The phone wants to know what language he prefers. Billy tells it English. It asks if he wants to join a wireless network. Billy says no. He plugs in the minutes he paid for, making the necessary call to FastPhone HQ to finish the transaction. His minutes are good for the next three months. Billy hopes by then he’s on a beach somewhere and the only phone in his possession is the one that goes with his Dalton Smith credit cards.
Home and dry. That would be nice.
He tosses the phone from hand to hand, thinking about the day Frank Macintosh and Paul Logan took him to the house in Midwood, a trip he now wishes he had never taken. Nick was there to greet him, but not outside. Billy thinks of his first visit to the rented McMansion, Nick once more there to greet him with open arms, but again not outside. Next he thinks of the night Nick told him about the flashpots and pitched his getaway plan – Just get in the back of the van, Billy, relax and take a ride to Wisconsin. There had been Champagne to start and Baked Alaska to finish. A service couple, probably local and maybe married, cooked the meal and served it. Those two had seen Nick, but as far as they knew, he was a businessman from New York who was down here to do some kind of deal. He gave the woman some money and they were on their way.
Back and forth goes the burner phone. Right hand to left, left hand to right.
I asked Nick if Hoff was going to plant the flashpots, Billy thinks, and what did he say? What did he call him? A grande figlio di puttana, wasn’t it? Which meant son of a bitch, or son of a whore, or maybe motherfucker. One of those, and the exact translation hardly mattered. What did matter was what Nick said next: I’d be sad if that was your opinion of me.
Because the grande figlio di puttana was the designated patsy. It was Hoff who owned the building the shot came from. Hoff who procured the gun and now the police had it and they’d already be trying to trace it back to the point of sale. And if they got there – make that when they got there – what would they find? Probably an alias if Hoff had any sense at all, but if the cops showed the seller Hoff’s picture, there goes your ballgame. Ken winds up in a hot little interrogation room, willing to make a deal, eager to make a deal, because he believes that’s what he does best.
Except Billy’s betting that Ken Hoff is never going to get to the little room. He’s never going to talk about Nikolai Majarian because he’s going to be dead.
Billy got that far weeks ago, but the six o’clock news has taken him to a conclusion he should have reached sooner, and might have if he’d spent a little less time playing Monopoly with the Evergreen Street kids and taking care of his lawn and eating Corinne’s cookies and schmoozing with his neighbors. Even now what he’s thinking seems impossible, but the logic is undeniable.
Ken Hoff and David Lockridge weren’t the only ones who were out front.
Were they?
7
Billy texts Giorgio Piglielli, aka Georgie Pigs, aka George Russo, the big literary agent. He uses an alias he knows Giorgio will recognize.
Trilby: Text me back.
He waits. There’s no response, and that’s fucked up because there are two things Giorgio always keeps close at hand: his phone and something to eat. Billy tries again.
Trilby: I need to talk to you right away. Billy considers, then adds: The contract specified payment on publication day, right?
No dots to say Giorgio is reading his texts or composing a reply. Nothing.
Trilby: Text me.
Nothing.
Billy flips the phone closed and puts it on the coffee table. The worst thing about Giorgio’s silence is that Billy’s not surprised. There really is a dumb self, it seems, and what it hasn’t realized until the job has been done and it’s too late to go back is that Giorgio has been out front right along with Ken Hoff. Giorgio was with Hoff when they entered the Gerard Tower to show Billy his writer’s studio on the fifth floor. And it wasn’t Giorgio’s first visit to the building, either. This is George Russo, you met him last week, Hoff had said to Irv Dean, the security guy.
Is Giorgio back in Nevada? And if so, is he chowing down and drinking milkshakes in Vegas or buried somewhere in the surrounding desert? God knows he wouldn’t be the first. Or the hundredth.
They’ll trace Giorgio back to Nick even if he’s dead, Billy thinks. The two of them have been a team since forever, Nick in charge and Georgie Pigs as his consigliere. Billy doesn’t know if that’s what they really call a guy like Georgie or just something the movies made up, but for sure that’s what the fat man has been to Nick: his go-to guy.
Only not since forever, because the first time Billy worked for Nick – it was the third time he assassinated a man for pay – was in 2008, and Giorgio wasn’t there. Nick handled that one by himself. He told Billy there was a rape-o working some of the smaller clubs and casinos on the edge of town. The rape-o liked older women, liked to hurt them, finally went overboard and killed one. Nick found out who he was and wanted a pro from out of town to take care of the guy. Billy, he’d said, had been recommended. Highly.