A stupid question, but that’s okay. He’s supposed to be a stupid man. ‘Sure.’
‘You don’t want to use it today. The sun shines on this side of the building all afternoon and someone might see the hole.’
‘I know that.’
‘Yeah, I suppose you would. Nick says you were a sniper. Got some kills in Fallujah, yeah? How was that?’
‘Good.’ It wasn’t. Neither is this conversation. Having Edison in this room is like having let in a small and very compact storm cloud.
‘Nick wanted me to make sure you’re straight on the plan.’
‘I’m straight.’
Edison stays on message. ‘You take the shot. Five seconds later, no more than ten, there’s going to be a hell of a big bang from behind that café over there.’
‘A flashpot.’
‘A flashpot, right. That’s Frankie’s responsibility. Five seconds after that, no more than ten, one’s going to go off behind the news and stationery shop on the corner. That’s Paulie Logan. People are going to start beating feet. You’ll join them, just one more office guy wanting a quick look at what happened and then wanting to get the hell out. You hook around the corner. The DPW truck will be there. Reggie will have the back doors open. I’ll be behind the wheel. In you go and change into a coverall as fast as you can. Clear?’
It always was. Billy doesn’t need a last-minute tutorial. ‘Yes. Just one thing, Dana.’
‘What might that be?’
‘I’ve got stuff to do to get ready, and once I start doing it, there’s no going back. Are you sure it’s gonna be tomorrow?’
Dana starts to speak, to say of course, but Billy shakes his head.
‘Think before you say anything. Think hard, because if something changes, this deal goes south, I’m gone and Joel Allen is still using his lungs. So … are you sure?’
Dana Edison looks closely at Billy, perhaps re-evaluating. Then he smiles. ‘As sure as I am that the sun rises in the east. Anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Okay.’ Edison heads back to the outer office, walking that springy walk. His manbun looks like a dark red doorknob. At the door, he turns and regards Billy with eyes that are bright and blue and expressionless. He says, ‘Don’t miss.’ Then he’s gone.
Billy goes back into his writing room and stares at the frozen cribbage game. He’s thinking that Dana Edison said nothing about a possible warehouse fire in Cody, and he certainly would have if he knew about it. He’s also thinking about the possibility that if he went with Nick’s plan, he really might end up in a ditch on a country road with a hole in his forehead. If that were to happen, he guesses Edison would be the one to put it there. And who would end up with the owing million-five? Nick, of course. Billy would like to believe that’s paranoid, but after Edison’s visit it seems a little more likely. Surely the thought has at least crossed Nick’s mind, despite their long association. Pinch off Ken Hoff, pinch off Billy Summers, and everyone walks away clean.
Billy closes down his computer. Writing his story has never felt so far away. Hell, today he can’t even play cribbage.
9
On his way home he stops at Ace Hardware and buys the last thing he needs: a Yale padlock. When he arrives at his house – his last night here – there’s a piece of paper on the top step of the porch, held down with a rock. He slides his laptop case off his shoulder, picks up the paper, sits, studies it, and thinks this is a curtain call he could have done without. It’s a crayon drawing, obviously made by a child, but one who shows at least some talent. How much is impossible to tell, because the artist is currently only eight years old. At the bottom she has signed her name: Shanice Anya Ackerman. At the top, in capital letters: FOR DAVE!
The picture is of a smiling little girl with dark brown skin and bright red ribbons decorating her cornrows. In her arms is a pink flamingo, from whose head floats a series of hearts. Billy looks at it for a long time, then folds it and puts it in his back pocket. He has gotten himself into a box he never dreamed of. He would give anything, two-million-dollar payout included, to be able to turn the calendar back three months, to that hotel lobby where he sat reading Archie’s Pals ’n’ Gals and waiting for his ride. And when Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan came in, he would tell them to make his apologies to Nick, he’s changed his mind. But there’s no going back now, only forward, and when he thinks of Dana Edison perhaps stopping by this neighborhood to ask questions, maybe even putting those small neat hands of his on Shanice’s shoulders, Billy presses his lips together so tightly that they disappear. He is in a box and all he can do is shoot his way out.
CHAPTER 10
1
Thursday morning. The day of. Billy gets up at five. He eats toast with a glass of water to wash it down. No coffee. No caffeine of any kind until the job is done. When he shoulders the 700 and looks through the Leupold scope, he wants his hands perfectly steady.
He puts his toast plate and the empty water glass in the sink. Lined up on the table are his four cell phones. He takes the SIM cards from three of them – the Billy-phone, the Dave-phone, the burner – and microwaves the cards for two minutes. He dons an oven glove, picks out the charred remains, and grinds them up in the garbage disposal. The three SIMless phones go in a paper bag. He adds the Dalton Smith phone, the Yale lock, and the plain gray gimme cap he wore to Pearson Street when he dropped off the Dalton Smith gear and watered Beverly’s plants.
He stands in the doorway for a few moments, laptop slung over one shoulder, looking around. This isn’t home, he hasn’t really had a place he could call home since Officer F.W.S. Malkin drove him away from 19 Skyline Drive in the Hillview Trailer Park (and that wasn’t much of one, especially after Bob Raines killed his sister), but he guesses this place has been close.
‘Well okay then,’ Billy says, and goes out. He doesn’t bother to lock the door. No need for the cops to break it down. Bad enough that they’ll assuredly trample all over the lawn he worked so hard to bring back.
2
Billy doesn’t drive to the parking garage. The parking garage is done. At five to six he parks on Main Street a few blocks from the Gerard Tower. Plenty of curbside spaces at this hour and the sidewalk is deserted. His laptop is over his shoulder. The paper bag is in his hand. He leaves the keys in the Toyota’s cup holder. Maybe somebody will steal it, although that’s not actually necessary. Neither is dropping the three dead cell phones through three different sewer grates, always checking his surroundings to be sure he’s not observed. It’s what they called ‘policing up the area’ in the Marines. After he drops the third one, he checks to see if he brought Shan’s drawing of her and the flamingo. The one whose name has been changed to Dave. It’s there. Good. It’s a keeper.
He cuts down Geary Street, walks a block away from Gerard Tower, and comes to the alley he scoped out. After again checking to make sure he’s unobserved (also that there’s no inconvenient wino sleeping it off in there), Billy enters the alley and crouches behind the second of two dumpsters. Trash pickup day in this city is Friday, so both are full and reeking. He stows his laptop and the gray gimme cap behind the dumpster, then scavenges a bunch of packing paper and covers them.
This part worries him more than taking the shot. Do you call that irony? He doesn’t know. What he knows is that he doesn’t want to lose the lappie any more than he wants to lose the copy of Thérèse Raquin he was reading when he came to this city (the book is safely stowed at 658 Pearson). Lucky charms are what they are. Like the baby shoe he carried during Operation Vigilant Resolve and most of Phantom Fury.
The chances of someone coming down this alley, looking behind the dumpster, lifting the garbage-bespattered packing paper, and stealing his laptop are small, and they’d never be able to crack the password, but the object matters. He can’t bring it, though, because he can’t leave Gerard Tower with it slung over his shoulder. He has seen Colin White with his phone, and a couple of times he’s shown up for lunch still wearing the headset that must just about be a part of him, but Billy has never seen him with a laptop.