Billy goes down the hall to the kitchen, once more walking on the sides of his feet. He can’t see Marge, aka Mommy Elvis, but he can see her shadow pacing back and forth, and the shadow of the landline’s cord. He can also see a Mossberg shotgun lying beside Frank Macintosh’s splayed feet. It’s got to be the one Sal, the gate guard, had slung over his shoulder.
Should have taken it when I had the chance, Billy thinks.
‘Get here fast! He’s barely breathing!’
Billy drops to his knees and leans forward, hand outstretched. She has used a towel to sop up the blood from the back of Frank’s head and left it on the nape of his neck. Billy snags the shotgun by the trigger guard and pulls it toward him slowly, hoping she won’t hear it and turn. He wants no more to do with Marge.
He feels a sudden cold prickling along the back of his neck and knows it’s Nick. He had a gun in the safe room after all. He came out, he climbed the stairs, and now he’s aiming the gun at the back of Billy’s head. Billy turns, hearing his neck creak, sure it will be the last sound he ever hears, at least in this world. No one is there.
He gets to his feet. His knees pop. Frank’s mother hears it and comes around the fridge (not as big as the TV but almost) and stares at him. Her face is one big bruise and Billy thinks of Alice again. Marge is still holding the phone, but the cord has reached its limit, all its curls now straight. Her lips part in a snarl.
Billy points the Glock at the prone figure of her son, then raises the barrel to his lips: Shhhh.
The snarl stays, but she nods.
Billy leaves, backing down the hall until he gets to the front door.
6
The SUV parked on the tarmac has a triple-diamond logo on the grill that matches the one on Reggie’s key. When he gets inside it still has that new car smell, although it’s fighting a losing battle against the smell of its late owner’s cigarettes. There’s an aluminum Table Talk pie tin on the console full of butts. Billy rolls down the window and tosses it out. Something else for Nick to clean up.
Marge comes out the door. In bright sunlight she looks like death on a cracker. ‘If my son dies I’ll get you!’ she hollers. ‘If he dies I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth!’
And she probably would, Billy thinks, but Frank got what was coming to him and so did you, ma’am.
He never got a chance to show Nick the slogan on his T-shirt, but now he calls it out to her.
He drives past Sal’s body and through the open gate. Once he’s on Route 45 he phones Alice and tells her he’s all right. Against all odds, this is true. His only wound is a scrape from Marge’s trowel.
‘Thank God,’ Alice says. ‘Are you … did you …’
‘I’ll be there in a couple of hours, maybe sooner. I’ve upgraded my ride. I’m driving a green Mitsubishi Outlander now. I want you to pack up. We’re leaving. I’ll tell you everything on the way.’
Nor will he omit anything. She deserves to know the whole thing, especially if he’s going to ask for her help with the rest. He hasn’t completely made up his mind about that, has only the vaguest intimations of a plan, but he’s leaning in that direction. It will be her decision, but there are powerful reasons for wanting her in on the rest. And she’ll know it, he thinks.
‘Are we going back to … you know, your friend’s place?’
‘To start with. You can stay there, or you can come back east with me to finish this business. Your choice.’
Her reply is instant. ‘I’ll come.’
‘Don’t decide now. Wait until you hear where I’m going. And why.’
He ends the call. Ahead of him is the Las Vegas smog bowl, which he will be happy to leave behind. The slogan on his shirt, the very Vegas slogan that he didn’t get to show Frank but called out to Frank’s mom, is IF YOU WANT TO PLAY, YOU HAVE TO PAY. Someone else needs to pay: Roger Klerke.
He’s a very bad man.
CHAPTER 21
1
When he pulls in, Alice is waiting for him at the head of the space where the old truck was parked. She hugs him as soon as he’s out of the car, really throws herself into it. No hesitation. He hugs back the same way. When that’s done, he’s partly amused and partly saddened by her first question, because it comes from a young woman who is now living in an outlaw frame of mind.
‘Is that car safe to drive? We won’t be stopped by the police?’
‘It’s safe. The vehicle tracker was already disabled. Which didn’t surprise me.’ Also the owner is dead and Nick isn’t going to call the cops. He would have far too much to explain. And Billy now has information that could blow him and his whole operation sky-high.
‘I packed everything. There wasn’t much.’
‘Okay. Let’s go. While we’re driving, you can make us a reservation at a motel in Wendover. That’s just over the Utah state line.’
Alice looks around at their current lodgings. ‘I’m not sure the kind of places we’ve been staying have websites. Maybe, but …’ She shrugs.
‘Book us into a chain. The Dalton Smith name is still clean and the pressure’s off. Nobody is going to be looking for us.’
‘Are you sure?’
Billy thinks about it and decides he is. The last thing he said to Nick was for once in your life be honorable, and he thinks that Nick, who was sure he was going to die in his man-cave, will do that. At least for awhile. There’s something else, as well. If Billy succeeds in getting to Klerke, Nick Majarian will be off the hook, and quite possibly with the six-million-dollar bounty in one of his numbered accounts.
Meanwhile, Alice is looking up at him and waiting.
‘I’m sure. Let’s go.’
2
It’s a long story, but it’s a five-hour drive to Wendover and that will be plenty of time for Billy to tell her what he knows and what he’s deduced. But before they roll, he powers up his phone and googles Roger Klerke. The thumbnail biography says he was born in 1954, which makes him sixty-five, but in the accompanying photo he looks at least ten years older. He’s pasty, balding, wrinkled, jowly. His eyes are bright little animals living in sagging pockets of flesh. It’s the face of hard living and indulgence.
‘He’s the man behind this whole shit-show,’ Billy says, and hands her his phone.
She types and sweeps with her finger as Billy pulls out and heads for the 15. She bends over the phone, brushing her hair impatiently away from her face. ‘Holy crap. According to Wikipedia, he practically owns the world, at least media-wise.’
Billy again thinks back to his first meeting with Ken Hoff, the two of them sitting at an umbrella-shaded table outside the Sunspot Café, right across from the building where Billy would eventually take the shot. Hoff with a glass of wine, Billy with a diet soda, Hoff broadcasting a slightly desperate vibe even then. Although along with it, like a fraternal twin, was the mindset that had gotten him in so much trouble and was about to get him in even more. It was the core belief, maybe inculcated in childhood, that he was the star of a movie called The Fabulous Life of Ken Hoff, and no matter how bad things got, in the end he would come out with the girl, the gold watch, and everything.
‘Newspapers, websites, a movie studio, two streaming services …’
‘And TV,’ Billy says. ‘Don’t forget that. Including Channel 6 in Red Bluff, the only station that got footage of the courthouse killing.’
‘Are you thinking—’
‘Yes.’
‘Fuck,’ Alice says softly.
I’m a little bit tight this year, wasn’t that what Hoff said? Cash flow problems since I bought into WWE, but three affils, how could I say no?