One year earlier—thirteen months to be exact—Frank Howard was taking his own sweet time trying on cowboy hats at Sheplers Western wear store in Mesquite, Texas.
Mesquite was an hour west of Ben Wheeler, and Frank had spent the time it would have taken to drive half that distance admiring himself in the mirror, twisting this way and that, pulling the hats low over his eyes, tipping them high up above his forehead. He had just about decided to buy a black, broad-brimmed, Stetson Bozeman hat when he saw Billie Earl Johnson standing a few yards away from him, watching.
Although Billie had been standing there for some time now, he didn’t feel like he’d been looking at much.
Billie had spent a third of his forty-nine years behind bars. He knew a criminal when he met a criminal. But in Frank—or “Mr. John”—Billie felt as though he’d made something more useful than another casual, criminal acquaintance.
He felt as if he’d made out an easy mark.
For months now, Billie had been taking Mr. John’s money. Tens of thousands of dollars at a time—sometimes much more. The first time, it was $60,000 in cash. They’d been sitting in Mr. John’s Lexus at the time. The money sat between them in a paper bag that also contained a photo of the woman Mr. John wanted killed.
On that occasion, Mr. John had told him to make the death look like an accident.
Billie had said, “Sure,” adding only that “these things, done professionally, take some time.”
What had happened after that was, basically, nothing—except insofar as Billie had turned himself into the big man in town, handing $100 bills out to all the folks he’d grown up with in Ben Wheeler. He’d bought motorcycles, four-wheelers, and a big four-door pickup for himself. He’d bought a Firebird for his daughter. He’d also bought thousands of dollars’ worth of meth and shacked up with Stacey, partying and screwing for days on end. One day in town, the cops had picked him up for possession. But that was no big deal in the greater scheme of things. When he bonded out a few days later, he just called Mr. John and casually asked for more money.
The pattern had long since established itself, with Billie telling Mr. John he’d do the job, then coming up with some excuse or another that prevented him from doing the job. The one constant was that he’d always ask for more money.
The other constant was, he’d always get it.
Billie was surprised. He’d always been a good liar. A great liar, in fact. In some other life, he believed, he could have been one of the country’s great con men. And his excuses were always believable because they were always close to the truth. If Billie had to tell Mr. John that he’d have to delay the job on account of illness, it was because he really had been sick. If the cause was that Billie had found himself behind bars and needed to be bonded out, it was because he really had gotten himself into trouble again.
And Billie was always getting into trouble.
But even so, there had been so many excuses, stretched over so many months. Sometimes, Billie felt as though Mr. John was paying him not to kill Nancy Howard. Or if he was paying to not kill her just yet.
Sometimes, Billie wondered if Mr. John really did want this thing done. Sometimes he thought that the man was plain stupid. Stacey’s own theory was that, like all the men she’d run across, Mr. John didn’t know what he wanted. And what he’d been paying for was the luxury of not having to find out. In Stacey’s estimation, planning to have Nancy Howard knocked off made Mr. John feel free. But on some level, Mr. John had to know that doing the thing would make him feel terrible.
As far as Stacey was concerned, Mr. John paid Billie to talk—to make his fantasy about life without Nancy feel more real—and paying more and more stretched the fantasy out, while making it feel that much more real.
Stacey’s take on the situation sounded reasonable enough to Billie. As long as Mr. John kept paying, who was he to complain? And Mr. John did pay: twenty grand here, seventy there. Billie Earl burned through it all like a blowtorch through butter. As far as he even kept track, Billie figured he’d spent $750,000 or more just for coming up with a long line of excuses. Mr. John was not happy. He’d made that much clear. But for reasons that Billie could never quite fathom, that didn’t keep Mr. John from paying him. So, here they were at Sheplers, and Billie was sure that Mr. John would have a fat envelope full of cash on his person.
“Everything’s set,” Billie said, after the two men had exchanged a perfunctory greeting.
“Everything?” said Mr. John.
“Everything except the next installment,” said Billie. “I’m going to need that, if we’re to proceed.”
“Okay, then.”
In the store’s dressing room, Mr. John patted his pocket and took the envelope out.
“I want your assurance,” he said. “I want your word this is going to happen.”
Billie laughed as he grabbed the envelope out of Mr. John’s hand.
“You’ve got it, partner,” he said. “You’ve got it.”