Billy is starting to believe it. Nick is talking about Giorgio mostly in the present tense, and he hasn’t slipped up. In a way it’s like Edison flushing the toilet as he fell, mortally wounded. Some things are too bizarre not to be true. Georgie Pigs in a fat farm gulag is surely one of those things.
‘Giorgio knew he’d be ID’d after you killed Joel Allen, he’s a fucking whale, but he was okay with that. He said it was a way of making sure he wouldn’t back out at the last minute, new liver or no new liver. Plus he wanted to retire.’
‘Really?’ Billy would have believed Giorgio was one of those guys who would die in harness.
‘Yeah.’
‘Sunset years in Brazil?’
‘I think Argentina.’
‘Sounds expensive. What kind of a retirement bonus did he get for helping to set me up?’
Nick hesitates, then says, ‘Three million.’
‘Three for Giorgio and six for bringing me down.’
Nick’s eyes widen and he sags in the chair. He’s thinking that if Billy knows that, any chance he might have had of getting out of this alive just flew away. He’s probably right.
‘But you stuck at paying me the lousy million and a half you owed? I knew you were cheap, Nick, but I didn’t peg you for a chiseler.’
‘Billy, we were never going to—’
‘You were. I want to hear you say it or I’ll kill you right now.’
‘You’re going to kill me anyway,’ Nick says, and although his voice is steady enough, a single tear rolls down one plump and beautifully shaved cheek.
Billy doesn’t reply.
‘Okay, yeah. We were going to kill you. That came with the deal. Dana was going to do it.’
‘I was going to be your Oswald.’
‘It wasn’t my idea, Billy. I told the client you’d stand up no matter what. He insisted, and like I said, the money blinded me.’
Billy could ask how much Nick got, but does he want to know? He does not. ‘Who’s the client?’
Instead of answering, Nick points to the door leading to the panic room. ‘I’ve got money. Not a million-five but at least eighty thousand, probably more like a hundred. I’ll give it to you and I’ll get you the rest.’
‘I believe that completely,’ Billy says. ‘I also believe that we won in Vietnam and the moon landing was staged.’ Something else occurs to him. ‘Did you know about the fire?’
Nick blinks at the change of subject. ‘Fire? What fire?’
‘Those flashpots weren’t the only diversion that day. There was a warehouse fire in a nearby town not long before I took the shot. I knew about it ahead of time because Hoff told me.’
‘Hoff told you? That budalla?’
‘You sure you didn’t know about it?’
‘No.’
Billy believes him, but he wanted to hear him say it, and watch his face as he did. It doesn’t matter, anyway. He’s downriver from all that. ‘Who was the client?’
‘Are you going to kill me?’
I should, Billy thinks. You richly deserve it.
‘Who was the client?’
Nick raises a hand to his face and brings it down slowly, wiping away sweat from his brow and more spit from his lips. His eyes say he has given up hope, and he never had much to begin with. ‘If I tell you, will you at least let me pray before you do it? Or is killing me not enough, do you want me in hell for eternity, too?’ Now there are more tears.
‘You can pray. Client’s name first.’
‘Roger Klerke.’
At first Billy thinks he’s saying Clerk, like the guy who takes your money in a convenience store, but then Nick spells it. The name has a slightly familiar ring, but it’s not one he associates with Nick’s world. Or Bucky Hanson’s, for that matter. More like a name Billy has seen in the newspapers or blogs or heard on a podcast. Maybe on TV. Politics? Business? Billy has little interest in either.
‘World Wide Entertainment,’ Nick says. ‘It’s okay if you don’t recognize it, WWE’s only one of the four biggest media conglomerates in the world.’
Nick tries to smile – a man on his deathbed telling a feeble joke – but Billy hardly notices. He’s rewinding, almost all the way to the beginning. To his first meeting with Ken Hoff, who is certainly not looking forward to retirement in South America.
‘Tell me.’
Nick does, and Billy is so totally amazed by what he hears – and horrified, that too – that he loses track of time. He doesn’t remember that not everyone at Promontory Point has been neutralized until he hears a desolate howl from upstairs. It is the sound only a mother can make when she discovers her son stretched out unconscious and maybe dying. Maybe already dead.
‘Do you want to live, Nick?’ A rhetorical question.
‘Yes. Yes! If you let me, I’ll see that you get your money. Every cent of it. That’s my solemn promise.’ His tears stopped while he was telling his tale, but at the possibility of a reprieve they start again.
Billy’s not interested in Nick’s promises, solemn or otherwise. He points to the unadorned steel door to the safe room. Upstairs there’s another howl, then words: ‘Help me! Somebody help me!’
‘Are there guns in there?’
Nick is no longer the guy in charge, no longer the host with the most who welcomed Billy with outstretched arms five months ago, no longer the drinker of Champagne who just wanted to help Billy with his getaway. He has been broken down to his basic humanity, which is a desire to continue drawing breath, and so Billy accepts his look of surprise as genuine. ‘In the safe room? Why would I have guns in there?’
‘Go in. Close the door. Look at your watch. Wait an hour. If you come out before then, I might be gone or I might still be here.’ As if, Billy thinks. ‘If I’m here, I’ll kill you.’
‘I won’t. I won’t! And the money—’
‘I’ll be in touch about that.’
Maybe, Billy thinks. Or maybe I no longer want any of it, considering what I did and who I did it for. Not knowing at the time may be an excuse, but not a good one.
‘Call off the bounty hunters. Tell them I came here, there was a shootout, and I got killed. If there’s still guys on the prod for me, you better hope they kill me because if they don’t, I’ll come back here and kill you. Tell Klerke the same thing. I’ll ask him, and if he says anything different, I’ll come back and kill you. Got it?’
‘Yes. Yes!’
Billy gestures toward the TV part of the man-cave. ‘And clean up this mess. Make it go away. Do you understand?’
‘Help me, he won’t wake up!’ From upstairs.
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes. What are you planning to—’
‘Get in there.’
Nick has no trouble with the combo this time. The door must be sealed as tight as the airlock of a spaceship, because there’s a faint whoosh when it opens. Nick goes in. He gives Billy a final look from eyes that no longer believe they are master of all they survey, and maybe that’s revenge enough. Or would be, if it were to last. Billy knows it won’t.
‘For once in your life be honorable,’ Billy says.
Nick closes the door and there’s a thud as it re-locks. Billy sees a cheesecloth bag full of billiard balls hanging from a hook beside the chairs. He takes it and spills the balls onto the green felt of the table. He gets Edison’s Glock from the bathroom and Nick’s hideout gun from where it lies next to Reggie’s dead hand. He puts both guns in the bag. Then he searches Reggie’s pants pockets, an unpleasant task that has to be done because he has no intention of driving out of here in the old pickup with its unreliable starter. He finds the key to Reggie’s vehicle.
Billy has tucked his own Glock in the bib pocket of his overalls. As he mounts the stairs he takes it out. Now he can hear Frank’s mother – who Billy has started to think of as the Bride of Terminator – on the telephone. ‘Nick’s! Yes, you idiot, Nick’s! Why do you think I’m calling you instead of the hospital?’