by Stephen King
This is as good a chance as any to try out his cover story. He takes his pad and pencil from the front pocket of his biballs and writes mi es sordo y mudo.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Billy touches his ears with both hands, then pats his mouth with the other.
“Forget it,” she says, turning away. “I ain’t sucking no wetback cock.”
Billy watches her go, delighted. No wetback cock, huh? he thinks. Doesn’t exactly make me John Howard Griffin, but I’ll take it.
2
He stays parked behind the doughnut shop until eleven. During that time he sees the black chick and a few of her co-workers chatting up truck drivers, but none of them come near him. Which is fine with Billy. Every now and then he gets out of the truck, pretending to check his goods, actually just wanting to stretch his legs and stay loose.
At quarter past eleven he starts up the truck (the starter doesn’t catch at first, giving him a scare) and continues north on 45. The Paiute Foothills draw closer. From five miles out he can see Promontory Point. It’s different from the house Nick rented in the city where Billy did his job, but every bit as ugly.
As his GPS is informing him that his turn onto Cherokee Drive is a mile ahead, Billy comes to another rest area, this one just a turnout. He parks in the shade and uses another Porta-John, thinking of Taco Bell’s dictum: Never neglect a chance to piss before a firefight.
When he comes out, he checks his watch. Twelve-thirty. In his big white hacienda, Nick is probably settling in to watch the pregame show with a couple of his hardballs. Maybe eating nachos and drinking Dos Equis. Billy punches up Siri, who tells him he’s forty minutes from his destination. He forces himself to wait a little longer and forces himself not to call Alice. Instead he gets out, grabs a crowbar from one of the dirty barrels, and punches a couple of holes in the Ram’s muffler, which is already distressed. If he comes up to the service entrance with his old truck farting and backing off, so much the more in character.
“Okay,” Billy says. He thinks of giving the Darkhorse chant and tells himself not to be ridiculous. Besides, the last time they all chanted that, their hands in the huddle, things didn’t work out so well. He turns the key. The starter spins and spins. When it starts to lag, he clicks it off, waits, gives the gas pedal a single pump, then tries again. The Dodge fires right up. It was loud before. It’s louder now.
Billy checks for traffic, merges onto 45, then turns off at Cherokee Drive. The grade grows steeper. For the first mile or so there are other, more modest houses on either side of the road, but then they’re gone and there’s only Promontory Point, looming ahead of him.
I was always coming here, Billy thinks, and tries to laugh at the thought, which is not just omenish but pretentious. The thought won’t go, and Billy understands that’s because it’s a true thought. He was always coming here. Yes.
3
The air is bell-clear outside the smog bowl of Las Vegas, and maybe even has a slight magnifying effect, because by the time Billy is closing in on the compound’s main gate the house looks like it’s rearing back so it won’t fall on him. The wall is too high to see over, but he knows there’s a lookout post just inside and if it’s manned, his old beater is probably already on video.
Cherokee Drive ends at Promontory Point. Before it does, a dirt track splits off to the left. There are two signs flanking this track. The one on the left says MAINTENANCE & DELIVERY. The other says AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY. ONLY is in red.
Billy turns onto the track, not neglecting to set his hat a little higher on his head. He also pats the front pocket of the overalls (silenced Ruger) and side pocket (Glock). Sighting the guns in would be a joke, handguns are really only good for close work, but he realizes he hasn’t test-fired either of them or examined the loads. It would be a fine joke on him if he had to use the Glock and it jammed. Or if the Ruger’s silencer, maybe made in the garage of some guy with a taste for meth, plugged the gun’s barrel and caused it to blow up in his hand. Too late to worry about any of that now.
The compound’s wall is on his right. On the left, piñons grow close enough for their branches to thwap the sides of his truck. Billy can imagine bigger vehicles—trash haulers, propane gas delivery, a septic pumper—waddling their way along, their drivers cursing a blue streak every time they have to make this trip.
Then the wall makes a right angle turn and the trees end. The 20-degree grade does, too. He’s now on a plateau, probably bulldozed flat especially for the house and grounds. The maintenance road loops out, then curves back toward the much humbler gate Billy is looking for. Beyond the wall he can see the upper fifteen feet or so of the barn, painted rustic red. The roof is metal, heliographing the sun. Billy keeps his eyes off it after one quick look, not wanting to compromise his vision.
The gate is open. There are flowerbeds on either side of it. There’s a security camera mounted on the wall, but it’s hanging down like a bird with a broken neck. Billy likes it. He thought Nick might be relaxing, letting down his guard a bit, and here’s proof.
In the flowerbed on the left, a Mexican woman in a big blue dress is down on her knees, digging in the dirt with a trowel. A wicker basket half-filled with cut flowers is nearby. Her yellow gloves might have been purchased in the same place Billy bought his. She’s wearing a straw sombrero so big it’s comical. Her back is to him at first, but when she hears the truck—how can she miss it?—she turns to look and Billy sees she’s not Mexican at all. Her skin is tanned and leathery, but she’s Anglo. An old lady Anglo, at that.
She gets to her feet and stands in front of the truck with her feet spread, blocking the way forward. She only moves to the driver’s side when Billy slows to a stop and powers down the window.
“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” And then, another good thing to go with the broken security camera: “Qué deseas?”
Billy holds up a finger—wait one—and takes the pad from the front pocket of his biballs. For a moment he blanks, but then it comes to him and he writes Estos son para el jardín. These are for the garden.
“Got it, but what are you doing here on Sunday? Talk to me, Pedro.”
He flips a page and writes mi es sordo y mudo. I am a deafmute.
“You are, huh? Do you understand English?” Moving her lips with exaggerated care.
Her eyes, dark blue in her narrow face, are studying him. Two things come to Billy. The first is that Nick may have let his guard down… but not all the way. The security camera is broken and his guys may be in the house watching the football game with him, but this woman is here with her trowel and her basket of blooms. Maybe that’s what his old friend Robin used to call a coinkydink, but maybe it’s not, because there’s a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper in the shade of a nearby tree. Which suggests she might be meaning to stay for awhile. Maybe until the game is over and she’s relieved.
That’s one thing. The other is she looks familiar. Goddamned if she doesn’t.
She reaches into the cab and snaps her fingers in front of his nose. They stink of cigarettes. “Lo entiendes?”
Billy holds his thumb and forefinger a smidgen apart to indicate that yes, he understands, but only a little.
“Bet if I asked to see your green card, you’d be shit out of luck.” She gives a laugh as raspy as her speaking voice. “So why you here on Sunday, mi amigo?”
Billy shrugs and then points at the barn looming over the wall.
“Yeah, I didn’t think you came for tea and cookies. What have you got to put in the barn? Show me.”
Billy likes this less and less. Partly because she could look in the truckbed herself and see the bags of gardening stuff, mostly because of that troubling sense that he’s seen her before. Which can’t be true. She’s too old to be one of Nick’s guard dogs, and he’d never hire a woman for that kind of job anyway. He’s old-school and she’s just old, a domestic they shoved out here to keep an eye on the service gate while they watc
h the game, and she decided to pass the time by cutting some flowers for the house. But he still doesn’t like it.
“Ándale, ándale!” More finger-snapping in front of his face. Billy doesn’t like that, either, although her assumption of superiority—her very Trumpian prejudice, if you like—is another sign that his disguise is working.
Billy gets out, leaving the door open, and walks her to the back of the truck. She ignores that and goes on to the little trailer. She looks in the barrels, gives a disdainful sniff, then comes back to look in the truckbed. “How come you’ve only got one bag of Black Kow? What good is that gonna do?”
Billy shrugs that he doesn’t understand.
The woman stands on tiptoes and slaps the bag. Her sombrero flops. “Only one! One! Solo uno!”
Billy shrugs that he’s only the delivery guy.
She sighs and flicks a hand at him. “Well, what the fuck. Go on. I’m not going to call Hector on Sunday afternoon and ask him why he sends a deafmute out to deliver a piddling load of shit, he’s probably watching the fucking game, too. Or a different one.”
Billy shrugs that he still doesn’t entender.
“Take that crap in. Tómalo! Then fuck off to the nearest cantina, maybe you’ll be in time for the second half.”
That is when he should have known. Something in her eyes. But he doesn’t. He only gets lucky. He sees her coming in the driver’s side mirror as he climbs into the cab and slides behind the wheel. He pulls back just in time, dipping his shoulder, and the trowel only scrapes his upper arm below the T-shirt he’s wearing under the overalls. He slams the door, catching her arm in it, and the trowel drops to the floorboards beside his left foot.
“Ow, fuck!”
She pulls her arm free so fast and hard that it flies up and knocks off the sombrero, revealing gray hair piled high and pinned that way. That’s when Billy understands where he’s seen her before.
She’s reaching into one of the big side pockets of her gardening dress. Billy gets out of the truck in a hurry and roundhouses her on the left side of her face. She goes sprawling on her back in the flowerbed. The thing she was reaching for falls out of her pocket. It’s a cell phone. It’s the first time in his life he’s hit a woman and when he sees the bruise rising on her cheek he thinks of Alice but doesn’t regret the blow. It could have been a gun.
And she recognized him. Not at first but yeah, she did. Covered it up well, too, until the end. So much for the biballs, tanning spray, wig, and cowboy hat. So much for Shan’s picture taped to the dashboard, the one he could write (with a fatherly smile of pride) was his daughter’s work. Was it because the woman has seen and studied his picture as well as meeting him once in Red Bluff? Or because she’s a woman and they tend to see past disguises quicker? That could be sexist bullshit, but Billy kind of doubts it.
“You fucking fuck. You’re him.”
He thinks, She seemed so nice at Nick’s rented house. Almost refined. Of course then she was in serving mode. He remembers now that Nick gave her a wad of cash for Alan, the chef who lit up their Baked Alaska, but none for her. Because she was on the payroll. She was, in fact, family. Pretty funny.
She looks dazed, but that could be another shuck and jive. Either way he’s glad the trowel is in the truck. He puts an arm around her shoulders and helps her sit. Her cheek is puffing up like a balloon, making him think of Alice again, but Alice never looked at him like this woman is looking at him now. If looks could kill, and all that.
With the hand not supporting her, Billy takes the Ruger out of his coat pocket and presses the muzzle lightly against her wrinkled forehead. Frank Macintosh is known (never to his face) as Frankie Elvis, sometimes Solar Elvis. Hair piled up high in front, like hers. Same hair, same narrow face, same widow’s peak. Billy thinks he might have made the connection sooner and saved himself a lot of trouble, if not for the oversized sombrero.
“Hello, Marge. You’re not as polite as you were when you were serving us our dinner that night.”
“You fucking traitor,” she says, and spits in his face.
Billy feels a well-nigh insurmountable urge to hit her again, but not because she spat on him. He arms it off his face, leaving her to support herself. She looks perfectly able to do so. She may be in her seventies and a lifelong smoker, but there’s no quit in her, Billy has to give her that much.
“You’ve got it backwards. Nick’s the fucking traitor. I did the job and instead of paying me he stiffed me and planned to kill me.”
“Nick would never do that. He stands up for his people.”
That might be true, Billy thinks, but I’m not one of them and never was. I’m your basic independent contractor.
“Let’s not argue, Marge. Time is tight.”
“I think you broke my fucking arm.”
“And you tried to open up my jugular vein. As far as I’m concerned that makes us even. How many men are in there watching the game?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Is Frank in there?”
She doesn’t reply, but the flicker he sees in those dark eyes tells him what he needs to know. He picks up her cell phone, knocks off the dirt, and holds it out to her. “Call him and tell him a guy from Greens & Gardens is dropping off some fertilizer and potting soil. Nothing to worry about. Say—”
“No.”
“Say you told the guy to go ahead and put it in the barn.”
“No.”
Billy has lowered the muzzle of the Ruger. Now he puts it back between her eyes. “Tell him, Marge.”
“No.”
“Tell him or I’ll blow your brains out, then Frank’s.”
She spits in his face again. At least tries to, there isn’t much to it. Because her mouth is dry, Billy thinks. She’s scared, but she’s still not going to do it. Even if she does, she’ll either tip them off by how she sounds or just go whole hog and scream It’s him, it’s that fucking fuck of a traitor Billy Summers.
Helpless not to think of Alice but reminding himself this isn’t her and never could be, he hits Marge in the temple. Her eyes roll up to whites and she flops back into the flowers. He stands over her for a minute to make sure she’s still breathing, then tosses her phone into the truck. He starts to get in himself, then re-thinks and dumps the cut flowers out of her basket. Under them is a walkie-talkie and a short-barreled .357 King Cobra revolver. So she wasn’t just gardening. And they didn’t just put her out here as an afterthought. This one’s got a lot of hard bark on her. He tosses the gun and the walkie in the truck.
The starter turns over without catching for ten long seconds and Billy thinks why now, oh Lord, why now. At last the engine fires up and he drives onto the estate. He stops ten feet inside the wall, leaving the truck in neutral, and closes the gate. There’s a huge steel bolt. He runs it through the double catch and heads back to the truck, which is bellowing through its perforated muffler. Doing that seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so much now.
As he climbs into the cab, Marge Macintosh starts pounding on the gate and shouting. “Hey! Hey! It’s Summers! It’s Summers in the truck!” Billy can’t believe anyone could hear her even if the Dodge’s muffler was intact, but he’s amazed by her vitality. He hit her as hard as he could and she’s already back for more.
Except you didn’t hit her as hard as you could, he thinks. You thought of Alice and held back a little.
Too late now and he doesn’t think it matters. She’d have to run all the way around the wall, shoving her way through the pines, to alert anyone in the little guardhouse by the main gate… assuming anyone is actually in there.
And of course there is. As Billy drives past the barn and the paddock, a guy comes out. He’s got a rifle or a shotgun but for the time being it’s slung over his shoulder. He looks relaxed. He raises his hands to his shoulders with the palms out: Qué pasa?
Instead of heading toward the house as he had intended, Billy reaches out the driver’s side window, gives the guy a thumbs-up, and turns down
the main driveway toward the guardhouse.
He pulls up. The guy walks toward him with the gun—it’s a Mossberg—still slung over his shoulder. Billy realizes he knows him. Billy has never been here, but he’s been in Nick’s penthouse suite at the Double Domino three or four times, and on a couple of them this guy was there. Sal something. But unlike Frank’s sharp-eyed mother, Sal doesn’t recognize him.
“What’s up, partner?” he says. “Old lady let you through?”
“She did.” Billy makes no attempt at a Spanish accent, he’d sound like Speedy fucking Gonzalez. “I got something for someone to sign. Can you do it?”
“I don’t know,” Sal says. He’s starting to look troubled. Billy thinks, Too late, amigo, too late. “Let’s see what you got.”
Billy’s deafmute pad is sticking up from the front pocket of his overalls. He pats it and says, “It’s right here.”
He reaches past the pad and grabs Don Jensen’s Ruger. For a wonder it comes out smoothly, even with the bulb-shaped silencer on the end. He fires. A hole appears between two of the pearl buttons up the front of Sal’s Western-style shirt. There’s a bursting balloon sound and wouldn’t you know it, the silencer falls in two smoking pieces, one half on the ground and the other in the cab.
“You shot me!” Sal says, staggering back a step. His eyes are wide.
Billy doesn’t want to shoot the guy again because the second one will be a lot noisier, and he doesn’t have to. Sal folds up, knees on the ground and head lowered. He looks like he’s praying. Then he falls forward.
Billy thinks about taking the Mossberg but decides to leave it. As he told Marge, time is tight.
4
He drives up to the main house. There are three cars parked on the apron, a sedan, a compact SUV, and a Lamborghini that must belong to Nick. Billy remembers Bucky saying Nick has a thing for cars. Billy turns off the noisy truck and walks up the main steps. He has his deafmute pad in one hand. He’s holding the Glock behind it. He just killed a man, and Sal was probably a bad guy who has done many bad things at Nick’s behest, but Billy doesn’t know that for a fact. Now he will kill more, assuming he doesn’t get killed himself. He’ll think about it later. If there is any later.
