‘Yes. It’s not far from where I’m living.’
‘Right. On the day this thing goes down, there’s going to be a diversion in Cody.’
The only diversion Billy knows about are the flashpots, one in the alley behind the Sunspot Café, the other someplace close to the courthouse. Cody is miles from the courthouse, and Nick never would have told this moke about the flashpots, anyway.
‘What kind of diversion?’
‘A fire. Maybe a warehouse, there are a lot of them out that way. It’ll happen before your guy … your target … gets to the courthouse. I don’t know how long before. I just thought you’d like to know, in case you get a bulletin on your phone or computer or whatever.’
‘Okay, thanks. And now it’s time for you to beat it.’
Hoff gives him a thumbs-up and returns to his rich-boy car. Billy waits until he’s gone and then heads back to Evergreen Street, driving carefully, aware that he’s carrying a high-powered rifle in the trunk.
A warehouse fire in Cody? Really? Does Nick know? Billy doesn’t think so, Nick would have told him about anything that might knock him off his rhythm. But Hoff knows. The question is whether or not he, Billy, tells Nick or Giorgio about this unexpected wrinkle. He thinks he’ll keep it to himself. Ponder it in his heart, like Mary pondering the birth of baby Jesus.
He told Hoff to keep it simple. Except how simple can you keep it when, after three or four hours in that little interrogation room, the cops start asking you how you paid off all the creditors who were baying at your heels? By then they’d be calling him Ken instead of Mr Hoff, because that’s what they do when they smell blood. Where did the money come from, Ken? Did a rich uncle die, Ken? There’s still time to get out from under this. Is there something you’d like to tell us, Ken? Ken?
Billy finds himself wondering about the golf bag and the clubs that are inside it along with the gun. Is it Hoff’s bag? If it is, has he thought to wipe the club heads, in case his fingerprints are on them? Better not to think about it. Hoff has made his bed.
But isn’t that also true of Billy? He keeps thinking about Nick’s escape plan. It’s too good to be true, which is why Billy decided not to use it, and without letting Nick know. Because, hey – if you’re going to get rid of the guy who brokered the deal and supplied the gun, why not get rid of the man who used the gun? Billy doesn’t want to believe that Nick would do that, but he recognizes one incontrovertible fact: not wanting to believe stuff is how Ken Hoff got into a situation he’s almost certainly never going to get out of.
And whose idea was a warehouse fire in Cody on the day of the assassination? Not Nick’s, not Hoff’s. So who?
It’s all worrisome, but as he pulls into his driveway, he sees one thing that’s good: his lawn looks terrific.
6
Through most of August Billy slept well. He drifted off to sleep thinking of nothing except what he would write the following day. There were only a few dreams of Fallujah and the houses with the green garbage bags fluttering from the palm trees in their courtyards. （How had they gotten up there? Why were they up there?） It was no longer his story, it was Benjy’s story now. Those two things had begun to drift apart, and that was all right. He had once watched an interview with Tim O’Brien on YouTube, O’Brien talking about The Things They Carried. He said fiction wasn’t the truth, it was the way to the truth, and Billy can now understand that. Especially when it came to writing about war, and wasn’t that what his story was mostly about? Kissing in that ruined Mercedes with Robin Maguire, aka Ronnie Givens, had only been a truce. Most of the rest was fighting.
Tonight, with summer past and autumn on the come, he lies awake, troubled. Not by the gun in the golf bag. He’s thinking about the job he’s agreed to do with the gun. As a rule he never goes further than the two basics: taking the shot and getting out of Dodge. This time it’s different, and not just because it’s the last time he plans to take a life for pay. It’s different because it has a smell, the way Hoff’s breath had a smell when he snared Billy in that clumsy and unexpected embrace.
Somebody got in touch with Hoff, he thinks, then realizes that’s not so. Nobody got in touch with Hoff, because Hoff is a nobody. He may think he’s a somebody, with his real estate developments and his movie theaters and his red Mustang convertible, but he’s just a big fish in a small pond, and not really that big, either. And this is a big deal. Lots of people are getting paid. Hoff himself, for one. Some of his debts are paid already, and he seems to think all of them will be cleared after Joel Allen goes down. Then there’s Nick, and the troops Nick has fielded for this op. They are not squad strength, but almost. And maybe it is a squad. There could be more Nick hasn’t told him about.