I looked at my pants. They were darker than Jetpack Jed’s and strictly off-the-rack rather than tailored like his; I had to ask myself if switching our pants was worth the trouble. After a moment’s thought, I decided against it. The same was true of the shoes—his shiny and mine shabby—but not worth the effort. It was a quick deception I was after, not a long con. Instead, I slipped off my coat and put his on. It was a perfect fit, of course. Then I took both weapons from my coat and put one in each pocket of the coat I wore now. Bending, I grabbed Jetpack Jed under the arms and hoisted him to the toilet seat where I let his body slump to the side. He might stay there until he regained consciousness, and he might slide back to the floor. I didn’t care either way, knowing I’d be gone by then. Finally—and this was the part that bothered me—I made the hard decision to leave my fedora behind. My double hadn’t worn a hat on our excursion, so it would defeat my purpose to walk out of the men’s room wearing mine. I took off the hat, ran a finger around the brim, and looked down at Jetpack Jed’s face. His cheek was still swollen from the punch I’d delivered the night before, but there was nothing for it; I wasn’t about to smack myself in the face for the sake of a brief deception. So, I dropped the fedora onto his face, making him look like a corpse.
When I left the stall and pulled the door closed, it wanted to swing open again. So, I pulled a sheet of paper towel from the dispenser behind me, folded it into a little square, and pulled the door shut once more, this time wedging the folded square into the space between the door and the frame. It worked, the door staying closed as I walked away.
As I exited the men’s room, I passed a man in a business suit heading in. Just in time, I thought as I scanned the lobby for Elsa.
She was near the far wall, standing next to a potted plant and looking at her watch in an effort—I assumed—to make it seem like she was waiting for someone who was late. When she saw me come out of the men’s room, she dropped the act. Her face registered alarm, probably because only one of us had appeared. I tried to exude confidence as I strode across the lobby, my eyes locked on hers and a hint of a smug smile on my face.
“What happened?” she asked when I was a few feet away.
“He tried to get smart, so I had to use your…toy.”
“Where is he?”
“In a stall. He’ll be there for a bit.”
She looked toward the men’s room door, her expression eager. I guess she was considering storming into the men’s room to check on the man she thought of as Jed Strait.
“Leave him,” I said. “I got the address. We should go.”
Her expression changed, suspicion clouding her visage. The shift was like a grenade that had been tossed into the foxhole of my confidence. I expect my face registered a moment’s doubt, which only fueled Elsa’s misgivings.
“Where is the address?” she asked, her tone icy.
“It’s right here,” I said, tapping my pants pocket.
“Show me,” she said.
I had wanted to get Elsa out to the car where I could have given her the same treatment I’d given Jetpack Jed once the doors were locked. Then I would have driven her to Echo Park and waited until almost the top of the hour before carrying her into some stranger’s garage and through the portal back to our proper world.
Now, I knew none of that was going to happen.
I could have turned and walked away, made the run back to Echo Park without her, but I had concerns other than a quick getaway.
“Until next time, Elsa,” I said as I stuck my right hand into my coat pocket.
She knew right away what I was going to do and—to her credit—lunged at me rather than trying to run away. My trigger finger was faster than her legs or her fists, though, and she went down without landing a blow.
A woman nearby gasped and several other visitors to the Hall of Records stopped midstride to see the spectacle. Fortunately, no one was standing near enough to Elsa to feel the effects of Guillermo’s gun along with her; otherwise, the whole place would have panicked, as several people would have gone down at the same time.
“She’s fainted,” I said to no one in particular and dropped to one knee beside the prone Nazi scientist. She’d been wearing a knee-length skirt, blouse, and jacket, and now she lay on the marble floor with her legs askew and her face staring up at the ceiling. Making a pretense of loosening her clothes, I pulled at her jacket and was pleased to find the Chavezium disk in an inner pocket.
“What’s going on here?” a man’s voice said.
I looked up to see the security guard who was normally stationed at the base of the stairs, checking people’s credentials before allowing them to go up and examine the records on the floors above. His stony face told me he didn’t like people ending up on the floor—perhaps not unless he was the one who put them there.
“She fainted,” I said.
“She your wife?” he asked.
“No. She’s—”
“Step aside then, sir. Give the lady some room.”
His tone suggested that he was ready for me to refuse. He might even have been hoping I would, just to have an excuse to force me to comply.
I palmed the Chavezium disk and reluctantly let go of the chance that she also had Klaus Lang’s encoded journal shoved into another pocket. She’d carried no purse, I saw, and I tried to remember if she’d brought one with us on the drive from the coast.
Getting to my feet as the guard turned and asked the bystanders to give the fallen woman some space, I took a step back into the crowd. The guard made eye contact with me for a moment before dropping down beside Elsa and putting his fingers on her throat, feeling for a pulse.
I took one more step backward, and then another. The crowd enveloped me, blocking the spectacle from my sight.
The guard must have looked up again, maybe ready to ask me a question, and then saw I was gone. “Hey!” I heard him shout, and that was my cue.
I ran for the glass doors, bursting through one and onto the sidewalk. Jetpack Jed’s hovercar was easy to spot—the longest and sleekest of the vehicles parked at the curb. I ran for it, pulling his keys from my pocket as I went.
When I got to the driver’s door, I saw there was no keyhole and nearly panicked. But then the door popped open of its own accord, something in the car clearly having sensed the presence of the key. Moments later, I was behind the wheel, the key in the ignition as the door slid back into place. To my right, I saw the security guard come through one of the glass doors, running onto the sidewalk and knocking a woman over as he scanned the crowds for me.
And then the car was off the ground, and I shoved the throttle lever forward. The car accelerated far more rapidly than I was ready for, whipping my head back as I gripped the wheel with everything I had. I sped away from the Hall of Records, making a quick succession of turns before slowing down amidst the monolithic spires of this strange Los Angeles.
Wary of pursuit, I shifted my eyes constantly between the rearview mirror and all the traffic around me as I scanned for police vehicles. At the same time, I started looking for a phone booth. It didn’t take long before I spotted one outside a bank on a busy corner. There was no parking nearby, so I took the first spot I could find. Before getting out, I checked the back seat for a purse or anything else that Elsa might have left behind, but there was nothing. I left the car and then walked half a block back to the phone, moving quickly but not so rapidly as to draw attention to myself.
As I had done on my first trip to this world, I got the operator, but this time I didn’t ask for Guillermo Garcia. Instead, I repeated what I’d done at the police station while under Brenda O’Neil’s supervision.
“Operator, I need the number for Carmella Garcia in Boyle Heights.”
“Thank you, sir. Did you want me to put you through?” the operator responded.
“Yes. That would be great.”
“Deposit five cents, please.”
I reached into my pocket automatically and, of course, found no
coins.
Cursing myself for not having thought to search Jetpack Jed’s pants for coins, I said, “I don’t have five cents right now, Operator.”
“We can try the call collect,” she said.
I doubted it would work, but there was nothing else to try.
“All right,” I said.
“Whom shall I say is calling?”
“She won’t know me by name,” I said. “Tell her…tell her I found her dog, Perdida.”
“Perdida?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This is highly irregular, sir.”
“I’m sure. Let’s just go ahead though, shall we?”
“Please hold,” she said, and I could almost hear her rolling her eyes.
The line rang three times, and then a woman picked up.
“Hello?” I’d been anticipating the voice of an elderly woman, but that’s not what I heard. The voice on the other end sounded like it belonged to a woman much younger than anyone who would have been Guillermo’s wife—in any world.
“This is the operator. I have a collect call from a gentleman who says he found your dog, Perdida. Will you accept the charges?”
There was a long pause, and then the woman said, “Is it a local call?” She sounded skeptical but I told myself I also heard curiosity in her voice.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right. I’ll accept the charges.”
“Go ahead, sir,” the operator said, and then she clicked off.
“Mrs. Garcia?” I asked.
“Who the hell is this?” she asked.
A little taken aback, I said, “Ma’am, my name is Jed Strait, and I’m sorry to be bothering you.”
“Does this have anything to do with that goddamned radio stunt?”
“No, ma’am. I’m actually hoping to keep the people who started that stunt from getting any kind of information at all about your husband.”
“My…” she said. Then she let out a brief laugh before saying, in a less acerbic tone, “How do you know about Perdida?”
I was confused by the laugh and was beginning to have a strange feeling about the call I’d finally succeeded in making. “Could I meet with you, ma’am? There’s a lot I need to explain, and I’m afraid it won’t come through quite as well over the phone.”
She hesitated a moment. “If you’re really part of this radio thing, you’re going to be sorry you bothered me.”
“I’m not. I swear it.” There was silence between us for several seconds, and I was afraid she was going to hang up on me. Feeling a little desperate, I offered one more thing. “I have something with me that I got from Guillermo. It’s not something I’m willing to give up, but I’d be glad to show you if it will help you believe I’m not interested in exploiting him the way those people on the radio are trying to do.”
I heard her let out a breath, and then she said, “All right. Can you come now?”
“That’s what I was hoping for.”
“Do you know Boyle Heights?”
“A little.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Downtown.”
“All right. Take the 6th Street bridge and head to Serena. Turn left and follow that to the cemetery. We’re right across the street.” She gave me the address.
“Thank you,” I said and hung up.
She said “we,” I thought as I walked away from the payphone. That certainly sounded like it could be her and Guillermo. But she’d also laughed after I referred to Guillermo as her husband, which was something I couldn’t make sense of.
Regardless, I knew I’d find out something concrete in about fifteen minutes.
Jetpack Jed’s hovercar was parked about a hundred feet away, and as I walked toward it, I thought of how I’d been lucky so far that no police vehicles had picked up the car’s scent…
…And then I didn’t see the car at the curb anymore.
I was still walking, but I felt like I’d been blindfolded for a minute and then set free again.
Stopping, I looked around me, panicking at having lost track of the hovercar.
None of the other pedestrians paid me any mind. Though they had to walk around me as I stood there planted to the concrete, they didn’t seem bothered by the inconvenience.
I’d had another episode, I realized, another moment of lost time. Another Jed Strait had crossed into my consciousness, getting behind the wheel and taking over the controls for…how long? And where had he led me?
Turning around, I saw Jetpack Jed’s hovercar about half a block away. Invaded by one of my many alter-selves, I must have walked right past the car, probably gawking at the glass skyscrapers and wondering what magical world this Jed Strait occupied—if my double even understood what happened to him when he had these experiences of slipping into another Jed’s body.
Fortunately, whichever of my doubles had crossed into me, he hadn’t stayed long, and he hadn’t done anything to disrupt my plans, other than making me a couple minutes late. Hurrying back to the car, I felt a little hesitant at the prospect of it happening again while I was hovering over to Boyle Heights. If another Jed didn’t know how to operate a hovercar, would he crash it?
There was no point in speculating. Disaster might happen, and it might not.
Thumbing the dull metal ring Guillermo had given me, I took a tiny bit of comfort in knowing that at least this episode had been captured by whatever technology Guillermo had built into it. I got into the hovercar, started it, and turned its nose in the direction of the Los Angeles River, knowing that Boyle Heights—and the answers to some big questions—would be on the other side.
Chapter Fourteen
Despite my having been psychically invaded after getting off the phone, I remembered the directions and the address. Not long after leaving downtown behind, I parked across from a large cemetery and was heading up the walkway to a modest little house that faced the high iron fence and the expanse of green beyond it. It reminded me of the walk I’d taken a couple days prior up to the front door of Jeanette Pruitt’s. In that case, the house had afforded a view of the vast blue Pacific, and while the cemetery’s green lawn might inspire feelings of peacefulness for anyone in this house who gazed out the front windows for any length of time, I suspected that the constant reminders of death—the headstones and mausoleums visible from here, the clusters of mourners during funerals, and the bringers of flowers in the days after those funerals—would produce a pall of melancholy that would be hard to shake.
Still, I thought as I rang the bell, it’s a house. Four walls and a roof. Somebody’s home. It might provide more comfort than I could imagine, possibly more than Jeanette Pruitt could imagine either.
The door opened a moment later, and I had to struggle to keep my face from registering shock at the sight of the woman on the other side of the threshold. She looked to be about fifty, but despite her age, she was almost a mirror image of Carmelita. The hair was going gray and there were crow’s feet around the eyes and deeper wrinkles leading down from the corners of her mouth, but the rest was all Carmelita—the wideset eyes, the high cheekbones, the full lips.
“You’re the man who called?” she said, and her voice was close to Carmelita’s as well.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “My name is Jed Strait. Are you Mrs. Garcia?”
She smiled a little at this and said, “I’m Mrs. Ruiz. Elvira Ruiz. My mother is Mrs. Garcia.”
“Ah,” I said, starting to understand. “And is this Mrs. Garcia’s home?”
“It is now,” she answered, and I picked up a tone of bitterness in her voice. “My mother isn’t well, Mr. Strait. And all this nonsense from the radio hasn’t helped her condition. I’m not inclined to let you in unless you tell me exactly what you want and how you know about Perdida.”
“Mrs. Ruiz,” I said. “I’m not from around here. I’ve come from somewhere very far away, and I know some of what I’ve got to say is going to sound crazy. I just hope you’ll listen.”
&n
bsp; “I’m listening now,” she said, but her tone was skeptical.
“I take it that you are Guillermo’s daughter?”
She looked a little pained as she said, “I am.”
And then I knew what I was dealing with. I could have turned around at that moment and walked away, having gotten what I needed. But I didn’t. Maybe I stuck around for Guillermo’s sake, to have something more concrete to tell him when I got back to Echo Park. And maybe it was because of Jetpack Jed’s words echoing in my mind, words I didn’t want to believe: Deep down, I’m a bad guy. And you are, too.
It was a little surprising how difficult it was to ask the question that had formed in my mind when this woman had admitted to being Guillermo’s daughter, but I managed it after a moment’s hesitation, willing the words to come out. “May I ask when he died?”
“You know about Perdida, but you don’t know when my father died?” she asked, incredulous.
“Was it in the explosion?” I asked. “And the fire that followed?”
She nodded, her features strained with the pain of memory.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Very sorry.” Despite knowing that her father was very much alive in my world, it pained me nevertheless to know that he had died in this one. There was also something bittersweet about knowing he’d had a daughter here, since as far as I knew Guillermo and his wife had been childless in the world where I knew him.
“Thank you for the expression of sympathy, sir,” she said, “but I’m still waiting to hear how you know about Perdida.”
I took a deep breath and said, “I know about Perdida, ma’am, because I met your father. I know his workshop in Chavez Ravine. Garcia Industries.”
She looked taken aback at this for a moment. But when she spoke again, her tone was accusatory. “We had Perdida when I was a girl,” she said. “She got hit by a car when I was nine years old. I don’t think you would even have been born by then.”
The Jetpack Boogie: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 4) Page 16