Billy Summers

CHAPTER 23

We left Lincoln early and drove east on 1-80. For the first hour or so we didn’t talk much. Alice had my lappie open and was reading everything I’d written in the summerhouse. On the outskirts of Council Bluffs a car blipped past us with a clown and a ballerina looking at us from the back seat. The clown waved. I waved back.

‘Alice!’ I said. ‘Do you know what today is?’

‘Thursday?’ She didn’t look up from the screen. It made me think of Derek Ackerman and his friend Danny Fazio back on Evergreen Street, hypnotized by whatever they were looking at on their phones.

‘Not just any Thursday. It’s Halloween.’

‘Okay.’ Still not looking up.

‘What did you go as? Your favorite, I mean.’

‘Mmm … once I was Princess Leia.’ Still not looking up from what she was reading. ‘My sister took me around the neighborhood.’

‘In Kingston, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Get much swag?’

She finally looked up. ‘Let me read, Billy, I’m almost done.’

So I let her read and we rolled deeper into lowa. No big changes there, just miles of flatland. At last she closed the laptop. I asked her if she’d read it all.

‘Just to where I came into the story. The part where I threw up and almost choked. That was hard to read about, so I stopped. By the way, you forgot to change my name.’

‘I’ll make a note.’

‘The rest I knew.’ She smiles. ‘Remember The Blacklist on Netflix? And how we watered the plants?’

‘Daphne and Walter.’

‘Do you think they lived?’

‘I’m sure they did.’

‘Bullshit. You don’t know if they did or not.’

I admitted that was true.

‘And neither do I. But we can believe they did if we want to, can’t we?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We can.’

‘That’s the advantage of not knowing.’ Alice was staring out the window at miles of cornfields, all brown now and waiting for winter. ‘People can choose to believe any old thing they want. I choose to believe that we’ll get to Montauk Point, and do what we came to do, and get away with it, and live happily ever after.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll choose to believe that, too.’

‘After all, you’ve never been caught yet. All those killings, and you got away with them all.’

‘I’m sorry you had to read about that. But you said I should write down everything.’

She shrugged. ‘They were bad people. They all had that in common. You didn’t shoot any priests or doctors or … or crossing guards.’

That made me laugh and Alice smiled a little, but I could tell she was thinking. I let her do it. The miles rolled by.

‘I’m going back to the mountains,’ she said at last. ‘I might even live with Bucky for awhile. What do you think of that?’

‘I think he’d like it.’

‘Just to get started. Until I can find work and get my own place and start saving up money to go back to school. Because you can start college whenever you want. Sometimes people don’t start college until they’re in their forties or even their sixties, right?’

‘I saw a thing on TV about a man who started when he was seventy-five and got his diploma when he was eighty. My Spidey sense tells me it’s not business school you’re thinking about.’

‘No, regular school. Maybe even the University of Colorado. I could live in Boulder. I liked that town.’

‘Any idea what you’d want to study?’

She hesitated, as if something had occurred to her and she’d changed her mind. ‘History, I think. Or sociology. Maybe even theater arts.’ Then, as if I had objected to the idea: ‘Not for acting, I wouldn’t want to do that, but the other stuff – sets and lighting and all that. There’s so much I’m curious about.’

I said that was good.

‘What about you, Billy? What’s your happily ever after?’

I didn’t have to think about it. ‘Since we’re dreaming, I’d like to write books.’ I tapped the laptop, which she was still holding. ‘Until I wrote that I didn’t know if I could. Now I do.’

‘What about this story? You could fix it up, turn it into fiction …’

I shook my head. ‘No one but you is ever going to see it, and that’s all right. It did its job. It opened the door. And I don’t have to give you an alias.’

Alice was quiet for awhile. Then she said, ‘This is Iowa, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Boring.’

I laughed. ‘I bet the lowans don’t think so.’

‘I bet they do. Especially the kids.’

I couldn’t argue with her there.

‘Tell me something.’

‘I will if I can.’

‘Why would a man in his sixties want to be with a girl as young as Rosalie is supposed to be? I don’t get that. It seems … I don’t know … grotesque.’

‘Insecurity? Or maybe trying to connect with the vitality he’s lost? Reaching back to his own youth and trying to connect with it?’

Alice considered these ideas, but only briefly. ‘Sounds like bullshit to me.’

It did to me too, actually.

‘I mean, think about it. What would Klerke talk about to a sixteen-year-old girl? Politics? World events? His TV stations? And what would she talk about to him? Cheerleading and her Facebook friends?’

‘I don’t think he’s looking for a long-term relationship. The deal was eight thousand for one hour.’

‘So it’s fucking for the sake of fucking. Taking for the sake of taking. That seems so hollow to me. So empty. And that little girl in Mexico …’

She fell silent and watched Iowa roll by. Then she said something, but so low I couldn’t make it out.

‘What?’

‘Monster.’ She was still looking out at the miles of dead corn. ‘I said monster.’

*

We spent Halloween night in South Bend, Indiana, and the first of November in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. As we checked in, my phone binged with a text from Giorgio.

GRusso: Petersen, RK’s assistant, wants a picture of Darren Byrne’s cousin, for identification purposes. Send it to judyb14455@aol.com. She will pass it on at no charge. She’d be happy if RK ran into some bad luck.

Petersen wanting a photo was worrisome but not surprising. He was Klerke’s on-site security as well as his assistant, after all.

Alice told me not to worry. She said she would cut and re-style the black wig I’d worn to Promontory Point. (‘Sometimes it’s good to have a sister who’s a hairdresser,’ she said.) We went to Walmart. Alice found a pair of aviator-style glasses and some cold cream that she said would give me an Irish pallor. Also a small clip-on gold earring, not too ostentatious, for my left ear. Back in the motel she combed the black wig back from my forehead and told me to prop the aviators on it.

‘Like you think you’re a movie star,’ she said. ‘Put on the shirt with the high collar. And remember that as far as Klerke and this guy Petersen know, Billy Summers is dead.’

She took the picture against a neutral background (the brick wall of the Best Western where we were staying) and we examined it together, and closely.

‘Is it good enough?’ Alice asked. ‘I mean, you don’t look like you to me, especially with that snarky grin, but I wish we had Bucky to help us.’

‘I think it is. As you said, it helps that they think I’m buried in the Pauite Foothills.’

‘This is quite a little conspiracy we’ve got going,’ Alice said as we went back inside. ‘Bucky, your make-believe literary agent, and now some big shot Vegas madam.’

‘Don’t forget Nick,’ I said.

She stopped halfway down the corridor to our rooms, frowning. ‘If any of them called Klerke and told him what’s going on, it would probably be a nice payday for them. Not Majarian or Mr Piglielli, and Bucky wouldn’t ever, but what about the Blatner woman?’

‘She won’t, either,’ I said. ‘Basically, they’ve all had enough of him.’

‘You hope.’

‘I know,’ I said, and hoped I did. In any case I was going in, and it looked more and more like Alice would be going in with me.

*

We stayed in New Jersey on the night of November 2. The following night we checked into the Riverhead Hyatt, fifty miles from Montauk Point. Giorgio had indeed made reservations from his fat farm prison in South America. Because he knew I had no Steven Byrne ID, I was reserved under the Dalton Smith name. And because this place was quite a bit more fancy-shmancy than the motels where we’d previously stayed, Alice had to show her new Elizabeth Anderson ID. Giorgio, maybe thinner but as sharp as ever, had also reserved a double room, prepaid, for Steven Byrne and Rosalie Forester. Klerke wouldn’t check, such chores were beneath him, but Petersen might. If the clerk told Petersen that Byrne and Forester hadn’t checked in yet, Petersen wouldn’t be too concerned. Pimps weren’t known for keeping regular schedules.

Before leaving the desk, I asked if there was a package for me. Turned out there was, from Fun & Games Novelties in Las Vegas. A nonexistent company, no doubt. Giorgio had ordered it at my request. I opened it in my room with Alice looking on. Inside was a small unmarked aerosol cannister about the size of a roll-on deodorant tube. No oven spray this time.

‘What is it?’

‘Carfentanil. In 2002, the Russians pumped a version of this into a theater where forty or fifty Chechen rebels were holding seven hundred people hostage. The idea was to put everyone to sleep and end the siege. It worked, but the gas was too strong. A hundred of the hostages didn’t just go to sleep, they died. I doubt if Putin gave a shit. This stuff is supposedly half-strength. It’s Klerke we’re after. I don’t want to kill Petersen if I don’t have to.’

‘What if it doesn’t work?’

‘Then I’ll do whatever I need to.’

‘We,’ Alice said.

*

November 4 was a long day. Days of waiting always are. Alice brought out her tank suit and swam in the pool. Later on we took a walk and ate a pickup lunch at a hotdog wagon. Alice said she wanted a nap. I tried to take one and couldn’t. Later, while she was re-styling the wig again to match the photo, she admitted she hadn’t been able to, either.

‘And I didn’t sleep much last night. I’ll sleep when this is over. Then I’ll sleep a lot.’

‘Fuck it,’ I said. ‘Stay here. Let me do this.’

Alice cracked a small smile. ‘And what would you say to Petersen when you showed up without the eight-thousand-dollar girl?’

‘I’ll think of something.’

‘You might not even get in. If you did, you’d have to kill Petersen. You don’t want to do that, and I don’t want you to do it. I’m going.’

So that was that.

*

We left at six. Alice had a picture of the estate from Google Earth and directions on how to get there on the GPS. This late in the season the traffic was light. I asked her if she wanted to stop at one of the fast food places on the outskirts of Riverhead and she gave a brittle laugh. ‘If I ate anything, I’d throw up all over my nice new dress.’

It was the boatneck, purple with tiny white flowers. She was wearing her new parka but not zipped, so the place where her cleavage began would show. There wasn’t much else up front because she was wearing a mid-length binder underneath instead of a bra. Her handbag was on her lap. The Sig was inside. I was wearing my new bomber jacket. The Glock was in one of the inside pockets. The aerosol can was in the other.

‘Montauk Highway makes a loop,’ she said. I knew that, I’d studied the layout on my laptop that afternoon when I couldn’t nap, but I let her talk. She was working on her nerves, trying to sand them down. ‘You go past the Lighthouse Museum and take your first left. Eos isn’t a seafront estate, he traded that for the view, I guess. I doubt if he water-skis or bodysurfs at his age, anyway. Are you scared?’

‘No.’ Not for myself, at least.

‘Then I’ll be scared for both of us. If you don’t mind.’ She consulted the map on her phone again. ‘It looks like number 775 is about a mile in, right after the Montauk Farm Store. That must be handy. For fresh veggies and all. You look good, Billy, Irish as all getout, and can you stop somewhere? I have to pee so bad.’

I stopped at a place called the BreezeWay Diner, about halfway between Riverhead and Montauk. Alice dashed inside and I thought about driving on without her. Everything Bucky had told me not to do with her – to her – I was doing. Soon she would be an accessory to the murder of a rich and famous man, and that would only be if things went right. If they didn’t, she might wind up dead. But I stayed. Because I needed her to get in, yes, but also because she had a right to decide.

She came out smiling. ‘That is so much better.’ And as I pulled back onto the highway: ‘I thought you might leave me.’

‘Never crossed my mind,’ I said. From the look she gave me I thought she knew better.

She straightened in her seat and tugged the hem of her dress to her knees. She looked like a prim and proper high school girl, the kind they don’t seem to make anymore. ‘Let’s do this.’

*

We passed the Lighthouse Museum and the left turn came up less than a hundred yards further on. It was full dark now. Somewhere off to the right was the sound of the ocean. A crescent moon flicked through the trees. Alice leaned over, fussed briefly with my wig, then sat back. We didn’t talk.

The numbers on Montauk Highway started at 600, for reasons probably only known to town planners who had long since gone to their final rewards. I was surprised that the houses, although well-kept, were mundane. Most were ranches and Cape Cods that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Evergreen Street. There was even a trailer park. A nice one with carriage lamps and gravel lanes, granted, but a trailer park is a trailer park.

The Montauk Farm Store, really just a jumped-up produce stand, was dark and shuttered. There were a few lonely pumpkins in a pyramid by the door and a few more in the back of an old stakebed truck with 4-SALE soaped on one side of the windshield and RUNS GOOD on the other.

Alice pointed at a mailbox beyond the store. ‘That’s it.’

I slowed. ‘Last chance. Are you sure? If you’re not we can turn around.’

‘I’m sure.’ She was sitting ramrod straight, knees together and hands clasped on the strap of her purse. Eyes straight ahead.

I turned onto a piece-of-shit dirt track marked with a sign reading PRIVATE WAY. It became clear almost at once that the dirt track was camouflage to deke curious tourists. Over the first hill it became a tar road wide enough for cars to pass each other comfortably. I crept along using my high beams, thinking that this was my second trip to the estate of a bad man. I hoped this one would be quicker and more efficient.

We rounded a curve. Ahead of us, a slatted wooden gate six or seven feet high blocked the road. There was a talk-box on a concrete pillar, lit by a metal-shaded light. I pulled up to it, rolled down my window, and thumbed the button. ‘Hello?’

I thought (Alice and Bucky concurred) that trying for an Irish lilt might be disastrous. And there was no reason why Byrne had to have one, not if he’d lived his whole life in New York.

Meanwhile, the box on the post wasn’t talking back to me.

‘Hello? This is Steve Byrne. Darren’s cousin, yo? I got something for Mr K.’

More silence, giving me – Alice too, from the look of her – reason to think something had gone wrong and we weren’t going to get in. Not this way, anyhow.

Then the box crackled and a man said, ‘Get out of the car.’ Flat and toneless. It could have been a cop’s voice. ‘You and the young lady both. You’ll see an X in front of the gate, right in the middle. Stand there and look to your left. Stand close together.’

I looked at Alice and she looked at me, wide-eyed. I shrugged and nodded. We got out and walked to the gate. The X, maybe once blue but now faded to gray, was on a concrete square. We crowded together on it and looked left.

‘Up. Look up.’

We looked up. It was a camera, of course.

I could hear a faint voice murmur something, then whoever was holding down the intercom button in the house – Petersen, I assumed – let go and there was only silence. No wind, and too late in the year for crickets.

‘What’s happening?’ Alice asked.

I didn’t know, but thought it probable they were listening, so I told her to shut up and wait. Her eyes widened, but then she got it and said, ‘Okay, sir’ in a meek little voice.

The intercom clicked and the voice said, ‘I see a bulge on the left side of your jacket, Mr Byrne. Are you armed?’

That was one hell of a good camera. I could say no and the barrier would no doubt stay closed, no matter how much Klerke wanted the girl. ‘Yeah, I’m carrying,’ I said. ‘For protection only.’

‘Take it out and hold it up.’

I took out the Glock and held it up to the camera.

‘Put it at the base of the intercom post. You won’t need protection here and no one will steal it. You can pick it up on your way out.’

I did as I was told. The aerosol can was much smaller, so there was no bulge on that side of the jacket, and if I could immobilize the man who belonged to the intercom voice, Klerke would be no problem. Or so I hoped.

I started back to the concrete square, but the voice from the intercom stopped me. ‘No, Mr Byrne. Stay where you are, please.’ There was a pause and then the voice said, ‘Actually I want you to take two steps back. Please.’

I took two steps back toward the car.

‘Now one more,’ the voice said, and I understood. They wanted me off-camera. Klerke wanted to size up the merchandise and decide if he really wanted to buy, or to send us on our way. There was a faint whine from the camera. I looked and saw the lens was now protruding. Zooming the image.

I thought the voice would next ask Alice to show the camera what was in her purse, and the Sig would end up at the base of the intercom post along with the Glock, but that wasn’t it.

‘Lift your skirt, young lady.’

Petersen’s voice, but it would be Klerke looking. Avid eyes in wrinkled sockets.

Staring at the ground instead of at the camera, Alice lifted her skirt to her thighs. The bruises there were long gone. Her legs were smooth. Young. I hated the voice. I hated both of them.

‘Higher, please.’

For a moment I didn’t think she was going to do it. Then she lifted her skirt to her waist, still not looking up. There was no doubt about her humiliation and I had no doubt Klerke was getting off on it.

‘Now look up at the camera.’

She did it.

‘Keep holding up your skirt. Mr Klerke would like you to run your tongue around your lips.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s enough.’

Alice dropped her skirt and gave me a look that asked what the hell I was doing.

I stepped back into camera range and looked up. ‘You seen enough, okay? Anything else is for inside. It’s fuckin cold out here.’ I thought about throwing in another yo, decided not to. ‘And I want the money in my hand before she steps through the door. Once she does, the clock is running. You got it?’

There was silence for maybe thirty seconds. I was getting that hinky feeling again. ‘Come on,’ I said, taking her arm. ‘Fuck this shit, we’re taillights.’

But then the gate started to roll open on little rubber wheels. The voice from the intercom said, ‘It’s eight-tenths of a mile, Mr Byrne. I will have your money.’

Alice got in on her side and I got in on mine. She was shaking.

I rolled up the window before telling her, just above a whisper, that I was sorry about that.

‘I don’t care if they saw my underpants, I just thought they were going to make me open my purse and he’d see the gun on his damn camera.’

‘You’re a kid,’ I said. I looked in the rearview and saw the gate trundling closed behind us. ‘I don’t think the idea that you were carrying ever crossed his mind.’

‘Then I thought he wouldn’t let us in at all. I thought that man would say “You’re no sixteen-year-old, get out of here and stop wasting our time.”’

Now there were old-fashioned lamps lining both sides of the road. Ahead I could see the lights of the house the old man had named Eos, after the rosy-fingered goddess of the dawn.

‘You better give me the gun,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘I want it. You’ve still got the spray.’

There was no time to argue about it. The house – the manor – was in sight. It was a rambling stone structure on at least two acres of lawn. A rich man’s playpen for sure, but with a grace none of the places Nick liked could match. There was a turnaround in front. I pulled up at stone steps leading to a circular entry. Alice reached for the doorhandle.

‘Don’t. Let me come around and open it for you, like a real gent.’

I went around the hood of the Mitsubishi, opened the door, and took her hand. It was very cold. Her eyes were wide and her lips were pressed together.

I murmured in her ear as I helped her out. ‘Walk behind me and stop at the foot of those steps. This is going to happen fast.’

‘I’m pretty scared.’

‘Don’t be afraid to show it. He’ll probably like that.’

We walked to the steps. There were four. She stopped at the bottom. The outside light came on and I could see her shadow jump long, hands still clasping her purse. Holding it in front of her as if it could shield her from what was going to happen in the next three hundred seconds or so. The big front door opened, casting an oblong of inside light around me. The man standing there was tall and well-built. With the light behind him I couldn’t judge his age or even make out his face, but I could see the holster on his hip. A small holster for a small gun.

‘What’s she doing down there?’ Petersen said. ‘Tell her to come up.’

‘Money first,’ I said. And over my shoulder, ‘Stay put, girl.’

Petersen reached into his front pocket – the one on the other side from the holster, which was undoubtedly lined with plastic for a fast, smooth draw should it be needed – and drew out a wad of bills. He handed it to me and said, ‘You don’t sound like a mick.’

I laughed and started to thumb through the bills. They were all hundreds. ‘Man, after forty years in Queens I hope not. Where’s the big man?’

‘None of your business. Send the girl up, park over there by the garage, and stay in the car.’

‘Yeah, sure, but now you made me lose my fuckin count.’

I started again. Behind me, Alice said, ‘Billy? I’m getting cold.’

Petersen stiffened slightly. ‘Billy? Why does she call you Billy?’

I laughed. ‘Ah, man, she does that all the time. It’s her boyfriend’s name.’ I gave him a grin. ‘He don’t know she’s here, get it?’

Petersen said nothing. He didn’t look convinced. His hand crept down toward the quick-draw holster.

‘This is good, man, pot’s right,’ I said.

I shoved the money into the pocket of the bomber jacket and brought out the aerosol. Maybe he saw it and maybe he didn’t, but he started to draw the little gun anyway. I made a fist with my free hand and brought it down on his, like a kid playing rock breaks scissors. Then I sprayed him. A white cloud of droplets hit him in the face. It was small, but the result was satisfactory. He rocked back and forth twice, then dropped. The gun fell on the stoop and went off with a report like a small firecracker. They are not supposed to do that, so he must have messed with it somehow. I felt the bullet go past my ankle and turned to make sure it hadn’t hit Alice.

She came running up the steps looking dismayed. ‘Sorry, sorry, that was stupid, I forgot who—’

From inside the house a cracked smoker’s voice shouted, ‘Bill? Bill!’

I almost answered, then remembered that the man lying in the foyer was also a Billy. It’s a common enough name.

‘What was that?’ A loose, phlegmy cough, followed by a throat-clearing sound. ‘Where’s the girl?’

A door opened halfway down the hall. Klerke came through it. He was dressed in blue silk pajamas. His white hair was combed back in a pompadour that made me think of Frank. He had a cane in one hand. ‘Bill, where’s the gir—’

He stopped and squinted at us. He looked down and saw his man sprawled on the floor. Then he turned and hobbled for the door he’d come through, hunched over his thumping cane, holding it in both hands, almost pole-vaulting on it. He was faster than I would have expected, given his age and condition. I ran after him, remembering to hold my breath as I went through the foyer, and caught him trying to shut the door. I shoved it against him and he fell over. His cane went flying.

He sat up and stared at me. We were in a living room. The rug he had sprawled on looked expensive. Maybe Turkish, maybe an Aubusson. There were paintings on the walls that looked equally expensive. The furniture was heavy, upholstered in velvet. There was a chrome stand holding a bottle of no doubt expensive Champagne on a bed of ice.

He started to back away from me on his bottom, groping for his cane. His careful comb-job was coming apart, hair falling in clumps around the wrinkled sag-bag of his face. His lower lip, shiny with spit, stuck out in a kind of a pout. I could smell his cologne.

‘What did you do to Bill? Did you shoot him? Was that a gunshot?’

He got hold of the cane and brandished it at me as he sat there with his legs splayed. His pajama pants were working down, exposing padded hips and graying pubic hair.

‘I want you out of here! Who are you, anyway?’

‘I’m the man who killed the man who killed your son,’ I said.

His eyes widened and he slashed the cane at me. I grabbed it, yanked it out of his hand, and threw it across the room.

‘You had someone set that fire in Cody. Arranged for your camera crew to be the only one at the courthouse when the deal went down. Didn’t you?’

He stared at me, upper lip rising and falling. Doing that made him look like an old dog with a bad temper. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I think you do. That diversion wasn’t for me, it was way too soon. So why?’

Klerke got on his knees and crawled toward the sofa, giving me a much better view of his ass-crack than I wanted. He pulled ineffectually at the waistband of his pants. I could almost feel sorry for him. Except I didn’t. Mr Klerke would like to see your underwear. Mr Klerke would like you to run your tongue around your lips.

‘Why?’ As if I didn’t know. ‘You need to answer me.’

He grabbed the arm of the sofa and pulled himself up. He was gasping for breath. I could see the flesh-colored button of a hearing aid in one ear. He sat down with a thump and a gasp.

‘All right. Allen tried to blackmail me and I wanted to watch him die.’

Of course you did, I thought. And I bet you watched it over and over, both at regular speed and in slow motion.

‘You’re Summers. Majarian told me you were dead.’ And then, with absurd and horrifying outrage: ‘I paid that kike millions of dollars! He robbed me!’

‘You should have asked for a picture. Why didn’t you?’

He didn’t reply and I didn’t need him to. He had been emperor so long he couldn’t conceive of not being obeyed. Film the execution. Kill the executioner. Lift your skirt and show me your panties. This time I want a really young one.

‘I owe you money. Is that what you’re here for?’

‘Tell me something else. Tell me how it was, putting out a hit on your own flesh and blood.’

The lip lifted again, showing teeth too perfect for the face they were in. ‘He deserved it. He wouldn’t stop. He was a …’ Klerke stopped, squinting past me. ‘Who’s that? Is it the girl I paid for?’

Alice came into the room and stood beside me. She was holding her bag in her left hand. The Sig was in her right. ‘You wanted to know what it was like, didn’t you?’

‘What? I don’t know what you’re—’

‘To rape a child. You wanted to know what it was like.’

‘You’re crazy! I don’t have any idea—’

‘It probably hurt. Like this.’ Alice shot him. I think she was aiming for his balls, but she hit him in the stomach instead.

Klerke screamed. It was a very loud scream. It banished the harpy who had taken over her head and pulled the trigger. She dropped her purse and put her hand over her mouth.

‘I’m hurt!’ Klerke shrieked. He was holding his stomach. Blood oozed through his fingers and into the lap of his silk pajamas. ‘Oh my God I’m HURRRT!’

Alice turned to me, eyes wide and wet, mouth open. She whispered something I didn’t quite hear because the gunshot from the Sig Sauer had been much louder than the one from Petersen’s little pistol. It might have been I didn’t know.

‘I need a doctor, it HURRRRRRTS!’

The blood was pouring out of him now. He was forcing it out with his screams. I took the gun from Alice’s limp hand, put the muzzle to his left temple, and pulled the trigger. He flopped back on the sofa, kicked once, and fell on the floor. His days of raping children and murdering sons and God knew what else were over.

‘It wasn’t me,’ Alice said. ‘Billy, it wasn’t me who pulled the trigger, I swear it wasn’t.’

Only it was. Something inside her had risen up, a stranger, and now she would have to live with its presence because that was her, too. She’d see it the next time she looked in the mirror.

‘Come on.’ I slipped the Sig in my belt and put the strap of her bag over her shoulder. ‘We need to go.’

‘I just … it was like I was outside myself, and …’

‘I know. We need to go, Alice.’

‘It was so loud. Wasn’t it loud?’

‘Yes, very loud. Come on.’

I led her back down the hall, only noticing now that it was lined with tapestries of knights and ladies fair and, for some fucked-up reason, windmills.

‘Is he dead, too?’ She was looking at Petersen.

I took a knee beside him but didn’t need to feel for his pulse. I could hear his breathing, good and steady. ‘He’s alive.’

‘Will he call the police?’

‘Eventually, but we’ll be long gone by the time he comes around, and he’s going to be fucked up for a long time after he does.’

‘Klerke deserved it,’ she said as we went down the steps. She swayed, maybe because she’d gotten a little of the gas, maybe because she was in shock, maybe both. I put an arm around her waist. She looked up at me. ‘Didn’t he?’

‘I think so, but I don’t really know anymore. What I know is men like him are above justice in most cases. Except the kind we gave him. For the girl in Mexico. And for the murder of his own son.’

‘But he was a bad man.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very bad.’

*

We got in the car and drove the rest of the way around the circle. I wondered if the monitor the two men had been watching had recorded us as well. If it did, it would only show a guy with black hair and a young girl who had lifted her skirt but only once or twice – and briefly – lifted her head. After she got rid of the blonde hair, she’d be next to impossible to identify. I was more concerned about the gate. If we needed a code to open it, we were in trouble. But when we pulled up close, the car broke an invisible beam and the gate trundled open. I stopped beyond it, put the car in park, and opened the door.

‘What are you stopping for?’

‘My gun. He made me leave it at the bottom of that post. It’s got my fingerprints on it.’

‘Oh my God, that’s right. I’m stupid.’

‘Not stupid, woozy. And in shock. It will wear off.’

She turned to me, now looking older than her years instead of younger. ‘Will it? Do you promise?’

‘It will and I do.’

I got out of the car and started around the hood. I was still in the glare thrown by the headlights, like an actor on a stage, when the woman came out of the trees ten feet from the gate. She was wearing camo pants and a camo jacket instead of a blue dress, it was a pistol instead of a trowel in her hand, she had no business being on this side of the continental United States or anywhere except at her damaged son’s bedside, but I knew who it was. There wasn’t even a second’s doubt. I raised the Sig, but she was faster.

‘You fucking fuck,’ Marge said, and fired. I fired a second later and her head snapped back. She went down with her sneakers sticking out into the road.

Alice was screaming and running to me. ‘Are you hurt? Billy, are you hurt?’

‘No. She missed me.’ Then I felt the pain start in my side. Not a clean miss after all.

‘Who was that?’

‘An angry woman named Marge.’

That struck me funny because it sounded like the title of the kind of film smart people go to see in the art cinemas. I laughed and that made my side hurt more.

‘Billy?’

‘She must have guessed where I was going. Or maybe Nick told her about Klerke, but I don’t think so. I think she was just good at keeping her ears peeled while she served lunch and dinner.’

‘The woman who was gardening when you drove up to the service gate?’

‘Yes. Her.’

‘Is she dead?’ Alice’s hands were at her mouth. ‘If she’s not, please don’t kill her the way you … the way …’

‘I’m not going to kill her if she’s still alive.’

I could say that because I knew she wasn’t. It was all in the way her head snapped back. I knelt beside her, but only briefly.

‘She’s gone.’ I winced when I stood up. I couldn’t help it.

‘You said she didn’t hit you!’

‘In the heat of the moment I didn’t think she did. It’s just a graze.’

‘I want to see!’

I did too, but not right then. ‘We have to get out of here before we do anything else. Five gunshots is four too many. Get my Glock from where I put it.’

While Alice did that, I took the gun Marge had used – a Smith & Wesson ACP – and replaced it with the Sig Sauer, after first wiping it clean on my shirt and then curling her dead fingers around it. I wiped the aerosol cannister, put her prints on it, and tucked it into one of her jacket pockets. When I got up the second time, the pain in my side was a little worse. Not terrible, but I could feel the seep of blood staining my high-class pimp’s shirt. Worn once and ruined, I thought. What a shame. Maybe I should have stuck with the green one.

I said, ‘This is done. Let’s get out of here.’

*

We drove back to Riverhead, stopping on the way for Band-Aids, a roll of gauze, tape, hydrogen peroxide, and Betadine ointment. Alice went into the Walgreens while I waited in the car. By the time we got to the hotel, my midsection and left arm had stiffened up considerably. Alice used her key to let us in the side door. In my room, she had to help me off with the bomber jacket. She looked at the hole in it, then at the left side of my shirt. ‘Oh my God.’

I told her it looked worse than it probably was. Most of the blood had dried.

She helped me with the shirt and invoked God again, but this time it was a bit muffled because her hand was over her mouth. ‘That’s not just a graze.’

True. The bullet had slashed through me just above the hipbone, parting the skin and the flesh. The wound was maybe half an inch deep. Fresh blood oozed and seeped.

‘In the bathroom,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want to leave a lot of blood around—’

‘It’s almost stopped.’

‘Bullshit! Every time you move it starts again. You need to get undressed and then stand in the tub while I dress the wound. Which I’ve never done before, if you want to know. Although my sister did it to me once when I crashed my bike into the Simeckis’ mailbox.’

We went into the bathroom and I sat on the toilet lid while she took off my shoes and socks. I stood up, provoking fresh seepage, and she unbuckled my pants. I wanted to take them off myself but she wouldn’t let me. She made me sit on the toilet again, then knelt and pulled them off by the legs.

‘Underwear, too. They’re soaked through on the left side.’

‘Alice—’

‘Don’t argue. You’ve seen me naked, right? Think of it as balancing the scales. Get in the tub.’

I stood up, dropped my shorts, and stepped into the tub. She kept a steadying hand on my elbow while I did it. There was blood down my left leg to the knee. I reached for the shower handle and she pushed my hand away. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Not tonight.’

She started the tub faucet, wetted a washcloth, and cleaned me up, avoiding the wound. Blood and small clots ran down the drain. ‘Dear God, she cut you wide open. Like with a knife.’

‘I saw worse in Iraq,’ I said, ‘and guys were back clearing blocks the next day.’

‘Is that really true?’

‘Well … two days. Maybe three.’

She wrung out the washcloth and tossed it into the plastic-lined wastebasket, then gave me another to wipe the sweat off my face. She took it and tossed it in with the other one. ‘Those go with us.’ She patted me dry with a hand towel, tossed that into the wastebasket, then helped me out of the tub. It was harder getting out than it had been getting in.

Alice walked with me to the bed, where I sat down – carefully, trying to stay straight from the waist up. She helped me on with my last pair of clean undershorts, then disinfected the wound, which hurt worse than the bullet had when it clipped through me. The Band-Aids were no good. The wound was too long and the edges had spread, creating a wedge-shaped divot in my side. She used the gauze and tape instead. At last she sat back on her heels. Her fingers were stained with my blood.

‘Try to lie still tonight,’ she said. ‘On your back. Don’t roll around and break it open and get blood on the sheets. Maybe you ought to lie on a towel.’

‘Probably a good idea.’

She went to get one, a bath towel this time. She also brought the plastic bag with the towel and washcloth in it. ‘I’ve got Tylenol in my purse. I’ll give you two and leave two for later, okay?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

She looked straight at me. ‘No thanks needed. I’d do anything for you, Billy.’

I wanted to tell her not to say that, but I didn’t. I said, ‘We need to get out of here in the morning. Early. It’s a long drive back to Sidewinder, and—’

‘Just shy of two thousand miles,’ Alice said. ‘I googled it.’

‘—and I don’t know how much of the driving I can do.’

‘None would be good, at least to start with. Unless you want to open that wound up again. You need stitches, but I’m not trying that.’

‘I don’t expect you to. I can live with some scarring. A couple of inches farther in and I would have been in real trouble. Marge. Jesus. Fucking Marge. Don’t turn down the bedspread, Alice, I’ll sleep on top of it.’ If I could sleep, that was. The pain wasn’t terribly intense now that the sting of the hydrogen peroxide had worn off, but it was steady. ‘Just spread the towel.’

She did, then sat where I had been sitting. ‘Maybe I should stay. Sleep on the other side.’

I shook my head. ‘No. Bring me the Tylenol, then sleep in your own room. You’ll need to sleep if you’re going to be doing the driving.’ I glanced at my watch and saw it was quarter past eleven. ‘I’d like to be out of here by eight, at the latest.’

*

We were out by seven. Alice took the wheel as far as the New York metro area, then turned the driving chore over to me, with obvious relief. I got us across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. At the welcome area just over the state line, we changed places again. The wound in my side was seeping again, and before we stopped for the night – at another off-the-grid motel – we’d have to pick up more gauze. I was going to be okay, but I was going to have one hell of a battle scar to go with my half-missing big toe. And no Purple Heart this time.

That night we stayed at Jim and Melissa’s Roadside Cabins, 10% Discount For Cash. The following day I felt better, my side not so stiff and painful, and I was able to do some of the driving. We stopped on the outskirts of Davenport, at a ramshackle motel called the Bide-A-Wee.

I had spent most of that day thinking and deciding what came next. There was money in three separate accounts, one of them accessible only to me as Dalton Smith, an identity that was (by the grace of God) still clean. At least as far as I knew. There would be more in the Woodley account if Nick came through, and I thought he would. His Roger Klerke problem had been solved, after all, and to his great financial benefit.

Before she went into her room, I hugged Alice and kissed her on both cheeks.

She looked at me with dark blue eyes I’d come to love, just as I’d loved Shan Ackerman’s dark brown ones. ‘What was that for?’

‘I just felt like doing it.’

‘Okay.’ She stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the mouth, firm and long. ‘And I felt like doing that.’

I don’t know what my expression was, but it made her smile.

‘You’re not going to sleep with me, I understand that, but you need to understand that I’m not your daughter, and my feelings for you aren’t in the least bit daughterly.’

She started away. I wasn’t going to see her again, but there was one more thing I needed from her. ‘Hey Alice?’ And when she turned back: ‘How are you doing with it? With Klerke?’

She thought it over, running a hand through her hair as she did it. She was back to black. ‘I’m getting there,’ she said. ‘Trying.’ I decided that was good enough.

That night I set my phone alarm for one A.M., long after she would be asleep. When I got up, I checked the bandages. No blood and hardly any pain. Pain had been replaced by the deep dry itch of healing. There was no stationery in the Bide-A-Wee, of course, but I had a Staples pad from the Gerard Tower in my suitcase. I tore out a couple of pages and wrote my goodbye letter.

Dear Alice,

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. One of the reasons I wanted to stop here is because of the truck stop, Happy Jack’s, half a mile down the road. There I’m sure I can find a long-haul independent who’ll let me ride along with him for a hundred dollars. It’s got to be west or north, either of those will be okay, just not south or east. I’ve been there and done that.

I am not deserting you. Believe it.

I rescued you when those three bad and stupid men dumped you on the side of Pearson Street, didn’t I? Now I’m rescuing you again. Trying, at least. Bucky said something I haven’t forgotten. He told me you’d follow me as long as I let you, and if I let you, I’d ruin you. I know he was right about the following part after what we did at Klerke’s estate in Montauk Point. I think he was right about the ruining part, too, but I don’t believe it’s happened yet. When I asked you how you were doing with Klerke, you said you were trying. I know that you are, and I’m sure that in time you will succeed in putting that behind you. But I hope it won’t be too soon. Klerke screamed, didn’t he? He screamed that it hurt, and I hope those screams will haunt you long after you’ve gotten over my going. Maybe he deserved to be hurt after what he did to the girl in Mexico. And his son. And the other girls – them, too. But when you administer pain to someone, not little pain like the healing wound in my side but a killing shot, it leaves a scar. Not on the body but on the mind and spirit. It should, because it’s no little thing.

I need to leave you because I too am a bad man. This was knowledge I pushed away from my heart before, mostly with books, but I can’t push it away any longer and I will not risk infecting you more than I already have.

Go to Bucky, but don’t stay with Bucky. He cares for you, he will be kind to you, but he is also a bad man. He will help you start a new life as Elizabeth Anderson, if that is what you want. There is money in the account of a man named Edward Woodley, and if Nick comes through there will be more. There is also money in the Bank of Bimini, in the name of James Lincoln. Bucky has both passwords and all the account information. He will give you advice on how to manage the flow into your own account and put you in touch with a tax advisor. That part is very important, because money that can’t be accounted for is a trapdoor that can open under your feet when you least expect it. Some of the money is for Bucky. The rest is yours, for school and for a start in life as a fine independent woman. Which is what you are, Alice, and what you will be.

Stay in the mountains if you want to. Boulder is nice. So is Greeley and Fort Collins and Estes Park. Enjoy your life. At some point, perhaps when you are in your forties and I’m in my sixties, you may get a call from me. We can go out for a drink. Make that two drinks! You can toast Daphne and I’ll toast Walter.

I have come to love you, Alice. So very much. If you love me as you have said, then bring that love into the world as a real thing by living a fine and useful life.

Yours,

Billy

PS: I’m taking my laptop – it’s an old friend – but leaving the thumb drive with my story on it. It’s in my room, along with the keys to the SUV. The story ends when we left for Montauk Point, but perhaps you could finish it. Certainly you must be very familiar with my style by now! Do with it as you will, just leave the Dalton Smith name out of it. And yours.

I folded the note around the key to my room, printed her name on it, and pushed it under her door. Goodbye, Alice.

I slung my laptop over my right shoulder, picked up my suitcase in my right hand, and left by the side door. Half a mile down the road I stopped to rest, and to do one other thing. I opened the suitcase and took out the two guns – my Glock and the ACP Marge had shot me with. I unloaded them and threw them as far as I could. The bullets would go into one of the trashcans at the truck stop.

With that taken care of, I started walking toward the lights and the big trucks and the rest of my life. Maybe even toward some kind of atonement, if that’s not too much to ask for. Probably it is.