Billy Summers

by Stephen King

  Hoff returns, I’ll come by your house.

  No, no, and no. Hoff at his house? Next door to the Ackermans, with whose kids Billy plays Monopoly on the weekends? Hoff will bring the rifle wrapped in a blanket, of course he will, as if anyone with half a brain and a single eye wouldn’t know what was inside.

  No, he texts. Walmart. The Garden Center parking lot. 7:30 2nite.

  He waits, watching the dots as Hoff composes his reply. If he thinks the meeting place is negotiable, he’s in for a surprise. But when the response comes back, it’s brief: OK.

  Billy shuts down his laptop without even finishing the last sentence. He’s done for the day. Hoff poisoned the well, he thinks. Only he knows better. Hoff is just Hoff and can’t help himself. The real poison is the gun. This thing is getting close.

  5

  At 7:25 Billy parks his David Lockridge Toyota in the Garden Center section of Walmart’s giant parking lot. Five minutes later, at 7:30 on the dot, he gets a text.

  Can’t see you, too many cars, get out and give me a wave.

  Billy gets out and waves, as if spotting a friend. A vintage cherry-red Mustang convertible—a Ken Hoff car if ever there was one—drives down one of the lanes and pulls in next to Billy’s humbler vehicle. Hoff gets out. He looks better than the last time Billy saw him, and there’s no alcohol on his breath. Which is a good thing, considering his cargo. He’s wearing a polo shirt (with a logo on it, naturally), pressed chinos, and loafers. He’s got a fresh haircut. Yet the essential Ken Hoff is still there, Billy thinks. The man’s expensive cologne doesn’t mask the smell of anxiety. He’s not cut out for the heavy stuff, and bringing a gun to a hired killer is pretty damn heavy.

  The rifle isn’t wrapped in a blanket after all and Billy is willing to give him points for that. What Hoff hauls out of the Mustang’s trunk is a tartan golf bag with four club heads sticking out. They gleam in the day’s fading light.

  Billy takes the bag and puts it in his own trunk. “Anything else?”

  Hoff shuffles his tasseled loafers. Then he says, “Maybe, yeah. Can we talk for a minute?”

  Because it might be prudent to know what’s on Hoff’s mind, Billy opens the passenger door of the Toyota and gestures for Hoff to get in. Hoff does. Billy goes around and sits behind the wheel.

  “I just want to ask you to tell Nick that I’m okay. Can you do that?”

  “Okay about what?”

  “About everything. That.” He hoists a thumb behind him, meaning the golf bag in the trunk. “Just make sure he knows I’m a stand-up guy.”

  You’ve seen too many movies, Billy thinks.

  “Tell him it’s all good. Some of the people I owe money to are happy. Once you do your job, they’ll all be happy. Tell him we all part friends and everybody goes their way. If I’m ever asked, I know nothing about nothing. You’re just some writer I rented space to in one of my buildings.”

  No, Billy thinks, you didn’t rent space to me, you rented it to my agent, and George Russo is actually Giorgio Piglielli, aka Georgie Pigs, a known associate of Nikolai Majarian. You’re the link and you know it, which is why we’re having this conversation. You still think you can probably skate after the deal goes down. You have a right to think that, I guess, because skating is what you do. Trouble is, I don’t think you could skate far after ten hours in an interrogation room with cops tag-teaming you. Maybe not even five, if they dangled a deal in front of you. I think you’d crack like an egg.

  “Listen a minute.” Billy tries to sound kind, but hopefully in a straight-from-the-shoulder way: just two guys in a Toyota having a no-bullshit talk. Is it really the job of Billy Summers to keep this man-shaped annoyance in line? Wasn’t he just supposed to be the mechanic, the one who can disappear like Houdini after the deal is done? That was always the deal before, but for two million…

  Meanwhile, Hoff is looking at him eagerly. Needing that reassurance, that soothing syrup. It should have been George giving it, George is good at this stuff, but Georgie Pigs isn’t here.

  “I know this isn’t your usual thing—”

  “No! It’s not!”

  “—and I know you’re nervous, but this isn’t a movie star or a politician or the Pope of Rome we’re talking about. This is a bad guy.”

  Like you, Hoff’s face says, and why not? That Billy won a pink flamingo for a cute little girl with ribbons in her hair doesn’t matter. It’s not what they call an extenuating circumstance.

  Billy turns to face the other man squarely. “Ken, I need to ask you something. Don’t take it personally.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “You’re not wearing a wire or anything, are you?”

  Hoff’s shocked expression is all the answer Billy needs, and he cuts the man’s confused gabble of protests short.

  “Okay, fine, I believe you. I just had to ask. Now listen up. Nobody is going to set up a task force on this one. There’s not going to be a big investigation. They’ll ask you a few questions, they’ll look for my agent and find out he’s a ghost who fooled you with some good papers, and that will be it.” Balls it will. “Do you know what they’ll say? Not for the newspapers or TV, but among themselves?”

  Ken Hoff shakes his head. His eyes never leave Billy’s.

  “They’ll say it was a gang killing or a revenge thing and whoever did it saved the city the cost of a trial. They’ll look for me, they won’t find me, and the case will go in the open-unsolved file. They’ll say good riddance to bad rubbish. Got it?”

  “Well, when you put it that way…”

  “I do. I do put it that way. Now go home. Let me take care of the rest.”

  Ken Hoff suddenly moves toward him, and for a moment Billy thinks the man is going to slug him. Instead, Hoff gives him a hug. He looks better tonight, but his breath tells a different story. It doesn’t stink of booze, but it stinks.

  Billy suffers the hug, bad breath and all. He even hugs back a little. Then he tells Hoff to go on, for God’s sake. Hoff gets out of the car, which is a relief (a huge relief), but then leans back in. He’s smiling, and this smile looks real, as if it comes from the man inside. Apparently there is one.

  “I know something about you.”

  “What’s that, Ken?”

  “That text you sent me. You didn’t write garden center, small g and small c. You wrote capital G, capital C. And just now you didn’t say between themselves, you said among. You’re not as dumb as you like to make out, are you?”

  “I’m smart enough to know that you’ll be fine if you keep it simple. You have no idea where I got the rifle and no clue what I was planning to do with it. End of story.”

  “Okay. One other thing. A heads-up, like. You know Cody?”

  Sure he does. The town where they went to the little shitpot of a carnival. At first Billy thinks Hoff’s going to tell him that he was noticed there, because of his shooting. It’s a paranoid thought, but before a job paranoia is just the way to be.

  “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 k
now? 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.

  Nobody got in touch with Hoff. Somebody got in touch with Nick, and told him to bring Hoff on board. Billy remembers thinking, the first time he met with Hoff at the Sunspot Café, that Nick and Hoff must be affiliated. Now he’s one step from being positive that’s not true. Hoff wanted a casino license but didn’t get one. Would that have happened if he were tight with Nick, who knows how to finagle such things? A casino was a license to print money, after all, and Hoff needs money.

  Is the somebody behind this the same somebody who gave Hoff a heads-up about that putative warehouse fire in Cody? Maybe. Probably.

  And consider Joel Allen, now incarcerated in Los Angeles. He’s in protective custody, presumably as snug as a bug in a rug. He has a lawyer fighting extradition. Why, when Allen must know he’ll be shipped back here eventually? It’s not because the food is better in LA County. Is he buying time? Trying to make a deal with the somebody who set all this mishegas in motion, maybe using his lawyer as the go-between?

  The somebody must know Allen will be sent back here eventually, and when he gets here, Billy Summers will put him down before he can trade what he knows. The somebody must know there’s a risk Allen has an insurance policy—pictures, recordings, maybe a written confession to something (Billy can’t imagine what). Only the somebody must feel the risk has to be taken, and that it’s an acceptable one. The somebody could be right. Probably is. Guys like Allen don’t take out insurance policies; guys like Allen feel invulnerable. He may be good at the paid hits, but the crimes that have gotten him in his current barrel of shit were crimes of impulse.

  Besides, Mr. Somebody may feel he has no choice. Whatever the secret is, it’s bad. Allen can’t be allowed to find himself standing trial in a death penalty state. Not with something hot he can trade.

  Billy starts to drift into sleep. Before he goes under his last thought is of Monopoly, about how you try to stop the slide into bankruptcy by selling your properties one by one. It rarely works.

  7

  As he’s getting into his car the next morning, Corrie Ackerman cuts across her lawn and his. She’s got a brown bag, and something inside it smells delicious.

  “I made cranberry muffins. Shan and Derek both get hot lunch at school, but they like a little something extra. I had these two left over. They’re for you.”

  “That’s really nice,” he says, taking the bag. “Are you sure you don’t want to save at least one of them for Jamal when he comes home?”

  “I did put one by for him, but I want you to eat both of these, you hear?”

  “I think I can carry out that mission,” Billy says, smiling.

  “You’ve lost weight.” She pauses. “You’re okay, right?”

  Billy looks down at himself, surprised. Has he lost weight? It seems he has. A hole in his belt that used to go unused is now in service. Then he looks back at her. “I’m fine, Corrie.”

  “You look healthy enough, but that isn’t what I meant. Or not all I meant. Is your book going okay?”

  “Gangbusters.”

  “Then maybe you just need to eat more. Healthy stuff. Greens and yellow vegetables, not just take-out pizza and Taco Bell. In the long run, bachelor food is worse than booze. You come to dinner tonight. Six o’clock. I’m making shepherd’s pie. I load in the carrots and peas.”

  “That sounds good,” Billy says. “As long as I’m not putting you out.”

  “You’re not, and I need to say thank you. You have been very good to my kids. Shanice’s crush on you got even bigger when you won her that flamingo.” She lowers her voice, as if imparting a secret. “She changed its name from Frankie to Dave.”

  As he drives toward downtown, Billy thinks of Shan changing her flamingo’s name and feels happy because she did that and shame because the name is, after all, a lie.

  8

  That afternoon he leaves Gerard Tower and strolls a couple of blocks toward Pearson Street. He stops briefly to look into a narrow alley where there are a couple of dumpsters. He thinks it will do. He U-turns to the parking garage.

  Later, on his way back to Midwood, he stops at the Walmart. Since coming to Midwood, he’s always stopping here, it seems. As he stands in line at the checkout with his shopping basket, he thinks again about packing this job in. Just disappearing. Only Nick would come after him, and not just looki
ng for a refund of the considerable sum that’s already been paid on account. Billy is good at disappearing, but Nick wouldn’t stop hunting. He’d start by sending a hardball to question Bucky Hanson, and that questioning would be rough, because Nick would figure if anyone had a line on Billy Summers’s whereabouts, it would be his broker in New York. Bucky might end up without fingernails. He might end up dead. He deserves neither.

  Nick would also send guys, probably Frankie Elvis and Paul Logan, to the neighborhood. The Fazios and the Raglands would be questioned. So would Jamal and Corrie. Maybe the kids? That was unlikely, grown men talking to kids attracted unwanted attention, but just the thought of those two questioning Shan and Derek makes him queasy.

  There are two other things. He has never run out on a job, that’s number one. Joel Allen has it coming, that’s number two. He’s a bad person.

  “Sir? You’re next.”

  Billy comes back to the Walmart checkout lane. “Sorry, I was woolgathering.”

  “No worries, I do it all the time,” the checkout girl says.

  He empties his carry-basket. There are bright green golf head covers with things like POW! and WHAM! printed on them, a gun cleaning kit, a set of wooden kitchen spoons, a big red bow with HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it in glitter, a light jacket with the Rolling Stones logo on the back, and a child’s lunchbox. The checkout girl beeps the lunchbox last, then holds it up for a better look.

  “Sailor Moon! Some little girl is going to love this!”

  Shan Ackerman would love it, Billy thinks, but it’s not for her. In a better world it would be.

  9

  That night, after dinner with the Ackermans (Corrie’s shepherd’s pie is delicious), he goes down to his basement rumpus room and slides the gun out of the golf bag. It’s an M24, as specified, and it looks okay. He breaks it down, laying the pieces out on the Ping-Pong table, and cleans each one, over five dozen in all. He finds the telescopic sight in one of the golf bag’s two zipper pockets. In the other pocket is a magazine, which holds five rounds of ammunition: Sierra MatchKing Hollow Point Boat Tails.