Billy Summers [en]

Billy and Alice get out and look up at the porch, shading their eyes. Bucky Hanson rises from the rocking chair he’s been sitting in and comes to the shakepole railing. He’s wearing a New York Rangers gimme cap and smoking a cigarette.

‘Yo, Billy. I thought you got lost.’

‘She did, too. Bucky, this is Alice Maxwell.’

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alice. And Billy, look at you. How long has it been since we were face to face?’

‘Got to be four years at least,’ Billy says. ‘Maybe five.’

‘Well, come on up. Steps are on the side. Are you hungry?’

12

Billy was afraid his long-time fixer and agent might resent him bringing a stranger to this place, which is pretty clearly an emergency bolthole, but Bucky treats Alice kindly. He doesn’t come right out and say that any friend of Billy’s, etc., but he makes it clear, and after her initial shyness (or maybe it’s wariness), she relaxes. Still, she’s careful to stay near Billy.

The kitchen is neat, roomy, sunshiny. Bucky heats up macaroni and cheese in the microwave. ‘I’d love to make you huevos rancheros, I’m not half-bad at it, but I’m still not completely situated here. Need to finish getting supplied. Then I’ll just hunker down until this business comes to a conclusion. A happy one would be nice.’

‘I got you into a mess and I’m sorry,’ Billy says.

Bucky flaps a hand at him. ‘I brokered the deal and knew the risks.’ He sets a steaming bowl before each of them. ‘What about you, Alice? How’d you meet this vet of Georgie Bush’s war?’

Alice looks down at her mac and cheese as if she finds it especially fascinating. Her cheeks turn pink. ‘I guess you could say he picked me up off the street.’

‘Is that so? Huh. Has he shown you his stupid act yet? That is something to see. Give it to her, Billy.’

Billy doesn’t want to, Alice is different from mugs like Nick and Giorgio, but Bucky has given them a place to stay for awhile and he doesn’t want to refuse such a simple request. Only he doesn’t have to do it.

‘I’ve seen it already.’ Alice pauses, then adds, ‘In a manner of speaking.’

She gives Billy a look before addressing her food again, just a quick one, but it’s enough to make him feel sure she’s talking about the first part of his story. The part he wrote knowing Nick or Giorgio was probably reading over his shoulder.

‘Great, isn’t it?’ Bucky says, fetching his own bowl and sitting down. ‘Billy reads all the hard books, but he can also tell you every kid at Riverdale High and how Batman got his cape.’

Billy thinks what the hell, a little won’t hurt. He makes his eyes big and slows his speech. ‘I actually don’t know that part.’

Bucky laughs and points his fork, a macaroni noodle still caught on one of the tines, at Billy. ‘Man, you haven’t lost a step.’

He turns to Alice.

‘Just picked you up off the street, huh? What’s that mean exactly?’

‘That he saved my life.’

Bucky raises his eyebrows. ‘Did he now? I want to hear all about it. In fact I want to hear everything. Especially what went wrong.’

Billy considers this carefully. ‘Everything but Alice,’ he says, and starts laughing. He can’t help it.

13

He again starts with Frank Macintosh and Paulie Logan picking him up at the hotel and goes through it to the end, skimping only on the last part, just saying some guys roughed Alice up and he took care of them.

Bucky doesn’t ask how. He only collects their dishes, takes them over to the sink, and starts running hot water. The little house at the ass end of Edgewood Mountain Drive has a microwave and a satellite dish on the roof, but there’s no dishwasher.

‘I’ll do those,’ Alice says, getting up.

‘No you won’t,’ Bucky says. ‘There’s only a few and I’ll leave the casserole dish to soak. That baked-on cheese is a bitch. Billy, how long do you want to stay? I only ask because if you’re gonna be here long, I’ll have to make a run to King Soopers.’

‘I don’t know, but I’m happy to get the groceries.’

‘I’ll go, too,’ Alice says. ‘Just give me a list.’ She looks in the fridge. ‘You need some vegetables.’

Bucky ignores that. From the sink, back turned, he says, ‘They’re after you, Billy. Not just Nick’s organization, four other brands of competition plus God knows how many independents. One of those occasions, rare but not unheard-of, where everybody’s on the same page. You’re a big topic of conversation in certain chat rooms where you’re referred to as Mr Summerlock.’

‘As in Billy Summers and David Lockridge,’ Billy says.

‘Right.’

‘Is anybody chatting about Dalton Smith?’ Please God no, he thinks.

‘So far as I know Dalton Smith is still good, but these guys have access to all the best investigative agencies, outfits that make the FBI look like rubes, and if you left any loose ends, any at all, Dalton Smith is a goner.’

Bucky turns from the sink, and as he wipes his reddened hands on a dish towel, he looks directly at Alice. He doesn’t have to say anything to make his point.

Billy says, ‘She’s not a loose end. When I leave here, she goes her own way as someone else. If you can put together the documentation, that is.’