She backed out her long, boatlike American car and Big Bill waited, judging how well he would fit behind her seat. She made the half turn and shifted into drive but now, rather than nosing into her place, Bill backed his van into her path and all she could do was wait and look up at him, imperially seated in his captain’s chair. He was proud of the new silver paint job he’d given his vehicle. He smiled down at her and felt the cold white anger blooming inside him.
She rolled her window down to just below her mouth. “Thanks for waiting,” she said.
“You’re very welcome, ma’am.”
“Well, thanks. But now you’re kind of in my way.”
“I was just wondering if you’d like to have a drink.”
She was still smiling. He couldn’t believe it. In fact he didn’t believe it because he knew how fast things could change with a woman. In that second she measured him, he knew, making difficult decisions faster than any computer, assessing his threat and attractiveness, calculating his likely gifts and his potential dangers, judging both the safety and the profitability of his company.
“Look,” she said. “I work here, at Goldsmith’s Jewelry? Come in some night and say hi. Maybe we could get coffee. I’m Ronnie.”
“They call me Bill.”
“Cool! Nice to meet you.”
“Have a nice evening, Ronnie.”
He bowed his head in what he thought of as an Old West manner, then eased his van forward and into the place.
A moment later he looked to see Ronnie’s one-tail- lighted heap of a car wobble around a corner and out of the lot. He wrote down her license plate number just in case she didn’t work at Goldsmith’s Jewelry. Bill didn’t mind research. Research was part of scouting. And nothing on earth infuriated him more than being lied to by a woman he trusted.
The parking spot turned out to be a pretty good one — facing one of the main entrances, no cars in front of it to obscure his view of the crosswalk. He cut the engine and sat back. Ronnie’s car vanished onto the boulevard. The only reason he could tell it was hers was because of the broken light. What a smile. Bill felt a little stirring down there south of the belt line.
Bill watched a couple of teenage girls walk toward the entrance, but they didn’t interest him. He was a mature man with mature tastes. He believed that young people deserved a chance, and who knew, maybe one of them would grow into a woman he could enjoy someday. Bill then entertained himself with a recurring daydream: sailing down the highway in a fast car with a couple of his girls in the back with their hair blowing free, another in the front next to him with her hand on his crotch. Tape player up loud, that Springsteen song where the guy wants to get the electric chair with his girl on his lap. Heading for Vegas. Ninety miles an hour and a vintage 9mm Luger under his thigh. Oh, really, officer? B-LAM!
It was pleasant enough to imagine this, but a little absurd. He didn’t like to gamble and he had no desire to die at the hands of law enforcement. He didn’t quite understand martyrdom of any kind. There was no glamour in it.
He pivoted in his captain’s chair and stepped into the back of the van. He gloved up with fresh latex and took out the purses by their straps, stashing them behind his seat.
He started up the van and backed out of the spot. Out of the lot, down the boulevard where Ronnie had gone — she was almost certainly a lying, scheming witch — then back onto the freeway bound for the master-planned community of Irvine and the sanctuary of his home.
He felt behind him and brought out the purses, setting them all on the big console beside the driver’s station. Each had its own smell. He lifted and sniffed and enjoyed them one at a time. His program hadn’t been worked out for the first three — he didn’t know how to do what he wanted to do with them. He knew he had to keep something from each of the women he loved — why bother if you just dumped them forever, treated them like they didn’t matter?
He tapped to the radio on his steering wheel, wondering what he’d do if he could do anything in the world he wanted to.
One thing he’d do was develop that conscience. It seemed like life would be easier with such a thing. He’d know the difference between right and wrong.
And if you knew, you could easily pick the one that was best for you.
He’d also get that job at Saddleback’s, the one advertised on the sign in the window last week. The pay was decent, and he would be surrounded by boots, hats, dusters, thick belts with enormous buckles and genuine feed and tack. The place smelled of hay and leather. Either that, or get a job as one of the costumed gunslingers at Knott’s Berry Farm, blasting away while women in bonnets admired his gunplay.
Big Bill remembered the first time he actually saw John Wayne’s house — former house, to be exact. It was just over the hills there, on an island in Newport Harbor. He’d stood for hours, contemplating it. And gone back a dozen times, at least. That had naturally led to a dinner cruise aboard the Duke’s former boat, Wild Goose. The cruise had set him back $50 but Bill would never forget the majesty of the enormous wooden bar where John Wayne had drank and gambled, the master stateroom or the little berths set up for his kids. Standing on that ship while it hummed around the harbor Bill had felt like he was stationed in the very heart of the American West.
Now the West was mostly suburbia, but that was okay, because the suburbs thrived on the illusion of tranquillity.
Bill checked his speed and thought of the old detective they’d brought back to catch the Purse Snatcher — Hess was his name. He was in the papers this morning, a picture and everything. He looked like an Old West sheriff, all the lines in his face and those cold eyes. Obviously a man with a conscience.
Naturally, however, the cop in charge of his case was a woman. She’d clucked on in the article about what a privilege it was to work with the foul old investigator. In the newspaper picture, she looked about half the age of her new partner. Bill liked that idea: an old corpse of a guy and a perfectly preserved, young, fresh woman, trying to catch a criminal genius.
Give them something to think about. He reached into his shirt pocket, took out the folded paper and stuffed it into one of the purses — his very first, actually, the brown-and- black one.
He checked his mirror, then reached over, swung all three purses across his body and dangled them out over the carpool lane. The wind ripped them from his hand. He watched them in the sideview mirror, bouncing like heads along the asphalt.
Fifteen
“We got a hit from CAL–ID, Hess,” said Merci Rayborn. “Those must have been some damned good parameters you and the witch doctor worked up.”
She couldn’t control the excitement in her voice. “Creep named Lee LaLonde, car thief, meth freak, nice healthy sheet — mostly Riverside County. Get this, he lives out in Elsinore now, just off the Ortega. I let Riverside know we’re coming in. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
She could hear a lamp click on, then the sound of the old man breathing. Her bedside clock said 4:56.
“Get some backup?” he asked in a calm, clear voice.
“No. The shitbird is still on parole. We can do what we want with him. Don’t worry.”
She felt presumptuous telling a superior officer not to worry but Hess wasn’t superior anymore, she reminded herself. It made her feel powerful. The adrenaline was jumping through her now and she couldn’t stop it if she wanted to. She didn’t want to.
This was what it was all about, life made vivid and death made close by force of arms. It was better than being in love.