The perky blonde weather girl gives a quick update, talking about how it’s going to be unusually cold for this time of year. She promises a more detailed forecast later, then turns it over to the perky blonde traffic reporter, who warns commuters to expect a slow ride this morning ‘because of a heightened police presence.’
That means roadblocks. The cops are assuming the shooter is still in the city, which is correct. They are also assuming that the fat man calling himself George Russo is also in the city. This, Billy knows, is incorrect. His former literary agent is in Nevada, possibly underground with his considerable bulk already beginning to decay.
After an ad for Chevy trucks, the anchors return with a retired police detective. He is asked to speculate on the possible reasons why Joel Allen was killed. The retired detective says, ‘There’s only one I can see. Someone wanted to shut him up before he could trade information for a reduced sentence.’
‘What kind of sentence reduction could he possibly expect?’ asks one of the anchors. She’s a perky brunette. How can they all be so perky so early? Is it drugs?
‘Life instead of the needle,’ the detective returns, not even having to pause for thought.
Billy is sure this is also correct. The only question is what Allen knew, and why the killing had to be so public. As a warning to others who might share Allen’s knowledge? Ordinarily Billy wouldn’t care. Ordinarily he’s just the mechanic. Only nothing about the situation in which he now finds himself is ordinary.
The anchors turn it over to a reporter who’s interviewing John Colton, one of the Young Lawyers, and Billy doesn’t want to see that. Just a week ago he and Johnny and Jim Albright were matching quarters to see who was going to pay for the tacos. They were on the plaza, laughing and having a good time. Now John looks stunned and woeful. He gets as far as ‘We all thought he was a really decent—’ before Billy kills the television.
He rinses out his cereal bowl, then checks the Dalton Smith phone. There’s a text from Bucky, just three words: No transfer yet. It’s what he expected, but that, added to the expression on Johnny Colton’s face, is no way to start his first day in – might as well call it what it is – captivity.
If there’s been no transfer yet, there probably isn’t going to be any transfer at all. He was paid five hundred thousand up front, and that’s a lot of cheese, but it’s not what he was promised. Up to this morning Billy has been too busy to be really mad about getting stiffed by someone he trusted, but now he’s not busy and he’s pissed like a bear. He did the job, and not just yesterday. He’s been doing this job for over three months, and at far greater personal cost than he ever would have believed. He was promised, and who breaks their promises?
‘Bad people, that’s who,’ Billy says.
He goes to the local newspaper. The headline is big – COURTHOUSE ASSASSINATION! – but it probably looks bigger and better in print than it does on his iPhone screen. The story tells him nothing he doesn’t already know, but the lead photo makes it clear why Sheriff Vickery wasn’t in attendance at Chief Conlee’s press conference. The pic shows that absurd Stetson hat lying on the steps, with no county sheriff to hold it up. Sheriff Vickery beat feet. Sheriff Vickery skedaddled. This picture is worth a thousand words. For him it wouldn’t have been a press conference, it would have been a walk of shame.
Good luck getting re-elected with that photo to explain, Billy thinks.
2
He goes upstairs to tend Daphne and Walter, then stops with the spray bottle in his hand, wondering if he’s crazy. He’s supposed to water them, not drown them. He checks the Jensens’ fridge and sees nothing he wants but there’s a package of English muffins on the counter with one left and he toasts it up, telling himself that if he doesn’t use it, it will just get moldy. There are regular windows up here and he sits in a bar of sun, munching his muffin and thinking about what he’s avoiding. Which is Benjy’s story, of course. It’s the only job he has to do now that he’s finished the one that brought him here. But it means writing about the Marines, and there’s so much, starting with the bus to Parris Island, basic … just so much.
Billy rinses off the plate he’s used, dries it, puts it back in the cupboard, and goes downstairs. He looks out the periscope window and sees the usual not much. The pants he wore yesterday are on the bedroom floor. He picks them up and feels in the pockets, almost hoping he’s lost the flash drive somewhere along the way, but it’s there with his keys, one of them to Dalton Smith’s leased Ford Fusion in the parking garage on the other side of town. Waiting until he feels it’s safe to leave. When the heat goes down, as they say in those movies about the last job that always goes wrong.