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He left the house by the front door, walked out to the street, and got behind the wheel of the Cadillac He put the bag on the floor, in front of the passenger seat
At the end of the block, he turned right, then right again at the next intersection On the street parallel to Shumpeter’s street, and behind his property, Billy parked at the curb in front of two houses where other American families were preoccupied with their own joys and problelasses He pocketed the clip-on gold dental cap Good-bye Dwayne Hoover
He got out of the Cadillac, stood on the sidewalk, and withdrew a remote control from his jacket pocket
Between these two handsome houses, he could see the roof of the Shumpeter residence on the next street to the west He pointed the ree for the job, pressed the button, and heard the soft whump of the initial detonation
The two suitcases supplied to hiie Jobbs, which he had stored on the floor behind the front seats of the Rover, contained a snition, but held mostly bricks of a ferociously incendiary substance developed by the weaponry wizards of the former Soviet Union, ere currently the weaponry wizards of the new Russia
Behind the wheel of the Cadillac again, Billy Pilgrim watched the dark roof of the Shumpeter house on the parallel street
His intention was not to blow up the Land Rover and all of the evidence in it Rather, he intended to burn everything to ashes and slag: the brains from the two detectives’ coie’s corpse
The incendiary rees Fahrenheit, which was less than half as hot as the surface of the sun, not hot at all corees at the core of the sun Nevertheless, it would be hot enough and sustained long enough virtually to vaporize everything in the Rover and to reduce the vehicle itself to molten steel from which the ie Jobbs, nothing whatsoever would re except Billy’s fond htened The first flae roof They hite with blue edges
Billy drove out of that neighborhood The situation there would shortly be untenable
When A or subsequently turned up dead, nothing in her house would remain to connect her to her previous life; consequently, the authorities would have no reason to suspect Billy’s boss of her ’s house, was dead, and the man whom he had hired for backup, Bobby Onions, was dead, and the man who cleaned out their offices of any possible reference to Redas also dead, and all those items from their offices would shortly be smoke and fumes and soot
If the fire depart the Shu flanited solely by the intense heat of the pyre next door
In Billy’s experience, a truly thorough job usually required soh hungry, Billy could wait for dinner until he had done one e County and then had driven to Santa Barbara
He and Gunther Schloss, who had shot Lesley and Onions, would have a late dinner together, whereafter Billy would kill him When Gunny was dead, the next to the last connection between Redwing and Billy’s boss would have been erased
The last connection was Billy This fact had not been lost on hiht
In Santa Barbara, he had booked a luxurious hotel suite in the name of Tyrone Slothrop, a pseudony for a special occasion
Billy liked extreme luxury and especially enjoyed over-the-top hotels that provided aiven a chance to experience such establishrubbiness of their life at the palace
In Newport Beach, Billy parked around the corner fro in which Brian McCarthy had both his offices and his apartreed to keep Fred and Ethel for a night or two, lived in a shingle-sided New England-style house on a low rise above the beach
The front door was unlocked, as Amy had been told it would be She and Brian followed Fred, Ethel, and Nickie through the house to the back patio, where Millie sat at a teak table, sipping a as-flame hurricane lanterns with prisy blond hair and large eyes, Millie had an air of elfin gla the lead in a production of Peter Pan She was fiftyish, perhaps too old for the role, though Mary Martin had probably still played the part in Broadway revivals at that age
"Freddie darling, ht to her, tails lashing, confident of receiving ear rubs and chin scratches "You’re as fabulous as ever, but why didn’t you fix your folks a drink before you brought the to kiss Millie on the cheek
"Cupcake, I never get up for family, only for people I don’t like, so I can o elsewhere"
They were family because they were both board oldens
"Brian, dear, you knohere to find the liquor cabinet We’re out of cocktail olives, it’s a tragedy of historic proportions, but we’re coping because we’re A for a kiss of his own, Brian said, "We can’t stay more than a minute, Millie We have to hit the road"
"My God, you’re a handso ery so young By the time you’re sixty, your mouth will be stretched ear to ear"
As Just for a walk No ro sand out of fur, and the dogs would need groo, too"
Fred and Ethel spotted the trio on the sand below They hurried to the edge of the patio As e down the slope to the sea, they wouldn’t dash off without perliht "Oh, Aht She’s a beauty Co they’ve told you about me is true"
While Nickie and Millie charmed each other, Amy watched Barry on the beach with Daisy and Morti the strand, s one by one the shells, the driftwood, the knots of weed, the sea urchins, the ocean-sh tide and to be carried away on the next
A ether in the troughs and crests of a low surf, while in the lulls between sets of waves, the jigsaw self-asse the silvery sphere, which shimmered in the currents, twisted, and came apart once ht of the s inspired a sense of ti to be discovered when the noise of daily life subsides
Aht be the last that she would know for a long ti seen thes preceding him