‘I just want to ask you to tell Nick that I’m okay. Can you do that?’
‘Okay about what?’
‘About everything. That.’ He hoists a thumb behind him, meaning the golf bag in the trunk. ‘Just make sure he knows I’m a stand-up guy.’
You’ve seen too many movies, Billy thinks.
‘Tell him it’s all good. Some of the people I owe money to are happy. Once you do your job, they’ll all be happy. Tell him we all part friends and everybody goes their way. If I’m ever asked, I know nothing about nothing. You’re just some writer I rented space to in one of my buildings.’
No, Billy thinks, you didn’t rent space to me, you rented it to my agent, and George Russo is actually Giorgio Piglielli, aka Georgie Pigs, a known associate of Nikolai Majarian. You’re the link and you know it, which is why we’re having this conversation. You still think you can probably skate after the deal goes down. You have a right to think that, I guess, because skating is what you do. Trouble is, I don’t think you could skate far after ten hours in an interrogation room with cops tag-teaming you. Maybe not even five, if they dangled a deal in front of you. I think you’d crack like an egg.
‘Listen a minute.’ Billy tries to sound kind, but hopefully in a straight-from-the-shoulder way: just two guys in a Toyota having a no-bullshit talk. Is it really the job of Billy Summers to keep this man-shaped annoyance in line? Wasn’t he just supposed to be the mechanic, the one who can disappear like Houdini after the deal is done? That was always the deal before, but for two million …
Meanwhile, Hoff is looking at him eagerly. Needing that reassurance, that soothing syrup. It should have been George giving it, George is good at this stuff, but Georgie Pigs isn’t here.
‘I know this isn’t your usual thing—’
‘No! It’s not!’
‘—and I know you’re nervous, but this isn’t a movie star or a politician or the Pope of Rome we’re talking about. This is a bad guy.’
Like you, Hoff’s face says, and why not? That Billy won a pink flamingo for a cute little girl with ribbons in her hair doesn’t matter. It’s not what they call an extenuating circumstance.
Billy turns to face the other man squarely. ‘Ken, I need to ask you something. Don’t take it personally.’
‘Okay, sure.’
‘You’re not wearing a wire or anything, are you?’
Hoff’s shocked expression is all the answer Billy needs, and he cuts the man’s confused gabble of protests short.
‘Okay, fine, I believe you. I just had to ask. Now listen up. Nobody is going to set up a task force on this one. There’s not going to be a big investigation. They’ll ask you a few questions, they’ll look for my agent and find out he’s a ghost who fooled you with some good papers, and that will be it.’ Balls it will. ‘Do you know what they’ll say? Not for the newspapers or TV, but among themselves?’
Ken Hoff shakes his head. His eyes never leave Billy’s.
‘They’ll say it was a gang killing or a revenge thing and whoever did it saved the city the cost of a trial. They’ll look for me, they won’t find me, and the case will go in the open-unsolved file. They’ll say good riddance to bad rubbish. Got it?’
‘Well, when you put it that way …’
‘I do. I do put it that way. Now go home. Let me take care of the rest.’
Ken Hoff suddenly moves toward him, and for a moment Billy thinks the man is going to slug him. Instead, Hoff gives him a hug. He looks better tonight, but his breath tells a different story. It doesn’t stink of booze, but it stinks.
Billy suffers the hug, bad breath and all. He even hugs back a little. Then he tells Hoff to go on, for God’s sake. Hoff gets out of the car, which is a relief (a huge relief), but then leans back in. He’s smiling, and this smile looks real, as if it comes from the man inside. Apparently there is one.
‘I know something about you.’
‘What’s that, Ken?’
‘That text you sent me. You didn’t write garden center, small g and small c. You wrote capital G, capital C. And just now you didn’t say between themselves, you said among. You’re not as dumb as you like to make out, are you?’
‘I’m smart enough to know that you’ll be fine if you keep it simple. You have no idea where I got the rifle and no clue what I was planning to do with it. End of story.’
‘Okay. One other thing. A heads-up, like. You know Cody?’
Sure he does. The town where they went to the little shitpot of a carnival. At first Billy thinks Hoff’s going to tell him that he was noticed there, because of his shooting. It’s a paranoid thought, but before a job paranoia is just the way to be.
‘Yes. It’s not far from where I’m living.’
‘Right. On the day this thing goes down, there’s going to be a diversion in Cody.’
The only diversion Billy knows about are the flashpots, one in the alley behind the Sunspot Café, the other someplace close to the courthouse. Cody is miles from the courthouse, and Nick never would have told this moke about the flashpots, anyway.
‘What kind of diversion?’
‘A fire. Maybe a warehouse, there are a lot of them out that way. It’ll happen before your guy … your target … gets to the courthouse. I don’t know how long before. I just thought you’d like to know, in case you get a bulletin on your phone or computer or whatever.’
‘Okay, thanks. And now it’s time for you to beat it.’
Hoff gives him a thumbs-up and returns to his rich-boy car. Billy waits until he’s gone and then heads back to Evergreen Street, driving carefully, aware that he’s carrying a high-powered rifle in the trunk.
A warehouse fire in Cody? Really? Does Nick know? Billy doesn’t think so, Nick would have told him about anything that might knock him off his rhythm. But Hoff knows. The question is whether or not he, Billy, tells Nick or Giorgio about this unexpected wrinkle. He thinks he’ll keep it to himself. Ponder it in his heart, like Mary pondering the birth of baby Jesus.
He told Hoff to keep it simple. Except how simple can you keep it when, after three or four hours in that little interrogation room, the cops start asking you how you paid off all the creditors who were baying at your heels? By then they’d be calling him Ken instead of Mr Hoff, because that’s what they do when they smell blood. Where did the money come from, Ken? Did a rich uncle die, Ken? There’s still time to get out from under this. Is there something you’d like to tell us, Ken? Ken?
Billy finds himself wondering about the golf bag and the clubs that are inside it along with the gun. Is it Hoff’s bag? If it is, has he thought to wipe the club heads, in case his fingerprints are on them? Better not to think about it. Hoff has made his bed.
But isn’t that also true of Billy? He keeps thinking about Nick’s escape plan. It’s too good to be true, which is why Billy decided not to use it, and without letting Nick know. Because, hey – if you’re going to get rid of the guy who brokered the deal and supplied the gun, why not get rid of the man who used the gun? Billy doesn’t want to believe that Nick would do that, but he recognizes one incontrovertible fact: not wanting to believe stuff is how Ken Hoff got into a situation he’s almost certainly never going to get out of.
And whose idea was a warehouse fire in Cody on the day of the assassination? Not Nick’s, not Hoff’s. So who?
It’s all worrisome, but as he pulls into his driveway, he sees one thing that’s good: his lawn looks terrific.
6
Through most of August Billy slept well. He drifted off to sleep thinking of nothing except what he would write the following day. There were only a few dreams of Fallujah and the houses with the green garbage bags fluttering from the palm trees in their courtyards. (How had they gotten up there? Why were they up there?) It was no longer his story, it was Benjy’s story now. Those two things had begun to drift apart, and that was all right. He had once watched an interview with Tim O’Brien on YouTube, O’Brien talking about The Things They Carried. He said fiction wasn’t the truth, it was the way to the truth, and Billy can now understand that. Especially when it came to writing about war, and wasn’t that what his story was mostly about? Kissing in that ruined Mercedes with Robin Maguire, aka Ronnie Givens, had only been a truce. Most of the rest was fighting.