1

A week passes. He keeps expecting to hear from Giorgio, but there’s nothing. On Friday evening he invites his neighbors over for a backyard barbecue, and for awhile afterward he, Jamal, and Paul Ragland play three-way pass in Billy’s backyard while the kids play tag, ducking under Paul and Jamal’s throws, which are sizzling. Even though the glove Jamal found for Billy is a well-padded catcher’s mitt, his hand is still stinging as he does up the few dishes. That’s when his phone rings.

He goes to the David Lockridge one first, but it’s not that one. Then to the Billy Summers phone, but it’s not that one, either. Which leaves the one he didn’t expect to ring at all. It has to be Bucky in New York, because he’s the only one who has the Dalton Smith number. But as he picks it up off the Welsh dresser in the living room, he realizes that’s not true. It was on the form he filled out for Merton Richter, the real estate agent, and he also gave it to Beverly Jensen, his upstairs neighbor.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, neighbor.’ It’s not Beverly; it’s her husband. ‘How’s Alabama?’

For a moment Billy has no idea what Jensen is talking about. He’s frozen.

‘Dalton? Did I lose you?’

It clicks into place. He’s supposed to be in Huntsville, installing a computer system for Equity Insurance. ‘No, I’m here. How is it? Hot, that’s how it is.’

‘Weather okay otherwise?’

Billy has no clue how the weather is in Huntsville, probably pretty much like here but who knows. If he’d had the slightest fucking idea Don Jensen might call, he’d have checked. ‘Nothing special,’ he says. ‘What can I do for you?’

Well, we were wondering just who the hell you really are, he imagines Don saying. That fake belly might fool most people, but my wife spotted it from the get-go.

‘I tell you what,’ Don says, ‘Bev’s mother took a turn for the worse yesterday and died this afternoon.’

‘Oh. I’m very sorry to hear that.’ Billy actually is sorry. Maybe not ‘very,’ but at least ‘sort of.’ Beverly is no Corrie Ackerman, but she’s okay.

‘Yeah, Bev’s pretty broken up about it. She’s in the bedroom, packin and bawlin, bawlin and packin. We’re flyin to St Louis tomorrow, then gotta rent a car at the airport and drive to this little shitsplat town called Diggins. It’s not just the buryin, there’s a bunch of affairs that need windin up. Gonna be there awhile.’ Don sighs. ‘I hate the expense, but some lawyer of hers gonna read the will on Tuesday, and I think there might be some money in it for us. That’s how he sounds, but you know lawyers.’

‘Cagey,’ Billy says.

‘That’s right, cagey. Still, Annette was what you call a savin soul, and Bev’s her only kid.’

‘Ah.’

‘We’re apt to be there awhile is why I’m callin. Bev wanted to know if it’d be okay for me to put a key to our place under your door. When you get back from Bama, it’d be a favor if you’d check our fridge and water Bev’s spider plant and her Busy Lizzie. Crazy about those things, even gives em names, do you believe it? If you’re gonna be gone longer than a week, that’s a head-scratcher. We don’t know many people around here.’

Because there aren’t many people around there, Billy thinks. He also thinks this is good. Better than good, a fantastic stroke of luck. He’ll have the Pearson Street house entirely to himself, unless the Jensens come back before Joel Allen leaves California.

‘If you can’t do it …’

‘I can and I’ll be happy to. How long do you think you’ll be gone?’

‘No way of telling. At least a week, maybe two. I got a leave of absence from work. Without pay, accourse, but if there’s money in it …’

‘Right. I get it.’ Better and better. ‘And no problem on the plants. I expect to be back soon, and for quite awhile this time.’

‘That’s great. Bev told me to tell you that you can have anything out of the fridge you want. Better it gets used up than have it spoil, she says. Course, the milk may be gone, anyway.’

‘Yes,’ Billy says. ‘I ran into that problem myself. You have a safe trip.’

‘Thanks, Dalton.’

‘You bet,’ Billy says.

2

That night Billy lies in bed with his hands under the pillow, looking up at the misty oblong of yellowish light on the ceiling, thrown by the streetlight in front of the Fazios’. He keeps forgetting to get curtains. He thinks about doing it and then it slips his mind. Maybe now, with nothing to do but wait, he’ll remember.

He hopes the waiting period will be short, not just because Don and Beverly being gone is so convenient but because the hours spent in Gerard Tower are going to hang heavy without Benjy’s story to work on. Fallujah comes next, and Billy knows some of what he wants to say, some of the brilliant details he wants to capture. Those shredded garbage bags caught in the palm trees, blowing in the hot wind like flags. How the muj showed up in taxis to battle the Marines, piling out of them like clowns out of the little car at the circus. Only the circus clowns don’t pile out guns up. How boys in 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg T-shirts served as ammo runners, darting through the rubble in their battered Nikes or Chuck Taylors. How a three-legged dog with half a human hand in its mouth went trotting through Jolan Park. Billy can see the white dust on that dog’s paws so clearly.

The pieces are there, but no way he can put them together until this job is done. According to William Wordsworth, the best writing is about strong emotion recalled in tranquility. Billy has lost his tranquility.

Finally he slips into sleep, but the soft ding-dong of an arriving text awakens him at some dark hour. Ordinarily he might have slept through it, but now all his sleep is thin, with dreams that are mere wisps. It was always that way in the suck.

Three phones are lined up and charging on his nightstand: Billy’s, Dave’s, and Dalton’s. It’s the screen of his own that’s lit up.

Db1Dom: Call me. There follows a number with a Las Vegas area code. Db1Dom is the Double Domino, Nick’s casino hotel. In Billy’s time-zone it’s three o’clock. In Vegas, Nick is probably just preparing to turn in.

Billy calls. Nick answers and asks how Billy’s doing. Billy says he’s doing fine except for it being three o’clock in the morning.

Nick laughs cheerfully. ‘Best time to call, folks are always home. I just got word that our friend will probably be coming your way next Wednesday. It would have been Monday, but he’s got a little case of food poisoning, probably self-administered. His ride will take him to his hotel, where he’ll spend the night. You follow?’

Billy follows. Allen’s hotel will be the county jail.

‘The next morning he’ll be over your way for the A. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’ The arraignment.

‘Did our redhaired friend get you what you wanted?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Your agent will send you one more text, then you’re on standby. After, you leave on your vacation. Got all that?’

‘Yes,’ Billy says.

‘You’ll want to pay the bill on this phone and any other you’ve been using. Follow me?’

‘Yes,’ Billy says. The way Nick keeps asking him if he’s getting it is tiresome, but also good. Nick still thinks he’s talking to a fellow whose brains are permanently on the dimmer switch. Destroy the Billy Summers phone, destroy the David Lockridge phone, destroy any burner phones he may have picked up along the way, roger that. The phone he’ll keep is the one Nick doesn’t know about.

‘We’ll talk down the line,’ Nick says. ‘Keep your phone for awhile if you want, but trash the text I sent you.’ And he’s gone.

Billy deletes the text, lies down, and is asleep in less than a minute.

3

It’s a cool weekend. Fall, it seems, is finally arriving. Billy can see the first few dashes of color in the trees on Evergreen Street. There’s Monopoly on Sunday afternoon, Billy playing against three kids with half a dozen more kibitzing around the board. The dice are usually his friend but not today. He rolls three doubles and winds up in jail on three consecutive turns, a statistical freak almost up there with picking all six Mega Millions numbers. He hangs in long enough for two of his opponents to go broke and then loses to Derek Ackerman. When the bank has taken his last mortgaged property, the kids all crow and pig-pile him, chanting loser-loser-vodka-boozer. Corrie comes downstairs to see what all the ruckus is about and yells through her laughter to get off him, let the man breathe.

‘You got smoked!’ Danny Fazio shouts gleefully. ‘You got smoked by a kid!’

‘I did,’ Billy says, laughing himself. ‘If I’d gotten all of the railroads instead of going to jail—’

Shan’s friend Becky blows a raspberry at him and they all laugh some more. Then they go upstairs and eat pie in the living room, where Jamal is watching a baseball playoff game. Shan sits next to Billy on the couch, holding her flamingo in her lap. In the seventh inning, she goes to sleep with her head resting on Billy’s arm. Corrie asks him to stay for supper, but Billy declines, saying he might catch an early movie. He’s been hankering to see Deadly Express.

‘I saw the previews for that one,’ Derek says. ‘It looks scary.’

‘I eat lots of popcorn,’ Billy says. ‘It keeps me from being scared.’

Billy doesn’t go to the movie but listens to a podcast review of it as he drives across town to the parking garage where his Ford Fusion awaits. Always safe, never sorry. He drives the Fusion to 658 Pearson Street and stows his Dalton Smith gear in the closet. Then he goes upstairs and waters Bev Jensen’s spider plant and Busy Lizzie. The spider plant is going great guns, but the Busy Lizzie looks pretty wilted.

‘There you go, Daphne,’ Billy says. The little sign in front of the Busy Lizzie so identifies her. The spider plant is named – who knows why – Walter.

Billy locks up and leaves the house, wearing a gimme cap to cover his non-blond hair. Also sunglasses, although it’s now almost dark. He returns the Fusion, drives his Toyota back to Midwood, watches some TV, goes to bed. He falls asleep almost immediately.

4

On Monday afternoon there’s a knock on his door. Billy opens it with a sinking heart, expecting Ken Hoff, but it’s not Hoff. It’s Phyllis Stanhope. She’s smiling, but her eyes are red and puffy.

‘Take a girl to dinner?’ Just like that. ‘My boyfriend dumped me, and I need some cheering up.’ She pauses, then adds: ‘My treat.’

‘No need of that,’ Billy says. He has an idea where this might lead, and it’s maybe not such a good idea, but he doesn’t care. ‘Happy to pick up the tab, and if you really don’t like that, we can go dutch again.’

But they don’t go dutch. Billy pays. He thinks she may have decided to celebrate the end of her affair by sleeping with him, and the three screwdrivers she downs – two before dinner and one during – only cement the idea. Billy offers her the wine list but she waves it away.

‘Never mix, never worry,’ she says. ‘That’s from—’

‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ Billy finishes, and she laughs.

She doesn’t eat much of her dinner, says it was kind of a nasty breakup scene, part one in person and part two on the phone, and she’s just not that hungry. What she really wants are those drinks. They may not be going dutch, but she needs some dutch courage for what comes next, which now seems not just possible but inevitable. And he wants it. It’s been a long time since he’s been with a woman. As Billy pays the check with one of his David Lockridge credit cards, he thinks of the kids piling on him and chanting loser-loser-vodka-boozer. And here, only a day later, is that very vodka boozer, a loser in love.

‘Let’s go to your place. I don’t want to go to mine and look at his aftershave on the bathroom shelf.’

Well, Billy thinks, you can look at the aftershave on mine. You can even use my toothbrush.

When they get to the yellow house on Evergreen Street, she takes an appraising look around, compliments him on the Doctor Zhivago poster he bought in a downtown junkshop, and asks him if he has anything to drink. Billy has a six in the fridge. He asks her if she wants a glass, and Phil says she’ll drink it right out of the can. He brings two into the living room.

‘I thought you were off alcohol for the duration.’

He shrugs. ‘Promises were made to be broken. Besides, I’m off the clock.’

They have barely opened them when she says ‘It’s hot in here’ and starts unbuttoning her blouse. The beers will be open on the coffee table in the morning, flat and barely tasted.

The sex is good, at least for Billy. He thinks for her, too, but with women it’s hard to tell. Sometimes they’d just like you to stop trying so hard and get off so they can go to sleep, but if she’s faking it’s a good fake. There comes a point, just before he can hold back no longer, when she makes an mmmm sound against his shoulder and digs in with her nails almost hard enough to bring blood.

When he rolls over to his side of the bed, she gives him a pat on the shoulder as if to say good boy. ‘Please don’t tell me that was a mercy fuck.’

‘It wasn’t, believe me,’ he says. ‘I won’t ask you if it was a revenge fuck.’

She laughs. ‘You better not.’ Then she rolls over on her side, away from him. Five minutes later she’s snoring.

Billy lies awake for awhile, not because she’s snoring – they’re ladylike snores, almost like purring – but because his mind won’t turn off. He thinks her turning up the way she did and then coming home with him is like something out of a Zola novel, where every character has to be fully used and make one final appearance, like a curtain call. He hopes his own story isn’t over, but guesses this part of it almost is. If he finishes his job and collects his pay, some new life (maybe as Dalton Smith, maybe as someone else) will begin. Maybe a better life.

He has realized for some time, probably since he started writing Benjy’s story, that he can no longer live this one without choking. The idea – no, the conceit – that he only kills bad people will stretch just so far. There are good people sleeping in the houses on this very street. He’s not going to kill any of them, but he supposes he’ll kill something inside them when they find out why he was really here.

Is that too poetic? Too romantic? Billy thinks not. A stranger came, and he turned into a neighbor, but here’s the punchline, he turned out to be a stranger all along.

Around three o’clock Billy awakes to hear Phil puking in the bathroom. The toilet flushes. Water runs. She comes back to bed. She cries a little. Billy pretends to be asleep. The crying stops. The snores recommence. Billy sleeps and dreams of garbage bags fluttering in palm trees.

5

He awakes shortly after six to the smell of coffee. Phil is in the kitchen, barefoot and wearing one of his button-up shirts.

‘How did you sleep?’ Billy asks.

‘Fine. You?’

‘Terrific. And that coffee smells really good.’

‘I stole some of your aspirin. I guess I had one drink too many last night.’ She gives him a look that’s amusement and embarrassment, half and half.

‘As long as you didn’t steal any of my aftershave.’ That makes her laugh. One-night hookups can lead to some grisly mornings after, he’s suffered through a couple of those, but Billy thinks this one may be okay, and that’s good. Phil is a nice woman.

When he offers to scramble some eggs she makes a face and shakes her head. He does get her to eat some unbuttered toast. After, he gives the bedroom and bathroom over to her so she can shower and dress in privacy. When she emerges, she looks fine. Her blouse is a little wrinkled, but otherwise she’s good to go. She’ll have a tale to tell later on, Billy thinks. My Night with a Killer. If she chooses to tell it, that is. She may not.

‘Will you drive me home, Dave? I want to change my clothes.’

‘Happy to.’

She pauses at the door and puts a hand on his arm. ‘It wasn’t revenge sex.’

‘No?’

‘Sometimes a girl just wants to be wanted. And you wanted me … didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

She gives a brisk nod that says that’s settled. ‘And I wanted you. But I think it’s going to be the only time. Never say never, but that’s my feeling.’

Billy, who knows it’s going to be the only time, nods.

‘Friends?’ Phil asks.

He gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘To the end.’

It’s still early, but Evergreen Street gets up early. Across the street, Diane Fazio is sitting in a rocker on her front porch. She’s bundled up in a wooly pink housecoat, with a cup of coffee in one hand. Billy opens the passenger door of his Toyota for Phil. As he walks around the back to the driver’s side, Diane gives him a neighborly thumbs-up.

Billy has to smile.

6

When the lunch trucks arrive, Billy goes down for a taco and a Coke. Jim Albright, John Colton, and Harry Stone – The Young Lawyers, like characters in a TV show or a Grisham novel – wave him over and ask him to sit with them, but Billy says he wants to eat at his desk and do a little more work.

Jim raises a finger and recites, ‘No man on his deathbed ever said “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” Oscar Wilde, just before he passed into the great beyond.’

He could tell Jim that Oscar Wilde’s last words are actually reputed to have been Either that wallpaper goes or I do, but he just smiles.

The truth is he doesn’t want to spend time with these guys now that the job is almost here, not because he doesn’t like them but because he does. And Phil seems to have taken the day off. He hopes she’ll take Wednesday and Thursday off too, but that’s probably too much to hope for.

His Dalton phone starts to ring just as he re-enters his office. It’s Don Jensen.

‘Dollen my man! You back?’

‘I am.’

‘How you doon? How’s Daffy and Woller?’

‘All three of us are fine. How are you?’ In the bag is how Don is from the sound of his voice, even though it’s just a little past noon.

‘Man, I’ve never been better.’ Better comes out bear. ‘Bevvie, too. Say hi, Bevvie!’

Distant but perfectly audible because she’s yelling, Beverly says, ‘Hi there, honey-bunny!’ And shrieks with laughter. So she’s been drinking, too. Not exactly in mourning, either of them.

‘Bevvie says hi,’ Don says.

‘Yes, I heard her.’

‘Dollen … buddy …’ He drops his voice. ‘We’re rich.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Lawyer read the will this morning and Bevvie’s mom left her everything. Stocks and bank accounts. Almost two hunnert thousand dollars!’

In the background Bevvie cheers, and Billy can’t help but smile. She may be in mourning again when she sobers up, but right now these two apartment dwellers in one of the city’s not-very-desirable neighborhoods are celebrating, and Billy can’t blame them.

‘That’s great, Don. Really great.’

‘How long you gonna be home this time? That’s why I’m callin, Dollen.’

‘Probably quite awhile. I’ve got a new contract for—’

Don doesn’t wait for him to finish. ‘Good, that’s good. You keep waterin Daffy an Woller, because … you know what?’

‘What?’

‘Guess!’

‘Can’t guess.’

‘Gotta, my computer compadre, gotta!’

‘You’re going to Disneyland.’

Don laughs so loudly that Billy pulls the phone away from his ear with a little wince, but he’s also still smiling. A good thing has happened to decent people, and no matter what his own situation happens to be, he has to like it. He wonders if Zola ever wrote a development similar to this. Probably not, but Dickens, now—

‘Close, Dollen, close. We’re goin on a cruise!’

In the background, Beverly whoops.

‘You gonna be around for a month? Maybe even six weeks? Because—’

At this point, Beverly snatches the phone, and Billy once more has to hold it a couple of inches away to spare his overtaxed eardrum. ‘If you’re not, just let em die! I can afford new ones! A whole greenhouse!’

Billy has time to offer her both condolences and congratulations, then it’s Don again.

‘And when we get back, we’re movin. No more scenic view of that fuckin vacant lot across the street. Not that I’m dissin your apartment, Doll. Iss the one Bevvie always wanted.’

Bev cries, ‘Not anymore!’

Billy says, ‘I’ll water Daphne and Walter, don’t worry about that.’

‘We’ll pay you for it, Mr Computer Geek Plant Sitter! We can afford to!’

‘No need. You’re good neighbors.’

‘You too, Dollen, you too. Know what we’re drinkin?’

‘Maybe Champagne?’

Billy once more has to hold the phone away from his ear. ‘You hit the goddam nail on the goddam head!’

‘Don’t overdo it,’ Billy says. ‘And give Beverly my best, you hear? Sorry for her loss but glad for your gain.’

‘I will, for sure. Thanks a million, buddy.’ He pauses, and when he speaks again he sounds almost sober. Awed. ‘Two hundred thousand dollars. Do you believe it?’

‘Yes,’ Billy says. He ends the call and sits back in his office chair. He’s getting a lot more than two hundred K, but he thinks Don and Beverly Jensen are really the rich ones. Yes sir, really the rich ones. Sentimental but true.

7

The next morning, as he’s turning into the parking garage around the corner from Gerard Tower, his David Lockridge phone chimes with a text. He waits until he’s parked on the fourth level, then reads it.

GRusso: The check is on the way.

Billy doubts it, it’s only six-thirty on the west coast, but he understands that the check will be on the way soon enough. Allen is coming, probably on a commercial flight handcuffed to one of this city’s detectives or a state cop, and that’s good. Time to get the show on the road. Overtime.

He opens the back door of his car and takes a paper grocery bag from the seat. Crammed inside are the parachute pants and the silk jacket with the Rolling Stones lips on the back. This pair isn’t gold, although the gold ones are Colin White’s favorites. After some interior debate, Billy has decided that would be a little too flashy. The ones he ordered from Amazon are black with gold sparkles. He’s sure Colin would adore them.

Billy has a story ready in case – unlikely but always possible – Irv asks him why he’s coming to work with a grocery bag, but Irv is talking to several fine-looking ladies from Business Solutions and just gives him a distracted wave as Billy signs in and heads for the elevators.

In his office he opens the bag, rummages beneath the clothes, and takes out a sign he bought at Staples from a rack of them. It says SORRY CLOSED. A pair of sad cartoon faces flank the message. There’s white space for a brief explanation beneath. Billy uses a Sharpie to print NO WATER USE 4 OR 6. He waves the sign in the air a few times, not wanting his message to smudge, then places it back in the bag. He adds the long-haired black wig, then puts the bag in the closet.

At his desk, he transfers the Benjy story to a thumb drive. Once that’s done, he uses a suicide program to destroy everything on the MacBook Pro. It stays here. His fingerprints are all over it and everything else in this place, after all this time he’d miss some no matter how much he wiped, but that’s okay. Once he takes the shot and sees Joel Allen lying dead on the courthouse steps, Billy Summers will cease to exist. As for his personal lappie … he could kill that one as well, leave it, and use one of the cheap new AllTechs at Pearson Street, but he doesn’t want to. This one is coming along for the ride.

8

An hour later there’s a knock on the outer door. He answers it, once more expecting Ken Hoff, maybe with a case of cold feet, and once again he’s wrong. This time it’s Dana Edison, one of the imported hard boys from Nick’s Vegas team. He’s not dressed in his DPW coverall today. Today he’s Mr Nondescript in dark slacks and a gray sportcoat. He’s a little man, bespectacled, and at first glance you might think he belongs in Phil Stanhope’s accounting office at the other end of the hall. Take a closer look and you might – especially if you were a Marine – see something different.

‘Hey there, fella.’ Edison’s voice is low and polite. ‘Nick wanted me to have a word with you. Okay if I step in?’

Billy stands aside. Dana Edison breezes through the outer office in his neat brown loafers and into the small conference room that serves as Billy’s writing studio. Not to mention his shooter’s overlook. Edison moves with lithe confidence. He glances briefly at the table, where Billy’s personal lappie is open with a half-played cribbage game in progress, then looks out the window. Tracing the line of fire Billy has traced himself many times over the summer. Only now summer is over and there’s a snap in the air.

It’s good that Edison gives him a little time, because here Billy has gotten used to being a pretty smart guy named David Lockridge and might have slipped. But when Edison turns back to him, Billy has his dumb self face on: eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar. Not enough to make him look like the village idiot, just enough so he looks like a man who might believe Zola is one of Superman’s archenemies.

‘You’re Dana, right? I met you at Nick’s.’

He nods. ‘Also seen me and Reggie tooling around in that little city truck, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Nick wants to know if you’re all ready for tomorrow.’

‘Sure.’

‘Where’s the gun?’

‘Well …’

Dana grins, showing teeth as small and neat as the rest of him. ‘Never mind. But it’s close, right?’

‘You bet.’

‘Got a glass cutter for that window?’

A stupid question, but that’s okay. He’s supposed to be a stupid man. ‘Sure.’

‘You don’t want to use it today. The sun shines on this side of the building all afternoon and someone might see the hole.’

‘I know that.’

‘Yeah, I suppose you would. Nick says you were a sniper. Got some kills in Fallujah, yeah? How was that?’

‘Good.’ It wasn’t. Neither is this conversation. Having Edison in this room is like having let in a small and very compact storm cloud.

‘Nick wanted me to make sure you’re straight on the plan.’

‘I’m straight.’

Edison stays on message. ‘You take the shot. Five seconds later, no more than ten, there’s going to be a hell of a big bang from behind that café over there.’

‘A flashpot.’

‘A flashpot, right. That’s Frankie’s responsibility. Five seconds after that, no more than ten, one’s going to go off behind the news and stationery shop on the corner. That’s Paulie Logan. People are going to start beating feet. You’ll join them, just one more office guy wanting a quick look at what happened and then wanting to get the hell out. You hook around the corner. The DPW truck will be there. Reggie will have the back doors open. I’ll be behind the wheel. In you go and change into a coverall as fast as you can. Clear?’

It always was. Billy doesn’t need a last-minute tutorial. ‘Yes. Just one thing, Dana.’

‘What might that be?’

‘I’ve got stuff to do to get ready, and once I start doing it, there’s no going back. Are you sure it’s gonna be tomorrow?’

Dana starts to speak, to say of course, but Billy shakes his head.

‘Think before you say anything. Think hard, because if something changes, this deal goes south, I’m gone and Joel Allen is still using his lungs. So … are you sure?’

Dana Edison looks closely at Billy, perhaps re-evaluating. Then he smiles. ‘As sure as I am that the sun rises in the east. Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ Edison heads back to the outer office, walking that springy walk. His manbun looks like a dark red doorknob. At the door, he turns and regards Billy with eyes that are bright and blue and expressionless. He says, ‘Don’t miss.’ Then he’s gone.

Billy goes back into his writing room and stares at the frozen cribbage game. He’s thinking that Dana Edison said nothing about a possible warehouse fire in Cody, and he certainly would have if he knew about it. He’s also thinking about the possibility that if he went with Nick’s plan, he really might end up in a ditch on a country road with a hole in his forehead. If that were to happen, he guesses Edison would be the one to put it there. And who would end up with the owing million-five? Nick, of course. Billy would like to believe that’s paranoid, but after Edison’s visit it seems a little more likely. Surely the thought has at least crossed Nick’s mind, despite their long association. Pinch off Ken Hoff, pinch off Billy Summers, and everyone walks away clean.

Billy closes down his computer. Writing his story has never felt so far away. Hell, today he can’t even play cribbage.

9

On his way home he stops at Ace Hardware and buys the last thing he needs: a Yale padlock. When he arrives at his house – his last night here – there’s a piece of paper on the top step of the porch, held down with a rock. He slides his laptop case off his shoulder, picks up the paper, sits, studies it, and thinks this is a curtain call he could have done without. It’s a crayon drawing, obviously made by a child, but one who shows at least some talent. How much is impossible to tell, because the artist is currently only eight years old. At the bottom she has signed her name: Shanice Anya Ackerman. At the top, in capital letters: FOR DAVE!

The picture is of a smiling little girl with dark brown skin and bright red ribbons decorating her cornrows. In her arms is a pink flamingo, from whose head floats a series of hearts. Billy looks at it for a long time, then folds it and puts it in his back pocket. He has gotten himself into a box he never dreamed of. He would give anything, two-million-dollar payout included, to be able to turn the calendar back three months, to that hotel lobby where he sat reading Archie’s Pals ’n’ Gals and waiting for his ride. And when Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan came in, he would tell them to make his apologies to Nick, he’s changed his mind. But there’s no going back now, only forward, and when he thinks of Dana Edison perhaps stopping by this neighborhood to ask questions, maybe even putting those small neat hands of his on Shanice’s shoulders, Billy presses his lips together so tightly that they disappear. He is in a box and all he can do is shoot his way out.