Billy knows it. In the red states they put stone killers out of their misery. He has no problem with that.
‘And after looking at the security footage, the jury would almost certainly decide to give old Joey the needle. You see that, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘He’s using his lawyer to fight extradition, no big surprise there. You know what extradition is, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘Okay. Joe’s lawyer is fighting it for all he’s worth, and the guy ain’t no ambulance chaser. He’s already got a thirty-day delay on a hearing, and he’ll use it to figure out other ways to stall, but in the end he’s gonna lose. And Joe’s in an isolation cell, because somebody tried to stick a shiv into him. Old Joey took it away and broke his wrist for him, but where there’s one guy with a shiv, there could be a dozen.’
‘Gang thing?’ Billy asks. ‘Crips, maybe? They got a beef with him?’
Nick shrugs. ‘Who knows? For now, Joe’s got his own private quarters, doesn’t have to get slopped with the rest of the hogs, gets thirty minutes in the yard all by his lonesome. Also meantime, the lawyer-man is reaching out to people. The message he’s sending is that this guy will talk about something very big unless he can get a pass on the murder charge.’
‘Could that happen?’ Billy doesn’t like to think so, even if the man this Joe killed after the poker game was a bad person. ‘The prosecutors might take the death penalty off the table, or maybe even step it down to second-degree, or something?’
‘Not bad, Billy. You’re on the right track, at least. But what I’m hearing is that Joe wants all the charges dismissed. He must be holding some high cards.’
‘He thinks he can trade something to get away with murder.’
‘Says the guy who got away with it God knows how many times,’ Nick says, and laughs.
Billy doesn’t. ‘I never shot anyone because I lost money in a poker game. I don’t play poker. And I don’t rob.’
Nick nods vigorously. ‘I know that, Billy. Just bad people. I was only busting your chops a bit. Drink your drink.’
Billy drinks his drink. He’s thinking, Two million. For one job. And he’s thinking, What’s the catch?
‘Someone must really want to stop this guy from giving up whatever he’s got.’
Nick points a finger gun at him like Billy has made an amazing leap of deduction. ‘You know it. Anyway, I get a message from this local guy, you’ll meet him if you take the job, and the message is we’re looking for a pro shooter who’s the best of the best. I think that’s Billy Summers, case fuckin closed.’
‘You want me to do this guy, but not in LA. Here.’
‘Not me. I’m just the middleman, remember. It’s someone else. Someone with very deep pockets.’
‘What’s the catch?’
Nick turns on the grin. He points another finger gun at Billy. ‘Straight to the point, right? Straight to the fuckin point. Except it’s not really a catch. Or maybe it is, depending on how you feel. It’s time, you see. You’re going to be here …’
He waves his hand to indicate the little yellow house. Maybe the neighborhood it sits in, as well – the one Billy will discover is called Midwood. Maybe the whole city, which sits east of the Mississippi and just below the Mason–Dixon Line.
‘… for quite awhile.’
4
They talk some more. Nick tells Billy that the location is set, by which he means the place Billy will shoot from. He says Billy doesn’t have to decide until he sees it and hears more. Billy will get that from Ken Hoff. He’s the local guy. Nick says Ken is out of town today.
‘Does he know what I use?’ This isn’t the same as saying he’s in, but it’s a big step in that direction. Two million for mostly sitting around on his ass, then taking one shot. Hard to turn down a deal like that.
Nick nods.
‘Okay, when do I meet this Hoff guy?’
‘Tomorrow. He’ll give you a call at your hotel tonight, time and place.’
‘If I do it, I’ll need some kind of a cover story for why I’m here.’
‘All worked out, and it’s a beaut. Giorgio’s idea. We’ll tell you tomorrow night, after you meet with Hoff.’ Nick rises. He sticks out his hand. Billy shakes it. He has shaken with Nick before and never likes it because Nick is a bad guy. Hard not to like him a little, though. Nick is also a pro, and that grin works.
5
Paulie Logan drives him back to the hotel. Paulie doesn’t talk much. He asks Billy if he minds the radio, and when Billy says no, Paulie puts on a soft rock station. At one point he says, ‘Loggins and Messina, they’re the best.’ Except for cursing at a guy who cuts him off on Cedar Street, that’s the extent of his conversation.
Billy doesn’t mind. He’s thinking of all the movies he’s seen about robbers who are planning one last job. If noir is a genre, then ‘one last job’ is a sub-genre. In those movies, the last job always goes bad. Billy isn’t a robber and he doesn’t work with a gang and he’s not superstitious, but this last job thing nags at him just the same. Maybe because the price is so high. Maybe because he doesn’t know who’s paying the tab, or why. Maybe it’s even the story Nick told about how the target once took out a fifteen-year-old honor student.
‘You stickin around?’ Paulie asks when he pulls the car into the hotel’s forecourt. ‘Because this guy Hoff will get you the tool you need. I could have done it myself, but Nick said no.’
Is he sticking around? ‘Don’t know. Maybe.’ He pauses getting out. ‘Probably.’
6
In his room, Billy powers up his laptop. He changes the time stamp and checks his VPN, because hackers love hotels. He could try googling Los Angeles County courts, extradition hearings have got to be matters of public record, but there are simpler ways to get what he wants. And he wants. Ronald Reagan had a point when he said trust but verify.
Billy goes to the LA Times website and pays for a six-month subscription. He uses a credit card that belongs to a fictitious person named Thomas Hardy, Hardy being Billy’s favorite writer. Of the naturalist school, anyway. Once in, he searches for feminist writer and adds attempted rape. He finds half a dozen stories, each smaller than the last. There’s a picture of the feminist writer, who looks hot and has a lot to say. The alleged attack took place in the forecourt of the Beverly Hills Hotel. The alleged perpetrator was discovered to be in possession of multiple IDs and credit cards. According to the Times, his real name is Joel Randolph Allen. He beat a rape charge in Massachusetts in 2012.
So Joe was pretty close, Billy thinks.
Next he goes to the website of this city’s newspaper, once again uses Thomas Hardy to get through the paywall, and searches for murder victim poker game.
The story is there, and the security photo that runs with it is pretty damning. An hour earlier the light wouldn’t have been good enough to show the doer’s face, but the time stamp on the bottom of the photo is 5:18 A.M. The sun isn’t up but it’s getting there, and the face of the guy standing in the alley is as clear as you’d want, if you were a prosecutor. He’s got his hand in his pocket, he’s waiting outside a door that says LOADING ZONE DO NOT BLOCK, and if Billy was on the jury, he’d probably vote for the needle just on the basis of that. Because Billy Summers is an expert when it comes to premeditation, and that’s what he’s looking at right here.
The most recent story in the Red Bluff paper says that Joel Allen has been arrested on unrelated charges in Los Angeles.