by Stephen King
“I believe that completely,” Billy says. “I also believe that we won in Vietnam and the moon landing was staged.” Something else occurs to him. “Did you know about the fire?”
Nick blinks at the change of subject. “Fire? What fire?”
“Those flashpots weren’t the only diversion that day. There was a warehouse fire in a nearby town not long before I took the shot. I knew about it ahead of time because Hoff told me.”
“Hoff told you? That budalla?”
“You sure you didn’t know about it?”
“No.”
Billy believes him, but he wanted to hear him say it, and watch his face as he did. It doesn’t matter, anyway. He’s downriver from all that. “Who was the client?”
“Are you going to kill me?”
I should, Billy thinks. You richly deserve it.
“Who was the client?”
Nick raises a hand to his face and brings it down slowly, wiping away sweat from his brow and more spit from his lips. His eyes say he has given up hope, and he never had much to begin with. “If I tell you, will you at least let me pray before you do it? Or is killing me not enough, do you want me in hell for eternity, too?” Now there are more tears.
“You can pray. Client’s name first.”
“Roger Klerke.”
At first Billy thinks he’s saying Clerk, like the guy who takes your money in a convenience store, but then Nick spells it. The name has a slightly familiar ring, but it’s not one he associates with Nick’s world. Or Bucky Hanson’s, for that matter. More like a name Billy has seen in the newspapers or blogs or heard on a podcast. Maybe on TV. Politics? Business? Billy has little interest in either.
“World Wide Entertainment,” Nick says. “It’s okay if you don’t recognize it, WWE’s only one of the four biggest media conglomerates in the world.”
Nick tries to smile—a man on his deathbed telling a feeble joke—but Billy hardly notices. He’s rewinding, almost all the way to the beginning. To his first meeting with Ken Hoff, who was certainly not looking forward to retirement in South America.
“Tell me.”
Nick does, and Billy is so totally amazed by what he hears—and horrified, that too—that he loses track of time. He doesn’t remember that not everyone at Promontory Point has been neutralized until he hears a desolate howl from upstairs. It is the sound only a mother can make when she discovers her son stretched out unconscious and maybe dying. Maybe already dead.
“Do you want to live, Nick?” A rhetorical question.
“Yes. Yes! If you let me, I’ll see that you get your money. Every cent of it. That’s my solemn promise.” His tears stopped while he was telling his tale, but at the possibility of a reprieve they start again.
Billy’s not interested in Nick’s promises, solemn or otherwise. He points to the unadorned steel door to the safe room. Upstairs there’s another howl, then words: “Help me! Somebody help me!”
“Are there guns in there?”
Nick is no longer the guy in charge, no longer the host with the most who welcomed Billy with outstretched arms five months ago, no longer the drinker of Champagne who just wanted to help Billy with his getaway. He has been broken down to his basic humanity, which is a desire to continue drawing breath, and so Billy accepts his look of surprise as genuine. “In the safe room? Why would I have guns in there?”
“Go in. Close the door. Look at your watch. Wait an hour. If you come out before then, I might be gone or I might still be here.” As if, Billy thinks. “If I’m here, I’ll kill you.”
“I won’t. I won’t! And the money—”
“I’ll be in touch about that.”
Maybe, Billy thinks. Or maybe I no longer want any of it, considering what I did and who I did it for. Not knowing at the time may be an excuse, but not a good one.
“Call off the bounty hunters. Tell them I came here, there was a shootout, and I got killed. If there’s still guys on the prod for me, you better hope they kill me because if they don’t, I’ll come back here and kill you. Tell Klerke the same thing. I’ll ask him, and if he says anything different, I’ll come back and kill you. Got it?”
“Yes. Yes!”
Billy gestures toward the TV part of the man-cave. “And clean up this mess. Make it go away. Do you understand?”
“Help me, he won’t wake up!” From upstairs.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes. What are you planning to—”
“Get in there.”
Nick has no trouble with the combo this time. The door must be sealed as tight as the airlock of a spaceship, because there’s a faint whoosh when it opens. Nick goes in. He gives Billy a final look from eyes that no longer believe they are master of all they survey, and maybe that’s revenge enough. Or would be, if it were to last. Billy knows it won’t.
“For once in your life be honorable,” Billy says.
Nick closes the door and there’s a thud as it re-locks. Billy sees a cheesecloth bag full of billiard balls hanging from a hook beside the chairs. He takes it and spills the balls onto the green felt of the table. He gets Edison’s Glock from the bathroom and Nick’s hideout gun from where it lies next to Reggie’s dead hand. He puts both guns in the bag. Then he searches Reggie’s pants pockets, an unpleasant task that has to be done because he has no intention of driving out of here in the old pickup with its unreliable starter. He finds the key to Reggie’s vehicle.
Billy has tucked his own Glock in the bib pocket of his overalls. As he mounts the stairs he takes it out. Now he can hear Frank’s mother—who Billy has started to think of as the Bride of Terminator—on the telephone. “Nick’s! Yes, you idiot, Nick’s! Why do you think I’m calling you instead of the hospital?”
Billy goes down the hall to the kitchen, once more walking on the sides of his feet. He can’t see Marge, aka Mommy Elvis, but he can see her shadow pacing back and forth, and the shadow of the landline’s cord. He can also see a Mossberg shotgun lying beside Frank Macintosh’s splayed feet. It’s got to be the one Sal, the gate guard, had slung over his shoulder.
Should have taken it when I had the chance, Billy thinks.
“Get here fast! He’s barely breathing!”
Billy drops to his knees and leans forward, hand outstretched. She has used a towel to sop up the blood from the back of Frank’s head and left it on the nape of his neck. Billy snags the shotgun by the trigger guard and pulls it toward him slowly, hoping she won’t hear it and turn. He wants no more to do with Marge.
He feels a sudden cold prickling along the back of his neck and knows it’s Nick. He had a gun in the safe room after all. He came out, he climbed the stairs, and now he’s aiming the gun at the back of Billy’s head. Billy turns, hearing his neck creak, sure it will be the last sound he ever hears, at least in this world. No one is there.
He gets to his feet. His knees pop. Frank’s mother hears it and comes around the fridge (not as big as the TV but almost) and stares at him. Her face is one big bruise and Billy thinks of Alice again. Marge is still holding the phone, but the cord has reached its limit, all its curls now straight. Her lips part in a snarl.
Billy points the Glock at the prone figure of her son, then raises the barrel to his lips: Shhhh.
The snarl stays, but she nods.
Billy leaves, backing down the hall until he gets to the front door.
6
The SUV parked on the tarmac has a triple-diamond logo on the grill that matches the one on Reggie’s key. When he gets inside it still has that new car smell, although it’s fighting a losing battle against the smell of its late owner’s cigarettes. There’s an aluminum Table Talk pie tin on the console full of butts. Billy rolls down the window and tosses it out. Something else for Nick to clean up.
Marge comes out the door. In bright sunlight she looks like death on a cracker. “If my son dies I’ll get you!” she hollers. “If he dies I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth!”
And she probably would, Bi
lly thinks, but Frank got what was coming to him and so did you, ma’am.
He never got a chance to show Nick the slogan on his T-shirt, but now he calls it out to her.
He drives past Sal’s body and through the open gate. Once he’s on Route 45 he phones Alice and tells her he’s all right. Against all odds, this is true. His only wound is a scrape from Marge’s trowel.
“Thank God,” Alice says. “Are you… did you…”
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours, maybe sooner. I’ve upgraded my ride. I’m driving a green Mitsubishi Outlander now. I want you to pack up. We’re leaving. I’ll tell you everything on the way.”
Nor will he omit anything. She deserves to know the whole thing, especially if he’s going to ask for her help with the rest. He hasn’t completely made up his mind about that, has only the vaguest intimations of a plan, but he’s leaning in that direction. It will be her decision, but there are powerful reasons for wanting her in on the rest. And she’ll know it, he thinks.
“Are we going back to… you know, your friend’s place?”
“To start with. You can stay there, or you can come back east with me to finish this business. Your choice.”
Her reply is instant. “I’ll come.”
“Don’t decide now. Wait until you hear where I’m going. And why.”
He ends the call. Ahead of him is the Las Vegas smog bowl, which he will be happy to leave behind. The slogan on his shirt, the very Vegas slogan that he didn’t get to show Frank but called out to Frank’s mom, is IF YOU WANT TO PLAY, YOU HAVE TO PAY. Someone else needs to pay: Roger Klerke.
He’s a very bad man.
CHAPTER 21
1
When he pulls in, Alice is waiting for him at the head of the space where the old truck was parked. She hugs him as soon as he’s out of the car, really throws herself into it. No hesitation. He hugs back the same way. When that’s done, he’s partly amused and partly saddened by her first question, because it comes from a young woman who is now living in an outlaw frame of mind.
“Is that car safe to drive? We won’t be stopped by the police?”
“It’s safe. The vehicle tracker was already disabled. Which didn’t surprise me.” Also the owner is dead and Nick isn’t going to call the cops. He would have far too much to explain. And Billy now has information that could blow him and his whole operation sky-high.
“I packed everything. There wasn’t much.”
“Okay. Let’s go. While we’re driving, you can make us a reservation at a motel in Wendover. That’s just over the Utah state line.”
Alice looks around at their current lodgings. “I’m not sure the kind of places we’ve been staying have websites. Maybe, but…” She shrugs.
“Book us into a chain. The Dalton Smith name is still clean and the pressure’s off. Nobody is going to be looking for us.”
“Are you sure?”
Billy thinks about it and decides he is. The last thing he said to Nick was for once in your life be honorable, and he thinks that Nick, who was sure he was going to die in his man-cave, will do that. At least for awhile. There’s something else, as well. If Billy succeeds in getting to Klerke, Nick Majarian will be off the hook, and quite possibly with the six-million-dollar bounty in one of his numbered accounts.
Meanwhile, Alice is looking up at him and waiting.
“I’m sure. Let’s go.”
2
It’s a long story, but it’s a five-hour drive to Wendover and that will be plenty of time for Billy to tell her what he knows and what he’s deduced. But before they roll, he powers up his phone and googles Roger Klerke. The thumbnail biography says he was born in 1954, which makes him sixty-five, but in the accompanying photo he looks at least ten years older. He’s pasty, balding, wrinkled, jowly. His eyes are bright little animals living in sagging pockets of flesh. It’s the face of hard living and indulgence.
“He’s the man behind this whole shit-show,” Billy says, and hands her his phone.
She types and sweeps with her finger as Billy pulls out and heads for the 15. She bends over the phone, brushing her hair impatiently away from her face. “Holy crap. According to Wikipedia, he practically owns the world, at least media-wise.”
Billy again thinks back to his first meeting with Ken Hoff, the two of them sitting at an umbrella-shaded table outside the Sunspot Café, right across from the building where Billy would eventually take the shot. Hoff with a glass of wine, Billy with a diet soda, Hoff broadcasting a slightly desperate vibe even then. Although along with it, like a fraternal twin, was the mindset that had gotten him in so much trouble and was about to get him in even more. It was the core belief, maybe inculcated in childhood, that he was the star of a movie called The Fabulous Life of Ken Hoff, and no matter how bad things got, in the end he would come out with the girl, the gold watch, and everything.
“Newspapers, websites, a movie studio, two streaming services…”
“And TV,” Billy says. “Don’t forget that. Including Channel 6 in Red Bluff, the only station that got footage of the courthouse killing.”
“Are you thinking—”
“Yes.”
“Fuck,” Alice says softly.
I’m a little bit tight this year, wasn’t that what Hoff said? Cash flow problems since I bought into WWE, but three affils, how could I say no?
“He owns World Wide Entertainment,” Alice says. “That’s a network plus about twelve cable channels. One of them is that news station that loves Trump. There’s this bunch of rabid commentators—”
“I know the ones you’re talking about.”
He’s seen WWE News 24, everybody has. It plays all the time in hotel lobbies and airport terminals. Billy sometimes stops for a few minutes to absorb some rightwing pundit’s bilge, then either moves on or changes to one of the movie channels if he has access to the controller. He had no idea they franchised local TV stations, though. Had no idea (at least at first) what Hoff was talking about and didn’t care. He hadn’t thought it was important. But it was. Very. It was how Hoff got into this. It was why the Channel 6 news crew didn’t go chasing the fire in Cody. It was how Ken Hoff ended up dead in his own garage.
“This guy wanted you to kill Joel Allen? This guy? He’s old. And rich.”
Yes, Billy thinks. Old and rich and used to being emperor. Ken Hoff had only thought he was starring in a movie. Roger Klerke really has been. He’s the man who thinks he deserves everything, and that it should not just be brought to him but that it should be served to perfection. Which included film footage of Joel Allen’s death.
And I was the waiter, Billy thinks.
“Tell me what happened at Promontory Point.”
Billy does as she asks, skipping over only what Nick told him before Billy sent him into his safe room like a bad kid grounded and confined to his bedroom. When he finishes, she says, “You did what you had to do.”
This is true, but it’s the verdict of a young woman barely old enough to buy a legal drink. He’s sure Ken Hoff thought the same. “Yes, but it was wrong choices that got me to the point where I had to do it.”
“That old lady,” Alice says, and shakes her head. “Amazing. Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“Not if her son dies.”
She gives Billy a look he’s actually glad to see. If she feels safe enough to be pissed at him, she’s probably still getting down the road to being all right. “Don’t you think she bears some of the responsibility for the job he was doing? Working for a gangster?”
Billy can’t answer that.
“Now tell me what you’re leaving out. What the gangster told you. Tell me why.”
They’re on the Interstate now. The shadows are starting to lengthen. The game between the Giants and the Cardinals will be over. One team won and the other team didn’t. A clean-up crew will be on its way to Promontory Point. Billy’s got the cruise control pegged just below seventy.
“Nick hired Joel Allen to do a killing, b
ut Nick was just the go-between. He even told me that, although he called himself the agent. It was Roger Klerke who wanted the job done, and paid millions for it. They met on an island in Puget Sound and struck the deal there.”
“Who did he want killed?”
“His son.”
3
Alice jumps like a person startled by a slamming door. “Peter, Paul, something like that! He was supposed to take over from his father!”
“It was Patrick,” Billy says. “You knew?”
“Just kinda-sorta. Because my mother has News 24 on all the time.”
Alice’s mom and probably seventy per cent of the cable-watching news junkies in America, Billy thinks.
“I’d mostly leave the room, I hate that drivel but it’s not worth arguing about with her. Only it was like their top story for almost a week, even ahead of Trump.” She looks at him. “Now I know why. Klerke owns News 24.”
“Correct.”
“They said it was a gang thing and Patrick Klerke got mistaken for somebody else.”
“It was no gang thing and no mistake. Klerke’s apartment was in a building with all sorts of security. A gangbanger never could have gotten past the gate guard, let alone into the building. Plus no one heard the shot. Allen must have used a potato-buster.”
“A what?”
“A silencer.”
“24 was all over the cops to catch the guy but they never did. Because by then Allen was probably out of town.”
“Sure, over the hills and far away,” Billy agrees. “And if he hadn’t shot those two men because he lost big at poker, he’d probably still be over the hills and far away. Maybe even then, if he hadn’t gone back to LA and mistaken some lady writer for a hooker.”
“Why would Klerke… his own son? Why?”
“I can only tell you what Nick told me. There’s probably more to it, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time.”
