Billy pressed the door buzzer and looked around. He thought the house was a little seedy. This was a fairly upscale Bethesda neighborhood, but this house had a shutter dangling and the landscaping looked haphazard. Maybe the owner was just lazy. Why didn’t the guy bother putting his car into his garage? Unless, of course, he was intending to go right back out. It must be that he had some appointment and they knew he would leave. That was why the timing was so critical.
He heard the phone ringing inside and then a woman’s voice come on the answering machine.
Where the hell was this guy? He had seen him enter. Why didn’t he answer his phone? Maybe he was in the bathroom and there was no phone in there. The house didn’t look like it had much technology. In fact, the more he considered it, the more it looked like some holdover from a bygone era. In some ways, it reminded him of his first house, the house in which his father had keeled over and rolled head over heels down the staircase to sprawl like Jesus on a cross—only unlike Jesus, he had snapped his neck. Billy remembered looking down at him, at the disgusted expression on his face. The cloud of alcohol had lifted just enough for him to be consciously aware of his own death, Billy thought, and probably brought on some final sense of self-disgust.
It was amazing for me to have that thought at the age of nine, he realized, and was suddenly quite proud of himself. Despite his anti-social behavior problems at school, he was always an A-plus student, otherwise he wouldn’t have even been considered for the Special Ops program.
He pressed the buzzer again and thought, Maybe it doesn’t work. He hadn’t heard any bells or gongs. He pressed again, keeping his head close to the door. Nothing. The damn buzzer didn’t work. Who the hell lived here and didn’t have a buzzer that worked or a knocker to take its place? The guy was an idiot and deserved to die for that as much as anything, he concluded.
He knocked vigorously, actually pounding. Not smart of me, he realized. I’m supposed to be a timid Jehovah’s Witness. He waited and listened and still heard nothing. Now more curious than anything, he tried the doorknob and was surprised that the door opened. It wasn’t locked. He looked behind at the street. There was no one walking and no traffic at the moment. Carefully, he pushed the door farther open and waited to see if anyone complained, but there was only silence…actually, not complete silence. There was a sound off to the right that was like something mechanical, some machine running.
‘Hello?’ he called, leaning in. ‘Anyone home?’
He waited, but all he heard was that sound. What was it? This was maddening.
He stepped in and closed the door softly behind him, waiting and listening for any other sound, especially footsteps.
‘Hello, anyone home?’ he tried again, and again there was no response.
He fingered the thin stiletto between the magazines and took a few steps to his right to peer through the doorway of what was obviously the living room. He saw a bottle of scotch on a table and a glass beside it, but no one sitting there. As he walked into the living room, he realized the mechanical sound was louder. He continued through another entrance that opened on the kitchen, a messy kitchen, too, he thought. Fits everything else. The guy’s a real slob, he concluded.
The sound he heard was clearly coming through the door on the immediate right, which was half open. It was a door to the garage. He’s in there doing something, Billy thought. He approached slowly and then gaped in astonishment. The entire garage floor was covered with what looked like a miniature world, and the sound he heard was the sound of three different sets of electric trains crisscrossing the imitation landscape. It was truly intriguing because of the detail in the buildings, people, cars and buses. Traffic lights actually turned green and red. In the far-left corner there was an airport, with jets lined up on the tarmac and a control tower that had a beam of light and the tiny men who were supposed to be air traffic controllers sitting inside and looking out.
How long could it have taken to build such a thing? he wondered. Why build it? Was it for an adult or children? Maybe it was for grandchildren, he concluded, but still, the guy would have to have been totally out of his mind to construct all this for his grandchildren.
Who was operating it now? Where was the guy?
He stepped into the garage and looked around, taking another step to get a better view of everything.
Just then, he was struck with a two-by-four squarely across his wing bones and went flying forward, dropping everything, his arms extended to break his fall to the cement floor. His stiletto rolled out from between the magazines.
The blow had driven the air from his lungs. He crouched on his knees, gasping and sucking and feeling his eyes bulge with the effort. Before he could turn, he received another blow, this time to the back of his head, and he fell forward, unconscious. He wasn’t out long, not more than maybe three minutes, but when he awoke, he felt his wrists bound behind his back with some thin wire.
Someone used a foot to turn him over and he looked up at Richard Byron, who was smirking and shaking his head. He held Billy’s stiletto in his right hand and pointed it down at him.
‘Sorry, but someone didn’t do his homework,’ Richard Byron said. ‘Saw you sitting out there when I drove up and saw you approaching the house. This is an NSN, a no-solicitation neighborhood. The sign’s pretty obvious on both ends and in between. We haven’t had a Jehovah’s Witness or anyone like that for a good ten years. It wouldn’t have been exactly brain surgery to put you into some other mode, maybe a utility man or something. You should file a complaint in triplicate.’
‘Fuck you,’ Billy said. He was hoping Richard Byron would get angry and come close enough for him to kick his legs out from under him. He looked old enough and in a bad enough physical condition for Billy to get the best of him even with his hands tied behind his back. Wouldn’t be the first time he had killed a man with that disadvantage.
‘Who sent you here?’ Richard asked.
‘God,’ Billy replied. ‘Read a magazine,’ he added, nodding at the Watchtowers sprawled on the floor.
Richard swung the two-by-four and struck Billy’s left ankle. The pain put lightning in his eyes, but he didn’t scream. He was good at swallowing back pain. The training for that had been a lot worse than this.
‘I imagine you’re a tough son of a bitch and can take the pain without succumbing,’ Richard said, ‘but I’m going to break both your ankles and then most of your ribs. You’ll heal, but you’ll be out of it recuperating for so long that your people will no longer have much use for you, not that they will once they hear about this. Considering what you were planning to do to me, I won’t have any remorse about it. Your choice. When that train reaches the depot,’ he said nodding at the model city.
He raised the two-by-four over his shoulder, holding it like a baseball bat.
‘I don’t know who sent me. I never know. I’m a contract player. I get a call and I go.’
‘You can do a little better than that,’ Richard said, waving the board.
‘It’s someone in some government agency. That’s all I know. You can pound me to death. I can’t give you anything I don’t have.’
‘Yeah, maybe you’re right, but I should pound you to death anyway, just to be sure.’
Billy had little doubt that the old bastard was going to do just that. ‘OK, OK,’ he said stalling for time and opportunity, ‘I’m with a division of Special Ops out of DC. We get our orders from a commander in the CIA.’
Richard relaxed, but maintained his skepticism. He took a few steps to the right, which brought him a little closer. Billy angled his hip in anticipation.
‘Who’s the commander?’
‘I don’t know names.’
‘How do you reach him then if you need to, and don’t tell me you can’t reach him. That would be bullshit. Things happen, like what’s happening now.’
‘I have a telephone number on my cell phone,’ he said. ‘It’s in my left pants pocket.’ He nodded at his left side. ‘It’s under V.’
‘Why V if you don’t know his name?’
‘It’s kind of a private joke. I call him the Voice.’
Richard considered. Of course, this was too easy. He probably has confidence in something here, some contingency, perhaps a backup.
‘Turn your head to the right and keep it there,’ Richard said, dropping the board and taking a pistol out of a holster on the rear of his belt. ‘Do it and if you make one move without my permission, I’ll splatter your brains on my floor and create a mess to clean up.’
‘Take it easy,’ Billy said and turned.
Richard considered him and then edged closer. He carefully knelt down and reached out with his left hand to go into Billy’s pocket. He could see there really was a cell phone in it.
‘Easy,’ he told him. ‘Keep that head turned. This pistol is right behind your ear.’
‘Sure,’ Billy said.
The moment Richard put his fingers into Billy’s pocket, Billy swung his right leg over with such speed and accuracy he caught Richard smack on his left cheekbone, driving him over. Billy’s next kick was a sharp blow with his left leg, the heel of his foot striking Richard squarely on the forehead. His arm went up and the pistol flew out of his hands and bounced off to the right.
In one swift motion, Billy was on his feet. Richard started to turn away, but Billy caught him with another kick in the left side and he collapsed face down. Smiling and confident now, Billy moved in slowly for the final fatal blow just under Richard Byron’s skull.
‘May the Lord welcome you with open arms,’ Billy said and lifted his leg.
One bullet zipped through Billy’s chest like a steel needle and thread. He felt it and looked down with surprise. When he raised his head, he just saw the two agents in the doorway an instant before the second bullet drilled through the center of his forehead. It circled his brain like some metal bug, chopping and chewing, and then he folded with the surprise of death, as if his entire skeletal structure had turned to jelly.
Richard groaned with the effort to sit up. One of the agents assisted him to his feet.
‘Easy, Mr Byron,’ he said.
‘Who the hell are you guys?’
The agent showed his identification.
‘Spaulding, FBI. My daughter send you?’ Richard asked immediately.
‘We had orders from Mr Connors directly sir. We don’t know how they were originated.’
‘Who is this guy?’ Richard asked, nodding at Billy’s corpse folded on the floor.
‘We don’t have that information,’ the other agent said, stepping up quickly.
The two agents looked at the trains.
‘Quite a set-up,’ Agent Spaulding said.
‘I bought my kid an electric train last year and it took me all damn day to get it hooked up right,’ the other agent said.
Neither seemed at all concerned about killing a man. Their coldness amazed Richard. It was as if they had just taken out a bag of garbage. Maybe that was the best attitude to have, he thought, and wondered if his daughter had become this hard, too. Having come within a hair of dying, he thought now about all the missed opportunities he had had to grow closer to Holland. Like some reformed smoker or alcoholic, he pledged to himself to change, to make an effort.
‘So we just killed an unknown man?’ Richard asked, snapping back to the here and now.
‘Someone knows him, sir,’ Spaulding said, smiling. ‘Or knew him, I should say.’
‘How did Connors know to send you guys over here now, just in time?’
‘Your guess would be as good as ours, sir,’ the other agent said.
‘Times they are a changing,’ Richard muttered. He looked at Billy again. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked them.
Neither said anything, so he knelt beside the body and felt for a wallet.
‘I doubt he carried any identification, Mr Byron,’ Spaulding said.
Richard tossed them a wallet, but threw it so that they both turned away, and in that instant he pulled out Billy’s cell phone and inserted it in his own pocket.
Spaulding looked at the wallet and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Someone has quite a sense of humor,’ Spaulding said, handing Richard the wallet. He opened it and looked at the driver’s license. The address listed was in Casablanca.
‘We just killed Humphrey Bogart,’ Spaulding said.