Billy Summers (28 page)

He scrambles two eggs and sets them before her with two more slices of toast. While she eats, he goes into the bedroom and closes the door. If she bolts, she bolts. He has been gripped by the fatalism he felt during Operation Phantom Fury, clearing the city of insurgents street by street and block by block. Checking for the baby shoe on his belt loop before stacking to go in each house. Each day he wasn't wounded or killed increased the odds that the next day he would be. You could only roll so many sevens or make so many points before you crapped out. That fatalism became sort of a friend.
What the fuck
, they used to say.
What the fuck, let's get some
. Same thing now: what the fuck.

He dons the blond wig, the mustache, the glasses. He sits on the bed and checks a couple of things on his phone. Once he's got the info he needs, he goes into the bathroom and spreads a handful of baby powder on his stomach. He's found it helps with the chafing. Then he takes the fake belly into the kitchen.

She looks at him with wide eyes, the last forkful of eggs suspended above the plate. Billy holds the Styrofoam appliance against his stomach and turns around. “Would you tighten the strap for me? I always have a hard job doing it for myself.”

He waits. A lot depends on what happens next. She might refuse. She might even stick him with the knife he gave her to butter her toast. It's not exactly a lethal weapon, she could have done more damage with the paring knife if she'd decided to use it on him while he was sleeping, but she could put a hurt on him even with a butter knife if she put her arm into it and got it in the right place.

She doesn't stick him. She pulls the strap tight instead. Tighter than he's ever managed even when he starts by turning the fake belly around to the small of his back so he can see the plastic buckle.

“When did you know I knew?” she asks in a small voice.

“While you were telling me your story. You were looking right at me and I saw it click. Then you had the panic attack.”

“You're the man who killed—”

“Yes.”

“And this is… what, your hideout?”

“Yes.”

“The wig and mustache is your disguise?”

“Yes. And the fake potbelly.”

She opens her mouth, then closes it. She seems to have run out of questions to ask, but she's not whooping for breath and Billy thinks that's another step in the right direction. Then he thinks, Who am I kidding? There
is
no right direction.

“Have you looked at your—” He points at her lap.

“Yes.” Small voice. “Just before I got up to see where I was. There's blood. And it hurts. I knew that you… or somebody…”

“It isn't just blood. You'll see when you clean yourself up. At least one of them didn't use protection. Probably none of them did.”

She puts the forkful of eggs down uneaten.

“I'm going out. There's a twenty-four-hour drugstore about half a mile from here, back toward the city. I'll have to walk because I don't have a car. You can buy the morning-after pill over the counter in this state, I just checked on my phone to make sure. Unless you have religious or moral objections to taking it, that is?”

“God, no.” In that same small voice. She's crying again. “If I got pregnant…” She just shakes her head.

“Some drugstores also sell ladies' underwear. If they do, I'll buy some.”

“I can pay you back. I have money.” This is absurd and she seems to know it because she looks away, flushing.

“Your clothes are hanging in the bathroom. Once I'm gone you could put them on and get out of here. I can't stop you. But listen, Alice.”

He reaches out and turns her face back to him. Her shoulders stiffen, but she looks at him.

“I saved your life last night. It was cold and it was raining and you were unconscious. Drugged to the gills. If you didn't die of exposure you would have choked on your own vomit. Now I'm going to put my life in your hands. Do you understand me?”

“It was those men who raped me? You swear?”

“I couldn't swear to it in court because I didn't see their faces, but three men dumped you out of that van and you were with three men in that apartment when your memory went dark.”

Alice puts her hands over her face. “I'm so ashamed.”

Billy is honestly perplexed. “Why? You trusted and you were tricked. End of story.”

“I saw your picture on the news. You shot that man.”

“I did. Joel Allen was a bad man, a hired killer.” Like me, Billy thinks, but there's at least one difference. “He waited outside a poker game and shot two men because he lost big and wanted his money back. One of them died. I want to go now while it's still early and there aren't too many people on the streets.”

“Do you have a sweatshirt?”

“Yes. Why?”

“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.”

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.

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.

The women's underwear is on the back wall. Most of it is for ladies who are leaky, but there's a few other kinds as well. He thinks about the bikinis but decides that would be a little suggestive. It's funny, in a way; he's still operating on the assumption that she'll be there when he gets back. But what other assumption is there? He
will
go back, because he has no other place to go.

He grabs a three-pack of Hanes cotton boy-leg shorts and takes them to the counter, looking for police cars outside, but doesn't spot any. Of course they wouldn't park in front, anyway. He'd clock them and maybe hole up with hostages. The clerk is a woman in her fifties. She rings up his purchases with no comment, but Billy is good at reading faces and knows she's thinking that someone had a busy night. He pays with a Dalton Smith credit card and walks back out into the rain, now just a fine drizzle, waiting to be taken. There's no one there but three women, chatting amiably together. They don't look at him as they go into the drugstore.

Billy walks back to 658 Pearson. It seems like a very long walk because it's more than a glimmer of hope now, and hope may be the thing with feathers, but it's also the thing that hurts you. They could be waiting around back or in the apartment, he thinks. But no blue boys come rushing around the old three-decker, and there's no one in the apartment but the girl. She's watching
Today
on his television.

Alice looks at him and something passes between them. He shifts the pharmacy bag and digs in his righthand pocket. He holds his hand out to her and sees her flinch a little, as if she thinks he
means to strike her. The bruises on her face are at their most colorful. They shout assault and battery.

“I found your earring.”

He opens his hand and shows her.

Alice goes into the bathroom to put on a pair of the new underpants but stays in the shin-length T-shirt because her skirt is still damp. “Denim takes forever to dry,” she says.

She takes the pill with water from the kitchen tap. He tells her the side effects may include vomiting, dizziness—

“I can read. Who else lives in this building? It's as quiet as the… it's quiet.”

He tells her about the Jensens and how they went on a cruise, neither of them knowing that in another six months the cruise lines will be shut down, along with just about everything else. He takes her upstairs—she comes willingly enough—and introduces her to Daphne and Walter.

“You're watering them too much. You want to drown them?”

“No.”

“Give them a couple of days off.” She pauses. “Will you be here for a couple of days?”

“Yes. It's safer to wait.”

She looks around the Jensens' kitchen and living room, sizing it up the way that women do. Then she astounds him by asking if she can stay with him. Maybe stay in the basement apartment even after he's gone.

“I don't want to go out until the bruises get better,” she says. “I look like I was in a car accident. Also, what if Tripp comes looking for me? He knows where I go to school, and he knows where I live.”

Billy thinks that Tripp and his friends will want nothing more
to do with her now that they've had their fun. Oh, they might cruise Pearson Street to make sure the place where they threw her out isn't a crime scene, and when they sober up—or come down from whatever high they were riding—they will surely check the local news to make sure she's not a part of it, but he doesn't point these things out. Having her stay solves a lot of problems.

Back downstairs she says she's tired and asks if she can take a nap in his bed. Billy tells her that would be fine unless she's feeling dizzy or nauseated. If she is, it would be better for her to stay awake for awhile.

She says she's okay and goes into the bedroom. She's doing a good job of pretending she's not afraid of him, but Billy is pretty sure she still is. She'd be crazy if she wasn't. But she's also still in shock, still humiliated by what has happened to her. And ashamed. He told her she didn't have to be, but that bounced right off. Later on she'll undoubtedly decide that asking to stay with him was a bad call, really bad. But right now all she wants is sleep. It's in her slumped shoulders and shuffling bare feet.

Billy hears the creak of bedsprings. He looks in five minutes later and she's either zonked out or doing a world-class acting job.

He boots up his laptop and goes to where he left off. You can't write today, he thinks, not with everything that's going on. Not with that girl in the other room, the one who may wake up and decide she wants to get the hell away from here, and me.