The Fedora Fandango: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 5)

by Richard Levesque

  Looking for mementos? I would have asked if I could have made my mouth work.

  All she picked up was Guillermo’s gun and the paralyzer I’d brought with me from Jetpack’s world. Then, apparently satisfied, she turned her attention to me. “It’s a shame to leave that one here with you,” she said, nodding toward the paralyzer on the floor in front of her. “I suppose I could just kill you and take it with me, but…it would be a shame. You’re not like that other guitar playing fool. You’re a little more like me, I think. Besides, you won’t be able to cause me any trouble after tonight. I’ll be on my way back to Europe, and if we ever see each other again, it will be when I’m on a throne and you’ve got a bit between your teeth.” The image this conjured must have made her happy, as she broke into an even wider smile. Then she turned toward the door and said, “I suppose you’ll have another long evening frozen there, but as you sit there cursing me, I want you to remind yourself that I could easily have shot you between the eyes and been done with it.”

  With that, she picked up the bag, walked to the door, and pulled it open. Then she crossed the threshold and shut the door after her. Moments later, I heard my car door close and then the engine fired up.

  Just as she’d predicted, I sat there cursing her, but I felt none of the gratitude at her magnanimity that she’d suggested would be appropriate.

  I listened as the car dropped into gear and then started rumbling away into the dark. Then my eyes went to the paralyzer on the floor, and I knew there was nothing for it now but to wait until its power started to fade. The only consolation I felt in light of the whole rotten situation was that at least Hennigar would get what he was after—Elsa—and so would have no interest in going after Sherise again once he saw that I had failed to show up at the east end of the Mount Hollywood tunnel.

  And then, just as the sound of the Winslow’s engine almost faded into silence, I noticed something odd.

  The car was coming back.

  At first, I thought I was hearing things or just giving in to wishful thinking, but after several seconds, I felt certain that the engine noise was getting louder.

  Still, I told myself I had to be wrong, that it must be some other car that had crossed paths with Elsa, some other drifter in the dark who was down here in the depths of Franklin Canyon long after sunset, and this other car was just going to glide past the rutted road through the trees and leave me here alone again.

  But the sound kept getting closer, and maybe a minute later, I heard the engine rumble right up to the side of the house and shut off. A car door opened and closed. My car?

  The heavy wooden door opened, and Elsa walked back in, disgust in her eyes. She stooped and grabbed the paralyzer and then pulled my gun from the pocket of her dress. With a click of the paralyzer’s trigger, I was free again, every muscle in my body relaxing just a little now that it was free of the beam’s influence.

  “Get up!” she barked. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Scared of the dark?” I asked as I rose from the chair.

  “Idiot,” she hissed as she waved the gun’s muzzle, indicating that I could either walk or wish I had.

  “Don’t get nasty,” I said, putting my hands up for effect and moving deliberately toward the door. “Just a few minutes ago, you were getting all sentimental about me. Things change so quickly between people these days.”

  “Walk. Get in on the passenger’s side. If you try running, you won’t get two steps.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Elsa. I’m actually glad you came back, see? I paid for my ticket, and I want to see how the last reel ends. You won’t get any trouble out of me.”

  “Mein Gott, you talk as incessantly as your doppelganger.”

  “You should hear me sing,” I said as I opened the Winslow’s passenger door and sat down. “I think I’ve figured you out. It’s Hennigar, isn’t it? He’s expecting me to show up at the tunnel with you in tow, for me to hand you over. You’re worried, aren’t you? If a woman shows up alone outside that tunnel…not me. You’re afraid he’ll get itchy and start shooting.”

  I watched her jaw tighten as I spoke, and I knew I’d at least gotten close to the truth.

  Then I took another jab and said, “He’s never actually met you, has he? He came over here when you stopped communicating with him. Or with his bosses.” She gave me no reaction, and as I looked into her eyes, I realized how close I’d been to having an easier solution to my problems all along. That train had left the station now, though. Still, it couldn’t make things much worse to poke the Nazi a little more, so I said, “I could have showed up at that tunnel with any woman I wanted to. Some actress from a B-movie lot who had a German accent in her back pocket. Could have fooled him long enough to get the drop on him, couldn’t I?”

  Elsa had had the gun on me this whole time, and I could see she would have liked nothing more than to pull the trigger now. Instead, she showed a little restraint and activated the paralyzer instead, freezing me in place with my head turned toward her. Then she leaned into the car, her hair almost in my nose, and reached forward with her right hand. I assume she was placing the paralyzer on the dashboard, but I couldn’t see it with my head turned to the side. All I know is that when she straightened up, she didn’t have the device in her hand anymore, but I was still frozen in place.

  She shut my door, leaving me staring out the side window as she walked around to the other side of the car. Once she was in her seat, I sensed her moving around. I heard the metallic slide of the car’s ashtray door being pulled open and then closed again.

  “I see you don’t smoke, Mr. Jed,” she said. “Good for you. Filthy habit.”

  Then she started the engine.

  I assumed she had wedged the paralyzer into the ashtray, not satisfied with leaving it on the dashboard where it might come dislodged as the car passed over the rough road out of the canyon.

  As the car started its bumpy route back to the main road, my thoughts raced of their own accord—maybe because the rest of me was so stuck. It occurred to me at one point that monks in a temple somewhere might really benefit from something like Elsa’s paralyzer, as giving in to the fact that I’d been immobilized somehow freed my mind to travel passageways I’d previously ignored.

  And the one that I kept coming back to was the way Elsa had called me “Mr. Jed” two times. At first, I played with the significance of the appellation and wondered if she’d had some other name for Jetpack Jed. But then, somewhere near the bottom of the canyon where the road spilled out into Beverly Hills proper and millionaires’ homes began to scroll past my vision, my thoughts took a different path. I pictured Jack Wheatley standing in the doorway of Sherise’s bedroom in her suite at the Hollywood Hotel. “Mr. Jed,” he’d called me.

  Mr. Jed, I thought.

  Miss Sherise, he’d also said.

  What was I missing? Why did this matter?

  Mr. Jed.

  Miss Sherise.

  Polite names for adults that a well-mannered little boy would be taught to use rather than dipping into the rude familiarity of just saying Sherise or Jed.

  There was something else, though.

  One other thing.

  The car came to a stop at a busy intersection. My eyes sought the street sign. Sunset Boulevard. Moments later, we turned left and started heading toward Hollywood, Griffith Park just past the movie town’s eastern edge. A map opened in my mind. Griffith Park. Tucked up against the hillside just below the edge of the park and the Observatory was Los Feliz—where the Wheatleys had lived and died, where the sheriff and his wife still lived. Atwater Village on the other side of the LA River—where Wayne Dietrich had died.

  Something told me I’d gone too far.

  I backed up in my mind, back to Los Feliz.

  The Wheatleys.

  The Buckmans.

  Son of a bitch!! I thought, and the energy and excitement that pulsed through me were enough to pull me out of the stream my thoughts had just been floating in.


  Sitting in the deli, O’Neal had told me Mrs. Buckman’s first name. It hadn’t meant anything to me at the time, but now it did.

  Carrie Buckman.

  Little Jack Wheatley knew her. The Buckmans were family friends.

  Mr. Earl.

  And Miss Carrie.

  It hadn’t been “miscarry” Jack had said to me when he’d woken from his nightmare the first night I’d had him in my charge.

  It had been “Miss Carrie.”

  And then he’d promptly shut his mouth until Sherise’s kindness had started it working again.

  He’d seen Carrie Buckman in the house the night of the killings. Maybe even saw it happen. And he’d relived it in his nightmare.

  Son a bitch, I thought again.

  Why exactly Mrs. Buckman had done it was impossible to say, but I’d have bet it had something to do with the attraction she and the DA had felt for each other in another world, probably more than one. They’d felt it here, too. Maybe they hadn’t acted on it when they’d known each other years earlier. And maybe in this world those early friendships hadn’t even existed.

  But they’d known each other for a while, and my guess was that things had passed the friendship stage a long time ago.

  It wouldn’t have done to have something like that lurking in one’s past if one’s husband was running for governor.

  There had to be more to it, of course.

  The possibility of exposure wasn’t motive enough for a double murder, followed by a conspiracy that had gotten two more people killed.

  Motive was O’Neal’s problem, though. If I lived through the coming conflict, I’d lay all of this in her lap and let her sort it out.

  Traveling east along Sunset, we had gotten past the residential section of the road and were now traveling through the business district, heading for Hollywood. Bright lights of nightclub marquees slipped past my eyes as the car rolled along, and on the tops of buildings were brightly lit billboards with pictures of glamourous stars in provocative poses. I hadn’t seen any of the films they were advertising, as my movie viewing was usually limited to the third or fourth runs of scratchy and mended prints that made it to the Broadway theater over which my downtown office perched.

  I do remember one image from one of those billboards, though. It showed a black-clad Wilma Pringle aiming a gun at someone off-camera, and the film being promoted was called The Showdown. It sticks in my memory so clearly because just as we were passing it, Elsa slammed on the brakes and started shouting in German.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Wo bin ich?” she shouted as the car skidded to a stop in the middle of the road. Behind us, brakes screeched as other cars avoided the suddenly stopped Winslow. Horns honked. I could hear voices raised in anger from nearby drivers.

  And I could move again.

  I turned my head to see Elsa staring at me with wide-eyed terror, and I knew right away what had happened.

  “Wer sind Sie?” she shouted.

  I had picked up enough German in the war to know what she was asking, but I wasn’t interested in answering, not right away. Instead, I reached down and felt around on the floor of the passenger compartment until I found what I was looking for—the paralyzer. It had been jerked loose when the car had suddenly braked. Now it was mine, the break I’d been hoping for. I clicked the red button, deactivating the beam for the time being.

  The cars that had narrowly missed slamming into us had started cutting around the Winslow now. Angry drivers shouted, honked their horns, and waved fists at us as they passed.

  “Verdammt!” Elsa shouted now. “Wie bin ich hergekommen?”

  “Calm down, Elsa,” I said. “Do you speak English? Sprechen Sie Englisch?”

  “Ja,” she said, a little less frantic, and then, trying again, repeated, “Yes.”

  “Good. I’m going to explain to you what’s going on, but first you need to get this car out of the road. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” she repeated, but she said it with a little less confidence than I’d hoped for. I watched her look over her shoulder for more oncoming traffic, and although there were still several cars coming toward us, she gunned the engine anyway, cutting off a taxi and a sleek red Vesper. More horn honking ensued, which Elsa ignored. Moments later, my car was parked crookedly at the curb in front of a little nightclub called The Tidal Wave. Several well-dressed patrons stood out front, and I saw more than a few laughing at the spectacle they’d just been watching.

  Elsa turned in her seat and repeated her questions in English this time; in her tone, I could sense a barely contained panic. “Who are you? And where am I? What’s happened to me?”

  “I’m not going to tell you who I am right now because you don’t need to know. But I can tell you that you’re in Hollywood, California, and you’re not going to be here for long.”

  “Hollywood!” she sputtered. “How? Am I…am I losing my mind?”

  When she had pulled the car to the curb, she hadn’t taken it out of gear. Worried that she was going to lose her ability to focus again and let the Winslow roll forward into the car that was parked in front of us, I reached over and turned the key, killing the engine. As I pulled the key from the ignition with one hand, I made sure to keep my finger on the paralyzer’s trigger with the other just in case things threatened to slip out of my control again.

  “This is temporary,” I said. “You’re not losing your mind. Tell me…are you a scientist where you’re from?”

  “Yes!” she said. “How did you know?”

  “Because in my world, Elsa Schwartz is a scientist, too.”

  “Schwartz?” she asked incredulous. Then I saw her look down at her left hand. With renewed panic, she shouted, “Where is my wedding ring? What have you done with it?”

  I gave the patrons in front of The Tidal Wave another nervous glance and saw that a few of them looked a little less amused. One woman appeared a bit nervous about the drama playing out inside the car. I gave her a weak little smile and turned back to Elsa.

  “You need to calm down,” I said again, a little more loudly than before.

  She wasn’t calming down. “Who the hell are you? How do you know so much about me? And why are you calling this your world? What is that supposed to mean?”

  I paralyzed her as she was taking in air for another volley.

  “Sorry to do that to you, Elsa,” I said. Holding the paralyzer up where she could see it, I added, “Don’t be mad at me. You built this little thing, all right? You have only yourself to blame. Now, I’m sorry to get familiar with you, but I don’t see any other way around this.”

  I leaned forward and put my hand on the stiff material of her dress, feeling for the pocket on her right side. It was empty, so I leaned a little farther and found the metallic bulge in her left pocket. Cringing a little at the way being in such close contact with her made me think of her dalliance with Jetpack, I pulled my gun from the pocket and then leaned back again. Checking the gun, I saw that Elsa had disengaged the safety. I switched it back into place and set the gun on the seat next to me.

  Then, I reached into the back seat and hauled the carpetbag up front. I opened it and found Guillermo’s gun on top of the clothes she’d thrown into the bag. This weapon went into my jacket pocket before I closed the bag and tossed it over the seat again.

  I cleared my throat and said, “You’re in what I can only describe as an alternate world. Or maybe a parallel world. There’s a machine that a friend of mine built that allows people to move between worlds, but once you do it a few times, your identity gets a little bit tangled up with other versions of yourself from other worlds. That’s what happened to Elsa. I mean, that’s what happened to you. Elsa was driving the car, and somehow you slipped into her consciousness. I expect that back in your world, you’ve gone into a sort of trance or torpor state. When you leave this Elsa’s consciousness, you’ll be back in your own world and your own mind and body like nothing ever happened. You might even think
it was just a dream or a hallucination.” Then, to help her out, I added, “Maybe it is. I don’t really know.”

  I took a breath and turned my head to regard the nightclub patrons again. The woman who’d seemed alarmed was still watching my car, but the man she was with was looking the other way now, talking to someone else.

  Turning back to Elsa, I said, “If I free you from this thing, are you going to keep quiet or start shouting again?” Then, realizing she couldn’t answer, I said, “Sorry. I’m going to shut this off, but if you start shouting, I’m going to have to freeze you again.”

  I released the trigger, and she closed her mouth.

  “All right?” I asked.

  “I won’t scream,” she said, “but I’m not ‘all right’ either.”

  “You will be.”

  “I’m going crazy.”

  “No, it just feels like that. Believe me. The same thing has happened to me a few times, and I don’t think I’m crazy. You actually get used to it.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  As I’d been interacting with this Elsa, I’d been feeling increasingly disarmed. Rather than thinking about how much I wanted to kill her or at least thwart her plans permanently, I had started thinking that this Elsa seemed like a rather decent person, surprisingly different from the caustic and cruel version I’d come to know. Even so, I knew not to let my guard down. The real Elsa could be back any second.

  “I understand that you’re married in your world,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “Well, I’m sure you still are. You’ll have an interesting story to tell your husband when this thing ends.”

  “How long will this last?” she asked, and I could tell she was scared.

  “I don’t know. It could be another minute. It could be an hour. I doubt it’ll be any longer than that.”

  “What am I doing in Hollywood?”

  “It’s probably better if I don’t say. It’ll just confuse things. Let’s just say that Elsa and I were out for a drive, and all of a sudden she started shouting in German.”