Down Time

by Barry Lyga

  Back in Billy’s childhood, convenient, nigh-untraceable, highly anonymous pay phones were everywhere. But the world had moved on, and he didn’t have time to go searching for one. And so, the front desk beckoned.

  On his way to the elevator, Billy caught himself whistling. There was a mirror across from the elevator doors, and he stared at himself for a moment. Outside Billy was smiling. Inside Billy realized he was almost giddy. It was the sensation he had the night before he went out prospecting, when all the months of planning, all the hard work and dedication and devotion to endless minute details came together.

  The endorphin rush of a plan well-plotted, a murder sublimely designed.

  He felt that way now. His blood thrummed, and Outside Billy grinned. The idea that he could only be happy when in imminent danger of being caught didn’t appeal to him.… But he wasn’t one to deny himself any pleasure. He was enjoying this impromptu hunt, especially now that he knew he would prevail. The killer had made a mistake.

  They always made mistakes.

  Except for Billy.

  A new prospect was on duty at the front desk, this one a young Hispanic man whom Billy charmed just as easily as the woman who’d been at the desk before. Man or woman, straight or gay, prospects were prospects—they bent to the will of their betters without even realizing.

  Rodrigo (according to his name tag) happily handed a landline over the counter. The cord was just long enough that Billy could step around a half-wall in the lobby for a little bit of privacy. He had a sudden flash to his childhood, a time he rarely if ever thought of: His sister, Samantha, flinging herself at the ringing phone mounted to the kitchen wall, snatching up the receiver, then darting around the bend in the wall, her voice a covert hush that spiked into occasional squeals.

  That same phone still hung from the same spot on the wall. Assuming his mother hadn’t ripped it down by now.

  With a sigh and a shake of his head, he quickly punched in the number that had texted a photo of him to Nadine. After three rings, he experienced the slightest frisson of doubt, then reproached himself for ever questioning himself as the line opened midway through the fourth ring.

  “Yeah?” Male. Even in the single syllable, Billy detected a note of caution.

  A cop or a prospect would meet caution with caution, trying to put the man on the other end at ease. Getting the guy relaxed, the theory went, would elicit his cooperation and patience.

  Billy knew better. He knew people—prospects—better than they knew themselves because he’d spent a lifetime studying them, scrutinizing, beginning with his own sister. People rarely reacted in sensible ways, though their reactions were usually predictable to Billy.

  This guy—this cautious guy on the other end—still had in his possession a phone he’d used to contact a murder victim. That he’d not yet destroyed and discarded that phone meant one of two things: Either he was a complete idiot, or he was expecting a call at that number.

  Either way, being timid and trying to put him at ease wouldn’t work. Caution and calm and reserve were for planning. Once planning was over, it was time for action.

  “How the hell are you?” Billy boomed into the phone. “Enjoyin’ your time at Castle by the Sea?”

  A smart, thinking man would disconnect the call. But Billy knew he’d caught his prey off guard.

  “Wait, what?” the guy asked.

  Wait, what? When his first move should have been to break the connection, then stomp the phone into oblivion, then toss the pieces into a sewer.

  “Castle by the Sea,” Billy said again with great cheer. “Hell of a place, ain’t it? Relaxin’ vibe, easy access to the beach. And the taquitos at happy hour are to die for.”

  “Who is this?”

  Billy chuckled. The man on the other end sounded wary. Sounded wary, but the word didn’t apply. Not to this idiot. He wasn’t smart enough to be wary.

  Lowering his voice, Billy broadened his smile for the benefit of any lookee-loos. “You know who it is. I’m the witness, friend. And not the only one.”

  “Witness? To what?”

  If Billy had had any doubts at all about the man on the other end of the line being his quarry, they’d have been scrubbed away by the eraser of continued conversation. An innocent man would not be puzzled or even indignant by this point in such a strange phone call. An innocent man would be angry or perplexed enough to hang up.

  A guilty man—or a man with guilty knowledge—would pretend to be innocent but would keep the conversation going to see what Billy knew.

  “Seriously, who the hell is this?” the other man asked.

  “Look, it ain’t that I don’t appreciate the attempt, as bungled as it was. It’s just that—”

  “Bungled?”

  Billy bloated his voice with a too-innocent, gee-whiz quality, pitched it low and nearly inaudible. “Well, look, I don’t mean to offend. Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but it just seems to me that—speaking as a strictly disinterested observer, mind you—that if you plan on killin’ someone, well, you should probably kill ’em. Am I right?”

  Silence for a moment. Just a moment.

  An innocent man would threaten to call the police at this point.

  More silence. Weighing his options. Trying to tease the truth out of a noiseless phone connection.

  Billy threw some more words into the water like chum: “Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her. Maybe I’m seein’ this all wrong. Maybe you meant to give her just enough chemistry set jizz to stop her breathing long enough for her to go all vegetable. But, I mean, I’m no expert, but I imagine she’ll regain some kinda brain function at some point. Probably just enough to, y’know, point to some guy in a lineup or a photo array.”

  “You were with her.…” It was a near-strangled sound.

  “Sure. As her one-night stand. But I bet you met up with her in person at some point. How it worked, right? Some kinda money had to change hands. Maybe she’s a working girl, maybe an escort, maybe just a college kid looking to make some dough on the side, don’t care if she gotta spread her legs for it. Hail feminism, done made women embrace their sexuality, right?”

  Nothing.

  “So you meet up with her. Exchange dough. Later, you text her a picture of me ’cause you gotta do it close to when she’s gonna pull the trigger. No way for you to know if I’ve cut my hair or anything, right? Then you send her my way, and she and I have ourselves a good time. But she knows your face as well as she knows mine.”

  “Look, you—”

  Billy clapped the receiver back into the body of the phone. He spun around to the front desk and handed the phone over. “Thanks so much,” he said, grinning.

  He didn’t want to wait for the elevator. He took the stairs two at a time, regulating his breathing so that by the time he pushed through the stairwell door and emerged into the hallway, he appeared no more winded than if he’d just strolled down from the floor above.

  Sauntering past a maid in the hall, Billy snapped his fingers as though he’d just forgotten something.

  “Darlin’,” he said to the maid, “I sure am sorry, but I just spilled some of that room service coffee on my bed. I’m happy to take care of it, if you don’t mind…?”

  With a shrug and a smile, she gestured to the cart. Billy chose a neatly folded sheet and nodded with gratitude.

  Back in Nadine’s room, he left the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. He tore a sheet of paper off the pad on the desk and stepped briskly into the closet. With swift, purposeful movements, he crumpled the paper and stuffed it into the hole in the doorframe. Now he could pull the door closed all the way without the cylinder engaging.

  In the dark of the closet, he heard a sound from outside. The door to the room unlocking.

  Hotels. Always offering two keycards. Unlike Billy, Nadine had accepted the second one, and her killer had taken it with him. Sloppy.

  Must have still been at the hotel. Idiot.

  Billy counted to three, slo
wly. Most people counting to three—especially in dire situations where they were actively trying to calm themselves—sped up. Not Billy. He could be on the run from six Dobermans and a pissed-off daddy with a shotgun and he’d still get the count right. It had saved his bacon more than once.

  A three-count was pretty much exactly how long he figured it would take the killer to get from the door to the bedside.

  On three, Billy burst through the door. He didn’t know what waited on the other side, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t wait to assess the situation. He couldn’t sit in the closet and risk inching the door open enough to scope out his prey. Every millisecond he waited, the odds jumped that the killer would realize he’d been suckered.

  So Billy jumped, too.

  Blitzkrieg was a fine weapon in any killer’s arsenal. There was a time for planning and patience and subtlety, yeah, sure, but when push came to shove, it was best to shove as hard and as fast and as brutally as possible.

  The killer turned from the bed, half-crouched, eyes alight with a combination of surprise, rage, and bloodlust. He was tall and slender, with delicate features now twisted into a snarl.

  With the sheet twisted tightly and stretched between his hands, Billy flung himself bodily at the killer, who barely had time to react. In less than a second, the sheet, wound to the thickness of a hefty nautical rope, wrapped around the killer’s throat. His eyes bugged as he realized what was happening, hands raised for combat suddenly shooting to his neck.

  Too late. Billy’s momentum knocked them both over. They hit the bed, bounced off, crashed to the floor. The killer’s hands were trapped somewhere under him, and Billy—astride him—had the advantage. He crossed his arms, tightening the makeshift garrote. Breathed in deep through his nose, then out in short puffs through his mouth. Not a conscious decision at all—years of training, now muscle memory. Last thing he needed was to hyperventilate into unconsciousness while in the middle of his work.

  The killer scrabbled at the sheet with fingers so long and feminine that Billy expected to see nail polish there. Impassively, he stared down at the killer, no longer fearing the man’s hands. As oxygen fled the brain, the body directed all efforts to reacquiring it.

  The man’s lips moved. In a papery hush, he managed: “But… she… said…”

  Billy tightened the sheet. He didn’t care what Nadine had said.

  The killer’s legs kicked once, weakly. His hands dropped away. Unconscious.

  Billy, who had been possum’d more than once, waited a ten-count before he let himself relax.

  He had damn little time. As the sheet slackened around the killer’s neck, blood and oxygen would flow back into the brain. Wakening would be swift.

  He dragged the other man to the closet. The garment bar inside was sturdy, metal, bolted to a flange that was mounted into a stud. Moving quickly, precisely, with the sparing and exact gestures of a man who has practiced extended hours, until the unnatural becomes second nature, he fashioned a serviceable noose from one end of the sheet. He looped it over the killer’s head, tightened it with the knot to the left side of the killer’s neck.

  There had been a study once that most suicides positioned the knot to the left. Billy always went with the percentages.

  The killer’s eyes began to flutter open just as Billy tugged the free end of the sheet into position over the garment bar. Before the man could struggle, Billy hauled on his end of the sheet, tightening the knot and cutting off blood flow and oxygen again. The killer sagged back into unconsciousness.

  Billy braced himself against the back of the closet and gently nudged the killer with his foot, pushing the man forward into a leaning position. Then he waited patiently until the killer’s legs spasmed and the smell of human excrement assaulted his nose. Good smell, that. It meant the job was done. Death often loosened the sphincter.

  He tied the free end of the sheet to the garment bar, then gently adjusted the position of the body—leaning forward on its knees to the extreme end of the sheet. When he let go, the body slumped to one side, but that was fine. Bodies and gravity did their dance, and no one knew what clinch they’d be in when the music ended and the lights came up.

  Billy’s heart raced as he stepped back into the room; his blood thrummed in his ears.

  He caught his breath and frisked the body quickly, but thoroughly. Wallet with cash and no ID. Good. Traveling as anonymously as possible. First smart thing he’d done.

  In a jacket pocket, a capped needle and an empty vial. Probably waiting to get somewhere safe to discard them. Oh, well.

  He left everything in the man’s pockets except for the cell phone he found, complete with the picture of Billy on the sent text screen. Billy erased the phone, then tucked it into his own pocket. It would go into the furnace at home.

  He stepped back to admire his handiwork. “What we got here is a murder/suicide. Damn sad it is, especially with such a beautiful beach out there to enjoy.”

  Clucking his tongue, he glanced from one body to the other and back again. “I thought you two crazy kids would make it. I really did.”

  On his way to the door, he caught a glimpse of himself in the smallish mirror mounted pointlessly over the desk. For an instant—just an instant—Inside Billy showed himself, all dragon’s teeth and lion mane and eyes coruscating like bleeding suns.

  Billy grinned; fire and black, choking smoke purled up from between his lips.

  Poking his head into the hall, he saw he had a clear shot at the elevator. He took down the DO NOT DISTURB sign and listened for the satisfying click of the door locking behind him.

  On the beach, he wondered: Who had the killer been? Then again, did it really matter? Some Crow looking to make a name for himself. Trying to set Billy up for the ultimate indignity—capture.

  But the end result was Billy’s best vacation in years. He’d gotten laid and gotten to kill someone, and pinned two deaths on one loser. Not bad.

  By the time he returned to the Castle by the Sea, an ambulance and two police cruisers were parked outside. Billy joined the crowd of gawking rubberneckers. After a moment, an EMT emerged, pushing a stretcher on which lay a body bag. A gasp rose up from the crowd. Billy slipped inside and approached the front desk, where a very flustered manager was mopping sweat from her forehead with the cuff of her hotel blazer.

  “Say, what’s goin’ on out there?” Billy asked, hooking a thumb toward the parking lot.

  She smiled at him tightly, eyes squinted with concern. “I’m sorry. We’ve been asked not to talk about it.”

  “C’mon, darlin’.” He flashed her a smile that had unlocked doors and dropped panties in six states.

  She blushed satisfactorily. Vacation or no, he could work when he needed to. “There’s been a murder. And a suicide.”

  “Ain’t that just awful.” Billy clucked his tongue. “Some people just can’t control themselves, I suppose.”

  You never know what will happen when you go somewhere new.

  True.

  He stayed two more days. Leaving early would have looked odd, even though anyone could be justified vacating a hotel after hearing about a murder under its roof. Billy wasn’t “anyone,” though—he had to be above reproach, above suspicion, at all times.

  Those two days were as boring as the previous one had been exciting. He’d enjoyed his little chase more than he wanted to admit.

  Still, staying on gave him the opportunity to keep a weather eye on the investigation. After the first day, the bastard cops vacated the premises, and by the second day, the local news seemed to have declared the whole thing a one-night stand gone horribly wrong. It had the savor of a closed case from what Billy could tell, and that’s just how he liked it.

  He checked out of Castle by the Sea without so much as a sideways glance from a cop. With his usual Outside Billy smile, he took his receipt from the gal at the desk and sauntered through the lobby. Inside Billy couldn’t wait to get the living fuck away from this place, back home, back
to the Nod, back to Jasper.

  “Oh, Mr. Dent!” came the voice of the front-desk clerk. “Mr. Dent!” she called out again.

  Billy gritted his teeth. Almost out the door. Almost gone. If he ran, it would look suspicious. If he stayed, he could be walking into a trap. He thought he’d managed to wash Nadine off his hands, but maybe he’d forgotten something and the cops were waiting for him to leave before pouncing.…

  Possibilities and alternatives blew through him in a split second, and then he turned back to the desk. “Yes, darlin’?”

  Flustered, she held an envelope out to him. “I almost forgot—a message came in for you just a little while ago.”

  Billy took the envelope and saluted her with it. He waited until had put twenty miles between himself and the hotel before pulling over to the side of the road.

  The envelope was embossed with the hotel’s name and logo, but it was otherwise unremarkable. He opened it with his penknife and withdrew a single sheet of paper.

  Three words.

  Three words and a single, uppercase letter.

  Billy absorbed them, rolled them over in his mouth as though tasting them.

  Then, at last, he chuckled.

  The chuckles became honest-to-God laughter, then guffaws. He kept on until he wept.

  He burned the envelope by the side of the road and let its ashes waft away. The note itself he would keep a little while longer. Maybe he would even give it pride-of-place in his hidden rumpus room, where he kept souvenirs of his escapades.

  Back in the rental car, he tucked the note into the sun visor for the time being and pulled back into traffic. Every now and then, as he neared the airport, he would glance up and see three words and a letter, in handwriting so well known to him:

  Happy anniversary, darling. —J

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