‘You fucking fuck. You’re him.’
He thinks, She seemed so nice at Nick’s rented house. Almost refined. Of course then she was in serving mode. He remembers now that Nick gave her a wad of cash for Alan, the chef who lit up their Baked Alaska, but none for her. Because she was on the payroll. She was, in fact, family. Pretty funny.
She looks dazed, but that could be another shuck and jive. Either way he’s glad the trowel is in the truck. He puts an arm around her shoulders and helps her sit. Her cheek is puffing up like a balloon, making him think of Alice again, but Alice never looked at him like this woman is looking at him now. If looks could kill, and all that.
With the hand not supporting her, Billy takes the Ruger out of his coat pocket and presses the muzzle lightly against her wrinkled forehead. Frank Macintosh is known (never to his face) as Frankie Elvis, sometimes Solar Elvis. Hair piled up high in front, like hers. Same hair, same narrow face, same widow’s peak. Billy thinks he might have made the connection sooner and saved himself a lot of trouble, if not for the oversized sombrero.
‘Hello, Marge. You’re not as polite as you were when you were serving us our dinner that night.’
‘You fucking traitor,’ she says, and spits in his face.
Billy feels a well-nigh insurmountable urge to hit her again, but not because she spat on him. He arms it off his face, leaving her to support herself. She looks perfectly able to do so. She may be in her seventies and a lifelong smoker, but there’s no quit in her, Billy has to give her that much.
‘You’ve got it backwards. Nick’s the fucking traitor. I did the job and instead of paying me he stiffed me and planned to kill me.’
‘Nick would never do that. He stands up for his people.’
That might be true, Billy thinks, but I’m not one of them and never was. I’m your basic independent contractor.
‘Let’s not argue, Marge. Time is tight.’
‘I think you broke my fucking arm.’
‘And you tried to open up my jugular vein. As far as I’m concerned that makes us even. How many men are in there watching the game?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘Is Frank in there?’
She doesn’t reply, but the flicker he sees in those dark eyes tells him what he needs to know. He picks up her cell phone, knocks off the dirt, and holds it out to her. ‘Call him and tell him a guy from Greens & Gardens is dropping off some fertilizer and potting soil. Nothing to worry about. Say—’
‘No.’
‘Say you told the guy to go ahead and put it in the barn.’
‘No.’
Billy has lowered the muzzle of the Ruger. Now he puts it back between her eyes. ‘Tell him, Marge.’
‘No.’
‘Tell him or I’ll blow your brains out, then Frank’s.’
She spits in his face again. At least tries to, there isn’t much to it. Because her mouth is dry, Billy thinks. She’s scared, but she’s still not going to do it. Even if she does, she’ll either tip them off by how she sounds or just go whole hog and scream It’s him, it’s that fucking fuck of a traitor Billy Summers.
Helpless not to think of Alice but reminding himself this isn’t her and never could be, he hits Marge in the temple. Her eyes roll up to whites and she flops back into the flowers. He stands over her for a minute to make sure she’s still breathing, then tosses her phone into the truck. He starts to get in himself, then re-thinks and dumps the cut flowers out of her basket. Under them is a walkie-talkie and a short-barreled .357 King Cobra revolver. So she wasn’t just gardening. And they didn’t just put her out here as an afterthought. This one’s got a lot of hard bark on her. He tosses the gun and the walkie in the truck.
The starter turns over without catching for ten long seconds and Billy thinks why now, oh Lord, why now. At last the engine fires up and he drives onto the estate. He stops ten feet inside the wall, leaving the truck in neutral, and closes the gate. There’s a huge steel bolt. He runs it through the double catch and heads back to the truck, which is bellowing through its perforated muffler. Doing that seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so much now.
As he climbs into the cab, Marge Macintosh starts pounding on the gate and shouting. ‘Hey! Hey! It’s Summers! It’s Summers in the truck!’ Billy can’t believe anyone could hear her even if the Dodge’s muffler was intact, but he’s amazed by her vitality. He hit her as hard as he could and she’s already back for more.
Except you didn’t hit her as hard as you could, he thinks. You thought of Alice and held back a little.
Too late now and he doesn’t think it matters. She’d have to run all the way around the wall, shoving her way through the pines, to alert anyone in the little guardhouse by the main gate … assuming anyone is actually in there.
And of course there is. As Billy drives past the barn and the paddock, a guy comes out. He’s got a rifle or a shotgun but for the time being it’s slung over his shoulder. He looks relaxed. He raises his hands to his shoulders with the palms out: Qué pasa?
Instead of heading toward the house as he had intended, Billy reaches out the driver’s side window, gives the guy a thumbs-up, and turns down the main driveway toward the guardhouse.
He pulls up. The guy walks toward him with the gun – it’s a Mossberg – still slung over his shoulder. Billy realizes he knows him. Billy has never been here, but he’s been in Nick’s penthouse suite at the Double Domino three or four times, and on a couple of them this guy was there. Sal something. But unlike Frank’s sharp-eyed mother, Sal doesn’t recognize him.
‘What’s up, partner?’ he says. ‘Old lady let you through?’
‘She did.’ Billy makes no attempt at a Spanish accent, he’d sound like Speedy fucking Gonzalez. ‘I got something for someone to sign. Can you do it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sal says. He’s starting to look troubled. Billy thinks, too late, amigo, too late. ‘Let’s see what you got.’
Billy’s deafmute pad is sticking up from the front pocket of his overalls. He pats it and says, ‘It’s right here.’
He reaches past the pad and grabs Don Jensen’s Ruger. For a wonder it comes out smoothly, even with the bulb-shaped silencer on the end. He fires. A hole appears between two of the pearl buttons up the front of Sal’s Western-style shirt. There’s a bursting balloon sound and wouldn’t you know it, the silencer falls in two smoking pieces, one half on the ground and the other in the cab.
‘You shot me!’ Sal says, staggering back a step. His eyes are wide.
Billy doesn’t want to shoot the guy again because the second one will be a lot noisier, and he doesn’t have to. Sal folds up, knees on the ground and head lowered. He looks like he’s praying. Then he falls forward.
Billy thinks about taking the Mossberg but decides to leave it. As he told Marge, time is tight.
4
He drives up to the main house. There are three cars parked on the apron, a sedan, a compact SUV, and a Lamborghini that must belong to Nick. Billy remembers Bucky saying Nick has a thing for cars. Billy turns off the noisy truck and walks up the main steps. He has his deafmute pad in one hand. He’s holding the Glock behind it. He just killed a man, and Sal was probably a bad guy who has done many bad things at Nick’s behest, but Billy doesn’t know that for a fact. Now he will kill more, assuming he doesn’t get killed himself. He’ll think about it later. If there is any later.