Billy is sure that Nick believes he takes everything at face value. Like everyone else Billy has worked for over the years he’s been doing this, Nick believes that outside of his awesome sniper skills, Billy is a little slow, maybe even on the spectrum. Nick believes the dumb self, because Billy is at great pains not to overdo it. No gaping mouth, no glazed eyes, no outright stupidity. An Archie comic book does wonders. The Zola novel he’s been reading is buried deep in his suitcase. And if someone searched his case and discovered it? Billy would say he found it left in the pocket of an airline seat and picked it up because he liked the girl on the cover.
He thinks about looking for the fifteen-year-old honor student, but there isn’t enough info. He could google that all afternoon and not find it. Even if he did, he couldn’t be sure he was looking at the right fifteen-year-old. It’s enough to know the rest of the story Nick told checks out.
He orders a sandwich and a pot of tea. When it comes, he sits by the window, eating and reading Thérèse Raquin. He thinks it’s like James M. Cain crossed with an EC horror comic from the 1950s. After his late lunch, he lies down with his hands behind his head and beneath the pillow, feeling the cool that hides there. Which, like youth and beauty, doesn’t last long. He’ll see what this Ken Hoff has to say, and if that also checks out, he thinks he will take the job. The waiting will be difficult, he’s never been good at that (tried Zen once, didn’t take), but for a two-million-dollar payday he can wait.
Billy closes his eyes and goes to sleep.
At seven that evening, he’s eating a room service dinner and watching The Asphalt Jungle on his laptop. It’s a jinxed one last job picture, for sure. The phone rings. It’s Ken Hoff. He tells Billy where they’ll meet tomorrow afternoon. Billy doesn’t have to write it down. Writing things down can be dangerous, and he’s got a good memory.
CHAPTER 2
1
Like most male movie stars – not to mention men Billy passes on the street who are emulating those movie stars – Ken Hoff has a scruff of beard, as if he forgot to shave for three or four days. This is an unfortunate look for Hoff, who is a redhead. He doesn’t look rough and tough; he looks like he has a bad sunburn.
They are sitting at an umbrella-shaded table outside an eatery called the Sunspot Café. It’s on the corner of Main and Court. Billy guesses the place is plenty busy during the week, but on this Saturday afternoon it’s almost deserted inside, and they have the outside scatter of tables to themselves.
Hoff is maybe fifty or a hard-living forty-five. He’s drinking a glass of wine. Billy has a diet soda. He doesn’t think Hoff works for Nick, because Nick is based in Vegas. But Nick has his fingers in many pies, not all of them out west. Nick Majarian and Ken Hoff may be connected in some way, or maybe Hoff is hooked up with the guy who is paying for the job. Always assuming the job happens, that is.
‘That building across the street is mine,’ Hoff says. ‘Only twenty-two stories, but good enough to make it the second highest in Red Bluff. It’ll be the third highest when the Higgins Center goes up. That’s gonna be thirty stories high. With a mall. I’ve got a piece of that one, too, but this one? Strictly my baby. They laughed at Trump when he said he was gonna fix the economy, but it’s working. It’s working.’
Billy has no interest in Trump or Trump’s economy, but he studies the building with professional interest. He’s pretty sure it’s where he’s supposed to take the shot. It’s called the Gerard Tower. Billy thinks that calling a building that has only twenty-two stories a tower is a little overblown, but he supposes in this city of small brick buildings, most of them shabby, it probably seems like a tower. On the well-tended and -watered greensward in front of it is a sign reading OFFICE SPACE AND LUXURY APARTMENTS NOW AVAILABLE. There’s a number to call. The sign looks like it’s been there awhile.
‘Hasn’t filled the way I expected,’ Hoff says. ‘The economy’s booming, yeah, people with money falling out of their asses and 2020 is going to be even better, but you’d be surprised how much of that is Internet-driven, Billy. Okay to call you Billy?’
‘Sure.’
‘Bottom line, I’m a little bit tight this year. Cash flow problems since I bought into WWE, but three affils, how could I say no?’
Billy has no idea what he’s talking about. Something about pro wrestling, maybe? Or the Monster Truck Jam they keep advertising on TV? Since Hoff clearly thinks he should know, Billy nods his head as if he does.
‘The local old money assholes think I’m overextended, but you have to bet on the economy, am I right? Roll the dice while the dice are hot. Takes money to make money, yeah?’
‘Sure.’
‘So I do what I have to do. And hey, I know a good thing when I see it and this is a good deal for me. A little risky, but I need a bridge. And Nick assures me that if you were to get caught, I know you won’t but if you did, you’d keep your mouth shut.’
‘Yes. I would.’ Billy has never been caught and doesn’t intend to get caught this time.
‘Code of the road, am I right?’
‘Sure.’ Billy has an idea that Ken Hoff has seen too many movies. Some of them probably in the ‘one last job’ sub-genre. He wishes the man would get to the point. It’s hot out here, even under the umbrella. And muggy. This climate is for the birds, Billy thinks, and probably even they don’t like it.
‘I got you a nice corner suite on the fifth floor,’ Hoff says. ‘Three rooms. Office, reception, kitchenette. A kitchenette, how about that, huh? You’ll be okay no matter how long it takes. Snug as a bug in a rug. I’m not gonna point, but I’m sure you can count to five, right?’
Sure, Billy thinks, I can even walk and chew gum at the same time.
The building is square, your basic Saltine box with windows, so there are actually two corner suites on the fifth floor, but Billy knows which one Hoff means: the one on the left. From the window he traces a diagonal down Court Street, which is only two blocks long. The diagonal, the path of the shot he’ll take if he takes the job, ends at the steps of the county courthouse. It’s a gray granite sprawl of a building. The steps, at least twenty, lead up to a plaza with blindfolded Lady Justice in the middle, holding out her scales. Among the many things he will never tell Ken Hoff: Lady Justice is based on Iustice, a Roman goddess more or less invented by the emperor Augustus.
Billy returns his gaze to the fifth-floor corner suite and once more eyes the diagonal. It looks to him like five hundred yards from the window to the steps. That’s a shot he is capable of making even in a strong wind. With the right tool, of course.
‘What have you got for me, Mr Hoff?’
‘Huh?’ For a moment Hoff’s dumb self is on full view. Billy makes a curling gesture with the index finger of his right hand. It could be taken to mean come on, but not in this case.
‘Oh! Sure! What you asked for, right?’ He looks around, sees no one, but lowers his voice anyway. ‘Remington 700.’
‘The M24.’ That’s the Army classification.
‘M …?’ Hoff reaches into his back pocket, takes out his wallet, and thumbs through it. He removes a scrap of paper and looks at it. ‘M24, right.’
He starts to put the piece of paper back in his wallet, but Billy holds out his hand.
Hoff hands it over. Billy puts it in his own pocket. Later, before he goes to see Nick, he’ll flush it down the toilet in his hotel room. You don’t write stuff down. He hopes this guy Hoff isn’t going to be a problem.
‘Optics?’
‘Huh?’
‘Scope. The sight.’