personal business, it’s just that I’m doing some research on distinctive physical characteristics, and, well, your lips are rather unusual.”
Driskell lifted both eyebrows. “Are they?” The one thing he didn’t need was someone poking into his background.
“Oh, dear.” Robert took two steps back. Clearing his throat, he pointed to the television. “Can you fix it? I called eight repair shops, working my way up the yellow page entries. This was the only place that answered. My wife says I should get a new set, but I like the old black and white. It gives the shows a sense of … reality. A time when life was simpler, choices clearer. I suppose I miss the old days.”
“Certainly.” Driskell whipped out two wires and a tiny light-bulb device. Rummaging in the spare part box, he held up a duplicate part. “You’re in luck. They don’t make parts for a set this ancient, but Bo keeps a lot of old things around.”
Across the street from Bo’s Electronics a tall, slender man leaned in the shadows of a doorway, a possible vagrant. His age was indeterminate, and he was dressed in a man’s somewhat expensive jacket that gave his lean frame an old world elegance.
Perhaps he might be someone who lived down one of the residential streets that fed off Pass Road, out for a late night stroll. Or a healing patient or medical employee of the nearby Veterans Administration Hospital. With his proper posture, perhaps someone from Keesler Air Force base, a man who’d sampled the bars and illicit brothels half a mile down Pass Road and who’d decided to give up sin and liquor for a walk in the cool, April night.
If anyone had bothered to watch him, they would have seen that he was none of those things. He watched the windows of Bo’s Electronics with an intensity that had not lessened for the fact that he had been doing the same thing, at varying intervals of the day and night, for four months now.
Tonight, with Lucille Hare and the man he recognized as Dr. Robert Beaudreaux, in the shop together, his watching was beginning to pay off.
It had taken him years to track down the Hare name. Years of painstaking research, and in some cases, torture, and blackmail. And once he’d secured the name, he’d been thwarted to find that Happy Hare and his wife Ethel were dead and in the grave. They had both died young, and from the newspaper accounts, Happy’s death was listed as long-term heart “ailments.” Ethel had died in her sleep. Bah!
Knowing what he knew, Marvin Lovelace was not certain that either of the Hares had met a natural end. Now his only hope was Bo and Lucille, the last surviving Hares.
In the weeks he had watched them, he had detected nothing out of the ordinary. Lucille’s hair was a strange color, but then a lot of the women in their mid-thirties who were going for a last gasp of drama before their youth petered out on them, dyed their hair. Bo lived behind the television repair shop, a practical decision, and he opened up at eight o’clock sharp. He was reliable, pleasant, regular, and good at his job. Lucille worked at a bank. She was inefficient, caustic, harried, and had her nose stuck in a book at every possible moment.
They were flip sides of the same coin, yin and yang. Male and female. So far, the Hares had been a big waste of his time. Marvin eased out of the doorway and drifted across the street. His stride was long, yet casual. He passed by the plate-glass front of the shop without leaving so much as a reflection on the glass. At the corner of the building he stopped and stared into the darkened interior where televisions refracted the politically correct view of American society. Even the thought made him furious. He loathed television, the insipid shows where women and minorities got the last word in a conversation, where men were portrayed as weak, egocentrics with brains fueled by testosterone and beer. Even in the cool April night the anger made him flush with heat. Television had
Driskell lifted both eyebrows. “Are they?” The one thing he didn’t need was someone poking into his background.
“Oh, dear.” Robert took two steps back. Clearing his throat, he pointed to the television. “Can you fix it? I called eight repair shops, working my way up the yellow page entries. This was the only place that answered. My wife says I should get a new set, but I like the old black and white. It gives the shows a sense of … reality. A time when life was simpler, choices clearer. I suppose I miss the old days.”
“Certainly.” Driskell whipped out two wires and a tiny light-bulb device. Rummaging in the spare part box, he held up a duplicate part. “You’re in luck. They don’t make parts for a set this ancient, but Bo keeps a lot of old things around.”
Across the street from Bo’s Electronics a tall, slender man leaned in the shadows of a doorway, a possible vagrant. His age was indeterminate, and he was dressed in a man’s somewhat expensive jacket that gave his lean frame an old world elegance.
Perhaps he might be someone who lived down one of the residential streets that fed off Pass Road, out for a late night stroll. Or a healing patient or medical employee of the nearby Veterans Administration Hospital. With his proper posture, perhaps someone from Keesler Air Force base, a man who’d sampled the bars and illicit brothels half a mile down Pass Road and who’d decided to give up sin and liquor for a walk in the cool, April night.
If anyone had bothered to watch him, they would have seen that he was none of those things. He watched the windows of Bo’s Electronics with an intensity that had not lessened for the fact that he had been doing the same thing, at varying intervals of the day and night, for four months now.
Tonight, with Lucille Hare and the man he recognized as Dr. Robert Beaudreaux, in the shop together, his watching was beginning to pay off.
It had taken him years to track down the Hare name. Years of painstaking research, and in some cases, torture, and blackmail. And once he’d secured the name, he’d been thwarted to find that Happy Hare and his wife Ethel were dead and in the grave. They had both died young, and from the newspaper accounts, Happy’s death was listed as long-term heart “ailments.” Ethel had died in her sleep. Bah!
Knowing what he knew, Marvin Lovelace was not certain that either of the Hares had met a natural end. Now his only hope was Bo and Lucille, the last surviving Hares.
In the weeks he had watched them, he had detected nothing out of the ordinary. Lucille’s hair was a strange color, but then a lot of the women in their mid-thirties who were going for a last gasp of drama before their youth petered out on them, dyed their hair. Bo lived behind the television repair shop, a practical decision, and he opened up at eight o’clock sharp. He was reliable, pleasant, regular, and good at his job. Lucille worked at a bank. She was inefficient, caustic, harried, and had her nose stuck in a book at every possible moment.
They were flip sides of the same coin, yin and yang. Male and female. So far, the Hares had been a big waste of his time. Marvin eased out of the doorway and drifted across the street. His stride was long, yet casual. He passed by the plate-glass front of the shop without leaving so much as a reflection on the glass. At the corner of the building he stopped and stared into the darkened interior where televisions refracted the politically correct view of American society. Even the thought made him furious. He loathed television, the insipid shows where women and minorities got the last word in a conversation, where men were portrayed as weak, egocentrics with brains fueled by testosterone and beer. Even in the cool April night the anger made him flush with heat. Television had
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