by Stephen King
“Take these,” Pill said. He had the morphine tablets.
“Oh God I wish I was dead I wish they killed me OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP!”
Pill two-fingered Johnny’s mouth open and dumped in the tabs. “Chew those and you’re gonna see God.”
“What happened here, Marines?”
I looked around and saw Hurst. Still standing spread-legged, trying his best to do the General Patton thing, but he looked pretty fucking green around the gills.
“What does it look like?” Din-Din said. “Fallujah happened. Sir.”
Pill said, “If he doesn’t get some blood ASAP, he’s going to
5
What brings Billy back from Iraq could have been in Iraq, part of Lalafallujah’s endless soundtrack: Angus Young’s guitar snarling its way through “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.” Bucky and Alice must be back from their shopping trip. Billy looks at his watch and sees it’s quarter past three in the afternoon. He’s been here for hours, with no sense of passing time at all.
He finishes that dangling last sentence, saves his work, cases up his lappie, and is about to leave when he happens to glance at the picture he took down, not neglecting to turn it to the wall so he wouldn’t be distracted by those bright primitive colors. He puts it back up on its hook, maybe (probably) because he’s still in Marine mode and remembering Sergeant “Up Yours” Uppington’s dictum: leave no trace when you leave the space.
He studies the painting, frowning. The hedge dog is on the right, the hedge rabbits on the left. Weren’t they the other way around before? And aren’t the lions closer?
I got it wrong, that’s all, he thinks, but before leaving the summerhouse he takes the picture down again. Not neglecting to turn it so it faces the wall.
6
The music gets louder as he approaches the house. With no neighbors, Bucky can really crank it if he wants to. It must be a mixtape, because as Billy approaches the house AC/DC gives way to Metallica.
They’ve brought back a new vehicle—new to them, at least—and Billy pauses before going up the steps to look it over. There not being any more space under the porch, they’ve parked it at the end of the driveway. It’s a Dodge Ram, the Quad Cab model from early in the twenty-first century, once blue, now mostly gray. There’s no Bondo around the headlights, but the bench seat has been mended with a strip of black tape and the rocker panels are mighty rusty. So is the bed of the pickup, which contains a Lawn-Boy mower maybe older than the truck itself. There’s a trailer hooked up behind, a two-wheeler, pretty battered, nothing in it.
By the time Billy starts up the steps to the porch, Metallica has been replaced by Tom Waits croaking “16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six.” Billy stops in the doorway. Bucky and Alice are dancing in the middle of the big room. She’s wearing a new shell top, her color is high and her eyes are bright. With her hair in a ponytail—really a horsetail, it goes all the way down to the middle of her back—she looks like a teenager. She’s laughing, having a ball. Maybe because Bucky is a pretty fucked-up dancer, maybe just because she’s having a good time.
Bucky gives Billy a double V and keeps shuffling off to Buffalo. He does a twirl and Alice spins the other way. She sees Billy leaning in the doorway and laughs some more and gives a hip-shake that makes her tied-back hair flip from side to side. Tom Waits ends. Bucky goes to the stereo and turns off Bob Seger before he can get a grip on that song about Betty Lou. Then he collapses on the couch and pats his chest. “I’m too bushed to boogaloo.”
Alice, years from being too bushed to boogaloo, turns to Billy, almost popping with excitement. “Did you see the truck?”
“I did.”
“It’s perfect, isn’t it?”
Billy nods. “Nobody would remember it five minutes after it passed them by.” He looks at Bucky over her shoulder. “How does it run?”
“Ricky says it’s fine for an old girl that’s already made one trip around the clock. Burns a little oil is all. Well, maybe a little more than a little. Alice and me took it for a test drive and it seemed okay. Suspension’s rough, but you gotta expect that in a truck that’s been around as long as this one. Ricky let it go for thirty-three hundred.”
“I drove it back,” Alice says. She’s still high on the shopping or the dancing or both. Billy is so glad for her. “It’s a standard, but I learned on a standard. My uncle taught me. Three on the tree, up to the side when you want a backwards ride.”
Billy has to laugh. He learned to drive at the House of Everlasting Paint, so he could be more help with the chores after Gad—Glen Dutton in his story—left to go in the service. Mr. Stepenek—Mr. Speck in his story—taught him those same two rhymes.
“I got you something,” she says. “Wait until you see.”
She runs into the other room to get it, and Billy looks at Bucky. Bucky nods and makes a quick thumbs-up sign: A-OK.
Alice comes back with a box that has SPECIALTY COSTUMERS embossed on the top in scrolly letters. She holds it out to him.
Billy opens it and lifts out a new wig, probably twice as expensive as the one he mail-ordered from Amazon. This one isn’t blond, it’s black threaded with plenty of gray, and longer than the Dalton Smith wig. Thicker, too. His first thought is that if he’s wearing it and gets stopped by a cop, it won’t match his DL photo. Then another thought comes, a much bigger one that drives all other thoughts from his mind.
“You don’t like it,” Alice says. Her smile is fading.
“Oh, but I do. Very much.”
He risks a hug. She hugs him back. So that’s all right.
7
The day Billy and Alice came was like summer, but their second night at Bucky’s is cooler, and the wind hooting around the house is downright cold. Billy brings up some split chunks of maple from under the porch and Bucky fires up the little Jøtul stove in the kitchen. Then they sit at the table looking at the pictures Bucky has printed, some from Google Earth and others from Zillow. They show the exterior grounds and the interior rooms and amenities of a house at 1900 Cherokee Drive in the town of Paiute, which is actually a northern suburb of Las Vegas. It is the residence of one Nikolai Majarian.
The house backs up against the Paiute Foothills. It’s snow white and built on four levels, each one stepped back from the one below so it looks like a giant’s staircase. The view of downtown Vegas must be pretty spectacular at night, Billy thinks, especially from the roof.
On Google Earth they can see a high wall surrounding the property, the main gate, and the driveway—actually a road, it’s got to be almost a mile long—leading to the compound. There’s a barn about two hundred yards from the house. A paddock and an exercise ring for horses nearby. Three other outbuildings, one big and two smaller. Billy thinks the help must stay in the biggest one, which would have been called a bunkhouse in the old days and maybe still is. The other two are probably for maintenance and storage. He sees nothing that could be a garage and asks Bucky about it.
“Built into this first slope would be my guess,” Bucky says, tapping the wooded rise behind the house. “Only it’s probably more like a hangar. Room for a dozen cars. Or more. Nick’s got a taste for the classics, or so I heard. I guess everybody’s got an itch that only money can scratch.”
There are plenty that money can’t scratch, Billy thinks.
Alice is examining the pix from Zillow. “God, there has to be twenty rooms. And look at the pool out back!”
“Nice,” Bucky agrees. “All the mods and cons. And he might have added more, because these pictures have to be from before Nick bought it. He paid fifteen mil. I saw it on Zillow.”
And stiffed me out of a measly million-five, Billy thinks.
The Zillow photos of the exterior show what Google Earth can’t. The vistas of lawn, for instance, brilliant green and dotted with flowerbeds. The paddock is equally green. There are groves of palms, some with groupings of outdoor furniture in their kindly shade. How many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water must it take to keep
that estate looking like Eden in the desert? How many groundskeepers? How many on the domestic staff? And how many hardballs are hanging out on the off chance that a hired assassin named Billy Summers might come looking for the rest of his blood money?
“He calls it Promontory Point,” Bucky says. “I did some digging, it’s amazing what you can find with a computer these days if you know how to dip into the darker regions. Nick’s been there since 2007, and with his back to the mountains nobody’s ever bothered him. Maybe he’s gotten a little careless, but I wouldn’t count on that.”
No, Billy thinks, it wouldn’t do to count on it. Someone who could get rid of a valued long-time associate like Giorgio Piglielli can’t be taken lightly. The only assumption he can make is that Nick is looking for him. Waiting for him. What Nick maybe doesn’t understand is how angry Billy is. There was a bargain. He held up his end of it. Instead of holding up the other end, Nick stiffed him. Then tried to kill him. Face to face Nick might deny that, but Billy knows. They both do.
Bucky taps a spot on the Google Earth aerial photo of the grounds. “This little square is the gatehouse, and it’ll be manned. Guarded. You can count on that.”
Billy has no doubt. He wonders again how many men Nick will have guarding his little kingdom. In a Sylvester Stallone or Jason Statham movie there would be dozens, armed with everything from gas-powered light machine guns to shoulder-mounted missile launchers, but this is real life. Maybe five, maybe only four, carrying automatic pistols or shotguns or both. But there’s only one of him, and he’s no Sylvester Stallone.
Alice pulls one of the photos from Google Earth to the middle of the table. “What’s this? I don’t see it on any of the Zillow pix.”
Bucky and Billy look. It’s where the west side of the wall ends against a rocky rise. After a bit Bucky says, “I think it must be a service entrance. You wouldn’t bother showing that on a real estate site, any more than you’d show the shed where the trash gets stored for pickup. Real estate sites stick to the glamour. What do you think, Billy?”
“I don’t know.” But he’s starting to. The more he thinks about that beat-up old truck, the more he likes it. And the new wig. That, too.
8
After supper, Alice commandeers the bathroom to dye her hair. When Bucky offers her a beer (“Just to keep up your strength”), she accepts. They both hear her lock the door behind her. Billy’s not surprised. He doubts if Bucky is, either.
Bucky gets two more bottles of beer from the fridge. After Bucky puts on a light jacket and tosses Billy a sweatshirt, they go out on the porch and settle side by side in the rockers. Bucky clinks the neck of his bottle against the neck of Billy’s. “Here’s to success.”
“Good toast,” Billy says, and takes a drink. “I want to thank you again for having us. I know you didn’t expect guests.”
“You serious about wanting a silencer for the Ruger?”
“Yes. Can you also get me a Glock 17 and ammunition for both?”
Bucky nods. “Shouldn’t be a problem, not around here. What else do you need?”
“A mustache to match the wig she bought me. I don’t have time to grow one.” There’s more, but Alice will have ideas about finding the rest.
“What are you thinking of doing? Maybe it’s time to tell me so I can try to argue you out of it.”
Billy tells him. Bucky listens closely and after awhile starts to nod. “Going out to his place is risky, bearding the lion in his den type of thing, but it could work. Any bounty hunters looking for you are apt to be downtown, especially around Nick’s casino. Double Deuce, or whatever.”
“Double Domino.”
Bucky leans forward, looking at him. “Look, if you’re worried about the money you promised me—”
“I’m not.”
“—you can let it go. I’m doing all right for money, and I’m glad to be out of the city. I have no idea why I stayed so fucking long in the first place. Someday someone’s going to blow up a dirty bomb on Fifth Avenue, or a communicable disease will come along that turns everything from Manhattan to Staten Island into a giant Petri dish.”
Billy thinks Bucky has been listening to too much talk radio but doesn’t say so. “It’s not about your money or mine, although I’ll take it if he has it. He cheated me. He fucked me. He’s a bad person.” Billy hears himself falling into the speech patterns of the dumb self and doesn’t care. “He killed Giorgio, or had him killed. He meant to do the same to me.”
“All right,” Bucky says quietly. “I get it. A matter of honor.”
“Not honor, honesty.”
“I stand corrected. Now drink your beer.”
Billy takes a swig and tilts his head toward the house where the shower is running. Again. “How was she on the shopping trip? Okay?”
“Mostly. Before we went into Common Threads to buy you a cowboy hat—forgot to show it to you, it’s a fuckin beaut—she had a little bit of a breathing problem and sang something under her breath. I couldn’t make out what it was, but after that she was all right again.”
Billy knows what it was.
“At the used car lot she rocked the house. Spotted that truck and bargained Ricky down from forty-four hundred to thirty-three. When he tried to hold steady at thirty-five she grabbed me and said ‘Come on, Elmer, he’s nice but he’s not serious.’ You believe that?”
“Actually I do,” Billy says. He laughs, but Bucky doesn’t laugh with him. He’s grown serious. Billy asks him if something’s wrong.
“Not yet, but there could be.” He puts his beer bottle down and turns to look Billy square in the face. “The two of us are outlaws, okay? People don’t use that word so much these days, but that’s what we are. Alice isn’t, but if she keeps running with you, she will be. Because she’s in love with you.”
Billy puts his own bottle down. “Bucky, I’m not… I don’t…”
“I know you don’t want to jump in the sack with her and maybe she doesn’t want to jump in the sack with you, not after what she’s been through. But you saved her life and put her back together—”
“I didn’t put her back—”
“Okay, maybe you didn’t, but you gave her the time and space to start doing it herself. That doesn’t change the fact that 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.”
Having delivered himself of what Billy now believes he came out here to say, Bucky pauses for breath, picks up his beer, downs half of it, and gives a ringing belch.
“Argue me back if you want. Giving you a place to stay for a few days doesn’t give me the right not to hear opposing arguments, so go on and argue me back.”
But Billy doesn’t.
“Take her to Nevada with you, sure. Find a cheap place to stay outside the city and leave her there while you take care of your business. If you get out clean and with your money, give her a bunch of it and send her back east. Tell her to stop and see me and remind her those false papers are just short-term camouflage. She can go back to being Alice Maxwell again.”
He raises a finger, which is starting to show the first twists and gnarls of arthritis. “But only if you keep her out of it. Capisce?”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t get out clean you probably won’t be getting out at all. That will be hard for her to hear, but she has to know. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Tell her that if a few days go by and she hasn’t heard from you, you pick how many, she should come back here. I’ll give her some money. A thousand, fifteen hundred maybe.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to. I like her. She’s not a whiner, and given what happened to her she’d have a right to whine. Besides, it’d be money you made for me. You’re my only client now. Have been for the last four years. No more bankrolling stickups for this kid. Too easy for one of them to come back on me if something went wrong, and I’m too old for prison.”
“All right. Thank
you. Thank you.”
The shower goes off. Bucky leans toward Billy again over the arm of his rocker.
“You know, a baby kitten will take to a dog that decides to groom it instead of chasing it or eating it. Hell, a baby duck will. They imprint. She’s imprinted on you, Billy, and I don’t want her to get hurt.”
The bathroom door opens and Alice comes out on the porch. She’s wearing an old blue bathrobe that must be Bucky’s; it’s so long it brushes the tops of her bare feet. Her hair is put up, held with what looks like a dozen barrettes, and covered in transparent plastic. She’s not going to be even close to platinum, maybe because her hair was so dark to begin with, but it’s still a big change.
“What do you think? I know it’s hard to tell right now, but…”
“Looks good,” Bucky says. “I was always partial to a dirty blond. My first ex was a dirty blond. I saw her hanging by the jukebox and knew I had to have her. More fool me.”
She gives that a distracted smile but it’s Billy she’s looking at, his opinion that matters. Billy knows exactly what Bucky was talking about. He remembers a video he saw on YouTube, one that showed a bird taking a bath in a dog’s water dish while the dog—a Great Dane—sat and watched. And he thinks of that old saying about how if you save someone’s life, you are responsible for them.
“You look terrific,” he says, and Alice smiles.
CHAPTER 19
1
Billy and Alice stay with Bucky for five days. On the morning of the sixth day—the one where God reputedly created the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air—they pack up the Dodge Ram and get ready to leave. Billy is wearing the blond wig and the fake glasses. Because the truck is the Quad Cab model, they can stow their scant luggage behind the bench seat. The ancient mower is still in the truckbed. It has been joined by a hedger, a leaf-blower, and an old Stihl chainsaw. The trailer, empty when Billy first saw it, now contains four cardboard barrels purchased at Lowe’s. The two men kicked them around awhile to give them the right battered look and filled them with hand tools bought for a song at a bank foreclosure auction in Nederland. The barrels have been secured to the sides of the trailer with bungee cords.