He puts his finger on the bell, then hesitates. Suppose a woman comes to the door? If that happens, Billy doesn’t think he’ll be able to shoot her. Even if everything turns to shit as a result, he doesn’t believe he’ll be able to. He’d like a chance to go around the house instead, scope it out a little, but there’s no time. Mommy Elvis is on the warpath.
He tries the door. It opens. Billy is surprised but not shocked. Nick has decided he’s not coming. Also it’s Sunday afternoon, the sun is out, and it’s football day in America. Billy believes the Giants have just scored. The crowd is whooping and so are several men. Not close but not far away.
Billy puts the pad back in the front pocket of the overalls and walks toward the sound. Then, just what he was afraid of. Down the main hall comes a pretty little Latina maid with a tray of steaming franks in buns balanced on top of an Igloo cooler that’s probably full of beer. Billy has time to think of an old Chuck Berry lyric, She’s too cute to be a minute over seventeen. She sees Billy, she sees the gun, her mouth opens, the Igloo tilts, the tray of franks starts to slide. Billy pushes it back to safety.
‘Go,’ he says, and points at the open door. ‘Take that and get out of here. Go far.’
She doesn’t say a word. Carrying the tray, she walks down the hall and out into the sunlight. Her posture, Billy thinks, is perfect and the sunlight on her black hair suggests that God may not be all bad. She goes down the steps, back straight and head up. She doesn’t look back. The crowd cheers. The men watching do, too. Someone shouts, ‘Fuck ’em up, Big Blue!’
Billy walks partway down the tiled corridor. Between two Georgia O’Keeffe prints – mesas on one side, mountains on the other – a door is standing open. Through the gap between the hinges, Billy can see stairs going down. There’s a commercial on for beer. Billy stands behind the open door, waiting for it to end, wanting their attention back on the game.
Then, Nick, from the foot of the stairs: ‘Maria! Where are those dogs?’ When there’s no answer: ‘Maria! Hurry up!’
Someone says, ‘I’ll go see.’ Billy isn’t sure, but it sounds like Frank.
Footsteps thumping up the stairs. Someone comes out into the hall and turns left, presumably toward the kitchen. It’s Frank, all right. Billy recognizes him even with his back turned: the pomp trying to cover the solar sex panel. Billy steps out from behind the door and follows him, walking on the sides of his feet, glad he wore sneakers. Frank goes into the kitchen and looks around.
‘Maria? Where are you, honey? We need—’
Billy hits him in the bald spot with the butt of the Glock, raising it high and giving it everything he has. Blood flies and Frank collapses forward, smacking his forehead on the butcher block table in the middle of the room on his way down. His mother’s head was hard, and maybe Frank has inherited that from her along with the widow’s peak, but Billy doesn’t think he’s coming back from this. Not for awhile, anyway, and maybe never. Guys are always getting clonked on the head in films and getting up a few minutes later with little or no damage done, but that’s not the way it works in real life. Frank Macintosh could die of a cerebral edema or a subdural hematoma. It could happen five minutes from now or he could linger in a coma for five years. He might also come back sooner, but probably not before Billy finishes his day’s work. Still, he bends and frisks him. No gun.
Billy walks quietly back down the hall. The game must have resumed, because the crowd is roaring again. One of the men down there in Nick’s man-cave yells, ‘Fucking clothesline him! Yeah! That’s what I’m TALKIN’ about!’
Billy descends the stairs, not fast and not slow. Three men are watching a TV screen that’s beyond big. Two of them are in bucket chairs. A third bucket chair – probably Frank’s – is empty. Nick is sitting in the middle of the couch with his legs spread. He’s wearing shorts that are too short, too tight, and too loud. His belly is bulging out the front of a New York Giants shirt and supporting a bowl of popcorn. The other two also have popcorn bowls, which is good because it keeps their hands occupied. Billy knows both of them. One he’s seen in Nick’s suite and in the Domino’s main offices. An accountant, maybe, a numbers guy for sure. Billy doesn’t remember his name, Mikey or Mickey or maybe Markie. The other was one of the fake Department of Public Works guys with the Transit van. Reggie something.
‘Well it took you long enough,’ Nick says. The other two have seen Billy, but Nick only has eyes for the play in progress on the television. ‘Just set it on the—’
He finally registers the shocked expressions of his companions, turns his head, and sees Billy standing two steps from the carpeted floor. The look of fear and amazement that dawns on Nick’s face gives Billy a great deal of satisfaction. It isn’t payback for the last five months of his life, not even close, but it’s a step in the right direction.
‘Billy?’ The bowl balanced on Nick’s stomach overturns and popcorn goes pattering to the rug.
‘Hello, Nick. You’re probably not glad to see me, but I’m glad to see you.’ He gestures with the Glock at the accountant guy, who has already raised his hands. ‘What’s your name?’
‘M-Mark. Mark Abromowitz.’
‘Get down on the floor, Mark. You too, Reggie. On your stomachs. Arms and legs spread. Like you’re making snow angels.’
They don’t argue. They set aside their popcorn bowls – carefully – and get down on the floor.
‘I’ve got a family,’ Mark Abromowitz says.
‘That’s good. Behave yourself and you’ll see them again. Are either of you armed?’ He doesn’t have to ask about Nick, because in that ridiculous game-day outfit he’s got no place for a hidden weapon, not even an ankle gun.
The two men, face down, shake their heads.
Nick says Billy’s name again, this time not as a question but as an exclamation of delight. He’s striving for his old lord of the manor bonhomie and not finding very much of it. ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you!’
Billy wouldn’t bother to answer this ridiculous lie even if he didn’t have a more pressing concern. There’s a fourth chair, and a half-empty bowl of popcorn beside it.
‘They keep it on the ground with Barkley,’ the play-by-play announcer is saying, ‘with Jones leading the way, and—’
‘Turn it off,’ Billy says. Nick is king of the house and king of the couch, so of course the controller is beside him.
‘What?’
‘You heard me, turn it off.’
As Nick points the remote at the television, Billy is happy to see a slight tremble in his hand. The game goes away. Now it’s just the four of them, but that fourth empty chair with the popcorn bowl beside it says there’s an unaccounted-for fifth.
‘Where is he?’ Billy asks.
‘Who?’
Billy points at the empty chair.
‘Billy, I have to explain why I had to wait to get in touch with you. There was a problem at my end. It—’
‘Shut up.’ What a pleasure to say that, and what a pleasure not to have to play dumb. ‘Mark!’
The accountant jerks his legs, as if he’s just had an electric shock.
‘Where is he?’
Mark replies promptly, which is wise. ‘He went to the bathroom.’
‘Shut up, asshole,’ Reggie says, and Billy shoots him in the ankle. He doesn’t know he’s going to do it until it’s done but his aim is as good as ever and he regrets it no more than he regrets cold-cocking Frank in the kitchen. Reggie was part of the plan to get rid of dumb old Billy Summers. Get him in the back of the fake DPW van, drive him a few miles out of town, put a bullet in his head, case closed. Besides, this little man-cave trio needs to know who is in charge.
Reggie screams and rolls on his back, trying to clutch his ankle. ‘You fuck! You fucking shot me!’