‘Have you seen Reggie and Dana around?’
‘Yes. Once in awhile.’ They drive a DPW panel truck. Once they were parked at the curb in front of the Gerard Tower, where the food trucks roost at lunchtime. They were fiddling with a manhole cover. Another time he saw them on Holland Street, kneeling down and shining their lights into a sewer grate. They were wearing gray coveralls, city gimme caps, work boots.
‘You’ll see them more. They look okay?’
Billy shrugs.
Nick returns it with an impatient look. ‘What does that mean?’
‘They looked okay.’
‘Not attracting any special attention?’
‘Not that I saw.’
‘Good. Good. The truck’s in the carriage house here. They don’t take it out every day, at least not yet, but I want people to get used to seeing them cruising around.’
‘Blending into the scenery,’ Billy says with his best dumb self smile.
Nick points a finger gun at him. It’s his trademark, Billy knows, probably picked it up from some Vegas lounge act, but Billy doesn’t care for having even a make-believe gun pointed at him. ‘Exactly right. Hoff deliver your weapon yet?’
‘No.’
‘You seen him?’
‘No, and don’t much want to.’
‘Okay.’ Nick sighs and runs a hand through his hair. ‘Probably you’d like to sight the gun in, right? Take a few shots out in the country?’
‘Maybe,’ Billy says, but he won’t risk shooting, even out in the toolies where every stop sign has been riddled with bullet holes. He can zero the rifle with an iPhone app and a laser gadget they sell on Amazon.
Nick leans forward, hands clasped in front of his considerable basket. He wears an expression of friendly concern. To Billy it makes him look like an imposter. ‘How are you doing out there in … what’s it called? Midwood?’
‘Midwood, yeah. Pretty good.’
‘Kind of a shithole, I know, but the payoff will be worth it.’
‘Yeah.’ Thinking it’s actually a pretty nice neighborhood.
‘Keeping a low profile?’
Billy nods. No need for Nick to know about the Monopoly games, or the get-together in his backyard, or the drink he had with Phil Stanhope. Now or ever.
‘Have you thought any more about the getaway plan I mentioned to you? Because, as you see, the boys will be ready when it’s time. Reggie’s no rocket scientist, but Dana is a thinking cat. And both of them can drive.’
‘I just run around the corner, right? And get in the back of the van.’
‘Right, and change into one of the coveralls like the ones the city employees wear. You guys ask the cops if you can help with crowd control or something.’ Like Billy has forgotten all this. ‘If they say yes – they probably won’t, but if they do – you pitch right in. Either way, you’ll be out of state and on your way to Wisconsin by nightfall. Maybe sooner. So what do you think?’
Billy pictures himself not on his way to Wisconsin but lying dead beside a county road in a ditch along with the beer cans and discarded Big Mac boxes. That picture is very clear.
He smiles – big smile – and says, ‘It sounds good. Better than anything I could have thought up.’
Which is bullshit, what he’s thought up seems strong to him no matter how much he turns it this way and that. There are risks, but they are minimal. Nick doesn’t need to know his actual getaway plan. He may be pissed off later, but really, how pissed can he be if the job gets done?
Nick rises to his feet. ‘Good. Glad to help you out, Billy. You’re a good man.’
No I’m not, and neither are you. ‘Thanks, Nick.’
‘Last job, huh? You really mean that?’
‘I do.’
‘Well come here, bambino, and give me a hug.’
Billy does.
It isn’t that he doesn’t trust Nick, he thinks on his way back to the yellow house. It’s just that he trusts himself more. Always has, always will.
4
A couple of days later there’s a knock on the door of his little office suite. Billy has been writing, lost in a past that’s partly Benjy Compson’s but mostly his. He saves his work, shuts down, and opens the door. It’s Ken Hoff. He looks like he’s lost ten pounds since Billy saw him in June. The scruff on his face is scruffier than ever. Maybe he still thinks it makes him look like the leading man in an action movie, but to Billy he looks like a guy one day off a five-day drunk. His breath doesn’t help. The mint he’s chewing can’t disguise the shot or two he had on his way here, at ten-forty in the morning. His tie is natty, but his shirt is wrinkled and a bit untucked on one side. This is trouble on two legs, Billy thinks.