‘Something like that. Then Joey introduced me to Bucky, and Bucky introduced me to Nick, and that’s where we are.’
‘I’m guessing there’s quite a lot more to it.’
She’s guessing right, but Billy doesn’t want to say any more, let alone go into the details of the jobs he did for Nick and for others. He has never said any of this, not to anyone, and he’s appalled to hear that part of his life told out loud. It’s sordid and stupid. Alice Maxwell, business school student and rape survivor, is sitting in an old truck with a man who killed people for a living. It was his fucking job. And is he going to kill Nick Majarian? If he gets the chance, very likely. So, a question: is killing for honor better than killing for money? Probably not, but that won’t stop him.
Alice is silent for a bit, thinking it over. Then she says, ‘You told me that because you think you might never get a chance to write it down. Isn’t that right?’
It is, but he doesn’t want to say so out loud.
‘Billy?’
‘I told you because you wanted to know,’ he says finally, and turns on the radio.
5
They register at another off-brand motel. There are a lot of them in a rough ring around the outskirts of Vegas. While Billy registers them as Dalton Smith and Elizabeth Anderson, Alice plugs four dollars in one of the lobby slots. On the fifth, ten fake cartwheels drop into the trough with a clatter and she squeals like a kid. The desk clerk offers her a choice: ten bucks or motel credit in that amount.
‘How’s the restaurant here?’ Alice asks.
‘Buffet’s pretty good.’ Then he lowers his voice and says, ‘Take the money, honey.’
Alice takes the money and they get to-go at the Sirloin Super Burger down the road. She insists that it be her treat and Billy doesn’t argue.
Back in Billy’s room, she sits at the window and watches the endless traffic streaming toward downtown, and the lights of the hotels and casinos coming on. ‘Sin City,’ she marvels, ‘and here I am in a motel room with a good-looking guy who happens to be twice my age. My mother would just shit.’
Billy throws back his head and laughs. ‘And your sister?’
‘Wouldn’t believe it.’ She points. ‘Are those the Paiute Mountains?’
‘If that’s north, those are them. I think they’re actually called foothills. If it matters.’
She turns to him, no longer smiling. ‘Tell me what you’re going to do.’
He does, and not just because he needs her help with the prep. She listens carefully. ‘It sounds awfully dangerous.’
‘If it looks hinky, I’ll back off and reconsider.’
‘Will you know if it’s hinky? The way your friend Taco knew outside that house in Fallujah?’
‘You remember that, huh?’
‘Will you?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘But you’ll probably go in anyway. The way you went into the Funhouse and look what happened there.’
Billy says nothing. There’s nothing to say.
‘I wish I could go with you.’
He says nothing to that, either. Even if the idea didn’t fill him with horror, the plan wouldn’t work if she were with him and she knows it.
‘How badly do you need that money?’
‘I could get along without it, and most of it’s going to Bucky anyway. The money’s not the reason I’m going. Nick treated me badly. He needs to pay a price, just like the boys who raped you needed to pay a price.’
It’s Alice’s turn to be silent.
‘There’s something else. I don’t think it was Nick’s idea to kill me after the job was done, and I know it wasn’t his idea to put a six-million-dollar price on my head. I want to know who that person is.’
‘And why?’
‘Yes. That too.’
6
The first thing Billy does the next morning is to check the back of the old Dodge truck, because the tools were only tied down, not locked down. Everything is present and accounted for. He’s not surprised, partly because everything in the truckbed and trailer is old and pretty clapped-out, but also because his experience over the years has taught him that the great majority of people are honest. They don’t take what isn’t theirs. People who do – people like Tripp Donovan, Nick Majarian, and whoever is behind Nick – piss him off mightily.
He almost texts Bucky to ask if Bucky can find out what car Nick is currently driving – it would probably be in the VIP area of the Double Domino’s parking garage, undoubtedly something fancy with a vanity plate – then doesn’t do it. Bucky probably could find out, and it might raise a red flag. That’s the last thing Billy wants. He hopes that by now Nick has started to relax.