‘All three of us are fine. How are you?’ In the bag is how Don is from the sound of his voice, even though it’s just a little past noon.
‘Man, I’ve never been better.’ Better comes out bear. ‘Bevvie, too. Say hi, Bevvie!’
Distant but perfectly audible because she’s yelling, Beverly says, ‘Hi there, honey-bunny!’ And shrieks with laughter. So she’s been drinking, too. Not exactly in mourning, either of them.
‘Bevvie says hi,’ Don says.
‘Yes, I heard her.’
‘Dollen … buddy …’ He drops his voice. ‘We’re rich.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Lawyer read the will this morning and Bevvie’s mom left her everything. Stocks and bank accounts. Almost two hunnert thousand dollars!’
In the background Bevvie cheers, and Billy can’t help but smile. She may be in mourning again when she sobers up, but right now these two apartment dwellers in one of the city’s not-very-desirable neighborhoods are celebrating, and Billy can’t blame them.
‘That’s great, Don. Really great.’
‘How long you gonna be home this time? That’s why I’m callin, Dollen.’
‘Probably quite awhile. I’ve got a new contract for—’
Don doesn’t wait for him to finish. ‘Good, that’s good. You keep waterin Daffy an Woller, because … you know what?’
‘What?’
‘Guess!’
‘Can’t guess.’
‘Gotta, my computer compadre, gotta!’
‘You’re going to Disneyland.’
Don laughs so loudly that Billy pulls the phone away from his ear with a little wince, but he’s also still smiling. A good thing has happened to decent people, and no matter what his own situation happens to be, he has to like it. He wonders if Zola ever wrote a development similar to this. Probably not, but Dickens, now—
‘Close, Dollen, close. We’re goin on a cruise!’
In the background, Beverly whoops.
‘You gonna be around for a month? Maybe even six weeks? Because—’
At this point, Beverly snatches the phone, and Billy once more has to hold it a couple of inches away to spare his overtaxed eardrum. ‘If you’re not, just let em die! I can afford new ones! A whole greenhouse!’
Billy has time to offer her both condolences and congratulations, then it’s Don again.
‘And when we get back, we’re movin. No more scenic view of that fuckin vacant lot across the street. Not that I’m dissin your apartment, Doll. Iss the one Bevvie always wanted.’
Bev cries, ‘Not anymore!’
Billy says, ‘I’ll water Daphne and Walter, don’t worry about that.’
‘We’ll pay you for it, Mr Computer Geek Plant Sitter! We can afford to!’
‘No need. You’re good neighbors.’
‘You too, Dollen, you too. Know what we’re drinkin?’
‘Maybe Champagne?’
Billy once more has to hold the phone away from his ear. ‘You hit the goddam nail on the goddam head!’
‘Don’t overdo it,’ Billy says. ‘And give Beverly my best, you hear? Sorry for her loss but glad for your gain.’
‘I will, for sure. Thanks a million, buddy.’ He pauses, and when he speaks again he sounds almost sober. Awed. ‘Two hundred thousand dollars. Do you believe it?’
‘Yes,’ Billy says. He ends the call and sits back in his office chair. He’s getting a lot more than two hundred K, but he thinks Don and Beverly Jensen are really the rich ones. Yes sir, really the rich ones. Sentimental but true.
7
The next morning, as he’s turning into the parking garage around the corner from Gerard Tower, his David Lockridge phone chimes with a text. He waits until he’s parked on the fourth level, then reads it.
GRusso: The check is on the way.
Billy doubts it, it’s only six-thirty on the west coast, but he understands that the check will be on the way soon enough. Allen is coming, probably on a commercial flight handcuffed to one of this city’s detectives or a state cop, and that’s good. Time to get the show on the road. Overtime.
He opens the back door of his car and takes a paper grocery bag from the seat. Crammed inside are the parachute pants and the silk jacket with the Rolling Stones lips on the back. This pair isn’t gold, although the gold ones are Colin White’s favorites. After some interior debate, Billy has decided that would be a little too flashy. The ones he ordered from Amazon are black with gold sparkles. He’s sure Colin would adore them.
Billy has a story ready in case – unlikely but always possible – Irv asks him why he’s coming to work with a grocery bag, but Irv is talking to several fine-looking ladies from Business Solutions and just gives him a distracted wave as Billy signs in and heads for the elevators.
In his office he opens the bag, rummages beneath the clothes, and takes out a sign he bought at Staples from a rack of them. It says SORRY CLOSED. A pair of sad cartoon faces flank the message. There’s white space for a brief explanation beneath. Billy uses a Sharpie to print NO WATER USE 4 OR 6. He waves the sign in the air a few times, not wanting his message to smudge, then places it back in the bag. He adds the long-haired black wig, then puts the bag in the closet.
At his desk, he transfers the Benjy story to a thumb drive. Once that’s done, he uses a suicide program to destroy everything on the MacBook Pro. It stays here. His fingerprints are all over it and everything else in this place, after all this time he’d miss some no matter how much he wiped, but that’s okay. Once he takes the shot and sees Joel Allen lying dead on the courthouse steps, Billy Summers will cease to exist. As for his personal lappie … he could kill that one as well, leave it, and use one of the cheap new AllTechs at Pearson Street, but he doesn’t want to. This one is coming along for the ride.
8
An hour later there’s a knock on the outer door. He answers it, once more expecting Ken Hoff, maybe with a case of cold feet, and once again he’s wrong. This time it’s Dana Edison, one of the imported hard boys from Nick’s Vegas team. He’s not dressed in his DPW coverall today. Today he’s Mr Nondescript in dark slacks and a gray sportcoat. He’s a little man, bespectacled, and at first glance you might think he belongs in Phil Stanhope’s accounting office at the other end of the hall. Take a closer look and you might – especially if you were a Marine – see something different.
‘Hey there, fella.’ Edison’s voice is low and polite. ‘Nick wanted me to have a word with you. Okay if I step in?’
Billy stands aside. Dana Edison breezes through the outer office in his neat brown loafers and into the small conference room that serves as Billy’s writing studio. Not to mention his shooter’s overlook. Edison moves with lithe confidence. He glances briefly at the table, where Billy’s personal lappie is open with a half-played cribbage game in progress, then looks out the window. Tracing the line of fire Billy has traced himself many times over the summer. Only now summer is over and there’s a snap in the air.
It’s good that Edison gives him a little time, because here Billy has gotten used to being a pretty smart guy named David Lockridge and might have slipped. But when Edison turns back to him, Billy has his dumb self face on: eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar. Not enough to make him look like the village idiot, just enough so he looks like a man who might believe Zola is one of Superman’s archenemies.
‘You’re Dana, right? I met you at Nick’s.’
He nods. ‘Also seen me and Reggie tooling around in that little city truck, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Nick wants to know if you’re all ready for tomorrow.’
‘Sure.’
‘Where’s the gun?’
‘Well …’
Dana grins, showing teeth as small and neat as the rest of him. ‘Never mind. But it’s close, right?’
‘You bet.’
‘Got a glass cutter for that window?’