The Blue Hour

Twenty-Five

A quick shower and clean clothes, plus Merci wanted Hess to know that she liked him now, so she tossed the old fast food and stopped for some new. She overbought, then wondered if a guy on chemo and radiation ate much of anything. Fries and shakes, hamburgers, tacos, onion rings, the works.

She was surprised to find his apartment neat and clean, the opposite of Mike’s place in Anaheim. She suspected it was a furnished rental unit until Hess told her so and removed all doubt. They sat in the living room at either end of a blue plastic couch, with the white bags strewn on the coffee table in front of them. Hess left the TV on. The windows were open and the shades up and Merci could see a pale prairie of sand topped by a black ocean topped by a blacker sky alive with stars. Voices wavered up from the sidewalk, laughter, the hiss of roller skates. Then the distant thump of waves followed by a sound like a soft drink poured over ice.

She leaned forward and ate.

“So, where were we?” she asked.

“Evil, I think.”

“I never think about evil. I just think you should be punished for what you do. Wow, these hamburgers are good.”

She looked across and saw that Hess was eating, too.

“They really are.”

“Do you eat healthy?”

“I have since the operation. Before, anything went.”

“How come you aren’t fat? Alcohol is really high in calories, you know.”

“Metabolism.”

“Yeah, and thirty years of cigarettes.”

“Fifty-five.”

“You really are old.”

He chuckled but that was all.

“I’ve got a terrible diet,” she confessed. “I actually like cooking, but not for just me. So it’s stuff like this half the time, decent stuff the other half.”

“You work it off, though.”

“I’m in the gym all the time. God, don’t we sound like a couple of real Californians now, talking about what we eat and what we do with our muscles? I spend my vacation every year in Maine. Kittery, Maine. Dad took me out there when I was little so I still go. Anyway, they don’t live like we do back there. You start talking lifestyle and they roll their eyes.”

“I always hated that word.”

“Me too. And anything with cyber in it I promised myself I’d never use it, now I just did.”

“Same with virtual.”

“Yeah. Virtual sucks. It’s all just bullshit to get you thinking you’re missing something new. So you’ll go buy things. Makes me want to puke. Vanilla or chocolate on the shake?”

“Chocolate.”

“Good. I got two of them.”

“And no vanilla.”

“Not a one.” Merci heard herself giggle, then giggled at the sound of it. “I thought that was funny when Izma asked me if I wanted ice water, then, when I bit, he said he didn’t have any ice or any water. That’s one large creepy dude, Hess.”

“He was holding a frozen cat when I busted him. When he opened the door, I mean.”

“What did he do with it?”

“He dropped it. It sounded like a rock on the floor.”

“God, what a hoot.”

“I was scared. I pistol-whipped him real hard to take him down. He hit the floor like a bag of nails, but after that, he was always real nice to me.”

“I noticed you got his attention. Do you like beating people up? Someone who really deserves it?”

Hess was nodding. “When I was young I enjoyed it. Trouble is, it’s hardly ever a fair fight, with batons and sidearms. You know?”

“If you’re a woman it’s fair. I mean, if you’re up against a guy you need all the help you can get.”

“I doubt you beat many up for the fun of it.”

She looked at him. “True. You’d think I’d do it a lot, given my bad temper and what a misanthrope I am.”

She thought of Lee LaLonde. “I actually didn’t get that much enjoyment dunking the thief out in Elsinore. I mean, besides the thrill you get dominating someone physically. Just to know you can do it. But I got lots of enjoyment out of the results, though.”

“You got them.”

“Do you think I was wrong?”

“No. You might have saved lives.”

“End justifies the means?”

“That’s another one of those simple statements that sort of bug me. But with LaLonde you did what was right.”

“How come you got married so many times? Wasn’t it like, three or four?”

He was about to take a bite of his hamburger. He closed his mouth and stared at her a long beat.

“Three.”

“Well, why three? Wasn’t once horrible enough?”

“Stupidity.”

“Whose?”

“Mostly mine.”

“You mean you gave up a good one or two?”

“All three, really.”

“How come you never had children?”

“Kept waiting. Waited too long. Some bad luck, too. Back when I was in my forties I wanted some. Never worked out.”

Merci thought about this.

“I don’t believe in luck. I think you’re directly responsible for what happens to you.”

“I used to think that.”

“How else could it be?”

“I don’t think you can lay what happened on Ronnie Stevens, for instance. I think she crossed paths with someone much stronger and more cunning and vicious than she ever was. Within the limits of what we’d call reasonable, it wasn’t her fault.”

“That’s all this victimization bullshit you see on TV.”

“The TV’s all the extremes.”

“Then why does everybody watch?”

“It comforts them to think everything’s out of control.”

“Bunch of goddamned whiners, if you ask me.”

Hess studied her. He had a way of looking disapproving and tolerant at the same time. Maybe she was making it up.

“Power,” she said. “Everything comes from the power you have inside yourself. Your will.”

That look again.

“You’ve got this look, like you think two things at once.”

“I guess I do.”

“Well, what are they?”

More of the same look. “Can I just say that I admire you a lot? Your youth and everything it implies. I like the way you wear it, what you’re doing with it.”

“Even when I screw up?”

“Yeah.”

She considered. “You’re still thinking two things about me at the same time — things that don’t go together except that you’re making them.”

“I’m wondering how you can be so bright and so dull at the same time. How you’ll either do really well for yourself or you’ll fail big. Just notions.”

“Hey, I’m your commanding officer.”

“You asked.”

“I’m happy with this. This burger is great and it’s nice to just sit here and talk about being a cop and a human being. Mike talked a lot but I don’t think he listened to my side very much. Then it was either TV or bed.”

Hess said nothing.

“Can you still, Hess?”

“Still what?”

“You know. It. Make love.”

His face went red and he looked at her again with that double-thoughts kind of expression.

“I mean, when you’re close to seventy, can you?”

“Of course you can.”

A slight edge to his voice as he looked at the TV and the light from the screen played off his face. She couldn’t tell if it was still red or not.

“I wonder if my mom and dad still do it. They’re your age.”

“You could ask them.”

“They’re kind of sensitive.”

She was truly surprised to see him laugh. She realized she’d never seen him do that before and it changed everything about his face: lines backing into shape over his eyes and around his mouth, actual dimples on his cheeks. A happy light.

Kind of amazing, really, how laughter could change a man. She realized she was looking at him with a kind of dumb astonishment.

He really let go, then. Eyes wet, big chest and shoulders moving and the goofiest look on a face that had held no goofiness she’d ever imagined until now.

“Good God, young lady. You’re funny.”

She wasn’t sure how to feel about this. “Well... really?”

“Really.”

She felt confusion about what she’d said, and some embarrassment along with it, and some shame, too. She wasn’t a zoo chimp who’d done something cute. She thought of how heavy and tired he’d felt when she helped him out of the chair on Friday evening and thought he owed her more for that than just this sudden amusement.

“Merci, I’m sorry. It’s just that I haven’t laughed in so goddamned long. I was not trying to make you feel bad.”

“Not at all,” she said.

“Really.”

“I know. Did you know we both use blue notebooks?” Anything to dampen the comedy.

“Yeah, I did notice that. Hey, would you like to take a walk?”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s a warm summer night and the ocean’s right there and you can digest your meal and feed your soul.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Something had gone out of her — the lightness, she thought, the freedom to say what you want to say. She felt tired and miles from home. She tried to think of something to cheer herself up.

“Hess, don’t you wish it was raining and we had one of those upside-down umbrellas to collect the rainwater?”

“God, those were great.”

“I would have bought one, but I was too busy being a hardass.”

“You ate him alive, Merci.”

“Sure did, didn’t I?”

They took the boardwalk north toward the pier, staying to the pedestrian side while skaters and bikers whizzed by them. Merci looked out to the water and watched the waves crashing in. She thought of Hess actually out riding those monsters at the Wedge. She’d gone down there with Mike once to see the bodysurfers and couldn’t believe that they’d take such chances. For what? She’d dreamed about big waves in a black ocean since she was small. She’d never questioned where the dream came from because its message was so clear: stay out of the water and save yourself. Easy enough. You didn’t have to be Old Testament to interpret that one.

The pier was hopping on this summer Sunday — lovers and skateboarders, white punks and gangster-style Mexicans, college kids and bikers, bums and cops and glum Asian fishermen with their lines in the water and an occasional mackerel flap-flapping on the wet cement.

Merci walked just a half step behind Hess and watched him more than occasionally. She was waiting for something from him but she didn’t know what. She thought it might come from his face rather than his mouth, plus, she just liked the way his head looked, battered but still noble, like a horse that had done great things. She wondered if that was where they got the term war-horse. She had this oddball desire to see what his hair felt like — that straight-up, almost jarhead, white wave in the front cut that made him look like a general from some war that was filmed in black and white.

He may think I’ve got the manners of a zoo monkey, she thought: but I know enough to keep my hands to myself. But if I could distract him for a second...

They had a drink at the Beach Ball and another at Scotty’s and another at the Rex. These were her idea. It seemed to Merci that you got closer to people when you were high on alcohol, so long as they were high, too. Like taking a little trip together. She had never considered herself a drinker, but here she was two nights of the weekend, knocking back some pretty stiff stuff. You couldn’t even tell with Hess. He was the same whether he had none or three. It surprised her he could drink his way through chemotherapy and radiation. Maybe it helped. For herself, the drinks made her feel hazy and warm and a little passive, which was good because she usually felt sharp and cool and prepared to kick serious butt. It was nice to get a glow you knew would be gone in a few hours, in the company of somebody you like. Temporary insanity.

But outside the Rex there was a scuffle on the sidewalk and Hess pulled Merci back from it just as two NBPD bike blues jumped in and broke it up.

Her anger just cut right up through the alcohol, sharper than it was when she was sober, and she felt her spirits rise then rankle in unfamiliar ways. Maybe that’s why they called it spirits. Scotch was kind of spooky stuff.

She looked back and saw the bike cops handcuffing a skinny wino to a parking meter. His opponent, a muscle type with a goatee, had a stream of blood running down his forehead.

“I feel like I have to do something in a situation like that.”

“Let it go. You’re a homicide investigator, not a beat cop.”

“I hate to see that kind of crap going down. Two meatballs, two perfectly good heads. Makes me want to bang them together.”

“It’s over. Relax.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s go down to the water.”

She trudged across the sand. The Scotch and the receding adrenaline left her legs heavy and her mind light. When they got to the berm near the waterline they stopped. Merci watched the faintly luminescent suds swoosh up toward them then fade back down. Small birds darted across the shiny slope before the brine soaked in.

“You’re a good partner, Hess.”

“You are, too.”

“We’re a decent team, aren’t we?”

“We’re doing okay, so far.”

“I know Brighton wants me to fail. I know the lawsuit makes him look bad. I know you’re supposed to watch me for him. Probably keep a record of it.”

“I’m supposed to watch out for you. Like you are for me.”

“That’s the first bullshit I’ve heard from you, Tim. I know the score and it’s more than you say it is. You can tell him what you want. I’m going to keep doing my job the way I think it needs to be done. Doesn’t mean I won’t mess up sometimes. What I’m not going to do is back off because of you, or Brighton, or anybody else. I’m going to find the Purse Snatcher and blow the brains out of his sick head and sleep good that night. All the rest of you can sweep up behind me, pick up the pieces, do what you have to do.

“This is the deal with me and Phil Kemp. Phil Kemp has been talking dirt to me since I got off jail duty my first two years. I mean real lowdown body parts and what he’d like to do. He’s rubbed his crotch on my ass and brushed my tits and said stuff you wouldn’t believe. I guess I didn’t react right when I was young. I didn’t know what to do. I thought that’s how it went, thought that meant being one of the boys. Then I started warning him off. He thought it was cute. Couple of weeks ago he was waiting in the parking structure, late, talking shit about Mike and what I really needed. He was leaning on my car. He took ahold of my arm, pretty hard, pretty rough. I got the nine between his eyes and I told him he could let go or get shot. He let go. Tried to laugh it off. So I hired a good lawyer. Because I’m sick of him getting away with it. I never wanted to play that game. It’s boring and it’s trite and it’s demeaning. Kemp’s a waste of a human being but he’s tight with Brighton. That’s why Brighton’s so eager for me to screw up. That would make it look like I’m suing because I can’t cut it.”

They walked south with the black water at their feet.

“What do you want, Merci? Out of this lawsuit? You want Kemp fired? Jail? A settlement? What?”

“I want Kemp to goddamned apologize to me and stop. It’s that simple.”

“That’s all?”

She thought about this. She wondered how clean she could come with Hess. Maybe it was the scotch or maybe it was just her instincts, but she thought she could trust him with this.

“Truth, Hess? What I want most is to go back in time and not file the goddamned thing. I’m already sorry I did it.”

She hoped he wouldn’t say just drop it, and he didn’t.

“But I’m not going to drop it, Hess. I’ll chase Kemp all the way to court if I have to. He’s gonna stop and he’s gonna apologize or I’ll ruin him. Guaranteed. And if fifteen other broads want to join in and wreck him with me, then they’ve got the right. They can do what they want. But I wish they’d quit treating me like some kind of leader. I got ten e-mails over the last three days, thanking me for stepping forward. For being courageous enough to stand up to the system. What they don’t get is I love the system. I’m part of it. I’m going to run the whole thing someday. Put money on that. And it really infuriates me to have to file a suit to get this guy to stop asking me to suck his miserable dick. But what I want to say to everybody else is, stay off my side.”

Merci heard a nightbird cry behind her, up close, like it was zooming past her ear. Then she could see it, just a blip of a shadow on the night, vanishing.

“You’re doing the right thing,” said Hess.

“That’s right. I’m doing it. Tell Brighton if you want to, since he doesn’t have the nuts to ask me himself.”

“This thing caught him by surprise.”

“That’s right. I never ratted Kemp out. Not until I talked to him. Then warned him. Then stuck a gun in his face. He’s getting what he deserves, Hess. I’m sorry if it upsets Brighton’s happiness, but it’s sure as hell upset mine.”

They ended up back at Hess’s apartment around eleven. Merci fell asleep on the couch and when she woke up at midnight Hess had made coffee.

He was lying back in a cheap recliner by the window with a glass of something on the sill, moonlight on his face, snoring. Merci stood over him and felt a strong urge to touch his hair while he wouldn’t know it.

She reached out, but stopped.