Giorgio sits back. The chair is sturdy, but still gives out a little groan.
‘Now if you tell me that’s a bad idea, or even if you tell me it’s a good idea but you can’t sell it, we’ll call the whole thing off.’
Nick holds up a hand. ‘Before you say anything, Billy, I want to lay out something else that makes this good. Everybody on your floor will get acquainted with you, and a lot of other people in the building, too. I know you, and you’ve got another talent besides hitting a quarter at a quarter of a mile.’
Like I could do that, Billy thinks. Like even Chris Kyle could.
‘You get along with people without buddying up to them. They smile when they see you coming.’ And then, as if Billy had denied it: ‘I’ve seen it! Hoff tells me that a couple of food wagons stop at that building every day, and in nice weather people line up and sit outside on the benches to eat their lunches. You could be one of those people. The time waiting doesn’t have to be for nothing. You can use it to get accepted. Once the novelty of how you’re writing a book wears off, you’ll be just another nine-to-fiver who goes home to his little house in Midwood.’
Billy sees how that could happen.
‘So when it finally goes down, are you a stranger no one knows? The outsider who must have done it? Uh-uh, you’ve been there for months, you make chit-chat in the elevator, you play dollar poker with some of the collection agency guys from the second floor to see who buys the tacos.’
‘They are going to know where the shot came from,’ Billy says.
‘Sure, but not right away. Because at first everyone will be looking for that outsider. And because there’s going to be a diversion. Also because you’ve always been fucking Houdini when it comes to disappearing after the hit. By the time things start to settle, you’ll be long gone.’
‘What’s the diversion?’
‘We can talk about that later,’ Nick says, which makes Billy think Nick might not have made up his mind about that yet. Although with Nick, it’s hard to tell. ‘Plenty of time. For now …’ He turns to Giorgio, aka Georgie Pigs, aka George Russo. Over to you, the look says.
Giorgio reaches into the pocket of his gigantic suit jacket again and pulls out his phone. ‘Say the word, Billy – the word being the passcode of your favorite offshore bank – and I’ll send five hundred grand to it. It’ll take about forty seconds. Minute and a half if the connection’s slow. Also plenty of walking-around money in a local bank to get you started.’
Billy understands they’re trying to rush him into a decision and has a brief image of a cow being driven down a chute to the slaughterhouse, but maybe that’s just paranoia because of the enormous payday. Maybe a person’s last job shouldn’t just be the most lucrative; maybe it should also be the most interesting. But he would like to know one more thing.
‘Why is Hoff involved?’
‘His building,’ Nick says promptly.
‘Yeah, but …’ Billy frowns, putting an expression of great concentration on his face. ‘He said there’s lots of vacancies in that building.’
‘The corner spot on the fifth floor is prime, though,’ Nick says. ‘Your agent, Georgie here, had him lease it, which keeps us out of it.’
‘He also gets the gun,’ Giorgio says. ‘May have it already. In any case, it won’t be traced back to us.’
Billy knows that already, from the way Nick has been careful not to be seen with him – no, not even on the porch of this gated estate – but he’s not entirely satisfied. Because Hoff struck him as a chatterbox, and a chatterbox isn’t a good person to have around when you’re planning an assassination.
4
Later that night. Closing in on midnight. Billy lies on his hotel room bed, hands beneath the pillow, relishing the cool that’s so ephemeral. He said yes, of course, and when you say yes to Nick Majarian, there’s no going back. He is now starring in his own last job story.
He had Giorgio send the $500,000 to a bank in the Caribbean. There’s a good amount of money in that account right now, and after Joel Allen dies on those courthouse steps, there will be a good deal more. Enough to live on for a long, long time if he’s prudent. And he will be. He doesn’t have expensive tastes. Champagne and escort services have never been his thing. In two other banks – local ones – David Lockridge will have an additional $18,000 to draw on. It’s plenty of walking-around money, but not enough to twang any federal tripwires.