The place was deserted.
Eddie Wolfnagle got lonely.
He got out of the car and looked around. There were no other cars. Nothing. Nothing but the ocean, the forest behind him and the awesome, black-ridged river of petrified lava ahead, sweeping down the mountainside straight into the ocean, the outfall of a volcano that once, thousands of years ago, had inundated over half the island, leaving behind a crater bigger than the island of Manhattan. The gray-black plateau stretched ahead as far as he could see. To his left it rolled gently down toward the sea, then suddenly fell away, dropping a hundred feet or so down to the ocean.
Jesus!’ he said aloud.
A barrier closed off the road. The sign nailed to it read:
DANGER! LAVA FIELD, ROAD UNSAFE.
THIS ROAD IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED.
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
HALEAKALA NATIONAL PARK
US RANGER SERVICE
A twig cracked behind him; he turned and saw a man coming toward him. He was about the same height as Eddie and was using a branch as a walking stick.
Eddie was a little surprised. If this was Hinge, he looked like a real square. Butch haircut? A polyester suit? Jesus, where’s he been? And he was younger than Eddie had imagined, and fair-skinned. For some reason, Eddie had expected Hinge to be dark. Maybe even with gray hair. This guy - hell, this guy was hardly thirty.
‘Hinge!’ Wolfnagle called out to the man, who smiled vaguely and nodded. ‘Hey, all right! I’m Eddie Wolfnagle.’
They shook hands and Hinge said, ‘Let’s get in the car, in case somebody comes by.’
‘Good idea,’ Eddie said.
They got in the Honda.
‘Where’s your car?’ Wolfnagle asked.
‘I’m camping out,’ Hinge said. ‘Up the draw there, a mile or so.,
‘Oh.’ Wolfnagle began feeling anxious. This was the moment he had been dreaming about for two months. Now it seemed too easy. ‘Uh ... maybe ... uh, you should show me something. You know, some identification.’
Hinge took a brown manila envelope out of his breast pocket and dangled it from his fingertips. ‘This should be enough,’ he said. ‘You have my goods?’
‘Right here.’ Eddie took a roll of 35-mm film from his coat pocket and held it up with two fingers, but as Hinge reached for it, Eddie let it drop into his fist. ‘Well...’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and grinned.
For just an instant Hinge’s eyes went cold, but it passed quickly and he smiled. He handed Eddie the envelope. Eddie gave Hinge the film and opened the envelope. Packets of nice, poppin-fresh hundreds. He riffled them with the dexterity of a Vegas croupier.
Hinge took a jeweller’s loupe from his pocket, and pinching it in front of his left eye with his eyebrow, unspooled a foot or so of film, which he held up toward the light.
‘Whaddya think?’ Eddie said, still counting.
‘So far, so good. You have close-ups of everything?’
‘You’re lookin’ at it, old buddy. Plans and the actual installation. Just what the doctor ordered, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘All here,’ Eddie said and giggled like a kid. ‘I can’t believe it, man. A hundred grand. You know something? I don’t think my old man made a hundred grand his whole fucking miserable life.’
‘Congratulations.’
Eddie took off his Stetson, dropped the envelope in it and put it back on. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you need something else, I’m your man, okay? I can steal the crutch off a cripple, he won’t know it till his ass hits the ground.’
‘I will be in touch.’
‘I started boosting when I was nine. Stole my first car when I was twelve. Could hardly see over the steering wheel. I did, skit, coupla hundred jobs before I was sixteen. Never got caught. Never seen the inside of a slammer.’
‘You’re lucky.’
‘it’s talent. A little luck, maybe, but mostly talent.’
‘I mean you are lucky never to have been in prison. How did you manage this job?’
‘Right place at the right time. Security on the rig was nothing. The plans? That was a break. They had them all out one night, checking something in the transfer station. When they was through, they asked me would I run ‘em back down to engineering. I sez sure, no problem, then I just stop off in my room on the way, whip out the old Minolta, bim, bam, boom, I got myself an insurance policy.’
‘Just off the sleeve like that? No planning?’
‘You got it. You stay alert, things pop your way. Look, I knew I had something, see. I knew somebody, somewhere, would like a shot at those plans. All I hadda do was find the somebody. Then you pop up. What a break!’
An amateur, Hinge thought. Just a blunder. But it was lucky the word had gotten to him first. ‘How can I be sure you don’t have copies? You could be peddling this material to our competitors.’
‘Look, that’d be dumb. I wanna do more business with you guys. I wouldn’t cut my own throat.’
‘That’s acceptable,’ Hinge said.
‘You have the drop in Camden, New Jersey, right? It’s my sister. I’m tight with the bitch.’
‘Yes.’
Wolfnagle winked. ‘I’m gonna be travellin’ awhile.’
‘You deserve a trip.’
‘Yeah, right. Well, uh, anything else?’
‘Yeah. Got a light?’
Did he have a light? Bet your ass, He had a fucking Dunhill lighter, that’s what he had. He took out the gold lighter, flipped it open, struck a flame and leaned over to light the cigar. He heard a faint poof, saw ashes float from the end of the cigar and then felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his throat.
At first he thought a bee had stung him. He brushed frantically at his neck.
Something bounced off the dashboard and fell on the
He reached down and picked it up. It was a dart of some kind. He stared at it.
Dumbly.
It was going in and out of focus. His skin began to tingle. His hands had no feeling. His feet went to sleep.
Then the tingle became pain, sharp, like pinpricks, then the pain got worse. His skin was being jabbed with needles, then knives. He tried to scratch the pain away but he could not move. A giant fist squeezed his chest. He gasped for breath. Nothing happened.
He turned desperately to Hinge, and Hinge was a wavering apparition, floating in and out of reality. Wolfnagle looked like a goldfish, with his eyes bugged out and his lips popping soundlessly as he tried to breathe.
It had been a good shot, straight to the jugular. The mercury worked swiftly, thirty or forty seconds after hitting the bloodstream, and when Wolfnagle began to thrash, Hinge grabbed him by the arms and jammed him hard against the car seat. Now he went into hard spasms and Hinge almost lost him. He was stronger than he looked. The seizure lasted a minute or so, then Wolfnagle’s teeth began to rattle, and then they snapped shut. There was a muffled rattle deep in his throat. His body stiffened. His eyes rolled up and crossed. Hinge heard him void.
Hinge held him for a few moments more, then released him. He seemed to shrink as he sagged slowly into the seat. His chin dropped suddenly to his chest. Hinge tipped Wolfnagle’s hat and the brown manila envelope slipped into his hand. He reached over and took the dart from ‘Wolfnagle’s stiffening fingers. He pressed two fingers into Woifnagle’s throat. There was no pulse.
Hinge got out of the car. The wind blew up from the sea, rattling the palm fronds and sighing off into Haleakala’s crater. A bird screamed and darted off through the trees. Then it was quiet. So far, so good.
He went around to Wolfnagle’s side of the car, released the brake and pushed the car in a slight arc until it faced the ocean. There was nothing between it and the sea but a couple of hundred yards of black, ridged, petrified lava. He looked around again. They were still alone. He started the ear and the engine coughed to life. He raised the hood and pulled the automatic throttle out an inch. The engine was roaring. He went back to the driver’s side and pressed in the clutch with his walking stick, dropped the gear shift into first, held the door with his free hand and then jumped back, releasing the clutch and slamming the door. The rear tires screamed on the hard surface. The engine was revving at almost full speed. The car lurched forward, picked up speed, struck the edge of the lava bed and leaped over it. It wove erratically toward the sea, then turned and started back up the incline, teetered for a dozen feet or so and flipped, roiling side over side, until it reached the drop-off. It flipped over the edge, soaring down, down, down, and smacked into the ocean. A geyser of water plumed up and was carried away by the hard wind. A wave washed over the car, then another, until finally Hinge could only see its trunk. Then a heavy swell shattered it against the lava wall. The ocean foamed and receded. The car was gone.