Ken Hoff got his information, but it was bang on the money.

It's now seven-thirty, and he is as ready as he can be. As ready as he needs to be, he hopes. He sits down in the chair where he has done his writing, hands clasped loosely in his lap, and waits. As he waited in Fallujah, high up and across the river from the Internet café run by the Arab who tattled on the Blackwater contractors and set off a firestorm. As he did on a dozen rooftops, listening to gunfire and garbage bags rattling in palm trees. His heartbeat is slow and regular. There are no nerves. He watches the traffic pick up on Court Street. Soon all the parking spaces will be full. He watches customers enter the Sunspot Café. A few sit outside, where Billy sat months ago with Ken Hoff. A Channel 6 news truck comes lumbering up the street, but it's the only one. Either the warehouse fire has drawn away the others, or Joel Allen isn't a big priority. Probably both, Billy thinks. He waits. The time passes. It always does.

The Business Solutions crew starts arriving at ten to eight, some carrying go-cups. They'll be hard at it by eight-fifteen, dunning folks
who are over their heads in debt, translucent shades dropped over the big windows to discourage them from looking away from their work for even a few seconds. Some stop on their way to the lobby doors to stare at the pillar of black smoke rising over the courthouse from out Cody way. Colin White is among them. No coffee in a go-cup for him; he's got a can of Red Bull. Today he's wearing tie-dyed bellbottoms and a blaze orange T-shirt. Nothing like the outfit Billy's hidden away, but in the confusion it shouldn't matter.

More people arrive, but in this under-occupied building, not that many. Most are headed for the courthouse. At eight-thirty, Jim Albright and John Colton come down Court Street and cut across the plaza. They are carrying big boxy briefcases. And behind them, Phyllis Stanhope. Her fall coat has come out of its closet hibernation for the first time. It's scarlet, making Billy think of Little Red Riding Hood. He has a brief and vivid memory of her looking down at him, urging him deeper as he brushes her nipples with his thumbs. He pushes it away.

There are twelve people on the fifth floor, not counting Billy himself—five in the lawyers' office and seven in the accounting office. The people in the lawyers' office may or may not hear the shot, but Billy is counting on them hearing the bang when the first flashpot goes off. There will be a short pause as they look at each other, asking
what was that
, and then they'll hurry across the hall to the Crescent Accounting Service, because those are the windows facing Court Street. By then the second flashpot will have gone off. They'll crowd together and look out, trying to decide what has happened and what they should do. Go down or stay put? There will be differing opinions. He thinks it may be as long as five minutes before they decide to go down, because they have a high vantage point and all the hoohaw is either across the street, at the courthouse, or up on the corner at the news and stationery store. Billy won't need five minutes. Three should do it, maybe only two.

His phone chimes with another news push. The warehouse fire
has spread to a nearby storage facility, and fire crews from other districts are on their way. Route 64 will be closed until at least noon. Motorists are advised to use State Road 47A. At five to nine, another push announces that the fire is being brought under control. So far there are no reported injuries or fatalities.

Billy is now sitting in front of the window with the Remington across his knees. The day is clear as a bell, the rain Nick fretted about hasn't happened, the breeze is no more than a refreshing breath, the Channel 6 film crew is all set and ready to record for News at Noon, so where is the star of the show? Billy expected Allen to be delivered in a county sheriff's vehicle rather than in the perp bus, and on the dot of nine, at which time he'd be escorted to a holding room until the judge was ready for him, but it's now five past and there's no sign of any official vehicle arriving from the county jail on Holland Street.

Ten past and still nothing. The breakfast crowd at the Sunspot is clearing out. Soon the woman in charge, no longer sleepy-eyed, will take in the signboard with the breakfast specials and replace it with the one for the lunch specials.

Quarter past nine and the smoke billowing above the courthouse seems to be thinning. Billy is starting to wonder if there's been a glitch. By twenty past he's sure of it. Maybe Allen's sick, or has made himself sick. Maybe somebody has attacked him in county. Maybe he's in the infirmary, or even dead. Maybe he's pretended to go mental in order to delay the arraignment. Maybe he actually
has
gone mental.