by Stephen King
“That’s right,” Billy says.
Frank appears. In an ascot and a pink shirt, with his hair combed in gleaming swoops and swirls piled high above an Eddie Munster widow’s peak, he looks like the hoodlum in a gangster movie who gets killed first. He’s got some glasses and a big green bottle on a tray. “Champers. Mote and Shandon.”
He sets down the tray and eases the cork from the bottle’s neck. No pop and no splurt. Frankie Elvis may not know French, but his opening technique is superb. So is his pour.
Nick lifts a glass. The others do likewise. “To success!”
Billy, Paulie, and Frank clink and drink. The Champagne goes pleasantly to Billy’s head at once, but he refuses another glass. “I’m driving. Don’t want to get stopped.”
“That’s Billy,” Nick says to his amigos. “Always thinking two steps ahead.”
“Three,” Billy says, and Nick laughs like this is the funniest thing he’s heard since Henny Youngman died. The amigos dutifully follow suit.
“Okay,” Nick says. “Enough with the bubble-water. Mangiamo, mangiamo.”
It’s a good meal, starting with French onion soup, progressing to beef marinated in red wine, and ending with the promised Baked Alaska. It’s served by an unsmiling woman in a white uniform, except for the dessert course. Nick’s hired chef wheels that in himself to the expected applause and compliments, nods his thanks and leaves.
Nick, Frank, and Paulie carry the conversation, which is mostly about Vegas: who is playing there, who is building there, who is looking for a casino license. As if they don’t understand that Vegas is obsolete, Billy thinks. Probably they don’t. There is no sign of Giorgio. When the serving woman comes in with after-dinner liqueur, Billy shakes his head. So does Nick.
“Marge, you and Alan can leave now,” Nick says. “It was a great meal.”
“Thanks, but we’ve just started to clean up the—”
“We’ll worry about that tomorrow. Here. Give this to Alan. Carfare, my old man would have said.” He pushes some bills into her hand. She mutters that she will and turns to go. “And Marge?”
She turns back.
“You haven’t been smoking in the house, have you?”
“No.”
Nick nods. “Don’t linger, okay? Billy, let’s you and me go in the living room for a little chin-chin. You guys, find something to do.”
Paul tells Billy it was good seeing him and heads for the front door. Frank follows Marge into the kitchen. Nick drops his napkin into the smeared remains of his dessert and leads Billy into the living room. The fireplace at one end is big enough to roast the Minotaur. There are statues in niches and a ceiling mural that looks like a porno version of the Sistine Chapel.
“Great, isn’t it?” Nick says, looking around.
“It sure is,” Billy says, thinking that if he had to spend too much time in this room, he might lose his mind.
“Sit down, Billy, take a load off.”
Billy sits. “Where’s Giorgio? Did he go back to Vegas?”
“Well, he might be there,” Nick says, “or he might be in New York or Hollywood talking to movie people about this great book he’s agenting.”
None of your business, in other words, Billy thinks. Which is, in a way, fair enough. He’s just an employee, after all. What they’d call a hired gun in the old Western movies Mr. Stepenek used to like.
Thinking of Mr. Stepenek makes him think of a thousand junked cars—it seemed like a thousand to a kid, anyway, and maybe there really were that many—with their cracked windshields winking in the sun. How many years since he last thought of that automobile graveyard? The door to the past is open. He could push it shut, latch and lock it, but he doesn’t want to. Let the wind blow in. It’s cold but it’s fresh, and the room he’s been living in is stuffy.
“Hey, Billy.” Nick is snapping his fingers. “Earth to Billy.”
“I’m here.”
“Yeah? Thought for a minute I lost you. Listen, are you actually writing something?”
“I am,” Billy says.
“Real life or made up?”
“Made up.”
“Not about Archie Andrews and his friends, is it?” Smiling.
Billy shakes his head, also smiling.
“They say that a lot of people writing fiction for the first time use their own experiences. ‘Write what you know,’ I remember that from senior English. Paramus High, go Spartans. That the case with you?”
Billy makes a seesaw gesture with one hand. Then, as if the idea has just occurred to him: “Hey, you aren’t getting up on what I’m writing, are you?” A dangerous question, but he can’t help himself. “Because I wouldn’t want—”
“God, no!” Nick says, sounding way past surprised, sounding actually shocked, and Billy knows he’s lying. “Why would we do that even if we could?”
“I don’t know, I just…” A shrug. “… wouldn’t want anyone peeking. Because I’m no writer, just trying to stay in character. And passing the time. I’d be embarrassed for anyone to see it.”
“You put a password on the laptop, right?”
Billy nods.
“Then nobody will.” Nick leans forward, his brown eyes on Billy’s. He lowers his voice like he did when telling Billy about the Baked Alaska. “Is it hot? Threesomes, and all that?”
“No, huh-uh.” A pause. “Not really.”
“Get some sex in there, that’s my advice. Because sex sells.” He chuckles and goes to a cabinet across the room. “I’m going to have a splash of brandy. Want some?”
“No thanks.” He waits for Nick to come back. “Any word on Joe?”
“Same old same old. His lawyer’s appealing the extradition like I told you and the whole thing is on hold, maybe, who knows, because Johnny Judge is off on vacation.”
“But he’s not talking about what he knows?”
“If he was, I’d know.”
“Maybe he might have an accident in jail. Never get extradited at all.”
“They’re taking very good care of him. Out of gen-pop, remember?”
“Oh yeah. Right.” That seems a little convenient is an observation Billy can’t make. It would be a bit too smart.
“Be patient, Billy. Settle in. Frankie says you’re meeting the neighbors out there in Midwood.”
So. He hasn’t seen Frank in the neighborhood, but Frank has seen him. Nick is checking his sexy new lappie at will and also keeping an eye on him at his temporary home. Billy thinks again of 1984.
“I am.”
“And in the building?”
“There too, sure. Mostly at lunch. The food wagons.”
“That’s great. Blend in with the scenery. Become part of the scenery. You’re good at that. I bet you were good at it in Iraq.”
I was good at it everywhere, Billy thinks. At least after I killed Bob Raines I was.
Time to change the subject. “You said there was going to be a diversion. Said we’d talk about it later. Is this later enough?”
“It is.” Nick takes a mouthful of brandy, swirls it around like it’s mouthwash, swallows. “Happens to feed into an idea I wanted to try out on you. The diversion is going to be a couple of flashpots. Do you know what those are?”
Billy does, but shakes his head.
“Rock bands use em. There’s a bang and a big flash of light. Like a geyser. When I know for sure that Joe is coming east, I’ll have a couple planted near the courthouse. One for sure in the alley that runs behind that café on the corner. Paulie suggested putting one in the parking garage, but it’s too far away. And besides, what terrorist blows up a fucking parking garage?”
Billy makes no attempt to hide his alarm. “Planting those things isn’t going to be Hoff’s job, is it?”
Nick doesn’t bother to swirl the second mouthful of brandy, just gulps it down. He coughs, and the cough turns into a laugh. “What, you think I’m stupid enough to give a job like that to a grande figlio di puttana like him? I’d be sad if that was you
r opinion of me. No, I’ve got a couple of my guys coming in. Good boys. Trustworthy.”
Billy thinks, You don’t want Hoff placing the flashpots, because that could come back to you, but you don’t mind him procuring the gun and placing it in the shooter’s nest, because that will come back to me. How stupid do you think I am?
“I’ll probably be in Vegas when this thing goes down, but Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan will be here with the two other guys I’m bringing in. If you need anything, they’ll take care of you.” He leans forward again, earnest and smiling. “It’s going to be a beautiful thing. The gunshot goes, scaring everybody. Then the flashpots go—BOOM, BOOM!—and anybody who’s not running already starts running then and screaming their heads off. Active shooter! Suicide bombers! Al-Qaeda! ISIS! Whatever! But the real beauty of it? Unless somebody breaks a leg running away, nobody gets hurt except for Joel Allen. That’s his real name. Court Street is in a panic, and that brings me to what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Okay.”
“Now I know you’re used to planning your own getaways, and you’ve always been good at it—fucking Houdini, like I said—but Giorgio and I had a little idea. Because…” Nick shakes his head. “Man, this could be a tough one, even for you and even if we panic the street with the flash-bangs. Which we will. If you’ve already got something worked out, go with God. But if you don’t…”
“I don’t.” Although he’s getting there. Billy gives a big dumb self smile. “Always happy to listen, Nick.”
2
He’s home—he guesses the yellow house is home, at least for a while—by eleven PM. All of his Amazon swag is in the closet. It would have stayed there until he got the call that Allen is headed east from Los Angeles, but things have changed. Billy is uneasy.
The black wig can stay here when it comes, but he takes the other stuff out to the car and stows it in the trunk. He won’t be spending all of tomorrow in the fifth-floor office, and that’s okay. The nice thing about being the Gerard Tower’s writer in residence is that he’s not a working stiff who has to keep regular hours. He can come in late and leave early. He can take a stroll if the urge strikes him. If anyone asks he can say he’s working over a new idea. Or doing research. Or just taking an hour or two off. Tomorrow he will stroll nine blocks to 658 Pearson Street. It’s a three-story house on the border of municipal downtown. Billy has already looked at the house on Zillow, but that’s not good enough. He wants eyes on.
He locks the car and goes back inside. He brought the shiny new MacBook Pro back from his office and parked it on the kitchen table. Now he opens it and reads what he’s written as Benjy Compson. It’s only a couple of pages, ending with Benjy shooting Bob Raines. He reads it over three times, trying to see it as Nick must have. Because Nick has read it, after that crack about writers using their own experiences Billy has no doubt of it.
He doesn’t care if Nick finds out about his childhood, for all Billy knows Nick has checked that out already. What Billy does care about is protecting the dumb self, at least for now. He won’t be able to sleep until he makes sure that there’s nothing in those two or three pages that makes him seem too smart. So he goes over it a fourth time.
At last he shuts the laptop down. He doesn’t think there’s anything in the prose that a C student in English couldn’t have written, assuming most of it really happened. The spelling is mostly good, and the punctuation, but Nick would chalk that up to autocorrect. Although the Word program isn’t able to detect the difference between can’t and cant, the computer always turns dont into don’t, it underlines misspellings in red, it even notes the most egregious grammatical lapses. The verb tenses in what he’s written come and go, which is fine because that’s above the computer’s pay grade… although the day will probably come when it flags those, too.
But he’s uneasy.
He’s never had reason to distrust Nick, who is undoubtedly a bad person but who has always played straight with Billy. He is not playing straight now, or he wouldn’t have denied cloning the Pro. Would not have cloned it in the first place. Billy feels he can still assume the job is straight, the first quarter of the payout is in his bank account, five hundred thousand dollars, tall tickets, but this whole thing still feels wrong. Not big wrong, just a little wonky. It’s like one of those shots you sometimes see in a movie where the camera has been slightly tilted to give you a sense of disorientation. Dutching is what movie people call that kind of tilt, and that’s how this job feels: dutched. Not enough to call it off, which he might not be able to do anyway now that he’s said yes, but enough to be concerning.
And there’s the getaway plan Nick sprang on him. If you’ve already got something worked out, go with God, he’d said. But if you don’t, me and Giorgio had an idea that might work fine.
Nick’s idea isn’t a problem because it’s bad; it’s not. It’s good. But disappearing after the job is done has always been Billy’s responsibility, and for Nick to get in his business like that is… well…
“Dutched,” Billy murmurs to his empty kitchen.
Nick said that six weeks ago, when this job looked like becoming a reality, he sent Paul Logan up to Macon and told him to buy a Ford Transit van, not new but not more than three years old. Transits were the workhorses of Red Bluff’s Department of Public Works fleet. Billy has already seen several, painted yellow and blue with the motto WE ARE HERE TO SERVE painted on the sides. The brown Transit Frank bought in Georgia was now in a garage on the outskirts of town, painted in DPW colors and with the DPW motto.
“I’ll have a good idea of when Allen’s extradition is getting close,” Nick said. He was sipping a little more brandy. “Those guys I told you about—the ones coming in—will start being out and about in that van, always looking busy but not really doing anything. Never staying too long in one place but always near the courthouse and the Gerard Tower. An hour here, two hours there. Becoming part of the scenery, in other words. Like you, Billy.”
On the day of Allen’s arrival, Nick said this bogus DPW van would be parked around the corner from the Gerard Tower. The bogus city workers would maybe open a manhole cover and pretend to be doing something inside. When the shot came, and the flashpot explosions, people would run everywhere. Including from the Gerard Tower and including Billy Summers, who would race around the corner and into the back of the van. There he would jump into a pair of DPW coveralls.
“The van pulls around to the courthouse,” Nick said. “Cops are already on the scene. My guys—and you—pile out and ask if there’s anything they can do to help. Put up sawhorses to block the street, or something. In all the confusion, it will look a hundred per cent natural. You see that?”
Billy saw. It was bold and it was good.
“The cops—”
“They probably tell us to get lost,” Billy said. “We’re city workers but we’re civilians. Is that right?”
Nick laughed and clapped his hands. “See? Anyone who thinks you’re stupid is full of shit. My guys say yes sir, officers, and off you drive. And you keep driving. After switching vehicles, of course.”
“Driving to where?”
“De Pere, Wisconsin, a thousand miles from here. There’s a safe house. You stay there a couple of days, relax, check your bank account for the rest of your payday, think about how you’re going to spend your money. After that you’re on your own. How does it sound?”
It sounded good. Too good? A possible set-up? Unlikely. If anyone in this deal is being set up, it’s Ken Hoff. Billy’s problem with Nick’s unexpected offer is that he’s never had to depend on other people to disappear before. He doesn’t like it but that wasn’t the time to say so.
“Let me think about it, okay?”
“You bet,” Nick said. “Plenty of time.”
3
Billy hauls his suitcase out of the master bedroom closet. He puts it on the bed and unzips it. It looks empty, but it’s not. The lining has a Velcro strip running along the underside. He pulls the lini
ng up and takes out a small flat case. It’s the kind smart people—those who read more challenging stuff than Archie digests and supermarket checkout lane scandal papers—might call an etui. There’s a wallet inside with credit cards and a driver’s license issued to Dalton Curtis Smith, of Stowe, Vermont.
There have been many other wallets and IDs during Billy’s career, not one for each of his assassinations (he calls them what they are) but at least a dozen, leading up to the current one belonging to a make-believe individual named David Lockridge. Some of his previous selves had good ID, some not so good. The credit cards and DL in the David Lockridge wallet are very good indeed, but the stuff in the flat gray case is better. The stuff in there is gold. Putting it together has been the work of five years, a labor of love going back to when he decided he must eventually get out of a business that makes him—admit it—just another bad person.
Dalton Smith isn’t just a Lord Buxton wallet with a legit-looking driver’s license inside; Dalton Smith is practically a real person. The Mastercard, the Amex card, and the Visa all get used regularly. Ditto the Bank of America debit card. Not every day, but often enough so the accounts don’t gather dust. His credit rating isn’t excellent, which might draw attention, but it’s very good.
There’s a Red Cross blood donor card, his Social Security card, and Dalton’s membership in an Apple User Group. No dumb self here; Dalton Curtis Smith is a freelance computer tech with a fairly lucrative sideline that allows him to go wherever the wind blows him. Also in the wallet are pictures of Dalton with his wife (they were divorced six years ago), Dalton with his parents (killed in the ever-popular car crash when Dalton was a teenager), Dalton with his estranged brother (they don’t talk since Dalton found out his brother voted for Nader in the 2000 election).
Dalton’s birth certificate is in the etui, and references. Some are from individuals and small businesses whose computers Dalton has fixed, others from people who have rented to him in Portsmouth, Chicago, and Irvine. His go-to guy in New York, Bucky Hanson, has created some of these references; Bucky is the only person Billy trusts completely. Others Billy created himself. Dalton Smith never stays long in one place, a tumbling tumbleweed is he, but when he’s in situ, he’s a very good tenant: neat and quiet, always pays the rent on time.