The Blue Hour (32 page)

He realized he had an
odd feeling inside.

"My mother fell in
love with a picture of Mexico when she was a young woman. For her it
represented a paradise far away from the frigid Carpathians. She never went
there until we came to live in America. She chose the name out of a book. And
she gave it to me."

Doberman: "Hmf. I
like this giant blue one with the yellow feather boa around it. It looks like
a pregnant stripper."

"Cassowary. I
think it's garish and obscene."

"You're
sensitive for a three-time granny raper."

She turned and looked at
him. The odd feeling was still inside him, slightly stronger.

No, he thought.

"But that was a long
time ago," he continued, "and I am a different man. Please, sit down.
You can watch the crowd outside on the TV, or you can open the blinds and watch
them in reality. You can do both. I usually just watch on the TV because I can
turn it off. Of course I can't turn off the crowd outside. But it's a
comfort."

"Do you get out
much?" asked the Doberman. She was still standing in front of the display
case. The old general was on the other side of the room so that Colesceau
couldn't see them both at the same time.

"I used to,
occasionally. Now, it's not possible."

She looked toward the
door. "Got you surrounded."

"Like Custer in
American history."

"Custer thought he
was a military genius. What kind of genius do you think you are?"

"None at all, I'm afraid. But I'm surrounded
just the same." "Sit."

Colesceau sat. He was
suddenly outside himself again, watching himself sit. From this dislocated
vantage point he could look down on the old guy's bristly head, the Doberman's
wavy locks and his own thinning dark hair. When the bitch's coat fell open he
saw the holster up under her arm, saw the snap was loose, wondered if she kept
it that way for quick kills.

And the strangest thing
had begun to happen—his shrunken, hormone-battered sex organ was starting to
stir.

"So, where did you
used to go, when you could get out?" Sergeant Rayborn asked him.

Sergeant Rayborn.

"Movies,
Sergeant. Inexpensive restaurants. The library."

Yes, it was growing.
Why now?

"When? What time
of day V'

"After work,
Sergeant. Evenings. Generally not on weekends because of the crowds."

"Ever go to
malls?"

"Yes. I like
malls."

"Why?" She was
looking at him sharply now. And he was looking down at himself, at the
beginning of a lump in his pants. He crossed his legs and locked his fingers
over his knees.

What was going cm?

"Variety," he
said. "Food, entertainment, merchandise. A nice environment. If you grew
up where I did, an American mall is a wonderful place."

"Ever go there
to look at the women.
⁷
"

"Never. I have had no
interest in women for three years. I have no desire to look at them or touch
them. Occasionally I want to talk to a female person, because females can have
such a refreshing way of seeing things. Then, I can call my mother, or perhaps
my psychologist, Dr. Carla Fontana. But so far as striking up conversations
with unfamiliar women—I don't do that. Very occasionally, one will strike up a
conversation with me."

"What do you do
then, run?"

"I'm a good
listener," he said. He wondered if he was laying it on a little thick,
because this Merci Rayborn was no typical American airhead. He had the feeling
she was seeing right into him. He pressed his legs together to apply pressure
to his shrunken testicles, in hopes of discouraging his excitement.
What is it about talking to her that does this to
me?

"I'll bet you
are," she said. "Gives you a chance to think about them, watch
them."

"This is what
conversation is, nor'

"Not when you're
figuring out a way to rape them it isn't."

"That is never
what I do."

"Stay where you
are."

He felt his
excitement rise a notch.

"Don't
move."

"Yes, Sergeant.
Whatever you demand."

Another notch. Something
to do with her commanding voice, he thought: her authority and conviction. It
was like she wore an invisible uniform. And not some indecisive American law
enforcement costume, but the actual power-emanating

uniform of the
Romanian state police.

• • •

Merci thought that
Colesceau was one of the weirdest guys she'd ever laid eyes on. The weirdness
was too vague and vast to identify yet but she felt it anyway, like the first
breeze before a massive storm. She shook her head and walked over to Hess, who
was now looking at the eggs.

"Take your
tour," she said. "I'm going to stay on him."

Hess looked over her
shoulder, toward Colesceau, then back to the display case. "Keep him in
front of you. He used an ice pick on those dogs."

"I'd like to see him try one on
me."

"Beware a weak man's rage."

"Yes, master."

She left Hess at the
case and went back to Colesceau. He was right where she had left him, legs
crossed and fingers locked over one knee. He looked pudgy and soft and she
thought she could see mounds of breasts under his shirt. A track light from the
ceiling lit the back of his slightly balding head. It was hard to imagine this
man doing what was done on the Ortega, or at the construction site off Main.
But he was compact enough to fit into the floor space behind the front seat of
a car. So were half a million other men in the county.

"I've got some dates I want to ask
you about," she said.

He looked at her and
smiled. "From a woman as attractive as you, I would say yes to all
dates."

She gave him her drop
dead look, heartfelt. "Let's get something straight, worm. One more
comment about my appearance, I'll book you for verbal assault. I'll have your
ass back in slam before you can form your next thought."

He squirmed a little
on the couch, nodding with apparent sincerity. He almost looked repentant.

"You clear on that, Jack?"

"Absolutely, Sergeant."

His
eyes, when I got up close, looked wet and sad . . .

A good description of this shitbird,
thought Merci.

"Saturday night, fourteen August.
Three nights ago."

He looked at her with
his regretful eyes and sighed. "I sat here and listened to my neighbors
chant. I would like to state right now that I love children and have never
harmed one.

Anyway, I watched TV. I saw myself interviewed by a
man who presented himself as an American Civil Liberties lawyer. He was in fact
a reporter with a hidden camera. I confronted the crowd at approximately six,
to see if they would be a little less loud. And again at nine-thirty, because
they had not yet set a time to discontinue the noise. So, Sergeant, you can go
outside and speak to them. They are my witnesses."

"I'll do that. All
right, three August—two Tuesday evenings ago."

"I need my calendar.
It's on the counter over there, by the phone."

"I'll get it.
You'll stay put."

He was smiling again, an expression that seemed to
hold a thousand messages but contain no clear meaning that Rayborn was familiar
with. He recrossed his legs and fingers. "Thank you, Sergeant."

• • •

Hess started in the
kitchen. He could hear their voices as he stood in the middle of it and took in
the generalities: neat, clean, used. He slid out the drawers and looked at the
flatware, the oven mitts, the utensils, the plastic wrap and foil. No ice
pick. The inside of the oven was clean. So was the stovetop. He turned on the
sink faucet and let the water run a minute, turned it off and listened to it
gurgling down the garbage disposal U. He looked in the cabinet under the sink:
wastebasket, pots and pans, dishwasher soap, glass cleaner, rags, brushes. The
dishwasher was half-loaded. No lidless canning jars. The refrigerator was
lightly stocked with ordinary staples and condiments. The freezer had boxes of
vegetables, ice cream and a package of hamburger.

The small downstairs
bathroom looked rarely used. The fixtures were dusty and dry and the toilet
bowl had a pale stain just above the water level.

Hess climbed the
stairs and went into the main bedroom. Colesceau slept on a small twin that was
neatly made: brown cotton bedspread, white sheets and pillow. On the wall above
the bed was a poster of a bright yellow Shelby Cobra with its hood open to
reveal a big highly chromed engine. Hess recognized the coveted Holly carbs of
his youth. The print at the bottom said "Pratt Automotive—Classic
Automobile Restoration," which Hess remembered as Colesceau's recent
employer.

Eggs with their
insides altered, made decorative.

Cars with their
insides altered, made custom.

Bodies with their
insides altered, made ... what?

The closet held a few
shirts and trousers on hangers; underclothes folded and stacked on a shelf;
shoes toe to toe in a plastic sleeve hung from the ceiling. Like Janet Kane's,
he thought. No wig—human hair or otherwise.

Where would you hide
the driver's licenses? Flat and small enough to fit into a million different
places.

Where would you hide
them?

He bent down and
looked under the bed: an aluminum baseball bat, a short rod and spinning reel,
a Daisy spring action BB pistol cast to look like a six-gun.

When Hess stood back
up he felt the blood rushing to his head, then a ringing lightness. The walls
bowed convex then back flat again. Two of them were empty but the one opposite
the bed had a framed poster of a castle looming atop a jagged mountaintop. He
walked up close but there was no title or description. Against one wall was a
dresser, which held sport shirts, shorts and more underwear. On top of it, Hess
found some change, paper clips, a pen and stubs from three computer-generated
movie tickets dated over the last three months. He wrote down the dates, times,
titles and locations of the theaters, and put them back. One of them was for
the night Janet Kane disappeared from the mall at Laguna Hills. The theater
issuing the ticket was in Irvine, just a few miles away.

In the bathroom he scraped
one of his credit cards down the bath towel hanging over the shower door, using
a sheet of toilet paper to catch the fallout. With his head angled to the light
he pulled several hairs out of the cotton terry and set them on the toilet
paper too. He added more from the hairbrush in the top drawer, then folded the
paper and slid it into his coat pocket. There was nothing of interest in the
wastebasket, the cabinets or the toilet tank, from which he removed the top
for a look. Someone had set bricks in each corner of the tank to save water.

Save water, Hess
thought.

Save eggshells.

Save cars.

Save things in
canning jars.

Save bodies.

The spare bedroom was really quite
small—just a bed, a dresser with a lamp on it and a closet. It felt larger than
it was because the closet doors and the back wall were mirrored. In the closet
were four boxes of books, most of them in Romanian. Some extra blankets and
pillows, a collection of men's clothing that looked faded and rarely worn. A
TV. The dresser held heavy sweaters, coats and socks. On the mirrored wall
opposite the bed hung a black plastic crucifix that struck Hess as the
loneliest depiction of Jesus he'd ever seen.

It seemed to Hess like a waste of a room. Why bother to pay for a
two-bedroom unit? Hard to imagine overnight guests in the home of Matamoros Colesceau.

" ...
I would say that the most drastic part of my
treatment was the terrible feelings I experienced internally. It was explained
to me that the hormone treatment would make me feel like I was constantly having
premenstrual syndrome, but this description did not mean much to me because I
was male. Am male. But it is a very bad feeling, as you know. Only in my case
it lasted for three years instead of three days."

"Constant or
intermittent
7'

Colesceau was still
outside himself, looking down on the authoritatively seductive Merci Rayborn
and his own rather hapless body. But he was having a good time talking to her,
telling her about how the Depo-Provera murdered his sex drive and turned him
into a peace-loving, nonsexual lamb of a man. His stimulation made him feel
mentally sharp and physically lithe. It was like a spark being fanned.

"Three years
seems very constant to me."

The sergeant fostered
confidence and energy in him and Colesceau was thankful for it. It surprised
him. He wondered if he was changing.