She stared up at me. “I can’t hear him?”
“Right.” I came down by her again. “You don’t hear him. He’s calling weakly. I heard him call, remember. It’s faint. If you’re not damned close by, you’ll miss it. Out here, for example. So that’s how come the intercom, and he’s using the intercom. As far as anybody’s concerned, you never heard a thing. You can be standing there looking at him, for all it matters. We’ll work that out. But it’s going to be that clean.”
“I don’t understand at all, Jack,”
“I’m going to fix that unit by his bed so it goes on the blink. And it’ll be my fault.”
“But they’ll find it.”
“Certainly they’ll find it. But it’ll be fixed in such a way that it won’t be on purpose. See? Just plain carelessness on my part. A mistake. They can’t hang you for making a fool mistake, can they? Sure, they’ll raise hell, and you’ll raise hell, and there’ll be talk, but so what? He’ll be dead. Don’t worry, I can do it.”
“How?”
“First of all. I’ll put the units in, and we’ll let them go for a couple of days so he can wear the newness out of it, get used to it. He’ll be using it all the time, calling you, talking to you. It’s always that way when people first get them in their homes. Then it’ll die off. You can maybe work in a word to him, ask him to use it only if he has to. Like if he has an attack. He won’t mind, after he’s played with it for a while.”
“Will you please tell me how you’ll work it? It sounds complicated.”
“It’s perfect. Look, it’s going to be careless soldering. A condenser’s going to go bad and I’ll have to put a new one in.”
“What’s a condenser?”
“Never mind. The point is this. It’s a coupling condenser, and it’ll be soldered to the grid terminal of a tube socket. Now, when I solder it in I’m going to do a sloppy job. I’ll know it’s a sloppy job, but I’m in a hurry—I’ve got another call. So I try the intercom and it works. So I say to hell with it.”
“If it works, what good is the idea?”
“Here’s the idea. When the unit’s turned on for any length of time, the metal on the grid will expand from the heat. It’ll ground out. That means the unit won’t function. It’s that simple.”
“But if he calls me, he isn’t just going to sit there and wait for metal to expand.”
“Shirley. It will only take a minute. And you’re forgetting this is staged for them when they look around. They’ll find him dead. You’ll make absolutely sure he’s dead before you do a thing. Like, if he uses the intercom to call you when he has an attack, and it works, you’ll just have to hold off going in to him till he dies. The unit will go off. It could go off the minute he turns the thing on.”
“Suppose it doesn’t go off?”
“But it will, Shirley.”
“Suppose he just uses it to call me. Maybe he just wants me to bring him something. I mean, before he has an attack, and it goes off? What then?”
“I thought of that, too. You just stick within hearing distance, like you do now, until the time comes when you know he’s having an attack. He’ll never know whether the unit’s working or not. See? There’s nothing can go wrong. Just the same, I’ll go over every point a hundred times, before we pull it.”
“I’m beginning to see. It’s good, Jack—it’s good.”
“Sure. So they find him dead. The intercom’s turned on. Obviously he was trying to call you. Only you were out here, sitting by the Gulf, and you didn’t hear a thing. You’re all broken up. The unit’s inspected. They find what? They find I did a careless soldering job. The set grounded out. He was trying to get you, but the unit wasn’t working. It’s my fault. I’m to blame. But did I actually kill him? Nobody’ll ever go so far as to say I did. It’s a human error.”
“Isn’t that taking an awful chance?”
“Sure. But you think of a better way, and tell me about it. Don’t you see? I’ll be sick about it, I’ll feel like hell. But what can I do? Resurrect him?”
“Jack—it’s really good.”
“Sure.” I motioned with my head. “We’d better get inside. It’s getting dark, and I’d better take off. It’ll look better if I come around in the morning, work in the daytime. We can iron out any snarls then. You try to think of flaws, all night, and I’ll do the same. Try to think of anything that could go wrong.”
“All right.”
We moved around the side of the house. “I wish you could stay,” she said.
“I can’t. We’ve got to take it real easy.”
We walked up the ramp onto the front porch. The front screen door opened, and a woman stepped out on the porch. She was very thin, with long blonde hair, and she was wearing a pair of dungarees and a loose white blouse. She looked the nervous type, and loud.
“Shirley,” she said. Her voice was raspy, like the edge of a tin can against slate, “Where’ve you been, honey? I’ve looked all over hell for you.”
This was great.
“Mayda,” Shirley said. “What is it?”
The woman looked at me and made with the sideward glance, waggling penciled eyebrows.
“I’d like to borrow handsome, here. For just a few minutes,” she said. She was maybe thirty-two or three. “I thought you were inside, so I just crashed the gate. You know me.”
Shirley gave me a quick helpless look and tried to tell me something with her eyes that I couldn’t get.
“Mr. Ruxton,” Shirley said. “This is my next door neighbor, Mayda Lamphier.”
“Free, white and twenty-one,” the woman said. She waggled her eyebrows again. “What I mean is, my husband’s in Alaska. He won’t be back for six months. You can imagine how that is, can’t you?”
“What’s up?” Shirley said.
“He’s a TV fixer-upper, isn’t he?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Well, daddy,” she said to me. “My set’s acting up. I saw your truck over here.” She regarded Shirley with a smile. “I figured maybe I could borrow him for a few minutes. It’s probably nothing more than some adjustment.” She gave with the eyebrows again. “The set, of course, honey.”
“I’m just leaving,” I said. “Be glad to take a look.” I turned to Shirley. “See you in the morning, Miss Angela. I’ll try to get everything installed as quickly as possible.”
“Thanks, Mr. Ruxton.”
This was something Shirley hadn’t warned me about. It troubled her. I felt bad about it.
We went across to Mayda’s house and tinkered with the set.
“You were right,” I said to Mayda Lamphier. “It was just the horizontal hold out of kilter. You could’ve fixed it yourself.”
“But it’s so much nicer having you do it. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Glad to help.”
“How’s for one for the road?”
“One what?”
“Oh, come, darling. Give me time to get my breath.” She gushed some laughter, eyeing me, and meaning damned well everything she said. “A drink is what I meant.”
“Thanks just the same. I’ve got to get back.”
“I’m all alone in this house,” she said. “I’ve been married for ten years. This is the first time my husband’s ever been away. Think of that.”
I thought of that.
“Know what I mean?” she said.
“You sure must miss him.”
“I don’t miss him worth a hang.” she said. “You know what I mean.”
I looked over at her TV set, in the dimly lighted room. “If you’ll just leave that the way it is, it’ll probably stay okay for a long while.”