Alaska’s eyebrow went up and she held out her hand and turned her head in a way I would have said was alluring. I took the hand as gently as I could but while I knew the protocol I didn’t bother with a kiss. I didn’t have any lips and I figured my bronzed steel face was a probably a little cold to the touch anyway.
Alaska took a breath and seemed to hold it. She looked sideways at Fresco. “And you know him as … Sparks?” she asked. She’d let the breath out first.
Fresco laughed and adjusted his cigarette and nudged me with that loose elbow again. “Go on, Sparks, give her the show.”
I lifted my hand, palm up, fingers curled like I was ready to catch a falling apple. Then I deliberately shorted a solenoid and let the little excess charge leak through my fingertips.
And as I watched Alaska watch the blue arcs jump from finger to finger with wide-eyed delight with Fresco rocking back on his heels with laughter, I listened to the crackling sound and realized just what the hell it was.
I needed to talk to Ada, and quick.
I closed my hand. Show over.
Fresco recovered himself and patted the front of his plaid jacket like he was checking it was still there. Sadly it was.
Alaska raised a tall glass that had appeared in her hand and gave me a salute. “I’m impressed, Mr. Electromatic.”
Fresco leaned back into Alaska as he looked at me. “I was just saying, my dear, that Sparks here should be in the movies.”
The crackling sound ran on and on and on. I started taking readings.
“You know,” said Fresco. “Science fiction. He’d fit right in, right?”
“Oh, science fiction! It’s a scream!” said Alaska, doing her best impression of surprise at winning an Oscar by placing her free hand on her chest and leaning back like a ladder was about to fall on her. “It’s all Aldebaran and pink pretzels and the fourth moon had already risen, right?”
I didn’t know anything about pretzels and why they would be pink, but right now I had other things to worry about. Like why that nervous exhaustion Eva McLuckie had so sadly come down with hadn’t prevented her from walking into my office with a bag of gold. Like how a strange chase up to the Hollywood Sign had led me to the Temple of the Magenta Dragon.
Like how one movie star had apparently taken out a contract on the life of another.
Like how Fresco Peterman and Alaska Gray laughed and drank and smoked and while they did those things they crackled like kids at camp eating graham crackers under the bedsheets.
I took another reading from my Geiger counter. Fifty-seven rads were wafting off Fresco. Nearly eighty off Alaska. These two were the hottest stars in Hollywood.
Literally.
I left them laughing and drinking and smoking and radiating and headed for the telephone at the end of the bar.
11
“I can’t believe it,” said Ada inside my head as I held the telephone to my ear. The roar of the club behind me didn’t have any impact on our private conversation.
“They’re radioactive. Cooked medium rare, by my calculation.”
“I mean,” said Ada, “what the hell kind of name is Fresco? First name Al, by any chance?”
I simulated a frown. “Um. Fresco is his first name. Fresco Peterman. Are you listening to me, Ada?”
“I’m all ears, Raymondo. So, those movie stars are hot, and not just on the silver screen. What are you going to do about it?”
I checked the time. It was running out faster than I thought. Pretty soon my batteries would be empty and my memory tape full. That didn’t sound like much fun.
“I’ll talk to some more people. Maybe take a look around a little. Both Charles David and Eva McLuckie are apparently out of the picture—”
“Very good, Ray.”
“Pun not intentional, but this is their crowd. Fresco knew a little. Maybe someone else will know a lot. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Hilarious,” said Ada. “What is?”
“How one movie star would take out a contract to kill another. I’ve heard of professional jealousy, but this seems a bit dramatic.”
“You’re doing it again, Ray.”
“Ah, oh.”
“But,” she said, “you’re right. If Eva is behind the contract at all.”
“The gold. I remember.”
“Right. So go take a look around. Ask some questions. But don’t make me wait up, Raymond. I need you back here by curfew.”
“I got it.”
I put the phone down and thought things over and then I turned around to face the room and I thought things over some more. Fresco hadn’t said much that was useful and really the most interesting thing about him was his taste in clothes and the little personal problem he had with radioactivity. His lady friend, too. They’d both been exposed to something, maybe for a long time given the amount of energy rising off of them.
But did that have anything to do with the absence of Charles David? It was hard to see any connection but my case felt a little kooky. Fresco and Alaska’s radioactivity certainly was. Seemed worth a bet to keep one bit of weirdness in mind as I investigated the other. But in the meantime I needed to find something out soon so I could give the lovely and nervously exhausted Eva McLuckie her report tomorrow.
Well, Ada would give her the report. I wouldn’t remember the club or the movie stars or the ice cream parlor or the man from the Parks Department. Ada would. I had a feeling we were in for a long chat in the morning as she filled me in.
As I lamented this state of affairs I noticed something had changed in the Temple of the Magenta Dragon. The music was still tripping a fast beat and the place was still filled with smoke and the silk-clad servers doing the quickstep around the patrons.
But I couldn’t see Fresco Peterman or Alaska Gray.
Then I couldn’t see Sheira Shane or Millicent Olivier. I couldn’t see Parker Silverwood or Bob Thatcher or Rico Spillane.
I couldn’t see any of the big names I recognized from the ice cream parade. And there were plenty more missing who I couldn’t name either.
The ticking of my Geiger counter had slowed to a bored and disinterested tapping in the back of my electromatic brain. In fact, the level of radioactivity in the club was now lower than it had been when I’d first walked in.
I put two and two together and didn’t like the answer. Because while the joint was still jumping what I had left in front of me was now the B-list. The big stars had gone, leaving lesser actors, directors you thought you knew but couldn’t list any of the pictures they’d made, producers who controlled big checkbooks but were name-checked not in the Daily News but in industry magazines that gathered dust in the waiting rooms of casting agents, some of whom were still in the room, too.
This being Hollywood there was still a lot of glitz on show, but it was tarnished beauty. Sure, there was still an electricity in the air. But what there wasn’t was any radioactivity.
I felt a pressing need to ask Fresco and Alaska and the others a whole lot of questions, so I did what every robot assassin who used to be a private detective would do in this situation.
I went to look for them.
12
Nobody stopped me. The staff were all too busy running the four-minute mile with trays of drinks and buckets of ice and by the time I’d walked through enough back doors and walked down enough back corridors there weren’t any staff left to bother me anyway. The pink and white lights were still there, though, lighting the whole damn building like a sinking submarine. And I knew my own air was starting to run out.
I walked on. I followed my nose because, like money, radioactivity had a distinct smell, only one measured in rads. I turned the counter up and it ticked in my ear like someone treading broken glass. I kept on walking and that dangerous crackle got louder and faster as I walked.
The Temple of the Magenta Dragon was a big place behind the scenes. In fact, the club itself seemed tiny compared to backstage, which was a labyrinth of brick corridors painted black. The Chi
nese décor was gone. I thought that was a shame. I had a sudden urge to have a dragon or two on my side.
I reached some stairs. My nose led me down so down I went. There was a door at the bottom and from the other side I could hear people talking. They sounded about as far away as the moon so I quietly opened the door and quietly moved myself to the other side of it. Then I closed it behind me without a sound.
I was at the top of more stairs. There was no handrail and the air felt damp. I thought some more about submarines as I descended, but at least the pinkish light had gone now. The stairs were black brick and covered in darkness as thick as the cigarette smoke in the club somewhere above me. The room below was lit in a weak and yellowish light. I kept close to the wall, where the shadows were deep enough to take a bath in, and down I went.
The basement under the club was damp and dirty. The ceiling was low, and like in the club above, supported by rows of columns. Unlike those, the columns here were plain brick painted black. In the dim light of the basement these columns provided long shadows that could have been tailor-made for a robot like me to hide in. As I crept forward the Geiger counter in my head started up with a jazz solo so I cooled it off just to hear myself think a little.
They were gathered around a big round table, on top of which was a big square red cloth covered with embroidery in metallic gold and black, clearly borrowed from the more salubrious establishment upstairs. The yellow light came from a big bare globe that hung in a wire cage from the ceiling. Despite the bulb’s size, it wasn’t doing much of a job and the darkness beyond the table was pretty thick.
And by they, I meant the A-listers. They were all here, some sitting around the round table and some standing. The evening wear, the dresses and suits and jewels, they were all covered by shapeless smocks, high at the neck, tied at the small of the back like something a surgeon might wear except for the fact the coverings were black as pitch.
That wasn’t all that was new.
Every man and woman in the basement wore thick rubber gloves that went right to the elbow, and everyone wore dark glasses, each pair large and rectangular and the same as all the others.
All those shaded eyes stared at the man at the head of the table. Unlike the others he was wearing a black dinner jacket, a white shirt, and a black tie. His face was nothing but a pair of those dark glasses stuck onto a ball of white bandages that made a tight orbit of his entire head. The tuxedoed mummy sat with his arms out of sight on a chair that was too low, making the big round table cut him high on the chest.
Must have been a hell of an accident.
Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Everyone was waiting for something. What, I had no idea, but it couldn’t have been for the Mummy to say anything because the Mummy’s mouth had a tight swath of gauze sweeping right over it. The poor guy couldn’t speak even if he wanted to.
My time was nearly up. As fascinating as this freak show was I had to think about getting out of there before I turned into a pumpkin.
And then she stepped right out of those shadows and into the light of that big bulb. She was in a black smock and she had the glasses and the rubber gloves. The glasses were a little too big for her small face with its pointed chin.
Eva McLuckie walked toward the table. The A-listers watched her and made room and I wondered what the hell kind of Hollywood party this was. Hell of a time to be rehearsing a play.
As she approached the table my Geiger counter went into overdrive.
The girl was glowing like a blast furnace.
Looking around at the others, she said, “Report,” but it took me a moment to process, because when she opened her mouth the voice that came out wasn’t the one I remembered from that morning. It was lower in tone and the consonants were clipped in a way that just wasn’t American, the r’s rolling like oil on a hot griddle.
Alaska Gray: “All are in position.”
“Stability?”
Parker Silverwood: “Stability achieved to ninety-nine percent.”
The voices. The accents. All coming out of the mouths of movie stars and all sounding like they were on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
“Conditional readiness?” asked Eva.
Fresco Peterman: “Phase three ready.”
“Additional?”
Alaska Gray: “Additional, phase four. Prepared and on standby.”
“Initiate phase four.”
Alaska Gray nodded. “Contact will be established.”
Eva paused. Then she nodded. “Report accepted. We are close now to the final part of the program.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Comrades,” said Eva in her weird voice, “you have all conducted your operations with maximum efficiency. When the program is complete, you will all make fine additions to the Supreme Council of the Western Hemisphere.”
Now, maybe it’s just me, but when people start talking about Western Hemispheres and Supreme Councils I get a little nervous.
There was a period of silence, six and seven-tenths seconds, according to my chronometer, when nobody moved or spoke. Some meeting. Those around the table I could see clearly were smiling. Fresco Peterman was smiling so much his cheeks pushed his big glasses up so high I wasn’t even sure he could see out of them properly. All the while, the bandage-wrapped Mummy at the head of the table sat perfectly still and perfectly silent.
Then someone cleared his throat. The chairs creaked and feet shuffled as everyone turned to look at the culprit.
Rico Spillane wasn’t smiling. He was wearing the glasses like everyone else and they were wrapped around sideburns you could carpet a small parlor with. He seemed to shiver and I saw those sideburns were flecked with moisture, like morning dew on a hedgerow.
“Ah,” he said. Then he coughed a little again. “Phase four … phase four.” He spoke in the clipped tones of Eastern Europe, like everyone else in the room who had spoken.
The only part of Eva McLuckie that moved was her head, and she turned it sideways to look at Rico Spillane in a way that would have made my skin crawl if I had any.
There was something in the air. Something new, something other than radioactivity.
Anger. Behind those big glasses, Eva McLuckie was not happy with the interruption.
Rico Spillane looked around the table. He turned his head slowly, like he was taking in the scene, and then he turned his head quickly, like he wasn’t really sure what was going on.
I knew the feeling.
Then his mouth opened and his jaw went up and down and when he finally found his voice it was his own, the accent as American as apple pie and Mutually Assured Destruction.
“What … what’s going on? Where am I?” Then he saw the Mummy sitting at the end of the table and Rico recoiled, pulling one arm up to shield his face. “What the hell is going on? What the hell is that?”
I watched as that raised arm knocked against the big glasses Rico was wearing. He jumped, then pulled them off, and stood there staring at them with eyes that I could now see were wide with fear and confusion.
While Rico had his little nervous breakdown, everyone else was as still as I was. Nobody spoke. It was hard to see what was going on with the stack of black brick in front of me, but I couldn’t risk getting any closer. The basement was dark but maybe it wasn’t that dark and while I figured I could reverse and leave without being seen, I didn’t much feel like trying my luck with anything else.
More dead air. Three seconds. Four and a quarter.
Everyone was watching Rico Spillane. Myself included.
He stumbled forward and leaned on the table.
Eva McLuckie’s frown deepened. “Report, Comrade,” she said. And then she said what sounded like “Otchet!” but I couldn’t tell. I didn’t recognize the language. Was it Russian? Maybe it was. It went rather well with the accents.
Then Rico groaned. He raised a hand and rubbed his forehead and he stumbled backward. The people behind him got out of the way. He stepped outside of the glow
of the big bare bulb and seemed to vanish into the shadows. From the darkness he kept muttering his new mantra, each iteration colored more and more with rising notes of panic.
“What the hell is this? What the hell is this? What the hell is this?”
“COMRADE.”
The voice that came from under those bandages sounded just like the kind of voice that you’d expect to come from a mummy. It was as dry and as dusty as the dirt under the Hollywood Sign and buzzed and clicked like the Geiger counter in my head had picked a fight with a hive of angry bees.
Rico stumbled back into the light and then every part of him froze in place except his lips, which continued to form the five-word repeat even though his vocal cords had stopped cooperating. He stared at the Mummy with eyes as round as quarter dollars.
“COMRADE SPILLANE HAS BECOME DISCONNECTED,” said the Mummy. “COMRADE SPILLANE MUST BE REPROCESSED IMMEDIATELY.”
Parker Silverwood and my old pal Fresco Peterman grabbed Rico. Rico struggled against them but it was only a token effort and after a moment he gave up altogether and just hung there, his toes touching the floor
I didn’t move and I didn’t breathe. Two relatively easy things for a machine to do, but I hoped it was enough.
The pair dragged Rico around to the head of the table.
“RETURN HIM TO THE CENTER FOR RE-TRANSFER,” said the Mummy.
Eva McLuckie turned and nodded at the Mummy.
“At once, Mr. Rockwell,” she said.
Then she turned back to the others and clicked her fingers at Parker and Fresco before disappearing into the dark of the basement. The two men followed, Rico dragged between them. Everyone else at the table looked at each other and looked at the Mummy, but nobody said anything.
It was time for me to go. Re-transfer didn’t sound like too much fun and something was up with Rico Spillane, but I could hardly go in and help even if I wanted to. My batteries were low and my memory was getting full and I already had plenty to think about.
Made to Kill Page 7