Billy Summers (25 page)

Lieutenant Colonel Jamieson had estimated the distance as 1,200 yards. Taco took his readings on a kid bouncing a ball in front of Pronto Pronto Photo Photo and called it 1,340 yards. A long shot for sure, but on a windless day like that one in early April, a high confidence one. I had made longer, and we had all heard stories of world-class snipers making shots at twice that distance. Of course I couldn't count on Jassim being perfectly stationary, like the head on a paper target. That concerned me, but the fact that he was a human being with a beating heart and a living brain didn't. He was a Judas goat who had lured four men into an ambush, guys guilty of nothing but delivering food. He was a bad guy and needed to be put down.

Around quarter past nine, Jassim came out of his store. He was wearing a long blue shirt like a dashiki and baggy white pants. Today he was wearing a knitted red cap instead of a blue topper. That was
a wonderful sight marker. I started to line up the shot, but Jassim just shooed the ball-bouncing kid away with a swat on the butt and went back inside.

“Well doesn't that suck,” Taco said.

We waited. Young men went into Pronto Pronto Photo Photo. Young men came out. They were laughing and scuffling and grab-assing around as young men do all over the world, from Kabul to Kansas City. Some of them had no doubt been shooting up those Blackwater trucks with their AKs just a couple of days before. Some of them were undoubtedly firing at us seven months later as we went from block to block, cleaning them out. For all I know, some of them were in what we called the Funhouse, where everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Ten o'clock came, then ten-fifteen. “Maybe he's taking his smoke break out back today,” Taco said.

Then, at ten-thirty, the door of Pronto Pronto Photo Photo opened and Ammar Jassim came out with two of his young men. I sighted in. I saw them laughing and talking. Jassim clapped one of them on the back and the two men strolled off with their arms around each other's shoulders. Jassim took a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket. I was in the optics and could read Marlboro and see the two trademark gold lions. Everything was clear: his bushy eyebrows, his lips as red as a woman's wearing lipstick, his salt-and-pepper beard stubble.

Taco was sighting with the M151, now handheld. “Fucker's a dead ringer for Yessir I'm-a Fat.”

“Shut up, Tac.”

I laid the crosshairs on the knitted cap and waited for Jassim to light up. I was willing to allow him one last drag before putting out his lights. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth. He put the pack back into his pocket and came out with a lighter. Not a cheap disposable Bic but a Zippo. He might have purchased it, either in a store or on the black market. It might also have been looted from one of the
contractors who had been shot, burned, and hung from the bridge. He flipped it open and a tiny sunstar winked off the top. I saw that. I saw everything. Master Gunny Sergeant Diego Vasquez at Pendleton used to say that a Marine sniper lives for a perfect shot. This one was perfect. He also said, “It's like sex, my little virgins. You will never forget your first.”

I drew in a breath, held it for a five-count, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil hit the hollow of my shoulder. Jassim's knitted hat flew off and at first I thought I had missed him, maybe only by an inch, but when you're sniping, an inch might as well be a mile. He just stood there with the cigarette between his lips. Then the lighter fell out of his fingers and the cigarette fell out of his mouth. They landed on the dusty sidewalk. In the movies, the person who gets shot flies back when the bullet hits. That's rarely how it happens in real life. Jassim actually took two steps forward. By then I could see that it wasn't just the hat that had come off; the top of his head was inside it.

He went to his knees, then full on his face. People came running.

“Payback's a bitch,” Taco said, and clapped me on the back.

I turned and yelled, “Get us down!”

The platform started to descend. It seemed very slow, because the gunfire had begun on the other side of the river. It sounded like fireworks. Taco and I ducked as we left the canvas sand-shield behind, not because ducking made us safer but because it was instinctive. I listened for bullets passing and tried to get ready to be hit, but I didn't hear anything or feel anything.

“Get out of there, get out!” Jamieson shouted. “Jump! Time to didi mau!” But he was laughing, triumphant. They all were. I had my back slapped so often and so hard that I almost fell over as we ran back to the dirty Mitsubishi the l-c had used to drive us out. Albie, Donk, Klew, and the others ran for the little power trucks, a scam that we'd never be able to use again. We could hear yelling across the river, and now there was even more gunfire.

“Yeah, eat it!” Big Klew shouted. “Eat it big, motherfuckers! Your man just got run over by the big dark horse!”

The l-c's old station wagon was parked behind the Iraqi power trucks in the turnaround. I opened the back to put in my rifle and Taco's gear.

“Hurry the fuck up,” Jamieson said. “We're blocking those guys in.”

Well, you were the one who parked there, I thought but didn't say. I tossed in our stuff. When I slammed the hatchback shut, I saw something lying in the dirt. It was a baby shoe. It must have been a little girl's, because it was pink. I bent down to get it and as I did, some shooter's blind-luck round punched into the bulletproof glass of the hatchback's window. If I hadn't bent down, the round would have gone in the nape of my neck or the back of my head.

“Get in, get in!” Jamieson was screaming. Another blind-luck round pinged off the Eagle wagon's armored side. Or maybe not so blind; by then the shooters had to be all the way down by their side of the river.

I picked up the shoe. I got in the 'Bishi and Jamieson tore out of there, fishtailing and throwing up a cloud of dust the trucks would have to drive through. The l-c wasn't thinking about that; he was concentrating on saving his ass.

“They're shooting the shit out of that boom lift,” Taco said. He was still laughing, high on the kill. “What have you got there?”

I showed it to him and said I thought it had saved my life.

“You keep that thing safe, brah,” Taco said. “And keep it with you.”

I did. Until the Funhouse, that November. I looked for it just as we started to clear that house in the Industrial Sector and it was gone.

Billy finally shuts down and stands at the periscope window of his landlocked submarine, looking out across the little patch of lawn, to the street, to the vacant lot on the other side where the train station once stood. He doesn't know how long he's been standing here. Maybe quite awhile. His brain feels blasted, as if he's just finished taking the world's longest and most complicated test.

How many words did he write today? He could check the counter on his document—now Billy's story instead of Benjy's—but he's not that OCD. It was a lot, leave it at that, and he's still got a long way to go. There was the April assault that started less than a week after he killed Jassim, followed by the pullback when the politicians got cold feet. Then the final nightmare that was Operation Phantom Fury. Forty-six days of hell. He won't put it that way (if he even gets that far) because it's a cliché, but hell is what it was. Culminating in the Funhouse, which seemed to summarize all the rest. He might skim through some of it but not the Funhouse, because the Funhouse was the point of Fallujah. And what exactly was the point? That it was pointless. Just another house that had to be cleared, but the price they paid.

A few people walk by on Pearson Street. A few cars drive by. One is a police car, but it doesn't concern Billy. It's moving leisurely, heading nowhere special and in no hurry to get there. He is still amazed that this part of the city, which is so close to downtown, feels so deserted. On Pearson Street, rush hour is hush hour. He supposes that most people who work in the city's center haul ass to the suburbs when the workday is done—nicer places like Bentonville, Sherwood Heights, Plateau, Midwood. Even Cody, where he won a little girl a stuffed toy. The neighborhood of which he is now a part doesn't even have a name, at least that he knows of.

He needs to catch up. Billy flips on Channel 8, the NBC affiliate,
wanting to stay away from 6, which will still be running the footage of Allen being shot. 8 comes on with a BREAKING NEWS logo and a soundtrack of ominous violins and thumping drums. Billy doubts that there's any serious news breaking with the assassin still at large. The assassin has spent the day writing a story that is in grave danger of becoming a book.

It turns out there have been developments, but nothing Billy hasn't expected and not anything that warrants the disaster soundtrack. One of the anchors says that local businessman Kenneth Hoff has been implicated in “the widening assassination conspiracy.” The other anchor says that Kenneth Hoff's apparent suicide may have been murder. Holmes, your deductions astound me, Billy thinks.

The anchors hand it over to a correspondent standing across the street from Hoff's home, an expensive crib that is still several rungs below Nick's rented McMansion on the grandiosity ladder. The correspondent is a leggy blond who looks like she might have gotten out of journalism school the week before. She explains that Kenneth Hoff has been “positively linked” to the Remington 700 rifle that was used to kill Joel Allen. This is in addition to plenty of other links to the presumed assassin, who has now been “positively identified” as William Summers, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war and winner of several medals.

Bronze Star and Silver Star, Billy thinks. Also a Purple Heart with a star on the ribbon, indicating not just one wound suffered in battle but two. He can understand them not wanting to do that particular rundown. He's the villain of the piece, so why muddle things up with a heroic background? Muddling things up is for novels, not news reports.

There are side-by-side pictures. One is the photo Irv Dean took of him at the Gerard Tower security stand on his first day as the building's resident writer. The other shows him as a new recruit, looking both solemn and goofy in his jarhead haircut. It was taken
on Photo Day. In it he looks even younger than the blond correspondent. Probably he was. They must have gotten it from some Marine archive, because Billy had no family to give a copy to on Family Day.

Local police believe that Summers may have fled the city, the correspondent says, and because he may also have fled the state, the FBI is now on the case. With that the blond sends it back to the studio, where the anchors next display a picture of Giorgio Piglielli, and yes, they give his mob nickname, as if Georgie Pigs is an alias he might be traveling under. He's been linked to organized crime operations in Las Vegas, Reno, Los Angeles, and San Diego, but hasn't yet been apprehended. The subtext is that if you see a middle-aged Italian guy who goes 370, possibly wearing alligator shoes and drinking a milkshake, get in touch with your local law enforcement.

So, Billy thinks. Hoff is dead, Giorgio is almost certainly dead, and Nick's alibied up the ying-yang. Which makes me the last melon in the patch, the last pea in the pod, the last chocolate in the box, pick your metaphor.

After an ad for some wonder pill with about two dozen possible side effects, some lethal, there are more interviews with his neighbors on Evergreen Street. Billy gets up to turn off the TV, then sits down again. He flew under false colors and hurt these people. Maybe he deserves to watch and listen as they express that hurt. And their bewilderment.

Jane Kellogg, the block's resident alcoholic, doesn't seem a bit bewildered. “I knew there was something wrong with him the first time I saw him,” she says. “He had shifty eyes.”

Bullshit you did, Billy thinks.

Diane Fazio, Danny's mom, shares how horrified she was when she found out they had allowed their children to spend time with a cold-blooded killer.

Paul Ragland marvels about how smooth he was, how natural. “I
really thought Dave was the real deal. He seemed like a totally nice guy. It sort of proves that you can't trust anybody.”

It's Corinne Ackerman who says the one thing everyone else seems to have ignored. “Of course it's terrible, but that man he shot wasn't going to court for shoplifting, was he? From what I understand he was a stone killer. If you ask me, David saved the county the cost of a trial.”

God bless you, Corrie, Billy thinks, and actually finds his eyes are welling up, as if it's the end of a Lifetime channel movie where everything comes out right. Always supposing your concept of right includes a dose of vigilante justice… and in cases like Joel Allen's, Billy has no problem with that.

Before moving on to the traffic (still slow because of police checkpoints, sorry folks) and the weather (turning colder), there's a final item in the courthouse assassination story, and Billy has to smile. The reason Sheriff Vickery was initially cut out of the investigation isn't because he skedaddled when his prisoner was shot, leaving only his ridiculous Stetson behind, or not just because of that. It's because he brought his prisoner up the courthouse steps instead of through the employees' door further down. There was initial suspicion that he might have been part of the plot. He has since convinced them otherwise, probably admitting that he wanted the press coverage.

And I could have made the shot either way, Billy thinks. Hell, I could have made it in the rain, unless it was a deluge out of Genesis.

He turns off the television and goes into the kitchen to inspect his stock of frozen dinners. He's already thinking about what he'll write tomorrow.

Three days pass in a dream of Fallujah.

Billy writes about the Hot Nine: Taco Bell, George Dinnerstein and Albie Stark, Big Klew, Donk Cashman. He spends one morning writing about how Johnny Capps more or less adopted a bunch of Iraqi kids who came to beg candy and cigarettes and stayed to play baseball. Johnny and Pablo “Bigfoot” Lopez taught them the game. One kid, Zamir, maybe nine or ten, used to chant “He was safe, mothafuckah!” over and over. Other than “Gedda hit” it seemed to be the only English he had. Somebody would pop out to the shortstop and Zamir, sitting on the bench in his red pants and Snoop Dogg tee and Blue Jays cap, would scream, “He was safe, mothafuckah!” Billy writes about how Clay Briggs, the corpsman they called Pillroller, kept up a lively and pornographic correspondence with five girls back in Sioux City. Tac said he couldn't understand how such an ugly guy got so much pussy. Donk said it was
fictional
pussy and Albie Stark said “He was safe, mothafuckah!” which had nothing to do with the issue of Pill's lively and pornographic correspondence, but which broke them up every time.

Billy exercises between stints at the laptop: pushups, situps, leg-lifts, squat thrusts. For the first two days he also runs in place, hands held out and down, smacking his palms with his knees. On the third day he suddenly remembers—duh!—that he has the house to himself, and instead of running in place he pelts up and
down the stairs to the third floor until he's out of breath and his pulse is racing along at a hundred and fifty per. He's not exactly going stir-crazy, not after less than a week, but long spells of sitting and writing aren't what he's used to, and these bursts of exercise keep him from getting squirrelly.

Exercise also aids thinking, and on one of his sprints up the stairs Billy has an idea. He can't believe he hasn't thought of it before. Billy uses the Jensens' key to let himself into their apartment. He checks Daphne and Walter (both doing well), then goes into the bedroom. Don is a certain kind of guy, likes his football and NASCAR, likes his BBQ ribs and chicken, likes a few brewskis on Friday night with the boys. A man like that almost certainly has a gun or two.

Billy finds one in the nightstand on Don's side of the bed. It's a Ruger GP six-shooter, fully loaded. Beside it is a box of .38 centerfire cartridges. Billy sees no reason to take the gun downstairs; if the cops bust in on him, he's certainly not going to shoot it out with them. But you never know when a gun might come in handy, and it's good to know where he can lay his hands on one if the need arises. What need that might be he can't imagine, but there are many twists and turns as one hops down the bunny trail of life. No one knows better than he does.

He gives Bev's plants a squirt each with the vaporizer, then trots back downstairs. Outside he can hear the wind picking up, blowing across the vacant lot on the other side of the street. The forecast is for rain and even colder temperatures. “You might not believe it,” the lady weatherperson chirped that morning, “but there may actually be some sleet mixed in with it. I guess Mother Nature can't read the calendar!”

Billy doesn't care if it rains, sleets, snows, or shits bananas. He's going to be in this basement apartment no matter what the weather is. The story he's writing has taken over his life because for the time being it's the only life he has, and that's okay.

He's had two brief communications with Bucky Hanson. Last
night he texted
Are u ok?
to which Bucky responded
Y
. He texted
Has the money been paid?
to which Bucky responded, as Billy expected,
N
. He can't call Giorgio, even with his burner, because the cops may be up on his phone. And what would he get if he took the risk? Almost certainly a female robot telling him that number is no longer in service. Because Giorgio is no longer in service. Billy is sure of it.

In the alternate world of his story, Billy has reached Operation Phantom Fury in November of 2004. He thinks that part may take ten days, possibly two weeks. When it's done, when he's put the story of the Funhouse to rest, he'll pack up his shit and get out of town. The checkpoints will be gone by then, may be gone already.

He sits at the laptop, looking at where he left off. Two days before the assault commenced, Jamieson ordered Johnny and Pablo to get the baseball kids off the base, and they all understood what that meant: they were going in again, and this time they'd be staying in until the job was done.

Billy remembers Zamir looking back at the gate and giving one final cry of “He was safe, mothafuckah!” Then they were gone for good. All these years later they'd be grown men. If they're still alive.

He starts to write about the day the baseball kids got sent home, but it feels flat. The well is temporarily dry. He saves his copy, shuts down, then walks around to the other laptops, the cheapies. He boots each up in turn, checks that all clickbait is updated (MICHAEL JACKSON'S DYING WISH, ONE SIMPLE TRICK TO BEAT SCIATICA, WHAT THE ORIGINAL MOUSKETEERS LOOK LIKE NOW), and shuts them down, too. All is well in his little world. He has a plan. He will finish the Iraq part of his story, the Funhouse serving as the natural climax. When that's done he'll pack up and get out of this bad luck town. He will drive west, not north, and at some point in the not-too-distant future, he will pay Nick Majarian a visit.

Nick owes him money.

Billy's plan lasts until quarter to midnight. He's been watching some action movie in his underwear, and although the plot is simple—something about a guy seeking revenge on the men who killed his dog—Billy has lost the thread. He decides to call it a day. He shuts off the idiot box and is heading for the bedroom when there's a loud squall of skidding tires and badly maintained brakes outside. He braces himself for the sound of the crash, that hollow slam-the-big-door boom as the vehicle goes head-on into a power pole. Instead he hears faint music and loud laughter. Drunken laughter, from the sound.

He goes to his periscope window and shoves back the curtain. There's a streetlight up the way and it casts just enough glow for him to see an old van with rusty sides. One set of wheels is on the sidewalk running beside the vacant lot. It's raining now, and hard enough so the van's headlights look like they're cutting through a gauze curtain. The long door on the passenger side rolls open on its track. The inside light goes on, but all Billy can make out through the blowing rain are shapes. Three at least, moving around. No, there are four. The fourth is slumped over, head low. Two of them are holding the shape under its arms, which hang down at the elbows like broken wings.

There's more laughter and talk. Two guys manhandle the slumped shape out of the van while a third stands behind them like he's supervising. The unconscious person has long dark hair. Probably a girl. The guys take her behind the van and let go of her. She folds up with her top half on the sidewalk and her bottom half in the gutter. The two guys hop back in. The cargo door rolls shut. For a moment the old van stays there, idling with its headlights cutting through the pelting rain. Then it pulls out with a squeal of tires and a belch of exhaust. There's a bumper sticker on the back,
but no way can Billy read it. The light over the license plate is flickering, almost dead.

It's a girl for sure. She's wearing sneakers, a skirt hiked up high enough to show nearly all of one bent leg, and a leather jacket. The exposed leg is half submerged in running gutter water. It looks very white. Can she be dead? Would those men have been laughing if she was? After some of the things he's seen in the desert (and can never unsee), Billy knows it's possible.

He has to get her, and not just because she might die out there if he doesn't. This part of town is quiet even at noon on a weekday, but eventually someone will come along and spot her. They might not stop, good Samaritans are always in short supply, but they would surely call 911. Thank God it's late and thank God he didn't go to bed five minutes sooner. There would have come a knock on his door, cops canvassing the houses on this side of Pearson Street to find out if anyone had seen the girl dumped, and if the knock came at one or two in the morning, he'd have no chance to even put on the Dalton Smith wig, let alone the fake stomach.
Hey
, one of the cops might say.
You look familiar, buddy. I think you should come with us
.

Billy doesn't bother putting on his pants and shoes, just runs up the stairs in his boxers. He goes through the foyer and down the front steps, leaving the door open to bang back and forth in the wind. He's aware that he's gotten a pretty good splinter in the ball of one foot, run it in there deep, but more aware of how fucking
cold
it is. Not cold enough for the rain to turn to sleet, at least not yet, but close. His arms are covered in goosebumps. The part of his big toe that isn't there aches. If the girl is still alive, she might not stay that way for long.

Billy goes to one knee and picks her up, so cranked with adrenaline that he has no idea if she's heavy or light. He looks both ways with rain running down his face and bare chest. His boxers are soaked, hanging low on his hips. He sees no one. Thank God. He splashes back to the apartment side of the street, and as he's
carrying her up the walk, she turns her head, makes a guttural sound, and spews a thin ribbon of vomit down his side and one of his legs. It's shockingly warm, almost like an electric heating pad.

Well, he thinks, she's alive all right.

He picks up another splinter on the steps, but then he's inside. He can't leave the outside door to bang in the wind, so he sets her down in the foyer and pulls it closed. When he turns back to her, the girl's eyes are half open. He can see a big purplish bruise on her cheek and the side of her nose. Can't be from the pavement because she didn't go down on her face. Besides, the bruising is too well established for that.

“Who're you?” the girl slurs. “Where—” Then she vomits again. This time it backwashes down her throat and she starts to choke.

Billy kneels behind her and gets an arm around her midsection. He uses her breasts as a brace and hauls her up in front of him. Now his fucking boxers, wet with rainwater and a little too big to begin with, start sliding down his legs. He gets two fingers in her mouth, hoping to God she won't bite him. Infected cuts are the last thing he needs. He gets a wad of stuff out, flings it to the floor, then tightens his grip on her midsection. It does the trick. She hurls like a hero, a banner of puke that hits the foyer wall with a splat.

A car, one that would have spelled his doom just three minutes before, is coming. Billy can see its headlights brightening the rain-splattered glass of the front door. He drops to one knee, still holding the girl in front of him. His stupid boxers are now spread between his knees and he actually has time to wonder why he ever gave up Jockeys. Her head is lolling forward, but he thinks the rasping sounds he now hears are snores, not choking. She's out again.

The headlights brighten, then diminish without slowing. Billy gets to his feet, hauling the girl up with him. He gets an arm under her knees, the other around her shoulders. Her head lolls backward. He shimmies his legs and his shorts fall to his ankles. He steps out of them and kicks them aside. It's like some nightmarish vaudeville skit.

Her dank hair drips and pendulums back and forth as he sidesaddles down the stairs, trying not to overbalance and fall. Her upturned face is as pale as the moon. There's another bruise on her forehead, above her left eye.

And Jesus, his feet are killing him. Never mind his half-gone toe, those fucking splinters! He makes it to the foot of the stairs without falling and bumps open the door to his apartment with his butt. She starts to slither out of his grip, her body forming a limp
U
shape. He raises one leg into the small of her back, shoves her back up, and staggers inside. She starts to slide again. Ignoring the splinters digging into his cold-reddened feet, Billy sprints to the couch. He makes it just in time. She lands with a thump, gives out a fuzzy grunting noise, then resumes her snoring.

Billy bends forward with his hands braced above his knees to ease his back, which is trying to cramp up. The stink of puke rising from her almost makes him feel like puking himself. He can smell alcohol too, but it's faint.

Well, she offloaded it, he thinks, but if she really got her drink on he should still be able to smell it on her breath. He should have smelled it in the foyer. And—

He lifts his leg, smelling the mostly liquid vomit on his skin. He still gets only the faintest whiff of booze.

He looks her up and down. The skirt she's wearing is denim, frayed at the hem, and short. He could see her underpants if she was wearing any, but she's not. He sees something else. The outsides of her thighs are pale and white—like the moon—but the tops of the insides are speckled with drying blood.

The girl retches again, but weakly, and nothing comes out except for a dribble of cloudy drool down the side of her mouth. Then she starts
to shiver. Of course she's shivering, she's soaked. Billy pulls off her sneakers. Tiny ankle socks come with them. There are hearts on the tops. He gets her to sit up, muttering “Come on, little help here,” although he knows she can't help. Her eyelids flutter and she tries to talk. She may even think she
is
talking, that she's asking all the questions anyone might ask in a situation like this, but the only words he can make out are
who
and
you
. All the rest is just
huzzz
and
whaa
.

“That's right,” Billy says, “all okay now, just don't die on me.”

Although even now, as he's trying to cope with this fucked-up situation, Billy realizes it might simplify things if she did. It's a rotten thought, but that doesn't make it untrue.

He gets her jacket—cheap, thin, and not real leather at all but some synthetic—off. Beneath is a T-shirt with BLACK KEYS NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 2017 on the front. He tries to pull it off over her head and it gets caught on her chin. She moans and he gets three words in the clear: “No, don't
choke
.”