Billy relaxes a little. They still believe what they see. He’s safe on that score, at least.
‘You’re going to be here for at least six weeks and maybe as long as six months,’ Giorgio says. ‘Depends on how long it takes for the moke’s lawyer to run out the string fighting extradition. Or until he thinks he has a deal on the murder charge. You’re getting paid for the job, but you’re also getting paid for your time. You get that, right?’
Billy nods.
‘Which means you need a reason to be here in Red Bluff, and it’s not exactly a vacation spot.’
‘Truth,’ Nick says, and makes a face like a little kid looking at a plate of broccoli.
‘You also need a reason to be in that building down the street from the courthouse. You’re writing a book, that’s the reason.’
‘But—’
Giorgio holds up a fat hand. ‘You don’t think it’ll work, but I’m telling you it will. I’m going to show you how.’
Billy looks doubtful, but now that he’s over his fear that they’ve seen through the camouflage of the dumb self, he thinks he can see where Giorgio is going. This might have possibilities.
‘I did my research. Read a bunch of writers’ magazines, plus a ton of stuff online. Here’s your cover story. David Lockridge grew up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Always wanted to be a writer but barely finished high school. Worked construction. You kept writing, but you were a hard partier. Lots of drinking. I thought about giving you a divorce but decided it would be a lot to keep straight.’
For a guy who’s smart about guns but not about much else, Billy thinks.
‘Finally you get going on something good, okay? There’s a lot of talk in the blogs I read about writers suddenly catching fire, and that’s what happens to you. You write a bunch, maybe seventy pages, maybe a hundred—’
‘About what?’ Billy’s actually starting to enjoy himself now, but he’s careful not to show it.
Giorgio exchanges a glance with Nick, who shrugs. ‘Haven’t decided that yet, but I’ll come up with someth—’
‘Maybe my own story? Dave’s story, I mean. There’s a word for that—’
‘Autobiography,’ Nick snaps, like he’s on Jeopardy!
‘That might work,’ Giorgio says. His face says nice try, Nick, but leave this to the experts. ‘Or maybe it’s a novel. The important thing is you never talk about it on orders from your agent. Top secret. You’re writing, you don’t keep that a secret, everybody you meet in the building will know the guy on the fifth floor is writing a book, but nobody knows what it’s about. That way you never get your stories mixed up.’
As if I would, Billy thinks. ‘How did David Lockridge get from Portsmouth to here? And how did he wind up in the Gerard Tower?’
‘This is my favorite part,’ Nick says. He sounds like a kid listening to a well-loved story at bedtime, and Billy doesn’t think he’s faking or exaggerating. Nick is totally on board with this.
‘You looked for agents online,’ Giorgio says, but then hesitates. ‘You go online, don’t you?’
‘Sure,’ Billy says. He’s pretty sure he knows more about computers than either of these two fat men, but that is also information he doesn’t share. ‘I do email. Sometimes play games on my phone. Also, there’s ComiXology. That’s an app. You download stuff. I use my laptop for that.’
‘Okay, good. You look for agents. You send out letters saying you’re working on this book. Most of the agents say no, because they stick with the proven earners like James Patterson and the Harry Potter babe. I read a blog that said it’s a catch-22: you need an agent to get published, but until you’re published you can’t get an agent.’
‘It’s the same in the movies,’ Nick puts in. ‘You got your famous stars, but it’s really all about the agents. They have the real power. They tell the stars what to do, and boy, they do it.’
Giorgio waits patiently for him to finish, then goes on. ‘Finally one agent says yeah, okay, what the fuck, I’ll take a look, send me the first couple of chapters.’
‘You,’ Billy says.
‘Me. George Russo. I read the pages. I flip for them. I show them to a few publishers I know—’
The fuck you do, Billy thinks, you show them to a few editors you know. But that part can be fixed if it ever needs to be.
‘—and they also flip, but they won’t pay big money, maybe even seven-figure money, until the book is finished. Because you’re an unknown commodity. Do you know what that means?’
Billy comes perilously close to saying of course he does, because he’s getting jazzed by the possibilities here. It could actually be an excellent cover, especially the part about being sworn to secrecy concerning his project. And it could be fun pretending to be what he’s always sort of wished he could be.
‘It means a flash in the pan.’
Nick flashes the money grin. Giorgio nods.
‘Close enough. Some time passes. I wait for more pages, but Dave doesn’t come through. I wait some more. Still no pages. I go to see him up there in lobsterland, and what do I find? The guy is partying his ass off like he’s Ernest fuckin Hemingway. When he’s not working, he’s either out with his homeboys or hungover. Substance abuse goes with talent, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘Proven fact. But George Russo is determined to save this guy, at least long enough to finish his book. He talks a publisher into contracting for it and paying an advance of let’s say thirty or maybe fifty thou. Not big money, but not small money either, plus the publisher can demand it back if the book doesn’t show up by a certain deadline, which they call a delivery date. But see, here’s the thing, Billy: the check is made out to me instead of to you.’
Now it’s all clear in Billy’s mind, but he’ll let Giorgio spin it out.
‘I have certain conditions. For your own good. You have to leave lobsterland and all your hard-drinking, coke-snorting friends. You have to go somewhere far away from them, to some little shitpot of a town or city where there’s nothing to do and no one to do it with even if there was. I tell you I’m gonna rent you a house.’
‘The one I saw, right?’
‘Right. More important, I’m going to rent you office space and you’re going to go there every weekday and sit in a little room and pound away until your top secret book is done. You agree to those terms or your golden ticket goes bye-bye.’
Giorgio sits back. The chair is sturdy, but still gives out a little groan.
‘Now if you tell me that’s a bad idea, or even if you tell me it’s a good idea but you can’t sell it, we’ll call the whole thing off.’
Nick holds up a hand. ‘Before you say anything, Billy, I want to lay out something else that makes this good. Everybody on your floor will get acquainted with you, and a lot of other people in the building, too. I know you, and you’ve got another talent besides hitting a quarter at a quarter of a mile.’
Like I could do that, Billy thinks. Like even Chris Kyle could.
‘You get along with people without buddying up to them. They smile when they see you coming.’ And then, as if Billy had denied it: ‘I’ve seen it! Hoff tells me that a couple of food wagons stop at that building every day, and in nice weather people line up and sit outside on the benches to eat their lunches. You could be one of those people. The time waiting doesn’t have to be for nothing. You can use it to get accepted. Once the novelty of how you’re writing a book wears off, you’ll be just another nine-to-fiver who goes home to his little house in Midwood.’
Billy sees how that could happen.
‘So when it finally goes down, are you a stranger no one knows? The outsider who must have done it? Uh-uh, you’ve been there for months, you make chit-chat in the elevator, you play dollar poker with some of the collection agency guys from the second floor to see who buys the tacos.’