The remaining tactical team members swarmed around Bo’s car.
“Quite a reception,” he said to Morse. “And you know what? You still owe me that beer for drooling on my shirt.”
“I’ll bring you a Coke in prison.” Morse held up a palm and said to the lead commando, “He can get out himself, Franklin.”
“Thanks.” Bo kept one hand high and out the window while he used the other to open the door and climb from the car, groaning as he stood. This day had been a long time coming, and there was almost a small measure of relief that the game was finally over.
Morse holstered her sidearm and tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. She squinted at Bo, studied him. “Something has been bugging me,” she said. “If you already had the bulb, and it was here in the U.S. waiting for delivery, why did you take the London job? I’ll be honest, we didn’t think our plan was going to work until we got to Vieri. That’s what I meant earlier by having time to move the chess pieces around. So, yeah, why the London job? Why take the unnecessary risk?”
Bo glared at the ten commandos around him. Agent Conners, the automaton, had materialized from somewhere and now stood to the right behind Morse. “You wanna break it down to nature, inherent motivations, whatever… it’s for the same reason these adrenaline junkies swoop in from helicopters and rappel down the sides of buildings to take on criminals. It’s for the same reason you and Mount Rushmore there chase the bad guys. It’s for the thrill of the hunt. And don’t give me that bullshit about truth and justice. If you wanted it that way, you’d be hiding behind a pantsuit and a briefcase, asking some stuffy guy in a black robe if you could approach the bench. It’s about winning. It’s about being a step ahead of the other guy. So why did I take the risk? Why go for a measly million-dollar payday when I had a chance at a couple billion sitting on my shelf at home? Because even if you quit smoking twenty years ago, you’ll always want that one last cigarette.”
Morse said, “That almost makes sense. Too bad you were a step behind the other guy, huh?” She turned to Agent Conners. “Okay, get him out of here. Time to put El Tigre back in the zoo.”
Conners lifted his chin at her, squinting quizzically.
“You know, like a cage.” Morse rolled her eyes. “See you around, Sheppard. We’ll talk.”
“For the record, I got the joke.”
Five Years Later
Special Agent Chloe Morse sat at her desk, reviewing files, officially still on the hunt for the Slow Burn 1000. The bulb in Bo Sheppard’s pelican case had turned out to be a perfectly crafted, fake duplicate of the prototype—and this had been verified by the PE engineers who’d designed it. Regardless, El Tigre had gone to prison for the remainder of his crimes, insisting throughout every appeal and hearing that he had no idea what had happened to the everlasting bulb. Some suspected that Tommy—who was released two years ago for the lesser offense of being an accomplice—had betrayed him and was simply waiting for the right time to drop it onto the desk of some corporate giant.
Morse knew better.
If the SB 1000 was in the hands of a guy like Tommy, greed would have driven him to a hasty attempt at selling it on the black market. No. It was still out there, somewhere.
But she hadn’t turned up any possible new leads in months, and she was prepared to approach her supervisors that afternoon about closing the case, or at least shelving it for a while. Her speech was ready; all she had to do was go into the office at the end of the hallway and present the facts. Conners was on board.
Earlier that morning, she’d received an email containing a short memo about the fate of Bo Sheppard. He had been released a week ago, his sentence commuted for good behavior after having served only five years of the thirty to which he’d been sentenced. She’d made a few calls, cursed a few people on the other end of the line about not letting her know sooner, and debated whether to place a tail on him, but had decided against it. Maybe give the big cat a little room to run in the wild, let him get comfortable again, and see where that would lead.
A junior agent in a thrift-store suit pulled a drive-by on her desk, dropping off a large envelope sealed with a clasp. Curious, she picked it up and surveyed the handwriting, noting that there was no return address and that it had been addressed to “Supermodel Chloe.”
She could easily guess the sender’s identity. She pushed the metal arms together and opened the flap. Inside she found nothing but a printed picture and a small note. It was a photo of Bo Sheppard, apparently using his phone to take a selfie. He had aged in prison, looked as if he’d grown harder—the lines were deeper around the corners of his eyes, and a thin scar ran along his left cheek. That endearing smile was the same, however, and he looked to be in excellent spirits.
Morse recognized the wallpaper in the hallway. How could she forget that atrocious assault on her eyes when she’d trailed Sheppard’s alter ego, Voyanovich, to that London apartment complex where he’d seduced the gorgeous, ditzy American twins?
Sheppard appeared to be standing on a small stepladder, his right hand reaching up to a bright light bulb in an otherwise dimly lit hallway.
The note included with the picture was on a small yellow square of paper. It asked one simple question, and gave one simple answer: “Hey, Morse, how many tigers does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, along with a building manager bribed to never change it.”
She laughed loudly enough to disrupt her neighboring cube mates, then thought about how she’d love to be there when Bo attempted to sell it to his former contacts in Czechoslovakia.
Morse checked her watch and decided to go home for the evening. With El Tigre surfacing in the wild, she could stay busy a little while longer, at least until she was ready.
Just as she did every night, she thought about turning off her desk lamp, and thought again, why bother? It had already been burning for five years. Because smart money waits for better money, and she had patient buyers lined up—and all the everlasting time in the world.
About the Conspiracy Theory:
The Everlasting Light Bulb
The longest burning light bulb in history, mentioned within this story, actually exists and really does illuminate the doorway of a fire station in Livermore, California. As of this writing, the bulb has been burning continuously for one hundred and fourteen years.
You read that right. One hundred and fourteen.
It’s called the Centennial Light, and per the Wikipedia entry, it was originally a 30-watt or 60-watt bulb, but it now burns with the approximate strength of a child’s dim nightlight. Over a hundred years later, one would imagine that the poor bulb is a bit tired.
As the characters discuss in “The Long Slow Burn,” your trusty author is astounded by the fact that the weak lifespan of most light bulbs is still an issue. We’ve traveled to the moon. Manned missions to Mars will be feasible within the next couple of decades. We’re building microscopic nanobots that can travel throughout the human body and help cure diseases. There are amazing technological advancements happening around us on a daily basis—yet we’re still making trips to the market to pick up those little round things that’ll burn out within a month or two. Granted, with the recent introduction of LED lamps, options exist for a longer-lasting alternative. However, nothing comes close to what, seemingly, should be a relatively simple advancement in light bulb engineering.
So, until the day comes when one easy purchase will solve your lifetime needs for that bedside lamp, just remember to turn the lights off when you leave a room. Save the energy. Save your wallet. Save a (light bulb’s) life.
To learn more about my fiction, and me, visit: www.ernielindsey.com. Be prepared for dad jokes and poorly drawn cartoons, along with free samples of my mystery, suspense, and thriller novels.
Day for Night
by Forbes West
Four in the morning, the machine arrived
At four o’clock in the morning, when the streets were empty, the drunks were going home, and a qu
ick rain had cooled off the asphalt steaming from the heat of the night, the arcade machine arrived to ruin a life in Key West and end the lives of a few others.
The two movers were supposed to have been there hours before, but they had gotten lost—if “lost” describes deciding to use some of the extra cash they were paid on a strip club in Islamorada. The money was to keep them quiet about the arcade machine’s origins. They had also come from the Upper Keys, and had had to wait through that bullshit roadblock Reagan put in to keep the drugs out.
So the movers were both late and inebriated when they showed up at The Smoker on Whitehead Street—a bar always bathed in blue light from its specialty bulbs—and were welcomed by an annoyed short-haired six-foot blonde from France named Monika. She was pissed as shit; she’d been forced to wait around for this replacement for the Pac-Man machine, which had been busted by a sailor on coke who’d ripped his hand open by smashing it into the monitor after losing.
Monika looked the new machine up and down. It was a black cabinet with simple white lettering on its side and front: “Polybius.”
“Po—polybius?” Monika said in her thick French accent, sipping on her ice water.
The first mover shrugged his fat shoulders as he supervised the other, who was shuffling the arcade cabinet into the space where the old Pac-Man machine had been—behind the pool tables and next to the ancient popcorn machine. He took a look at his clipboard with the invoice attached.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. Guess it’s a new thing. Kids need new things. I don’t know.”
Monika shrugged.
“Were we supposed to get Polybius? What was wrong with Ms. Pac-Man? I thought that would be—”
“It’s on the form. Lease, right? You leased with, uh… uh… Jeez, I can’t pronounce this. German shit.“He handed the clipboard to the second, skinnier mover, the one with the bloodshot eyes.
“Sinneslöschen,” Skinny Mover said. “German shit. That means—”
“Bless you, college boy,” Fat Mover said. “All right, sign this, ma’am.”
“Sense deleted,” Monika said. She stared at the invoice for a moment, then signed it.
The skinny mover nodded. “German shit, huh?”
“Odd name for a company,” Monika said. “Bad German.”
“Krauts were always bad,” the skinny mover said with a grin.
“No, I mean, the German is off. It’s a made-up term… uh, a made-up way to say a certain thing. We wanted to have the Ms. Pac-Man, we didn’t want to have this—”
The cabinet made a sound like a generator turning on. The three of them stared at it, then looked at each other before moving on.
“Hey, can we get a drink?” the skinny mover asked Monika. “Just two each and we’ll get driving again.”
“No,” Monika said. The movers got the hint from the cold look in her blue eyes and quietly left through the side door after mumbling a goodbye.
Monika, bored and jittery from exhaustion, thought about plugging in the machine for the fuck of it, but didn’t. But she did walk over to it, and as she did, she shivered. She wondered if the temperature had dropped outside. There was a wind blowing through the open side door.
Another woman stood outside, looking in. Maybe in her mid-thirties, she had the brightest blue eyes Monika had ever seen, and her skin was very pale.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” Monika said.
“Oh. I was looking for a Harley Mark,” the woman responded.
Monika told her that Harley, that crazed writer, wasn’t here, then watched the woman walk away into the darkness of Whitehead Street.
Monika ignored her urge to turn the machine on, locked up, and left.
Walking out onto the dark and wet streets of Key West made her feel very alone. There were too many shadows, too many strange faces at random corners, too many eyes despite the late hours. At this time of night, only the strange walked about.
She spied a newspaper vending machine on the corner of Duval as she made her way back to her house, and she eyed the front page.
Second Body Found, Blood Drained
The headline made her feel just as uneasy as the arrival of the machine had. She had a funny feeling for the rest of the night, a sort of queasiness in her stomach that wouldn’t go away as she lay next to her husband, the owner of the place.
Four in the afternoon, the player arrived
I was smoking a joint with the Felix brothers on the rooftop of the Pegasus Hotel when I realized I was about thirty minutes late for work and my dad was going to cut my pay because he owned the bar I worked at. He was the owner of The Smoker, and like any other place in Key West in April, it was busy as hell and they needed all the help they could get. But I never wanted to work there. It was mostly townie drunks during the day and then the potential rapist sailors from the U.S. Navy cruising in at night. But if I wanted to live in the house and I wanted money, I had to go.
I took one last puff of the joint, passed it to Bobby Felix, then went down the fire escape onto Duval Street, which was already full of people. Bobby Felix told me “Watch out for the blood drinker tonight!” as I climbed down, since we had been bullshitting each other and working ourselves up about the serial killer supposedly in town.
There was a lot of boozing going on in the streets after the city council had said they were going to go through that pseudo-independence “Conch Republic” thing that was getting everyone stirred up. A lot of people were down for the idea of mockingly seceding from the USA as a sort of screw you to Reagan for blocking the highway with the Border Patrol, and also because it was another excuse for people to get nuts through all-night drinking. There were even flags for the Republic being put up on Duval. Blue ones, all around. Even the old Cuban building that usually had the Cuban flag flying now sported a blue “Conch Republic” flag.
As I was walking by the San Carlos Institute on my way to The Smoker, I ran into a guy. Big guy, white buttoned-down shirt, loose tie, beard. He looked like the big bad guy from those Superman 2 trailers they’d been showing lately.
“What is the Conch Republic?” he said to me, with a heavy Russian accent.
“Conch Republic? You a tourist?”
“Yes, I came from… uh, well, Soviet Union. Cultural exchange. I’m a teacher. My name—”
I interrupted and spoke quickly because I was late. “Oh. Well. Conch Republic. It’s like we’re separating from the United States.”
“People will vote for this?” He took out a pack of what I guessed were crappy Soviet cigarettes and lit one up. He offered me one, but I refused because it smelled like a tire fire.
“City council will,” I said. “It’s, you know, sort of a joke, and sort of not. Everyone’s pissed about that Border Patrol checkpoint on the highway.”
“So it will not be its own republic?” he said, then followed with something else in Russian.
“Yeah, no, I don’t think so. Why? You thought it would be or something?” I checked my Casio watch.
“We heard something in Havana…” He shook his head. “Stupid.”
“We’re stupid? Well why don’t you go suck off—well, suck off whoever is in charge over there.” I put up my fists. This guy could probably tear me in half like a three-page brochure by the look of him.
“No, no little friend. I apologize. Other people were stupid. In my country. Official people.”
“Well. Huh.” I put down my fists. “We got a bar. The Smoker on Whitehead. Bring your friends. I don’t know,” I said awkwardly, and then I left, jogging down the street.
* * *
I got to The Smoker about ten minutes later. My old man, his bald head covered in sweat, stood outside hanging up the Conch Republic flag, his big frame perched pretty fucking precariously on a stepladder. He took one look at me, then nodded for me to get behind the bar counter. He was so pissed he couldn’t even talk. That used to be a bad sign, but now I just sort of rolled with it. I was twenty years old, an adult.
I to
ok my first order of the day, a frozen Rum Runner with a shot of Bacardi Gold on the side, and charged the fat woman for it. I took a shot myself when no one was looking because why should I work sober, and I spent the rest of the day with Monika, that cute piece of ass my father was currently having intercourse with. She was a machine. I didn’t think French women worked that hard but she did. She was up ’til four last night closing the place out. I liked how she looked as well. I didn’t blame the Old Man for digging on that.
I spotted the new machine in the back: Polybius. No one had turned it on.
“Broken?” I asked Monika.
“No one cares. It’s not Pac-Man,” Monika said. “I need someone to get more napkins.“
“We should have gotten Donkey Kong.”
She shushed me and I went on my way.
I looked at the other girl working there, Camille, who stared right back at me, and I sighed. I’d have to go get the damn shitty napkins myself because apparently I had to do everything around here despite being sort of a future part-owner. Unofficially, at this point.
I passed a couple of old men dressed in undershirts and swimming trunks as I made my way to the back, but as I got closer to the machine, I suddenly stopped in my tracks and just sort of stood there like a retard with my mouth open. The machine was off, but it seemed liked it should be on. It felt wrong and unwelcome and… uninviting for the thing to just be left off like that.
I reached behind the thing, straining against the cabinet before I could plug it in.
It came on after a moment, the “INSERT COIN” text flashing and the name “Polybius” in white letters scrolling across the screen. It made that sort of dog-whistle machine whine that I could hear even when I got back to the counter with the napkins. I went back to my station and helped a fat couple who wanted something sweet because they were fat, I guess. I don’t know.
Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy Page 8