by Stephen King
He puts his finger on the bell, then hesitates. Suppose a woman comes to the door? If that happens, Billy doesn’t think he’ll be able to shoot her. Even if everything turns to shit as a result, he doesn’t believe he’ll be able to. He’d like a chance to go around the house instead, scope it out a little, but there’s no time. Mommy Elvis is on the warpath.
He tries the door. It opens. Billy is surprised but not shocked. Nick has decided he’s not coming. Also it’s Sunday afternoon, the sun is out, and it’s football day in America. Billy believes the Giants have just scored. The crowd is whooping and so are several men. Not close but not far away.
Billy puts the pad back in the front pocket of the overalls and walks toward the sound. Then, just what he was afraid of. Down the main hall comes a pretty little Latina maid with a tray of steaming franks in buns balanced on top of an Igloo cooler that’s probably full of beer. Billy has time to think of an old Chuck Berry lyric, She’s too cute to be a minute over seventeen. She sees Billy, she sees the gun, her mouth opens, the Igloo tilts, the tray of franks starts to slide. Billy pushes it back to safety.
“Go,” he says, and points at the open door. “Take that and get out of here. Go far.”
She doesn’t say a word. Carrying the tray, she walks down the hall and out into the sunlight. Her posture, Billy thinks, is perfect and the sunlight on her black hair suggests that God may not be all bad. She goes down the steps, back straight and head up. She doesn’t look back. The crowd cheers. The men watching do, too. Someone shouts, “Fuck ’em up, Big Blue!”
Billy walks partway down the tiled corridor. Between two Georgia O’Keeffe prints—mesas on one side, mountains on the other—a door is standing open. Through the gap between the hinges, Billy can see stairs going down. There’s a commercial on for beer. Billy stands behind the open door, waiting for it to end, wanting their attention back on the game.
Then, Nick, from the foot of the stairs: “Maria! Where are those dogs?” When there’s no answer: “Maria! Hurry up!”
Someone says, “I’ll go see.” Billy isn’t sure, but it sounds like Frank.
Footsteps thumping up the stairs. Someone comes out into the hall and turns left, presumably toward the kitchen. It’s Frank, all right. Billy recognizes him even with his back turned: the pomp trying to cover the solar sex panel. Billy steps out from behind the door and follows him, walking on the sides of his feet, glad he wore sneakers. Frank goes into the kitchen and looks around.
“Maria? Where are you, honey? We need—”
Billy hits him in the bald spot with the butt of the Glock, raising it high and giving it everything he has. Blood flies and Frank collapses forward, smacking his forehead on the butcher block table in the middle of the room on his way down. His mother’s head was hard, and maybe Frank has inherited that from her along with the widow’s peak, but Billy doesn’t think he’s coming back from this. Not for awhile, anyway, and maybe never. Guys are always getting clonked on the head in films and getting up a few minutes later with little or no damage done, but that’s not the way it works in real life. Frank Macintosh could die of a cerebral edema or a subdural hematoma. It could happen five minutes from now or he could linger in a coma for five years. He might also come back sooner, but probably not before Billy finishes his day’s work. Still, he bends and frisks him. No gun.
Billy walks quietly back down the hall. The game must have resumed, because the crowd is roaring again. One of the men down there in Nick’s man-cave yells, “Fucking clothesline him! Yeah! That’s what I’m TALKIN’ about!”
Billy descends the stairs, not fast and not slow. Three men are watching a TV screen that’s beyond big. Two of them are in bucket chairs. A third bucket chair—probably Frank’s—is empty. Nick is sitting in the middle of the couch with his legs spread. He’s wearing shorts that are too short, too tight, and too loud. His belly is bulging out the front of a New York Giants shirt and supporting a bowl of popcorn. The other two also have popcorn bowls, which is good because it keeps their hands occupied. Billy knows both of them. One he’s seen in Nick’s suite and in the Domino’s main offices. An accountant, maybe, a numbers guy for sure. Billy doesn’t remember his name, Mikey or Mickey or maybe Markie. The other was one of the fake Department of Public Works guys with the Transit van. Reggie something.
“Well it took you long enough,” Nick says. The other two have seen Billy, but Nick only has eyes for the play in progress on the television. “Just set it on the—”
He finally registers the shocked expressions of his companions, turns his head, and sees Billy standing two steps from the carpeted floor. The look of fear and amazement that dawns on Nick’s face gives Billy a great deal of satisfaction. It isn’t payback for the last five months of his life, not even close, but it’s a step in the right direction.
“Billy?” The bowl balanced on Nick’s stomach overturns and popcorn goes pattering to the rug.
“Hello, Nick. You’re probably not glad to see me, but I’m glad to see you.” He gestures with the Glock at the accountant guy, who has already raised his hands. “What’s your name?”
“M-Mark. Mark Abromowitz.”
“Get down on the floor, Mark. You too, Reggie. On your stomachs. Arms and legs spread. Like you’re making snow angels.”
They don’t argue. They set aside their popcorn bowls—carefully—and get down on the floor.
“I’ve got a family,” Mark Abromowitz says.
“That’s good. Behave yourself and you’ll see them again. Are either of you armed?” He doesn’t have to ask about Nick, because in that ridiculous game-day outfit he’s got no place for a hidden weapon, not even an ankle gun.
The two men, facedown, shake their heads.
Nick says Billy’s name again, this time not as a question but as an exclamation of delight. He’s striving for his old lord of the manor bonhomie and not finding very much of it. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you!”
Billy wouldn’t bother to answer this ridiculous lie even if he didn’t have a more pressing concern. There’s a fourth chair, and a half-empty bowl of popcorn beside it.
“They keep it on the ground with Barkley,” the play-by-play announcer is saying, “with Jones leading the way, and—”
“Turn it off,” Billy says. Nick is king of the house and king of the couch, so of course the controller is beside him.
“What?”
“You heard me, turn it off.”
As Nick points the remote at the television, Billy is happy to see a slight tremble in his hand. The game goes away. Now it’s just the four of them, but that fourth empty chair with the popcorn bowl beside it says there’s an unaccounted-for fifth.
“Where is he?” Billy asks.
“Who?”
Billy points at the empty chair.
“Billy, I have to explain why I had to wait to get in touch with you. There was a problem at my end. It—”
“Shut up.” What a pleasure to say that, and what a pleasure not to have to play dumb. “Mark!”
The accountant jerks his legs, as if he’s just had an electric shock.
“Where is he?”
Mark replies promptly, which is wise. “He went to the bathroom.”
“Shut up, asshole,” Reggie says, and Billy shoots him in the ankle. He doesn’t know he’s going to do it until it’s done but his aim is as good as ever and he regrets it no more than he regrets cold-cocking Frank in the kitchen. Reggie was part of the plan to get rid of dumb old Billy Summers. Get him in the back of the fake DPW van, drive him a few miles out of town, put a bullet in his head, case closed. Besides, this little man-cave trio needs to know who is in charge.
Reggie screams and rolls on his back, trying to clutch his ankle. “You fuck! You fucking shot me!”
“Shut up or I’ll shut you up. If you don’t believe me, give it a try.” He turns the gun on Abromowitz, who’s looking at him with bulging eyes. “Where’s the bathroom? Point.”
Abromowitz points behind the couch. Three pinball machines are lined up against the wall, their lights flashing but all the boops and beeps silenced because of the game. Just beyond them is a closed wooden door.
“Nick. Tell him to come out.”
“Come on out, Dana!”
So that’s who the missing man is, Billy thinks. Reggie’s DPW partner. The little redhead with the dork knob who talked smack to me in the Gerard Tower. Maybe not the guy who got rid of Ken Hoff, but Billy thinks there’s a good chance that he was. Of course it’s Edison, because every character in a story must be used at least twice: Dickens’s rule. And Zola’s.
He doesn’t come out.
“Come on, Dana!” Nick calls. “It’s okay!”
No answer.
“He armed?” Billy asks Nick.
“What, are you kidding? You think when I invite friends over to watch a football game they come strapped?”
Billy says, “I think we’re going to find out about that. Nick, do your two friends there on the floor understand that I can shoot? That it’s what I do?”
“He can shoot,” Nick says. His normal olive complexion has gone yellow. “He learned it in the Marines. Sniper.”
“I’m going to go over to the bathroom and convince Dana to come out. I guess you can’t run, Reggie, but you still could, Mr. Abromowitz. Do it and I’ll kill you. Same goes for you, Nick.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Nick says. “We’ll work this out. I just have to explain why—”
Billy tells him again to shut up and goes around the couch. Nick is now back to him, an easy head shot if Billy needs to take it. Reggie and the accountant are blocked by the couch, but Reggie has a shattered ankle and he doesn’t think Abromowitz the family man is going to be a problem. It’s Dana Edison he’s concerned with.
He stands beside the pinball machine closest to the closed door. He says, “Come on out, Dana. If you do that, you might live. Otherwise, no.”
Billy doesn’t expect a reply and doesn’t get one.
“Okay, coming in.”
Like hell I am, he thinks, but he bends, reaches forward, and grabs the doorknob. The second he rattles it Edison fires four times, the shots so rapid Billy can hardly differentiate them. It’s a thin door and there are no holes, only wood flying in big splinters. Billy senses movement behind him but doesn’t look. Nick and Abromowitz may be on the run, but neither is going to run into Edison’s field of fire to tackle him, any more than that pair of mokes would have run into the Funhouse to try and rescue Johnny Capps.
Edison will expect Billy to hesitate if he’s still alive so he doesn’t. He steps in front of the splintered door and pumps half a dozen rounds into it. Edison shrieks. There’s a clatter and then—only reality can serve up such absurdities—the toilet flushes.
From the corner of his eye, Billy sees Abromowitz heading to the first floor in a series of gazelle-like leaps. Billy has no idea what Nick is up to but he’s not following Abromowitz up the stairs and this is the wrong time to check further. He raises a foot and kicks the remains of the door beside the lock. It flies open. Dana Edison is lying across the toilet, bleeding from the head and throat. His own Glock is lying in the shower along with his little rimless spectacles. He apparently struck the toilet’s flush lever when he went down. His eyes roll up to look at Billy.
“Doc… tor…”
Billy looks at the blood spilling down the side of the toilet. A doctor isn’t going to help Dana. Dana has bought that place they call the farm. Billy bends over him, gun in hand. “Do you remember the last thing you said to me when you came to my office in the Gerard Tower?”
Edison makes a hoarse huffing sound. A spray of blood comes out with it.
“I do.” Billy puts the muzzle of the Glock against Edison’s temple. “You said ‘Don’t miss.’ ”
He pulls the trigger.
5
When he comes out Reggie is on his knees in front of the couch. Billy can see the top of his head. He sees Billy and raises a small silver pistol that must have been stashed under one of the cushions. Nick wasn’t unarmed after all. Billy puts two rounds through the back of the couch before Reggie can fire and Reggie flops backward out of sight. Billy goes to the couch in three running steps and peers over. Reggie is on his back, the gun on the rug beside one of his outstretched hands. His eyes are open and starting to glaze.
You should have settled for the shattered ankle, Billy thinks. Doctors might have been able to fix that.
Something falls over deeper in the man-cave. Glass shatters and there’s a curse—“M’qifsh Karin!” Billy hurries that way, bent low. The lights in the area beyond the TV room are off, but Billy can see Nick in the gloom. His back is turned. He’s pushing buttons on a lighted keypad beside a steel door. There’s a billiards table in this adjoining room, and a few vintage slot machines, and a rolling bar that’s lying on its side in a glitter of broken glass and the eye-watering smell of spilled whiskey.
Nick stabs frantically at the buttons, still cursing in Albanian or whatever language he learned as a child and has otherwise forgotten. He only stops when Billy tells him to quit it and turn around.
Nick does as he’s told. He looks like a man on the precipice of death, which is fair because that’s where he is. But he’s smiling. Just a little, but yeah, that’s a smile. “I went the wrong way. I should have taken the stairs like Markie, but…” He shrugs.
“That your safe room?” Billy asks.
“Yeah. And do you know what? I forgot the fucking combination.” Then he shakes his head. “Nah, that’s bullshit. I blanked on the combination. Just four numbers and all I could remember is the second one’s a two.”
“What about now?” Billy asks.
“6247,” Nick says, and actually laughs.
Billy nods. “It happens to the best of us and it happens to the rest of us.”
Nick studies him. He wipes his lips, which are shiny with spit. “You sound different. You even look different. You were never as stupid as you made out, were you? Giorgio told me that and I didn’t believe him.”
“Before you had him killed,” Billy says.
Nick’s eyes widen with what Billy could swear is genuine surprise. “Giorgio isn’t dead, he’s in Brazil.” He studies Billy’s face. “You don’t believe me?”
“After the shit you pulled, why would I believe a word that comes out of your mouth?”
Nick shrugs as if to say point taken. “Can I sit down? My legs are all weak.”
Billy gestures with the barrel of the Glock to the three spectators’ seats beside the pool table. Nick walks unsteadily to the one in the middle and sits down. He reaches behind him and flips a switch that turns on the three hanging lights over the green felt.
“I never should have taken the contract. But all that money… it blinded me.”
Billy reckons he has some time. It would be a mistake to push it too far, but he may do so anyway. Because he wants answers. The money seems secondary. Not to mention unlikely. It’s only in movies that the gangster has a wall of cash in his safe room. These days it’s all computer transfers. Money hardly exists at all. Money has become the ghost in the machine.
“Pigs has got liver disease. You would’ve put money on his heart going, fat as he is, but it was his liver that turned out to be the problem. He needs a transplant. Doctors said no way unless he loses some weight, like two hundred pounds. If he doesn’t, he’ll die on the operating table. So he went to Brazil.”
“A fat farm?”
“A special clinic. The kind where once you sign in you can’t sign out until you reach your target weight and they let you sign out. He knew that’s the only way it could work, otherwise he’d be gone the first time he got a yen for a Triple Whopper with Cheese.”
Billy is starting to believe it. Nick is talking about Giorgio mostly in the present tense, and he hasn’t slipped up. In a way it’s like Edison flushing the toilet as he fell, mortally wounded. Some thing
s are too bizarre not to be true. Georgie Pigs in a fat farm gulag is surely one of those things.
“Giorgio knew he’d be ID’d after you killed Joel Allen, he’s a fucking whale, but he was okay with that. He said it was a way of making sure he wouldn’t back out at the last minute, new liver or no new liver. Plus he wanted to retire.”
“Really?” Billy would have believed Giorgio was one of those guys who would die in harness.
“Yeah.”
“Sunset years in Brazil?”
“I think Argentina.”
“Sounds expensive. What kind of a retirement bonus did he get for helping to set me up?”
Nick hesitates, then says, “Three million.”
“Three for Giorgio and six for bringing me down.”
Nick’s eyes widen and he sags in the chair. He’s thinking that if Billy knows that, any chance he might have had of getting out of this alive just flew away. He’s probably right.
“But you stuck at paying me the lousy million and a half you owed? I knew you were cheap, Nick, but I didn’t peg you for a chiseler.”
“Billy, we were never going to—”
“You were. I want to hear you say it or I’ll kill you right now.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway,” Nick says, and although his voice is steady enough, a single tear rolls down one plump and beautifully shaved cheek.
Billy doesn’t reply.
“Okay, yeah. We were going to kill you. That came with the deal. Dana was going to do it.”
“I was going to be your Oswald.”
“It wasn’t my idea, Billy. I told the client you’d stand up no matter what. He insisted, and like I said, the money blinded me.”
Billy could ask how much Nick got, but does he want to know? He does not. “Who’s the client?”
Instead of answering, Nick points to the door leading to the panic room. “I’ve got money. Not a million-five but at least eighty thousand, probably more like a hundred. I’ll give it to you and I’ll get you the rest.”
