“No!” I shouted at the same instant Elsa squeezed the trigger.
The report was deafening. Another followed it, but it didn’t come from Elsa’s gun.
My weapon was in my hand, the barrel smoking. I hadn’t been conscious of reaching for it or taking aim or squeezing the trigger, but I had done all of those things despite still being enervated from Elsa’s earlier assault.
Everything happened so fast. My ears rang from the gunshots, and smoke from the barrels wafted across the little workshop. I sensed rather than heard a thud behind me, but even as I was turning my head to look in that direction, my eyes were registering the sight of Elsa disappearing through the crossover machine as the lights surrounding the gateway flickered out and died again.
Had she fallen backwards? I wondered. Had the force of my bullet knocked her through the opening and into another world just as the machine lost power again?
I could only hope.
And then I was looking at Carmelita.
The force of Elsa’s weapon had stopped her charge and dropped her to the floor, half on her back and with her legs tangled under her. In our previous entanglement, Elsa had watched Carmelita get shot in the chest and had seen how little damage the bullet had done. Now, I looked in horror to see that the Nazi had learned from that encounter and aimed a little higher.
The left side of Carmelita’s face had been blown off. A flap of singed synthetic skin hung down from the line of her steel jaw, and I could see springs, wires and rods exposed beneath the bare orb that served as one of her eyes. It looked like the bullet had also torn off Carmelita’s left ear or else had disintegrated it completely.
Tendrils of smoke rose from the cavity.
Just as adrenaline had helped me get off a shot at Elsa, so had it gotten Guillermo off the floor. He stumbled his way to Carmelita, reaching out impotently as she struggled to get her legs out from underneath her.
At the same time, I caught sight of more movement from across the shop and knew that Osvaldo had come running at the sound of the gunshots. He cried out when he saw Carmelita on the floor, a sound of grief no different than any other man might make at the sight of his lover in such grave distress.
I got off the floor as well, so now it was the three of us crouched around her. From my vantage point, I could see the destroyed left side of her face clearly, and my only thought was Guillermo can fix her. Guillermo can fix her looping like a mantra in my mind.
Guillermo sat in front of her, both her hands in his, and Osvaldo crouched on her right side. I was glad that he was spared the sight of her ruined face, but he was still making mewling noises over the distress she was so clearly in.
Her undamaged eye blinked open, matching its partner, which was hideously exposed and permanently open with no eyelid left to cover it. She moved her head a bit to the left and then the right. Then she pulled a hand free from Guillermo’s grasp and reached up to what was left of her face. I cringed as I watched her fingers probe the edge of the damage.
She pulled her hand back, probably expecting to see blood, and a look of confusion crossed the parts of her face she could still move.
Looking at Guillermo, she said, “She shot me, didn’t she?” Her voice sounded tinny, like some part of her vocal mechanism had been broken or bent in all the violence.
“Si, niña,” he said, his voice quavering a little.
“Why am I not bleeding?” she asked. “Why am I not dead?”
“Porque…” he started and then again said, “Porque…”
He couldn’t do it. I didn’t think Osvaldo was capable either, nor was it his responsibility to say it. So, I stepped in.
“Carmelita,” I offered, trying to keep a tremor out of my voice as well, “it’s…it’s because you’re not…exactly human.”
She blinked the one eyelid and turned her face toward me. Then she blinked again and said, “I knew there was something…different.” I shuddered at the way her words echoed Sherise’s earlier description of me. She closed her eye all the way, and I was afraid for a moment that the closure was permanent. But then, eye still shut, she said, “That explains so many things.”
I couldn’t help smiling at this, and I saw Guillermo was also smiling despite the tears that had started running down his own synthetic cheeks.
“Osvaldo’s here,” I said.
She opened her eye immediately and turned to her right. Happiness lit the features she still had left, almost instantly tempered with worry. “Am I ugly?” she asked him.
“No,” he said with more self-assuredness than I’d heard from him until now. “Never.”
“I’ll fix you,” Guillermo said. “It’s going to take a little time, but I can do it.”
“I know you can,” she said, squeezing the old man’s hand but not taking her good eye off of Osvaldo.
Guillermo got the hint and moved to get up. I saw that he was struggling a bit, so I stood and then offered him a hand up.
“Thank you, lobo,” he said.
We stepped away from Carmelita and Osvaldo, moving toward the defunct crossover machine. I could see now that in all the commotion one of the neon tubes surrounding the gateway had shattered. Tiny shards of glass covered the workshop floor like the devil’s confetti. I also saw my bullet lodged in the metal frame the bulb had attached to and suspected it had severed wires inside, causing the machine’s breakdown. There was no blood anywhere, though, which told me that my hazy notion of having shot Elsa before she passed through had been nothing more than that.
“You can fix this, too, I assume?” I asked.
“Si,” he said, but he didn’t look happy about it.
“I’m sorry I broke it, Guillermo. Everything happened so fast.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that.”
“What, then? Carmelita?”
He shrugged. “It’s very sad what happened, but I can fix her, too.” Turning to look at me, he added, “You shouldn’t have…” He looked at a loss for words and then said “Incitar.”
“Incitar,” I repeated, rolling the word around in my mind for a moment. “Incite? I shouldn’t have pushed her into crossing over?”
“Si, si,” he said with a nod.
This confused me, as he still looked unhappy at the thought of Elsa gone. “But why not? You’ve got the coordinates for the world she crossed into, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then all you have to do once you get the machine fixed is never set it to those coordinates again. She can stay camped out on the other side right next to where the gateway spit her out, and as long as you don’t open it from this side, she’s trapped there forever.”
He shrugged. “Yes. But trapped there with the notebook.”
“Klaus’s notebook? You said Carmelita had it stored in her memory.”
“Yes, but we don’t know her damage yet, do we?”
I cursed inwardly as the realization struck home.
“That’s not the biggest problem, though.”
Not wanting to hear the answer, I asked the question anyway. “What is, then?”
“She’s got the book. And she’s got the Chavezium.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The Chavezium? How?” But I knew the answer almost as soon as I’d asked the question. The disk. Its power source was right there embedded in the clear polymer. Any eighth-grade science student would be able to figure it out. And Elsa Schwartz was far more competent than that.
“You don’t really think she can build a machine of her own, do you?” I asked. “She won’t be able to break Klaus’s code.”
“I hope not.”
“She won’t. Not even if she teams up with that world’s Elsa Schwartz. If there even is one.”
“Another Elsa isn’t the problem,” Guillermo said. Looking at me with a mix of fear and sadness in his eyes, he said, “What if she finds that world’s Guillermo Garcia?”
He could have slugged me in the jaw and it wouldn’t have stunned me as much as his words. I p
ictured Elsa in another world, seeking out Guillermo. Whether he was exactly like this world’s Guillermo or living a different reality, the genius would almost surely still be in his brain. And she’d find a way to get it out of him, probably bringing down a rain of suffering on the poor man who wouldn’t be expecting anything like an Elsa Schwartz to drop into his life.
“She’ll get what she wants,” I said.
“And do terrible things in that world.”
A wave of guilt crashed over me as I thought of what I’d done, all in an effort to outsmart the woman and get her out of our lives. I’d been so smug, and look where it had gotten me.
Then Guillermo dropped one more bomb, saying, “If she decides to stay in that world.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “She could make her way back here. Do you really think it’s possible?”
He shrugged. “It all depends on that world’s Guillermo, yes? How smart he is? How much she’s able to scare him into helping her.”
“I hope that other Guillermo is living a long way off from Chavez Ravine.”
He nodded. “You know what has to happen, yes?”
I let out a long breath and said, “I have to go find out, don’t I? Once you get the machine fixed.”
He said nothing, didn’t need to. We both knew the answer. I’d sent Elsa into that unsuspecting world armed with more power than she should ever have access to in any world. It was going to be my job to bring her back or put a stop to her.
Finally, he said, “I’m sorry, lobo.”
He didn’t have to say why he had regrets. I knew. It was because of what I’d told him the last time we were in the workshop about not wanting to use the machine to travel to other worlds even if the rat experiments proved that it was safe. And now, with Elsa having gone into one of those worlds to wreak whatever havoc she was capable of, it looked like the decision had been taken away from me.
“Me, too,” I said.
I turned away then, giving Guillermo a lonesome pat on the shoulder before leaving the three of them in the workshop. Remembering my guitar at the last minute, I went to the porch and collected it.
Then I looked at my watch and saw that I had plenty of time to make it to Hollywood before Darkness closed—not to accompany the performers, though. Instead, I might sit in the audience, maybe in the same seat Carl Culpepper had occupied in his misguided attempt to find some truth in a city full of lies, and then I’d get up and find Sherise, take her by the hand and lead her up onto the stage where she would sing while I played.
It wouldn’t matter if we were ready to spring our act on the pathetic little audience or not; all that would matter would be the joining of her notes and mine.
Later, I’d bury my face in her black curls, smell her perfume and feel the skin of her neck against my cheek—anything to help me forget the inescapable truth of what was waiting for me in Guillermo’s workshop and the gateway to other worlds it had become.
“Let there be darkness,” I said to the night as I got in my car and drove away.
* * * * *
The adventures don’t stop here. The Crossover Case Files continue with Book 4: The Jetpack Boogie. It’s available at the pre-order price now. Click here to reserve your copy before the price goes up on launch day.
Jed Strait has let his nemesis, Elsa Schwartz, get away one time too many. Now, he needs to track her down before she can do real damage—and that means following her into an alternate world where all the rules are different.
But pursuing Elsa means putting everything else on hold—his business, his latest case, and the relationship with Sherise that’s now moving in surprising directions. Worse, his hold on reality is starting to slip, and if he keeps chasing Elsa, he runs the risk of losing what little ability he has to cling to the world he’s made his own.
Faced with the choice of letting Elsa rise to power in an unsuspecting world or chasing her down and losing his chance at happiness, Jed Strait can do nothing more than let the notes play out in a deadly dance called The Jetpack Boogie.
Click Here to Get Your Copy of The Jetpack Boogie at the Pre-Order Price of just $1.99.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading The Shakedown Shuffle, the third in my series of dieselpunk novels featuring Jed Strait. If you’ve read some of my other books, you’ve probably found that I have a soft spot for stories about fish-out-of-water types like Jed and for stories set in past versions of Los Angeles and other parts of California. It’s been my plan to inject something new into that setting with the Crossover Case Files, and I hope you’ll continue following along with Book 4 which you can pre-order now.
If you enjoyed The Shakedown Shuffle, I would be most grateful if you would leave a review. As an indie author, reviews are a key part of my ability to get my books in front of readers, so if you could post even a short note about what you liked about this book, you would be helping me an awful lot.
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About the Author
Richard Levesque was either born too late or too early.
You decide.
On the one hand, he’s consumed with writing the kind of stories Raymond Chandler might have come up with if he’d been interested in time travel and aliens rather than murders and femmes fatale.
And on the other hand, he likes taking those noir-ish ideas and projecting them into the near future, a time where he imagines our technology has overtaken us and where the kind of integrity found among some of those detectives from old literary LA might still come in handy.
When he’s not thinking of intricate plots for his characters to struggle their way out of, he’s busy teaching English at Fullerton College in Southern California, where he’s lived most of his life. He does not own a fedora or a trench coat, but he is a sucker for wet, dark streets, long, ominous shadows and a gritty soundtrack playing somewhere in the background.
You can learn more about Richard and at his website.
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OTHER BOOKS BY RICHARD LEVESQUE
The Shakedown Shuffle: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 3) Page 23