‘So?’ Corinne says.
‘So?’ Billy says. He’s grinning.
‘I gotta go to the bathroom and I’m almost broke anyway,’ Shanice says, and gets up.
‘Honey, you don’t need to announce your bathroom calls. You just need to say excuse me.’
Shanice says, with that same winning dignity, ‘I’m going to powder my nose, okay?’
Billy bursts out laughing. Corinne joins him. Derek pays no attention. He studies the board, then looks up at his mother. ‘Sell or not? I’m almost out of money!’
‘It’s a Hobson’s choice,’ Billy says. ‘That means you have to decide between taking a chance or standing pat. Between you and me, D, I think you’re kinda sunk either way.’
‘Think he’s right, hon,’ Corinne says.
‘He’s really lucky,’ Derek says to his mother. ‘He landed on Free Parking and got all the money in there and it was a bundle.’
‘Also I’m really good,’ Billy says. ‘Admit it.’
Derek tries to scowl, but can’t manage it for a long time. He holds up the deed with the green stripe. ‘Twelve hundred.’
‘Done!’ Billy cries, and hands over the cash.
Twenty minutes later the children are bankrupt and the game is over. When Billy stands up, his knees crack and the kids laugh. ‘You guys lost, so you have to put the game away, right?’
‘That’s the way Daddy plays, too,’ Shanice says. ‘But sometimes he lets us win.’
Billy leans down, smiling. ‘I don’t do that.’
‘Big bully,’ she says, and giggles with her hands over her mouth.
Danny Fazio comes jingling down the stairs in a yellow rain slicker and unbuckled galoshes that gape like funnels. ‘Can I play?’
‘Next time,’ Billy says. ‘I make it a policy to only beat up on kids once a weekend.’
It’s just more joking around, what these kids might call throwing shade, but suddenly he sees burned cookies littering the floor in front of the stove in their trailer and the cast on Bob Raines’s arm thudding against the side of Cathy’s face and it isn’t funny anymore. The three kids laugh because to them it is. None of them have watched their sister being stepped on by a drunken ogre with a fading mermaid on his arm.
Upstairs, Corinne gives him a bag of cookies and says, ‘Thank you for making a rainy day so much fun for them.’
‘I had fun, too.’
He did. Right up until the end. When he gets home he throws the cookies into the trash. Corinne Ackerman is a good little baker, but he can’t think of eating cookies now. He can’t even bear to look at them.
6
On Monday he goes to see the rental agent, who does business in the sad little strip mall three blocks from 658. Merton Richter’s office is a hole-in-the-wall two-roomer between a tanning salon and the Jolly Roger Tattoo Parlor. Parked in front is a blue SUV, pretty old, with a stick-on sign on one side (RICHTER REAL ESTATE) and a long scratch on the other. The guy gives Dalton Smith’s painstakingly crafted references a cursory glance, then hands them back along with a rental agreement. The places where Billy is supposed to sign have been highlighted in yellow.
‘You could tell me it’s a little over-market,’ Richter says, as if Billy had protested, ‘and you might be right, but only a little, considering the furnishings and the WiFi. And with no street parking until six P.M., the driveway is a real convenience. You’ll be sharing it with the Jensens, of course—’
‘I’m planning to keep my car in a municipal garage for the most part. I can use the exercise.’ He pats his fake belly. ‘The rent does seem a little high, but I want the place.’
‘Sight unseen,’ Richter marvels.
‘Mrs Jensen spoke well of it.’
‘Ah, I see. In any case, if we’re in agreement …?’
Billy signs the form and writes his debut check as Dalton Smith: first month, last month, and a damage deposit that’s fucking outrageous unless the cookware is All-Clad, the china Limoges, and the lamps come with Tiffany shades.
‘IT guy, huh?’ Richter says, stashing the check away in his desk drawer. He pushes an envelope marked KEYS across the desk, then whacks his old PC like you’d whack a dog you don’t have much use for but keeps hanging around. ‘I could sure use some help with this balky bitch.’
‘I’m off the clock,’ Billy says, ‘but I can give you some advice.’
‘Which is?’
‘Replace it before you lose everything. Do you hook me up with heat, electric, water, and cable?’
Richter smiles as if giving Billy a prize. ‘Nope, that’s all you, brother.’ And offers his hand.
Billy could ask Richter what he actually does for his commission, the agreement is pretty obviously a form printed off the Internet with the local details dropped in, but does he care? Not at all.
7
Billy would like to get back to his story (it seems premature to call it a book, and maybe unlucky as well), but there’s more to do. When the banks open on Tuesday, he goes to SouthernTrust and withdraws some of the walking-around money that has been deposited in a David Lockridge account. He goes to three different chain stores and buys three more laptop computers, all for cash, all cheap off-brands like the AllTech. He also buys a cheap table model TV. That he pays for with a Dalton Smith credit card.
Next on his list is leasing a car. He stashes his Toyota in a garage on the other side of town from the one he uses as David Lockridge, not wanting to chance anyone from his building seeing him in his Dalton Smith rig. That would be a small chance, at this time of day all the worker bees should be in the hive, but taking even small chances is stupid. It’s how people get nailed.
When he’s put on the wig, glasses, mustache, and big belly, he calls an Uber and asks to be driven to McCoy Ford, on the western edge of the city. There he leases a Ford Fusion for thirty-six months. The dealer reminds him that if Billy drives it over 10,500 miles per year, he’ll pay a pretty hefty overcharge. Billy doubts if he’ll even put three hundred miles on the Fusion. The important thing is that Billy has wheels Nick knows about, and Dalton Smith now has wheels Nick doesn’t know about. It’s a precaution in case Nick should be planning something hinky, but it’s more. It’s keeping Dalton Curtis Smith separate from what’s going to happen on those courthouse steps. Keeping him clean.
Billy parks his new ride next to his old ride (different garage, same upper-level blind spot) long enough to transfer the TV and new laptops to the Fusion. Also the cheap suitcases he stashed in the Toyota’s trunk late last night. They are filled with the cheap Walmart clothes. He drives the Fusion to 658 Pearson Street and parks in the driveway, which is your basic asphalt stub with grass growing up the middle. He hopes Mrs Jensen will see him moving in, and he’s not disappointed.
Does Dalton Smith see her looking down from her second-story window? Billy decides he doesn’t. Dalton is a computer nerd, lost in his own world. He struggles and puffs two of the suitcases up to the door and uses his new key to unlock it. Nine steps down take him to the door of Dalton Smith’s new apartment, where he uses another key. The door opens directly onto the living room. He drops the bags on the industrial carpet and walks around, checking out the four rooms – five, if you count the bathroom.
The furnishings are quite nice, Richter said. That’s not true, but they’re not terrible, either. The word generic comes to mind. The bed’s a double, and when Billy lies down on it there are creaks but no springs poking at him, so that’s a win. There’s an easy chair in front of a table obviously meant to hold a small TV like the one he bought at Discount Electronics. The chair is comfortable enough, but the zebra-striping is almost the stuff of nightmares. He’ll want to cover it with something.
On the whole, he likes the place. He goes to the one narrow window, which is set at lawn-level. It’s almost like looking out through a periscope, Billy thinks. He digs the perspective. It feels cozy, somehow. He likes his Midwood neighbors, especially the Ackermans next door, but he thinks he likes this place better. It has a sense of safety. There’s an old couch that also looks comfortable, and he decides he’ll move it to where the zebra-striped chair is now, so he can sit on it and look out at the street. People passing on the sidewalk might look at the house, but most won’t glance down at these basement windows and see him looking back. It’s a den, he thinks. If I have to go to ground, this is where I should do it, not some safe house in Wisconsin. Because this place is actually in the gr—