‘Billy!’ Nick exclaims, and kisses him on both cheeks. Big hearty smacks. He’s wearing a million-dollar grin. ‘Billy, Billy, man, it’s good to see you!’
‘Good to see you, too, Nick.’ He looks around. ‘You usually stay somewhere fancier than this.’ He pauses. ‘If you don’t mind me saying.’
Nick laughs. He has a beautiful infectious laugh to go with the grin. Macintosh joins in and Logan smiles. ‘I got a place over on the West Side. Short-term. House-sitting, you could call it. There’s a fountain in the front yard. Got a naked little kid in the middle of it, there’s a word for that …’
Cherub, Billy thinks but doesn’t say. He just keeps smiling.
‘Anyway, a little kid peeing water. You’ll see it, you’ll see it. No, this one isn’t mine, Billy. It’s yours. If you decide to take the job, that is.’
3
Nick shows him around. ‘Fully furnished,’ he says, like he’s selling it. Maybe he sort of is.
This one has a second floor where there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms, the second small, probably for the kids. On the first floor there’s a kitchen, a living room, and a dining room that’s so small it’s actually a dining nook. Most of the cellar has been converted into a long carpeted room with a big TV at one end and a Ping-Pong table at the other. Track lighting. Nick calls it the rumpus room, and this is where they sit.
Macintosh asks them if they’d like something to drink. He says there’s soda, beer, lemonade, and iced tea.
‘I want an Arnold Palmer,’ Nick says. ‘Half and half. Lots of ice.’
Billy says that sounds good. They make small talk until the drinks come. The weather, how hot it is down here in the border south. Nick wants to know how Billy’s trip in was. Billy says it was fine but doesn’t say where he flew in from and Nick doesn’t ask. Nick says how about that fuckin Trump and Billy says how about him. That’s about all they’ve got, but it’s okay because by then Macintosh is back with two tall glasses on a tray, and once he leaves, Nick gets down to business.
‘When I called your man Bucky, he tells me you’re hoping to retire.’
‘I’m thinking about it. Been at it a long time. Too long.’
‘Truth. How old are you, anyway?’
‘Forty-four.’
‘Been doing this ever since you took off the uniform?’
‘Pretty much.’ He’s pretty sure Nick knows all this.
‘How many in all?’
Billy shrugs. ‘I don’t exactly remember.’ It’s seventeen. Eighteen, counting the first one, the man with the cast on his arm.
‘Bucky says you might do one more if the price was right.’
He waits for Billy to ask. Billy doesn’t, so Nick resumes.
‘The price on this one is very right. You could do it and spend the rest of your life someplace warm. Drinking pi?a coladas in a hammock.’ He busts out the big grin again. ‘Two million. Five hundred thousand up front, the rest after.’
Billy’s whistle isn’t part of the act, which he doesn’t think of as an act but his dumb self, the one he shows to guys like Nick and Frank and Paulie. It’s like a seatbelt. You don’t use it because you expect to be in a crash, but you never know who you might meet coming over a hill on your side of the road. This is also true on the road of life, where people veer all over the place and drive the wrong way on the turnpike.
‘Why so much?’ The most he’s ever gotten on a contract was seventy K. ‘It’s not a politician, is it? Because I don’t do that.’
‘Not even close.’
‘Is it a bad person?’
Nick laughs, shakes his head, and looks at Billy with real affection. ‘Always the same question with you.’
Billy nods.
The dumb self might be a shuck, but this is true: he only does bad people. It’s how he sleeps at night. It goes without saying that he has made a living working for bad people, yes, but Billy doesn’t see this as a moral conundrum. He has no problem with bad people paying to have other bad people killed. He basically sees himself as a garbageman with a gun.
‘This is a very bad person.’
‘Okay …’
‘And it’s not my two mill. I’m just the middleman here, getting what you could call an agenting fee. Not a piece of yours, mine’s on the side.’ Nick leans forward, hands clasped between his thighs. His expression is earnest. His eyes are fixed on Billy’s. ‘The target is a pro shooter, like you. Only this guy, he never asks if it’s a bad person or a good person. He doesn’t make those distinctions. If the money’s right, he does the job. For now we’ll call him Joe. Six years ago, or maybe it was seven, it don’t matter, this guy Joe took out a fifteen-year-old kid on his way to school. Was the kid a bad person? No. In fact he was an honor student. But someone wanted to send the kid’s dad a message. The kid was the message. Joe was the messenger.’