The Blue Hour

Thirty-Three

Eight minutes later Big Bill Wayne backed the silver van out of the garage and accelerated crisply down the street. He was breathing fast and perspiring heavily. This was a record time for getting out. What a help, to watch the cops come and go at Colesceau’s, live on TV!

He drove steadily and within the speed limit. He hit the serene darkness of the Ortega and followed the moonlit highway through the hills. He thought of his favorite poem. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moorland the highwayman came riding, riding, riding/The highwayman came riding/Up to the old inn door.

He found LaLonde’s place. It was what you’d expect for an ex-con inventor with no job — a commercial space, rented cheap. Someone began raising the door after three knocks. Up it went, like it was letting him into a castle. Except the door was blue steel and Lee LaLonde was no nobleman. Bill stood there in his black suit and western tie and his golden hair, with Pandora’s Box in his shopping bag, sniffing the inside of LaLonde’s cave for danger or opportunity.

“Hi, Bill,” said Lee LaLonde.

“Fix this, partner.”

The toothy young man nodded and smiled. Bill could tell he’d been asleep. So he swept in without an invitation, turned on his boot heels and stared at LaLonde.

“It failed. I figured you’d know why.”

“Okay, sure. Wanna beer or something?”

“Nope. I’m in a hurry.”

“Not a problem. I’ll check it out.”

Bill gave the kid the bag and watched him go to one of his workbenches. LaLonde pulled the string and an overhead fluorescent light flickered on.

“You can sit down if you want. I wondered if I’d see you again. How’s it hanging?”

“How’s what hanging?”

Bill didn’t like the furtive look that LaLonde gave him, or the seemingly genial talk. He didn’t feel like sitting on LaLonde’s couch.

He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and toured the place: meaningless inventions, organized tools, posters of girls. Beautiful women, made in America. Before him was a shoebox of identical metal rings, ten of them, maybe, big enough to fit around the wrist of a small woman. From each ring protruded a thin arm. Each arm widened into a flat, thin, shiny leaf of metal about the size of a quarter. They looked to Bill like they could be used for scooping something out of something else.

“What are these?” Bill demanded, slapping the back of the box with his hand.

“Flashlight Friends.”

“For what?”

“You put the ring around the end of your flashlight and adjust the deflector end into the beam. It sends some of the light to your feet. That’s if you’re aiming the light straight ahead, I mean. So you can see where you’re walking but see what you’re looking at, too.”

“Shoots the light to your feet while you walk in the dark?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do they work?”

“Not really. I don’t think you can divide light that way. Or not enough of it, maybe. The second beam’s too weak. But, you know, three bucks is all I wanted.”

Bill liked the idea. Some of the things he’d seen at LaLonde’s table at the Lake Elsinore Marina swap meet had been better, though. And, of course, the electronic alarm override he’d commissioned was the best thing he could imagine, short of a device you could turn on a person to make them just do whatever you said from then out. Like a gun, but unthreatening and legal. Something small and secret, they couldn’t even see. Maybe someday.

But on to more practical matters, Bill wondered if LaLonde could devise some kind of display stand for his driver’s license collection. Something to show them off. Something expandable.

“What’s this?”

It was two pieces of plastic about the size of counter tiles, connected at right angles. One side was backed by a large suction cup. From the bottom extended a three-foot tube that ended in some kind of coupling, from the other a short nozzle of some kind.

“It didn’t work, either.”

“I asked what it is, partner.”

“The Shower Power Coffee Caddie. It’s a coffee warmer for the shower. You know, for those cold mornings when you want to take a shower but you want your coffee, too? The suction holds it to the shower wall. Put your cup on the plate. That hose takes water from the hot water pipe and circulates it through coils. The cooler water comes out the nozzle to make more room for more hot.”

Bill set the Coffee Caddie back on the bench.

“What’s the problem with that device of mine?”

“I’m looking, I’m looking.”

Bill could hear LaLonde tinkering at the bench. He viewed the tools and projects on the other benches, glanced at the kitchenette/sitting area, looked into the bathroom. There was a Formica table near the refrigerator. On it were cardboard salt and pepper shakers, some magazines about inventing and a letter holder made of wire that displayed the envelopes upright and in fanned layers, like the tail of a peacock. The tail pivoted on its base. Bill spun it once, then again. No squeak. The little bastard did good work when he wanted to. A tan-colored business card with black writing and a gold badge toppled out when he spun the holder again.

Bill turned over the card and smiled to himself: her home phone, written in a woman’s slanting print. He slid it into the pocket of his duster. When, he wondered. When had they been here, and how did they know?

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“It’s just the fuse. I’m putting in a new one and it should work.”

Bill wondered where the old one had fallen out. The device had quit working after Janet, and LaLonde’s prints might be on the fuse. If it had fallen out near her car...

“There,” said LaLonde.

Bill looked over at him: dumb smile, hair all funny from being asleep, his jeans falling off his slender hips and bunching up over his boots.

“Yeah, see, the circuit’s fixed now and the charge is running. I’ll put in a couple of new nine volts to top it off.”

So merry, thought Bill. Guilty. Watch his face now. “When did you talk to Sergeant Rayborn?”

“Who’s that?”

“The dark-haired police gal who was here, partner.”

A heavy burned smell wafted through the shop.

“Oh, her. Couple of weeks back — they were asking questions about this guy in the slam with me. They think he’s heisting again, thought I might know about him. I don’t. Wouldn’t tell those pigs anything if I did.”

“Of course. And the older man, Hess? Was he here, too?”

“Old fart? Yeah. Hey, this thing’s working now. Looking good, Bill.”

“Demonstrate.”

“Well, I can’t, unless your car has an electronic alarm.”

“No alarm.”

“Mine neither, piece of junk. This is fixed. It was just the fuse. It must have fallen out somehow. I soldered a piece of wire to hold it in.”

LaLonde held out the little box. Bill walked over and took it, examining the new fuse and the soldered restraint. The solder gun lay on the bench with its tip over a tin ashtray, smoke wobbling upward toward the light.

Bill picked it up. “Smells like burning bones.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, Bill.”

“I burned a woman once, but she was already dead.”

“Jesus. I’ve wanted to a few times. You know, get real mad at one or something.”

“I’ll need two extra fuses.”

LaLonde nodded and picked out a plastic box from the bench top. He rummaged through its compartments, chose a tin of fuses and offered it.

“Thank you. Here is payment for what you’ve done.”

Bill felt in his pocket.

“You really don’t—”

Bill pulled out the derringer and blasted the inventor in the forehead with it. LaLonde hit the floor like someone had yanked it from under him. He was jerking and the blood pouring out of his head was deep red on the concrete. Bill shot him in the nose.

Bill mused on how some people would worry about doing something like this, whether it was right or wrong.

Then the traitor went stiff, the orgasm of his life, thought Bill.

He got $32 out of LaLonde’s wallet, then threw the worn-out canvas thing on the floor.

Fifty-five minutes later Colesceau came downstairs in the blue TV darkness to watch some more CNB.

The station was running old news of the day because it wasn’t prosperous enough to program fresh news all the time. Hence “Rape Watch: Irvine” and Colesceau’s continuing torment at the hands of the video shooters and Lauren Diamond.

He went to the door and opened it. There they were, the after-ten crowd: two couples sitting on lawn chairs in a semicircle feeing his front door. They were playing cards. One couple was dressed for tennis. The guy had a towel around his neck. The hot cider looked untouched. The video shooter heaved himself out of the CNB van and came his way with the camera down, not shooting, and a cigarette in his mouth. Colesceau had overheard his name, Mark, and rather liked his sloppy look and sleeplessness.

“Well, Mark, our law enforcement people didn’t want the cider.”

“Guess not,” said Mark, fiddling with his microphone. “They left about half hour ago.”

“Hmmm.”

He padded across the porch and lawn in his robe and white socks, bent over and collected his tray.

The protesters stared at him, cards still in their hands. Tennis man stood up.

“Don’t you ever go to sleep, shitface?”

“I’m about to.”

“You can dream about all the old persons you molested.”

“I raped them, actually. And I’ve never dreamed of them, not once.”

“You’re disgusting,” said Miss Tennis.

“You ever give me half a chance,” said Tennis Man, “I’ll beat the living shit out of you.”

“I know you would. Give my regards, please, to the reasonable and decent Trudy Powers.”

“She thinks you’re a bag of shit.”

Colesceau sighed. He glanced at Mark, who was right up close by now, gunning away, then back to the Tennis Couple.

“I have paid my debt and I am rehabilitated. Harmless. So why are you so frightened?”

“If it was up to me I’d just cut them off.”

“Why? To make earrings for your wife?”

Words of disgust, then, from all of them, and Mark in close.

He headed back inside. On his porch he turned, balanced the tray with one hand and waved.