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to be seen with him—no, not even on the porch of this gated estate—but he’s not entirely satisfied. Because Hoff struck him as a chatterbox, and a chatterbox isn’t a good person to have around when you’re planning an assassination.
4
    Later that night. Closing in on midnight. Billy lies on his hotel room bed, hands beneath the pillow, relishing the cool that’s so ephemeral. He said yes, of course, and when you say yes to Nick Majarian, there’s no going back. He is now starring in his own last job story.
    He had Giorgio send the $500,000 to a bank in the Caribbean. There’s a good amount of money in that account right now, and after Joel Allen dies on those courthouse steps, there will be a good deal more. Enough to live on for a long, long time if he’s prudent. And he will be. He doesn’t have expensive tastes. Champagne and escort services have never been his thing. In two other banks—local ones—David Lockridge will have an additional $18,000 to draw on. It’s plenty of walking-around money, but not enough to twang any federal tripwires.
    He did have a couple of other questions. The most important was how much lead time he could expect when the deal was about to go down.
    â€œNot a lot,” Nick said, “but it won’t be ‘He’s gonna be there in fifteen minutes,’ either. We’ll know right after the extradition is ordered, and you’ll get a call or a text. It’ll be twenty-four hours at the very least, maybe three days or even a week. Okay?”
    â€œYeah,” Billy said. “Just as long as you understand I can’t guarantee anything if it is fifteen minutes. Or even an hour.”
    â€œIt won’t be.”
    â€œWhat if they don’t bring him up the courthouse steps? What if they use another door?”
    â€œThere is another door,” Giorgio said. “It’s the one some of the courthouse employees use. But you’ll still have a sightline from the fifth floor and the distance is only sixty yards or so longer. You can do that, can’t you?”
    He could, and said so. Nick lifted a hand as if to wave away a troublesome fly. “It’ll be the steps, count on it. Anything else?”
    Billy said there wasn’t and now he lies here, thinking it over, waiting for sleep. On Monday he’ll be moving into the little yellow house, leased for him by his agent. His literary agent. On Tuesday, he’ll see the office suite Georgie Pigs has also leased for him. When Giorgio asked him what he’d do there, Billy told him he’d start by downloading ComiXology to his laptop. And maybe a few games.
    â€œBe sure to write something between funnybooks,” Giorgio said, half-joking and half not. “You know, get into character. Live the part.”
    Maybe he will. Maybe he will do that. Even if what he writes isn’t very good, it will pass the time. Autobiography was his suggestion. Giorgio suggested a novel, not because he thinks Billy’s bright enough to write one but because Billy could say that when someone asked, as someone will. Probably lots of someones, once he gets to know people in the Gerard Tower.
    He’s slipping toward sleep when a cool idea wakes him up: why not a combination of the two? Why not a novel that’s actually an autobiography, one written not by the Billy Summers who reads Zola and Hardy and even plowed his way through Infinite Jest , but one written by the other Billy Summers? The alter ego he calls his dumb self ? Could that work? He thinks yes, because he knows that Billy as well as he knows himself.
    I might give it a try, he thinks. With nothing but time on my hands, why not? He’s thinking about how he might begin when he finally drifts off.

CHAPTER 3
1
    Billy Summers once more sits in the hotel lobby, waiting for his ride.
    It’s Monday noon. His suitcase and laptop case are beside his chair and he’s reading another comic