The Blue Hour

Forty-Three

Hess made a left on Palmetto, gunning the Chevy through the light industrial zone of Costa Mesa, past a boatyard and a liquid propane distributor and a wrecking yard for German imports and a surfboard maker and a custom motorcycle shop. At intervals, large dogs regarded him through chain link. Then the brick and windows of Pratt Automotive. He cranked a hard right at the next comer and came around the backside behind the bay.

There it was, sheltered behind two metal doors that opened from the ground up. Into each big slider was built a man-sized convenience door. No van in sight. Hess planted his sedan to block the use of either doorway, then cut the engine and called his position into Dispatch. Hess said there wasn’t a Costa Mesa prowl car in sight and Dispatch told him there was a 211, armed robbery, going down on the east side, all area units requested. But the real news was Sheriffs deputies had pulled over a panel van eastbound on the Ortega Highway, stand by.

He got out, put on his hat and walked toward the doors. That set off the guard dogs, a whole pack of them from the sound of it, their voices shrieking all around Hess in the warm summer air. He could hear the clink and rattle of the fences. The convenience doors wouldn’t move. Neither would the big sliders. Locked from the inside, as he’d expected.

And if there was anyone inside, they’d heard him.

He went around the building to the front. No van. There were five spaces in front of the store, a patch of brown grass and ivy up by the windows, a break area with some patio furniture on it. He was breathing hard by the time he rounded the corner and he wished his heart would just settle down but it was thumping away. It felt like something was slipping in there. Hess told himself not to worry about it. When was the last time his heart did something he asked it to, anyway?

Up close to the building and bent low under the windows, he crept along. The chipped letters spelling out Pratt Automotive went past over his head. The ivy he stepped on was threadbare and almost leafless. He squeezed behind a rusted wrought-iron bench surrounded by cigarette butts. His back hurt and it was hard to ignore the pain when he was bent over like that. The front doors were mesh-reinforced glass and they were locked, too. He cupped his hands to the dirty scarred glass and saw the dark wood paneling of the front office, the counter with the computer on it, the rows of shelves. At the end of one row Hess could see a door with a square window.

The front of the shop sat in darkness but light showed through the window to the high bay. An orange rope swayed very slightly, hung in the cavernous bay beyond the glass.

His vision went sharp and his heart kicked in strong and fast. He ran over to the wrought-iron chair and dragged it away from the building. The legs caught on the moribund ivy, leaving furrows in the hard dry earth.

It took him two tries to get it up and balanced over his head. He swayed, feet planted in the cigarette butts.

The window exploded just under “Pratt,” carrying most of the name with it. Jagged triangles rimmed the frame. Hess I pulled his .45 and knocked some of them out with the butt. Then he swung one foot onto the bottom of the window frame and hauled the rest of himself up. He crunched heavily to the floor inside, slicing open his left finger on the way down. Swaying in the broken glass, Hess tried to keep his balance. He found the hatch in the counter and slammed it up and open.

Then he was running the aisle between the high stacked shelves, left arm reaching for the high bay door, the window getting bigger as he approached.

He grabbed the door handle, jerked down and pushed through. The sound of the door closing behind him echoed faintly in the high ceiling.

Over his gun sights now: a silver van. Yellow race car. Orange rope. Merci curled on the floor below the rope, naked but moving. She lifted her head and shook it when she saw him. Her face was taped and Hess could hear her scream against it.

Then a small long-haired man popped up from behind the race car and shot him in the stomach.

Hess fired fractionally later and the man blew backward against the van. He looked like Kamala Petersen’s guy, and he wore a thick black vest over a bright shirt. Hess’s next two shots seemed to pin his target to the metal. But two more blasts quickly came back at him. Hess ducked into a shooter’s crouch, hearing the bullets careening around the bay. When he went to fire again he saw nothing but silver vehicle. He looked to the floor by the van, unable to believe that there was no body lying on it. Then one of the bay doors flew open and the sunlight charged in and the little man charged out.

He was back to Merci in five steps. Her eyes were clear and focused and her neck muscles strained against the tape. She was still trying to speak.

“It’s okay,” he said. His voice didn’t sound believable to him. “Here.”

He used his pocketknife to cut the tape from her wrists. It was hard to get the blade out because both his hands were covered with blood. He’d told himself not to look at the hole and not to touch it, but apparently he’d done just that. So he glanced down at his abdomen as he slid the knife back into his pocket, not seeing much but a bloody shirt and belt. A bullet made no bigger hole going in than a sharp pencil, but going out was different.

Right now it felt like someone had swung an oar into his gut, maybe an oar with a big nail in it. And it felt like his body was trying to gather around where that nail had gone in and out again, trying to fill the gap. His flesh was confused. He popped the little .32 from his ankle holster and held it up to her, then set it on the blanket.

Seconds later Hess was in the sunlight behind Pratt Automotive, surrounded by the barking of dogs, looking down the alley to his left where the Purse Snatcher ran with his long blond hair shining in the sun. He had a hundred yards. No more. A cold shiver of nausea went up through Hess, even as the warm blood drenched his underwear and ran down into his shoes.

He ran.

Hess’s legs pumped in rhythm with his lungs. He could feel his body trying to writhe away from what had gone in him — or through him, more likely.

He wished he hadn’t worn his black wingtips, wished he could trade them for a set of body armor. But he’d had that opportunity before he left home this morning, deciding against it, looking for the damned fedora instead.

Dogs bounced off the fences on either side of him. He was close enough to hear their teeth snap. Hess tried to keep his legs working on the same beat as his lungs but he was gulping and spitting out air twice per step now and that funny red outline had come back and it made him feel like he was dreaming.

The important thing was to keep the legs moving, keep those wingtips aimed at the Purse Snatcher and keep him in sight. Keep him in sight. Hess was only sixty yards back. Sixty yards back and closing. Half of that, and he could try to take him out. Half of that and he could take him out with certainty, aim for his butt, below the armor. The pain in his gut made him squint.

So Hess squinted ahead through the red world and kept his vision riveted on his prey. His footfalls were the sound of wet socks in wet shoes. The Colt was slick and heavy and he thought he might change hands but he also thought he might drop it. He thought he must be slowing down because Colesceau seemed further out. So he really dug in and tried to get his knees up, get some better speed going.

The Purse Snatcher vanished right. Hess followed seconds later. Through a yard of hay bales with archery targets tacked to them, no archers in sight at this early hour, then around a yellow stucco clubhouse of some kind. Hess could just make out the bright shirt and flowing hair turning the corner away from him.

Then across an empty street and into the grounds of a commercial nursery. Hess saw a stout Japanese man staring first at Colesceau then at him with set, stoic eyes. He held a flat of flowers.

Beyond the nursery was the slough of the Santa Ana River, a thicket of bamboo and weeds inhabited by feral cats and human beings too poor to afford a place to sleep. Hess watched Colesceau scamper between the deep rows of five-gallon trees and potting soil, look back just once, then climb the chain-link fence and drop over. He seemed about a mile away by now, but Hess figured it was just the pain that made his eyes tight, made things look farther out.

Then his legs faltered. His balance began to abandon him and he had to put both hands out like a tightrope walker to keep himself steady, but the gun was heavy and this threw him off even more. Still, he didn’t fall. He realized with disappointment that his hat was still on: how fast was he really moving, anyway?

Colesceau was headed for the jungle, a hundred yards away.

Then Hess sensed something behind him and Merci stretched past. She seemed to be eating up the ground ten feet at a time and there was something small and silver in her hand.

On her way by she said, “I got him.”

And there she went.

Hess felt his feet slow down, felt the big trunk of his body swaying for balance as it tried to slow down too, then saw the ground coming up at him and turned his face to the side so he wouldn’t break his nose.

This he accomplished. With his head in the dirt he looked toward the river in time to see Merci’s body pitch over the chain-link fence.

Hess was pleased to see his hat had finally fallen off. He was pleased to see that he still had control of the big automatic .45 in his right hand. Forty-plus years and he’d never lost his sidearm to anyone.

He worked himself up to his knees, gathered his hat and stood. He holstered the gun, which in the nursery seemed to be an absurd, almost shameful possession. He looked for a place to sit and found a wooden bench beside the path by the potted roses. There were a million of them, it seemed, reds and yellows and whites and purples and even a fountain with a dolphin spraying water from its blowhole.

The bench had a back and he leaned against it. He put on the hat and adjusted the brim. He didn’t even bother to look down at himself. It felt like someone had burned a hole through his middle with a cigarette the size of a fire log.

He was still breathing fast and shallow. Couldn’t get quite enough air. Just not enough to go around.

He could see the Japanese man coming toward him down the pathway, with the flat of flowers still in his hands.

Hess didn’t really feel like talking. But he knew he should have something to say, some accounting of himself. After all, he was armed and trespassing and taking up space on a perfectly good bench. He could hear the slow pitter-patter of liquid hitting the ground below that bench, like night fog spilling off an eave.

Hess straightened himself and looked up. He folded his hands in his lap and it was like putting them into a pan of something hot and wet. He tried to figure out what he should say. But his thoughts came slow like thoughts in a dream, and he couldn’t tell if they were really good or not.

Hello. I’m Tim Hess...

It seemed to him that the nurseryman was studying him from a rather long distance. His lips moved. No sound. Earnestly, Hess tried to read them. Then he remembered that there were words, too. Always words. You just had to wait for them.

“Are you the good guy or the bad guy?”

Very slowly, because he could not do it any other way, Hess removed his hat. Something here demanded manners. He set it on his lap and looked at the nurseryman. It took a long time and a lot of strength to formulate his reply. He wanted to get it right. And in the end he got it out in what he hoped was a strong and resonant voice.

“I’m an Orange County Sheriff Department... detective. You put the creeps away. They come back again. Over and over. I’ve done small. Things. Only a small number of people... care about. A few people will remember me. I wish I had children to... give things to. I did save three lives. Three. Those are sure saves. Maybe a few by... accident. So those... three lives are my best contribution to. Things. What I wanted to be was. Useful. In a way you could. See. Like a trash man or a bricklayer. Or a doctor. That’s all I have to say.”

The nurseryman hovered above a mirage on a distant horizon. His flat of flowers threw colored beams of light into the sky.

“Sounds like you do all right, old man.”

“I guess I’m ready.”

“Don’t talk. I’ll call someone.”