‘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 your 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 P.M. 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.
He takes the 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.