Billy Summers (42 page)

Alice lets Billy tote the Black Kow. She wrinkles her nose and says she can smell it even through the bag.

They watch TV in her room and she asks him if he will stay the night with her. Billy says it would be better if he didn't.

“I don't think I can sleep alone,” Alice says.

“I don't think I can, either, but we're both going to try. Come here. Give me a hug.”

She gives him a good one. He can feel her trembling, not because she's afraid of him but because she's afraid for him. She doesn't deserve to be afraid at all, but if she has to be, Billy thinks, this way is better. A lot.

“Set your phone alarm for six,” he says when he lets her go.

“I won't have to.”

He smiles. “Do it anyway. You might surprise yourself.”

In his room next door, he texts Bucky:
Have you heard anything about N?

Bucky's reply is immediate.
No. He's probably there but I don't know for sure. Sorry.

It's okay
, Billy texts back, then sets his own phone alarm for five. He doesn't expect to sleep, either, but
he
might surprise himself.

He does, a little, and dreams of Shanice. She's tearing up the picture of Dave the Flamingo and saying
I hate you I hate you I hate you
.

He wakes up at four, and when he goes outside with the new
gloves in one hand, Alice is sitting in the eternal motel lawn chair, bundled up in an I LOVE LAS VEGAS sweatshirt and looking up at a rind of moon.

“Hey,” Billy says.

“Hey.”

He goes to the edge of the cement walk and scrubs the new gloves in the dirt. When he's satisfied that they look right, he claps the dust off them and stands up.

“Cold,” Alice says. “That will be good for you. You can wear the coat.”

Billy knows it will warm up fast once the sun rises. It may be October, but this is the desert. He'll wear the barn coat anyway.

“You want something to eat? Egg McMuffin? The Mickey D's down the road is twenty-four-hour.”

She shakes her head. “Not hungry.”

“Coffee?”

“Sure, that would be great.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Black, please.”

He goes down to the deserted lobby and gets them each a cup from the eternal motel Bunn. When he comes back, she's still looking at the moon. “It looks close enough to reach out and touch. Isn't it beautiful?”

“It is, but you're shivering. Let's go inside.”

She sits in his chair by the window and sips her coffee, then sets it on the little table and falls asleep. The sweatshirt is too big and the neck slips to the side, baring one shoulder. Billy thinks it's at least as beautiful as the moon. He sits and drinks his coffee and watches her. He likes her long slow breaths. The time passes. It's got a knack for that, Billy thinks.

When he wakes her up at seven-thirty she scolds him for letting her sleep. “We need to get you sprayed up. That goo takes at least four hours to work.”

“It's okay. The game starts at one and I'm not going to move on him until at least one-thirty.”

“Still, I wish we'd done this an hour ago, just to be safe.” She sighs. “Come in my room. We'll do it there.”

A few minutes later his shirt is off and he's rubbing moisturizer over his hands, forearms, and face. She tells him not to neglect his eyelids and the back of his neck. When he's done, she goes to work with the tanning spray. The first coat takes five minutes. When she's done, he goes into the bathroom and takes a look. What he sees is a white man with a desert tan.

“Not good enough,” he says.

“I know. Moisturize again.”

She uses the spray a second time. When he goes into the bathroom for another look it's better, but he's still not satisfied. “I don't know,” he tells Alice when he comes out. “This might have been a bad idea.”

“It's not. Remember what I said? For the next four to six hours, it will continue to darken. With the cowboy hat and the bib overalls…” She gives him a critical look. “If I didn't think you could pass for Chicano, I'd tell you.”

This is where she asks me again to just give it up and come back to Colorado with her, Billy thinks. But she doesn't. She tells him to get dressed in what she calls “your costume.” Billy goes back to his room and puts on the dark wig, T-shirt, bib overalls, barn coat (work gloves stuffed in the pockets), and the battered cowboy hat Bucky and Alice bought in Boulder. It comes down to his ears and
he reminds himself to raise it up a little when the time comes, to show that long black hair streaked with gray.

“You look fine.” All business, red-rimmed eyes notwithstanding. “Got your pad and pencil?”

He pats the front pocket of the biballs. It's capacious, with plenty of room for the silenced Ruger as well as the writing stuff.

“You're getting darker already.” She smiles wanly. “Good thing the PC Police aren't here.”

“Needs must,” Billy says. He reaches into the side pocket of the biballs, the one that doesn't hold the Glock 17, and brings out a roll of bills. It's everything he has left except for a couple of twenties. “Take this. Call it insurance.”

Alice pockets it without argument.

“If you don't get a call from me this afternoon, wait. I have no idea what kind of cell coverage they have north of here. If I'm not back by eight tonight, nine at the outside, I'm not coming back. Stay the night, then check out and get a Greyhound to Golden or Estes Park. Call Bucky. He'll pick you up. All right?”

“That would not be all right, but I understand. Let me help you carry those bags of fertilizer out to the truck.”

They make two trips and then Billy slams the tailgate. They stand there looking at each other. A few sleepy-eyed people—a couple of salesmen, a family—are toting out their luggage and preparing to move on.

“If you don't need to be there until one, you can stay another hour,” she says. “Two, even.”

“I think I better go now.”

“Yeah, maybe you better,” Alice says. “Before I break down.”

He hugs her. Alice hugs back fiercely. He expects her to say be careful. He expects her to tell him again not to die. He expects her to ask him one more time, maybe plead with him, not to go. She doesn't. She looks up at him and says, “
Get what's yours
.”

She lets go of him and walks back toward the motel. When she gets there, she turns to him and holds up her phone. “Call me when you're done. Don't forget.”

“I won't.”

If I can, he thinks. I will if I can.

An hour north of Vegas on Route 45, Billy comes to a Dougie's Donuts mated to an ARCO gas station and a convenience store with the unlikely name of Terrible Herbst. It's a truck stop surrounded by great expanses of parking, big rigs on one side snoring like sleeping beasts. Billy gasses up, grabs a bottle of orange juice and a cruller, then parks around back. He thinks about calling Alice, only because he'd like to hear her voice and thinks she might like to hear his. My hostage, he thinks. My Stockholm Syndrome hostage. Only that's not what she is now, if she ever was. He remembers how she said
Get what's yours
. Not fearless, she hasn't morphed into some comic book warrior queen (at least not yet), but plenty fierce. He has his phone in his hand before remembering she got as little sleep as he did last night. If she's gone back to bed with the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the door, he doesn't want to wake her.

He drinks his juice and eats his cruller and lets the time pass. There's enough of it for doubts to creep in. In some ways—many, actually—it's like the Funhouse all over again, only with no squad to back him up. He can't be sure Nick went to Promontory Point for the weekend. He has no idea how many men he may have brought back with him if he did. Some for sure, not bounty hunters from some other outfit but his own guys, and Billy has no idea where they might be placed. He has an idea of the interior layout from the Zillow photographs, but there might have been changes made
after Nick bought the place. If Nick
is
there, rooting on the Giants, Billy doesn't know where he'll be watching. He doesn't even know if he can get in through the service entrance. Maybe
sí
, maybe
no
.

There's a line of Porta-Johns, and he uses one to offload his coffee and juice. When he comes out, a black chick in a halter and a denim skirt short enough to show the edges of her panties is standing nearby. She looks like she's been up all night and the night was a hard one. The mascara around her eyes reminds Billy—
dumb self
Billy—of the Beagle Boys in the old Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics he sometimes picks up at rummage and yard sales.

“Hey, goodlooking man,” the lot lizard says. “Want to date me?”

This is as good a chance as any to try out his cover story. He takes his pad and pencil from the front pocket of his biballs and writes
mi es sordo y mudo
.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Billy touches his ears with both hands, then pats his mouth with the other.

“Forget it,” she says, turning away. “I ain't sucking no wetback cock.”

Billy watches her go, delighted. No wetback cock, huh? he thinks. Doesn't exactly make me John Howard Griffin, but I'll take it.

He stays parked behind the doughnut shop until eleven. During that time he sees the black chick and a few of her co-workers chatting up truck drivers, but none of them come near him. Which is fine with Billy. Every now and then he gets out of the truck, pretending to check his goods, actually just wanting to stretch his legs and stay loose.

At quarter past eleven he starts up the truck (the starter doesn't catch at first, giving him a scare) and continues north on 45. The
Paiute Foothills draw closer. From five miles out he can see Promontory Point. It's different from the house Nick rented in the city where Billy did his job, but every bit as ugly.

As his GPS is informing him that his turn onto Cherokee Drive is a mile ahead, Billy comes to another rest area, this one just a turnout. He parks in the shade and uses another Porta-John, thinking of Taco Bell's dictum:
Never neglect a chance to piss before a firefight
.

When he comes out, he checks his watch. Twelve-thirty. In his big white hacienda, Nick is probably settling in to watch the pregame show with a couple of his hardballs. Maybe eating nachos and drinking Dos Equis. Billy punches up Siri, who tells him he's forty minutes from his destination. He forces himself to wait a little longer and forces himself not to call Alice. Instead he gets out, grabs a crowbar from one of the dirty barrels, and punches a couple of holes in the Ram's muffler, which is already distressed. If he comes up to the service entrance with his old truck farting and backing off, so much the more in character.

“Okay,” Billy says. He thinks of giving the Darkhorse chant and tells himself not to be ridiculous. Besides, the last time they all chanted that, their hands in the huddle, things didn't work out so well. He turns the key. The starter spins and spins. When it starts to lag, he clicks it off, waits, gives the gas pedal a single pump, then tries again. The Dodge fires right up. It was loud before. It's louder now.

Billy checks for traffic, merges onto 45, then turns off at Cherokee Drive. The grade grows steeper. For the first mile or so there are other, more modest houses on either side of the road, but then they're gone and there's only Promontory Point, looming ahead of him.

I was always coming here, Billy thinks, and tries to laugh at the thought, which is not just omenish but pretentious. The thought won't go, and Billy understands that's because it's a true thought. He was always coming here. Yes.

The air is bell-clear outside the smog bowl of Las Vegas, and maybe even has a slight magnifying effect, because by the time Billy is closing in on the compound's main gate the house looks like it's rearing back so it won't fall on him. The wall is too high to see over, but he knows there's a lookout post just inside and if it's manned, his old beater is probably already on video.

Cherokee Drive ends at Promontory Point. Before it does, a dirt track splits off to the left. There are two signs flanking this track. The one on the left says MAINTENANCE & DELIVERY. The other says AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY.
ONLY
is in red.

Billy turns onto the track, not neglecting to set his hat a little higher on his head. He also pats the front pocket of the overalls (silenced Ruger) and side pocket (Glock). Sighting the guns in would be a joke, handguns are really only good for close work, but he realizes he hasn't test-fired either of them or examined the loads. It would be a fine joke on him if he had to use the Glock and it jammed. Or if the Ruger's silencer, maybe made in the garage of some guy with a taste for meth, plugged the gun's barrel and caused it to blow up in his hand. Too late to worry about any of that now.

The compound's wall is on his right. On the left, piñons grow close enough for their branches to thwap the sides of his truck. Billy can imagine bigger vehicles—trash haulers, propane gas delivery, a septic pumper—waddling their way along, their drivers cursing a blue streak every time they have to make this trip.

Then the wall makes a right angle turn and the trees end. The 20-degree grade does, too. He's now on a plateau, probably bulldozed flat especially for the house and grounds. The maintenance road loops out, then curves back toward the much humbler gate Billy is looking for. Beyond the wall he can see the upper fifteen feet or so of the barn, painted rustic red. The roof is metal,
heliographing the sun. Billy keeps his eyes off it after one quick look, not wanting to compromise his vision.

The gate is open. There are flowerbeds on either side of it. There's a security camera mounted on the wall, but it's hanging down like a bird with a broken neck. Billy likes it. He thought Nick might be relaxing, letting down his guard a bit, and here's proof.

In the flowerbed on the left, a Mexican woman in a big blue dress is down on her knees, digging in the dirt with a trowel. A wicker basket half-filled with cut flowers is nearby. Her yellow gloves might have been purchased in the same place Billy bought his. She's wearing a straw sombrero so big it's comical. Her back is to him at first, but when she hears the truck—how can she miss it?—she turns to look and Billy sees she's not Mexican at all. Her skin is tanned and leathery, but she's Anglo. An old lady Anglo, at that.

She gets to her feet and stands in front of the truck with her feet spread, blocking the way forward. She only moves to the driver's side when Billy slows to a stop and powers down the window.

“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” And then, another good thing to go with the broken security camera: “
Qué deseas?
”

Billy holds up a finger—wait one—and takes the pad from the front pocket of his biballs. For a moment he blanks, but then it comes to him and he writes
Estos son para el jardín
. These are for the garden.

“Got it, but what are you doing here on Sunday? Talk to me, Pedro.”

He flips a page and writes
mi es sordo y mudo
. I am a deafmute.

“You are, huh? Do you understand English?” Moving her lips with exaggerated care.

Her eyes, dark blue in her narrow face, are studying him. Two things come to Billy. The first is that Nick may have let his guard down… but not all the way. The security camera is broken and his guys may be in the house watching the football game with him, but this woman is here with her trowel and her basket of blooms.
Maybe that's what his old friend Robin used to call a coinkydink, but maybe it's not, because there's a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper in the shade of a nearby tree. Which suggests she might be meaning to stay for awhile. Maybe until the game is over and she's relieved.

That's one thing. The other is she looks familiar. Goddamned if she doesn't.

She reaches into the cab and snaps her fingers in front of his nose. They stink of cigarettes. “
Lo entiendes?
”

Billy holds his thumb and forefinger a smidgen apart to indicate that yes, he understands, but only a little.

“Bet if I asked to see your green card, you'd be shit out of luck.” She gives a laugh as raspy as her speaking voice. “So why you here on Sunday,
mi amigo
?”

Billy shrugs and then points at the barn looming over the wall.

“Yeah, I didn't think you came for tea and cookies. What have you got to put in the barn? Show me.”

Billy likes this less and less. Partly because she could look in the truckbed herself and see the bags of gardening stuff, mostly because of that troubling sense that he's seen her before. Which can't be true. She's too old to be one of Nick's guard dogs, and he'd never hire a woman for that kind of job anyway. He's old-school and she's just old, a domestic they shoved out here to keep an eye on the service gate while they watch the game, and she decided to pass the time by cutting some flowers for the house. But he still doesn't like it.

“
Ándale, ándale!
” More finger-snapping in front of his face. Billy doesn't like that, either, although her assumption of superiority—her very Trumpian prejudice, if you like—is another sign that his disguise is working.

Billy gets out, leaving the door open, and walks her to the back of the truck. She ignores that and goes on to the little trailer. She looks in the barrels, gives a disdainful sniff, then comes back to
look in the truckbed. “How come you've only got one bag of Black Kow? What good is that gonna do?”

Billy shrugs that he doesn't understand.

The woman stands on tiptoes and slaps the bag. Her sombrero flops. “Only one! One!
Solo uno!
”

Billy shrugs that he's only the delivery guy.

She sighs and flicks a hand at him. “Well, what the fuck. Go on. I'm not going to call Hector on Sunday afternoon and ask him why he sends a deafmute out to deliver a piddling load of shit, he's probably watching the fucking game, too. Or a different one.”

Billy shrugs that he still doesn't
entender
.

“Take that crap in.
Tómalo!
Then fuck off to the nearest
cantina
, maybe you'll be in time for the second half.”

That is when he should have known. Something in her eyes. But he doesn't. He only gets lucky. He sees her coming in the driver's side mirror as he climbs into the cab and slides behind the wheel. He pulls back just in time, dipping his shoulder, and the trowel only scrapes his upper arm below the T-shirt he's wearing under the overalls. He slams the door, catching her arm in it, and the trowel drops to the floorboards beside his left foot.

“Ow, fuck!”

She pulls her arm free so fast and hard that it flies up and knocks off the sombrero, revealing gray hair piled high and pinned that way. That's when Billy understands where he's seen her before.

She's reaching into one of the big side pockets of her gardening dress. Billy gets out of the truck in a hurry and roundhouses her on the left side of her face. She goes sprawling on her back in the flowerbed. The thing she was reaching for falls out of her pocket. It's a cell phone. It's the first time in his life he's hit a woman and when he sees the bruise rising on her cheek he thinks of Alice but doesn't regret the blow. It could have been a gun.

And she recognized him. Not at first but yeah, she did. Covered it up well, too, until the end. So much for the biballs, tanning
spray, wig, and cowboy hat. So much for Shan's picture taped to the dashboard, the one he could write (with a fatherly smile of pride) was his daughter's work. Was it because the woman has seen and studied his picture as well as meeting him once in Red Bluff? Or because she's a woman and they tend to see past disguises quicker? That could be sexist bullshit, but Billy kind of doubts it.

“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.