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Thursday, November 19, 2020

williams, part one


by nick nelson

part one of two




you know, walt, this doesn’t make much sense.

i didn’t ask you if it made any sense. i am asking you if you are with me. you owe me, and i am asking you if you are with me.

of course i am with you, and i admit it - i owe you everything. but just hear me out, all right?

all right, say what you want, if it makes you happy.

you just got out of prison. you were in for fourteen years. your health is not the greatest. if you go back in, you will never get out. never get out alive.

i know that.

now consider williams. he owns half the state, has owned it for a long time. he’s lived the life of a king, surrounded by servants and babes and bodyguards, all the time you were in prison. and now he’s an old man. how long has he got to live? if you leave him alone, he might die a long slow miserable death. .you might be puttng him out of his misery. are you with me so far?

of course. keep talking.

he’s surrounded by cops and guards. his own, and the taxpayers. even if you get to him, they are just about sure to take you down. and if, somehow, you manage to get away from them, and they don’t kill you, and they don’t sent you back inside, they will hunt you down forever. how will you like it, walt, a man of your age, in your condition, running, always running, from town to town, always looking over your shoulder, never able to relax, to enjoy a good night’s sleep, always waiting for a sound at the door, never able to sit in a bar and enjoy a drink without always looking at the door… always on the move… down a hundred dark highways… in the wind.. in the wind and the rain… forever.

o k, harry, you’ve made your point. but i don’t care about any of that. i only care about one thing. one thing. and that is seeing the look on that son of a bitch’s face when i point a gun at him and he knows he has two or three seconds to live….after that, i don’t care what happens. do you understand?

all right. when do you want to do this?

tonight. if you can fit it into your busy schedule

tonight it is, then.

*

three o’clock in the morning, twenty miles of town, in the rolling hills where the rich folks live.

harry parked the car, which had been outfitted to look like a cab, at the bottom of the hill that williams’s mansion stood on.

walt got out and headed up the hill.

there were only a few lights on, in the upper floors of the mansion.

it was quiet, but harry knew that the place must be swarming with invisible guards.

at any minute one of them would shoot walt, or at least shout at him.

harry had promised walt he would wait for him. yeah, right. with the brooklyn bridge and a bottle of champagne and a couple of babes in the glove compartment to help walt celebrate.

at the first shot, or the first shout, harry would have his foot on the gas and be on his way.

if williams’s men, or any cops or state troopers stopped him he would just say he had been paid by walt to drive him out here. he had a roll of bills to prove it. he had cleverly arranged for walt’s fingerprints tp be on the bill on the outside of the roll. not that it was likely to come to that, but harry prided himself on anticipating all possibilities.

walt, of course, would be dead.


part two





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