She came running up the steps looking dismayed. ‘Sorry, sorry, that was stupid, I forgot who—’
From inside the house a cracked smoker’s voice shouted, ‘Bill? Bill!’
I almost answered, then remembered that the man lying in the foyer was also a Billy. It’s a common enough name.
‘What was that?’ A loose, phlegmy cough, followed by a throat-clearing sound. ‘Where’s the girl?’
A door opened halfway down the hall. Klerke came through it. He was dressed in blue silk pajamas. His white hair was combed back in a pompadour that made me think of Frank. He had a cane in one hand. ‘Bill, where’s the gir—’
He stopped and squinted at us. He looked down and saw his man sprawled on the floor. Then he turned and hobbled for the door he’d come through, hunched over his thumping cane, holding it in both hands, almost pole-vaulting on it. He was faster than I would have expected, given his age and condition. I ran after him, remembering to hold my breath as I went through the foyer, and caught him trying to shut the door. I shoved it against him and he fell over. His cane went flying.
He sat up and stared at me. We were in a living room. The rug he had sprawled on looked expensive. Maybe Turkish, maybe an Aubusson. There were paintings on the walls that looked equally expensive. The furniture was heavy, upholstered in velvet. There was a chrome stand holding a bottle of no doubt expensive Champagne on a bed of ice.
He started to back away from me on his bottom, groping for his cane. His careful comb-job was coming apart, hair falling in clumps around the wrinkled sag-bag of his face. His lower lip, shiny with spit, stuck out in a kind of a pout. I could smell his cologne.
‘What did you do to Bill? Did you shoot him? Was that a gunshot?’
He got hold of the cane and brandished it at me as he sat there with his legs splayed. His pajama pants were working down, exposing padded hips and graying pubic hair.
‘I want you out of here! Who are you, anyway?’
‘I’m the man who killed the man who killed your son,’ I said.
His eyes widened and he slashed the cane at me. I grabbed it, yanked it out of his hand, and threw it across the room.
‘You had someone set that fire in Cody. Arranged for your camera crew to be the only one at the courthouse when the deal went down. Didn’t you?’
He stared at me, upper lip rising and falling. Doing that made him look like an old dog with a bad temper. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I think you do. That diversion wasn’t for me, it was way too soon. So why?’
Klerke got on his knees and crawled toward the sofa, giving me a much better view of his ass-crack than I wanted. He pulled ineffectually at the waistband of his pants. I could almost feel sorry for him. Except I didn’t. Mr Klerke would like to see your underwear. Mr Klerke would like you to run your tongue around your lips.
‘Why?’ As if I didn’t know. ‘You need to answer me.’
He grabbed the arm of the sofa and pulled himself up. He was gasping for breath. I could see the flesh-colored button of a hearing aid in one ear. He sat down with a thump and a gasp.
‘All right. Allen tried to blackmail me and I wanted to watch him die.’
Of course you did, I thought. And I bet you watched it over and over, both at regular speed and in slow motion.
‘You’re Summers. Majarian told me you were dead.’ And then, with absurd and horrifying outrage: ‘I paid that kike millions of dollars! He robbed me!’
‘You should have asked for a picture. Why didn’t you?’
He didn’t reply and I didn’t need him to. He had been emperor so long he couldn’t conceive of not being obeyed. Film the execution. Kill the executioner. Lift your skirt and show me your panties. This time I want a really young one.
‘I owe you money. Is that what you’re here for?’
‘Tell me something else. Tell me how it was, putting out a hit on your own flesh and blood.’
The lip lifted again, showing teeth too perfect for the face they were in. ‘He deserved it. He wouldn’t stop. He was a …’ Klerke stopped, squinting past me. ‘Who’s that? Is it the girl I paid for?’
Alice came into the room and stood beside me. She was holding her bag in her left hand. The Sig was in her right. ‘You wanted to know what it was like, didn’t you?’
‘What? I don’t know what you’re—’
‘To rape a child. You wanted to know what it was like.’
‘You’re crazy! I don’t have any idea—’
‘It probably hurt. Like this.’ Alice shot him. I think she was aiming for his balls, but she hit him in the stomach instead.
Klerke screamed. It was a very loud scream. It banished the harpy who had taken over her head and pulled the trigger. She dropped her purse and put her hand over her mouth.
‘I’m hurt!’ Klerke shrieked. He was holding his stomach. Blood oozed through his fingers and into the lap of his silk pajamas. ‘Oh my God I’m HURRRT!’
Alice turned to me, eyes wide and wet, mouth open. She whispered something I didn’t quite hear because the gunshot from the Sig Sauer had been much louder than the one from Petersen’s little pistol. It might have been I didn’t know.
‘I need a doctor, it HURRRRRRTS!’
The blood was pouring out of him now. He was forcing it out with his screams. I took the gun from Alice’s limp hand, put the muzzle to his left temple, and pulled the trigger. He flopped back on the sofa, kicked once, and fell on the floor. His days of raping children and murdering sons and God knew what else were over.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Alice said. ‘Billy, it wasn’t me who pulled the trigger, I swear it wasn’t.’
Only it was. Something inside her had risen up, a stranger, and now she would have to live with its presence because that was her, too. She’d see it the next time she looked in the mirror.
‘Come on.’ I slipped the Sig in my belt and put the strap of her bag over her shoulder. ‘We need to go.’
‘I just … it was like I was outside myself, and …’
‘I know. We need to go, Alice.’
‘It was so loud. Wasn’t it loud?’
‘Yes, very loud. Come on.’
I led her back down the hall, only noticing now that it was lined with tapestries of knights and ladies fair and, for some fucked-up reason, windmills.
‘Is he dead, too?’ She was looking at Petersen.
I took a knee beside him but didn’t need to feel for his pulse. I could hear his breathing, good and steady. ‘He’s alive.’
‘Will he call the police?’
‘Eventually, but we’ll be long gone by the time he comes around, and he’s going to be fucked up for a long time after he does.’
‘Klerke deserved it,’ she said as we went down the steps. She swayed, maybe because she’d gotten a little of the gas, maybe because she was in shock, maybe both. I put an arm around her waist. She looked up at me. ‘Didn’t he?’
‘I think so, but I don’t really know anymore. What I know is men like him are above justice in most cases. Except the kind we gave him. For the girl in Mexico. And for the murder of his own son.’
‘But he was a bad man.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very bad.’
*
We got in the car and drove the rest of the way around the circle. I wondered if the monitor the two men had been watching had recorded us as well. If it did, it would only show a guy with black hair and a young girl who had lifted her skirt but only once or twice – and briefly – lifted her head. After she got rid of the blonde hair, she’d be next to impossible to identify. I was more concerned about the gate. If we needed a code to open it, we were in trouble. But when we pulled up close, the car broke an invisible beam and the gate trundled open. I stopped beyond it, put the car in park, and opened the door.