So, Billy thinks. Hoff is dead, Giorgio is almost certainly dead, and Nick’s alibied up the ying-yang. Which makes me the last melon in the patch, the last pea in the pod, the last chocolate in the box, pick your metaphor.
After an ad for some wonder pill with about two dozen possible side effects, some lethal, there are more interviews with his neighbors on Evergreen Street. Billy gets up to turn off the TV, then sits down again. He flew under false colors and hurt these people. Maybe he deserves to watch and listen as they express that hurt. And their bewilderment.
Jane Kellogg, the block’s resident alcoholic, doesn’t seem a bit bewildered. ‘I knew there was something wrong with him the first time I saw him,’ she says. ‘He had shifty eyes.’
Bullshit you did, Billy thinks.
Diane Fazio, Danny’s mom, shares how horrified she was when she found out they had allowed their children to spend time with a cold-blooded killer.
Paul Ragland marvels about how smooth he was, how natural. ‘I really thought Dave was the real deal. He seemed like a totally nice guy. It sort of proves that you can’t trust anybody.’
It’s Corinne Ackerman who says the one thing everyone else seems to have ignored. ‘Of course it’s terrible, but that man he shot wasn’t going to court for shoplifting, was he? From what I understand he was a stone killer. If you ask me, David saved the county the cost of a trial.’
God bless you, Corrie, Billy thinks, and actually finds his eyes are welling up, as if it’s the end of a Lifetime channel movie where everything comes out right. Always supposing your concept of right includes a dose of vigilante justice … and in cases like Joel Allen’s, Billy has no problem with that.
Before moving on to the traffic （still slow because of police checkpoints, sorry folks） and the weather （turning colder）， there’s a final item in the courthouse assassination story, and Billy has to smile. The reason Sheriff Vickery was initially cut out of the investigation isn’t because he skedaddled when his prisoner was shot, leaving only his ridiculous Stetson behind, or not just because of that. It’s because he brought his prisoner up the courthouse steps instead of through the employees’ door further down. There was initial suspicion that he might have been part of the plot. He has since convinced them otherwise, probably admitting that he wanted the press coverage.
And I could have made the shot either way, Billy thinks. Hell, I could have made it in the rain, unless it was a deluge out of Genesis.
He turns off the television and goes into the kitchen to inspect his stock of frozen dinners. He’s already thinking about what he’ll write tomorrow.
CHAPTER 13
1
Three days pass in a dream of Fallujah.
Billy writes about the Hot Nine: Taco Bell, George Dinnerstein and Albie Stark, Big Klew, Donk Cashman. He spends one morning writing about how Johnny Capps more or less adopted a bunch of Iraqi kids who came to beg candy and cigarettes and stayed to play baseball. Johnny and Pablo ‘Bigfoot’ Lopez taught them the game. One kid, Zamir, maybe nine or ten, used to chant – ‘He was safe, mothafuckah!’ over and over. Other than ‘Gedda hit’ it seemed to be the only English he had. Somebody would pop out to the shortstop and Zamir, sitting on the bench in his red pants and Snoop Dogg tee and Blue Jays cap, would scream, ‘He was safe, mothafuckah!’ Billy writes about how Clay Briggs, the corpsman they called Pillroller, kept up a lively and pornographic correspondence with five girls back in Sioux City. Tac said he couldn’t understand how such an ugly guy got so much pussy. Donk said it was fictional pussy and Albie Stark said, ‘He was safe, mothafuckah!’ which had nothing to do with the issue of Pill’s lively and pornographic correspondence, but which broke them up every time.
Billy exercises between stints at the laptop: pushups, situps, leg-lifts, squat thrusts. For the first two days he also runs in place, hands held out and down, smacking his palms with his knees. On the third day he suddenly remembers – duh! – that he has the house to himself, and instead of running in place he pelts up and down the stairs to the third floor until he’s out of breath and his pulse is racing along at a hundred and fifty per. He’s not exactly going stir-crazy, not after less than a week, but long spells of sitting and writing aren’t what he’s used to, and these bursts of exercise keep him from getting squirrelly.
Exercise also aids thinking, and on one of his sprints up the stairs Billy has an idea. He can’t believe he hasn’t thought of it before. Billy uses the Jensens’ key to let himself into their apartment. He checks Daphne and Walter （both doing well）， then goes into the bedroom. Don is a certain kind of guy, likes his football and NASCAR, likes his BBQ ribs and chicken, likes a few brewskis on Friday night with the boys. A man like that almost certainly has a gun or two.