Billy Summers (46 page)

“It isn't the grasshopper and the ant. More like a Shakespeare play. One of the bloody ones.”

“With Patrick dead, when Klerke steps down—given his health it won't be long—Devin will take over.”

He pulls into a service area, because the Mitsubishi needs gas and because his throat is dry and he wants a cold drink. Alice checks out the Quik-Pik shelves and uses the restroom while he pays. When she gets back into the car she's crying.

“I'm sorry.” Her purchases are in a little white bag. She takes out a pack of Kleenex, wipes her nose, and tries on a smile. “But while I was in the bathroom I made us a reservation at the Ramada Inn in Wendover. It's supposed to be nice.”

“Good. And you don't have to be sorry.”

“I keep thinking about that horrible man with a child. He deserves to die.”

Billy thinks, That's the plan.

By the time he finishes—again weaving what he knows from Nick into what he deduced on his drive back from Promontory Point—some of the cars on the highway are showing headlights.

“Klerke told Nick he wanted the best man for the job, a guy who'd do it and get away clean and not talk about it afterward. Nick said he knew a guy—”

“You?”

“He said he thought of me first, but never even went to Bucky with it. He said he was pretty sure I wouldn't do it because Patrick Klerke was maybe not bad enough to fit my scruples. He put it to Allen as an ordinary cleaning job.”

“That's what he called it?
Cleaning?
”

“Yes. The figure they settled on was eighty thousand dollars,
twenty before and the rest after. Basically the same method of payment I was promised, but on a smaller scale.”

Alice is nodding. “He didn't want Allen to know what a big deal this was. How much was involved.”

“Sure. Nick felt okay about it, because Allen was what I always pretended to be, just your basic mechanic who fixed problems with a gun instead of socket wrenches and a timing computer. He gave Allen photos of Patrick's apartment building, photos of the apartment itself, the code to the service entrance, the car exchange after the job was done, anything he might need to do the job clean and quick.” Billy pauses. “Nick didn't tell me all that, but I've worked for him before. I knew the drill. What he didn't tell Allen was why and Allen didn't ask.”

“But he asked Patrick, didn't he? Before he killed him.”

Billy thinks that over. “It's possible, but it seems unlikely for a guy like Joel Allen. He'd be a lot more likely to just do the job. No conversation, just point and shoot.”

“Maybe Patrick offered him the thumb drive in exchange for…” Alice stops. “Except he couldn't, could he? He didn't have it. Thought he was home free once his appointment was announced to the board.”

“Nick doesn't know what happened, and Allen can't tell us how he found out about Roger Klerke and the kid in Tijuana, but I have an idea. Allen was told to make it look like a robbery, maybe committed by some fellow user who met Patrick along the Los Angeles drug trail. He was told to take any money or jewelry he found. He was supposed to toss the jewelry, watches and gold chains and shit like that, but he could keep the money as a little bonus. So after he killed Patrick he searched the place and might have found a picture, maybe more than one, that Patrick kept in reserve. At least one that showed his father's face nice and clear while he was… doing what he was doing. Does that make sense?”

Alice nods hard enough to make her hair bounce. “I bet it
happened just that way. Even if the picture or pictures were in a safe, Allen could have been given the combination with the rest of his background info. Would he really have recognized the man in the picture?”

Based on what he knows about Joel Allen, Billy doesn't see him as the sort of guy who watched the WWE business channel or read the Bloomberg report. “Probably not at first, but it wouldn't have taken him long to find out. A few Google searches would have shown him that he'd killed the son of a billionaire who also happened to be a pedophile.”

Alice's eyes are intent. She's totally into this now. Billy thinks again that a rinky-dink business school in Red Bluff would have wasted a lot of potential. And hairdressing school? Forget it.

“So this paid killer, this mechanic, this
cleaner
, had two things worth money—that the father was almost certainly the one who paid to have the son killed, and the father also raped a child. Because he ‘just wanted to see what it was like.' ” Some of the light goes out of her eyes when she says that.

“I doubt if he tried to turn what he knew into cash, although he might have down the line. He would've known that blackmailing someone as rich and powerful as Roger Klerke would be a tremendous risk. I think he kept it as a hole card. Which he eventually had to play not for money but because of his own stupidity.”

Double stupidity, Billy thinks, if you count in the lady writer.

“Almost like he wanted to be caught,” Alice says. “Some repeat killers do.” She rewinds what she's said and puts a hand on his wrist. “Ones without a moral code, I mean.”

Is that what you call it? Billy wonders.

“I doubt if Allen wanted to get caught. And if he was able to figure out what made that picture such a valuable commodity, I guess he wasn't completely stupid, either.”

“If he wasn't completely stupid, why kill that man over a poker game? And why attack that woman in LA?”

Well, Billy thinks, Allen believed the poker game guy was cheating. And the lady writer pepper-sprayed him. But neither of those things goes to the heart of Alice's question.

“My guess? Simple arrogance. Do you want to stop somewhere for dinner?”

She shakes her head. “Let's drive straight through and eat when we get there. I want to hear the rest.”

Billy feels surer about this part even though it's still mostly guesswork. After Allen was arrested for assault and attempted rape in LA, he must have known he'd be connected almost immediately with the murder and attempted murder back east in Red Bluff. There was a lively trade in cell phones in the county lockup, most of them burners. Allen could have gotten hold of one, called Nick, and said that if he had to go back to Red Bluff and stand trial for murder in a death penalty state, a very rich man, initials RK, was probably going to spend the rest of his life in jail, possibly getting buggered by Harvey Weinstein. And if anything happened to Allen in LA lockup, RK was going to be very, very sorry.

“Nick got in touch with Roger Klerke. Klerke—almost certainly through an intermediary—hired an expensive lawyer to fight extradition. Nick and Klerke had another meeting at that island and laid out any number of possible scenarios. I imagine they had the expensive legal talent on speed-dial. If so, he would have told them what Nick probably knew already, that he could draw out the extradition fight for quite awhile, but in the end Allen was going to be put on a plane and sent back to face trial. Because first-degree murder trumps aggravated assault.”

“That's when Majarian hired you.”

“Around then, yes. To get me placed where I could eventually
take the shot. By then Allen was out of gen-pop because he'd been attacked. By arrangement, I'd guess. Maybe his idea, probably his lawyer's. Either way he wound up having his own private accommodation while the extradition fight was ongoing. He met regularly with the expensive lawyer, who told him everything was under control. Or would be, once he was back east. Either an escape would be arranged, along with a completely new identity, or certain wheels would be greased, certain witnesses would be bribed, certain key evidence would disappear, and Allen would walk free as himself.”

“And he had no reason to doubt it.”

Billy shakes his head. “Guys like Allen doubt everything. But he had no choice.”

“What about the picture? Or pictures? His hole card?”

“I think both Nick and Klerke had people looking for that all the time the extradition fight was going on. That was one reason
why
the extradition fight was going on. And I think they eventually found it, or them. All I know for sure is that no federal marshals have turned up to arrest Roger Klerke.”

“Maybe we'll turn up first,” Alice says.

Billy hates that pronoun, but he doesn't correct it. He only has a ghost of a plan, and when it comes more into focus, maybe he can leave Alice out of it. He remembers what Bucky said:
She's in love with you and she'll follow you as long as you let her and if you let her you'll ruin her
.

“Ohhh, look—it's a palace!” So says Alice when they pull into the Wendover Ramada Inn at quarter of nine that Sunday night. “I mean, compared to the last three motels.”

Their adjoining rooms are far from palatial, but they're nice, and the hallway carpet looks as if it's been vacuumed recently.

“Will you be able to sleep?” she asks.

“Yes.” He doesn't actually know if that's true.

Her eyes are fixed on his. “I'll sleep with you, if you want.”

Billy thinks of Roger Klerke's taste for the young ones—on at least one pestiferous occasion a
very
young one—and shakes his head. “It's a kind offer and much appreciated, but better not.”

“Are you sure?”

Still looking directly at him, and is he tempted? Of course he is.

“Thank you, Alice, but no. Will
you
be able to sleep?”

“Will we be back at Bucky's tomorrow?”

“Should be.”

“Then I'll be able to sleep. I like him. He's, you know, safe.”

Billy isn't sure she'd feel that way if she knew even half the deals Elmer “Bucky” Hanson has been involved in over the years, but he knows what she means and thinks she's right. She and Bucky have made a connection.

“Goodnight.” He kisses her for the first time, on the corner of the mouth.

“Goodnight. Oh, and here.” She hands him the white Quik-Pik bag. “Baby oil and Handi Wipes. Clean off as much of that goop as you can, then get in the shower. You won't get it all, but you can get most of it.” She goes to the door, uses her keycard, then turns back. “And leave a good tip, because more of it will come off on the sheets.”

“Okay.” He wouldn't have thought of that himself, although he probably would have tomorrow, when he looked at the bed.

She starts to go in, then looks at him over her shoulder. Her face is solemn but calm. “I love you.”

Billy doesn't even think of lying. He tells her he loves her, too, then goes into his room.

He calls Nick. He's not sure Nick will answer, but he does.

“Who's this?” And then, without waiting for a reply: “Is it you?”

“It's me. Are you getting things right there?”

“They will be by tomorrow.”

“I didn't cool anybody that I didn't have to.”

A long pause with just the sound of breathing. Then Nick says, “I know.”

“What's up with Frank?”

“In the hospital. His mother called my pet medic. Doc Rivers sent a private ambulance. She went with him.”

“That's a hard woman.”

“Marge?” Nick gives a short laugh. “You don't know the half of it.”

I believe I do, Billy thinks. If I'd hit her in the back of the head with that Glock instead of Frank, it probably would have bounced right off.

“Is our fat friend still in the land of the living?”

“He was as of an hour ago when I called to tell him about what happened. He said I should have taken you more seriously. I said I thought four made guys—plus Marge—was pretty serious. Why do you ask?”

“Did he procure for Mr. K when he came to Vegas? It seems like the kind of job you'd delegate to him.”

“You are a
lot
smarter than I thought,” Nick says, as if talking to himself. “Smarter than
anybody
thought. Except maybe for Pigs.”

“Did he or didn't he?”

“Well, yeah. Kinda. Pigs'd get with Judy Blatner when he knew K was coming. They'd go over her picture books, try to find one he'd like. Ten, twelve years ago he woulda wanted two, but his stamina's declined. He ain't what you'd call a gentleman, but he does prefer blonds.”

“And they have to be young.”

“Well duh,” Nick says. “But the girls he went with in Vegas were never under eighteen. Judy's been around a long time and runs a legal escort service. That means she can't say the girls are for sex, but she doesn't have to. Everyone knows. She steers clear of jailbait, though. Like it was poison. Which it is.”

The thought of that jowly toad even with a girl Alice's age makes Billy's stomach turn. “When he wanted jailbait he crossed the border.”

“True.”

“I want the fat man's number. Will you give it to me?”

“Are you going after Mr. K?”

He is, but he's not going to say so even on a burner phone and believing Nick makes sure his personal phone is whistle clean. He only reiterates his request for Giorgio's number. Nick gives it to him.

“Will he talk to me?”

“If I tell him to. If I say you're going to keep it business. He never would have gone along with this if he didn't need to do something that would force him to change how he's been living. If you want to blame someone, blame me. I didn't need to lose two hundred pounds so the docs would give me a new liver. Like I told you, the money blinded me.”

Billy thinks it's as honest a confession as Nick will ever give anyone. “Tell him I'm going to keep it business. Joel Allen is water under the bridge.”

“When should I tell him to expect your call?”

“Not tonight, maybe not for awhile. When's the transplant scheduled?”

“It's not, and won't be until December at least. Pigs has got to drink a lot of protein shakes and eat a lot of kale between now and then.”