I reached into an inside pocket and pulled out the photograph. I straightened it out and I held it the right way around for him to look at.
Charles pointed at the photograph with his gun. “That’s Eva McLuckie.”
I tossed the photograph onto the desk. “I know,” I said.
Charles coughed. It was dry. When he was done he heaved a breath and I saw more blood on his teeth.
He was sick. Ada knew it and now I could see it for myself.
I wondered how much radiation a normal man, even one with a big, full beard, could take before he got ill.
Before he got dead.
Charles coughed again and pinched his nose with his free hand like his sinuses were about to blow.
“You are working together on something?” I asked.
“Ah, yes, you could say that. I mean, we were. Before everything.” He waved the gun around to indicate the entirety of the world around him.
“Before everything what?”
“Before they found out. They’re all in on it. Eva, too. I knew she wouldn’t last long, but I had hoped it would be longer—argh!”
He let the gun droop in his grip as he took his free hand from his nose and plunged it into his jacket. He fumbled then pulled out a small plastic cylinder. He popped the lid with his thumb, all the while trying to keep the gun pointed somewhere in my general direction.
His thumb slipped and the container dropped. Small white pills hit the rug and scattered like a teenage gang caught drinking in the street.
“Ah, dammit,” said Charles. He bent awkwardly at the knees while trying to keep his upper body straight and trying to reach the pills. I moved forward to help but he jerked back and nearly fell over. His glasses slipped to the end of his nose and the eyes behind those glasses were red raw. Then he brought the gun up high. “Stop right there,” he said. He stepped forward, treading on some of the pills. He seemed to have forgotten about them.
“You don’t look good, Mr. David,” I said.
At this Charles laughed. “Don’t I know it,” he said. “There’s no way out of this one for me. I should have known, of course. First Fresco and Alaska. Then Eva. They’ve got them all. All that work, gone, gone. But I had to try, didn’t I?”
I looked Charles David in his bloodshot eyes.
“Who’s got them? Where’s Eva now, Charles? What were you trying to do?”
Charles laughed. He adjusted his grip on the gun and he adjusted the glasses on his nose.
“Charles! You wanted to talk, so let’s talk. What were you trying to do?”
“Enough!”
“Talk to me, Charles. What’s going on?”
He laughed again. “What’s going on is this, Detective.”
Then he pulled the trigger.
19
Like I said, guns don’t worry me. I have a bronze steel chassis reinforced with titanium and some alloys that Professor Thornton invented and the federal government was pretty pleased with.
But while guns don’t worry me I was sure someone else in the building or the street outside would hear the shots and call the police and that I could do without.
But nobody called the cops because nobody heard the gun. Nobody heard the gun because it didn’t fire.
Charles didn’t seem to notice. He held it up and pulled the trigger and it went click-click-click-click.
“You’ve got the safety on,” I said.
Charles made a surprised expression and he turned the gun again to look at the side of it. He swore, fussed with a switch, then turned the gun back on me. But while he’d been fussing I’d moved closer and before he tried the trigger again I placed a big hand over the muzzle and pulled slightly. The gun slid out of his sweaty grip with the greatest of ease. His arm hung there in the air for a second or two. Then he let it swing by his side.
“Charles,” I said, “what’s going on? Did somebody put you up to this?”
Charles didn’t answer. Instead he grabbed his chest and moaned, and stumbled forward. I let him go. He hit the edge of the desk and leaned over it, gasping for air.
He was sick all right.
I went over and grabbed his shoulders and turned him around. He went with the motion, flopping like a dead fish. His dark glasses were pointed at me. I pulled them off and tossed them on the desk. He screwed his eyes closed and winced in pain, like the light in the office was just too bright.
“Charles, come on,” I said. I lifted the gun up, holding it by the barrel. Maybe that would jog his memory. “Is this thing yours or did somebody give it to you?”
He opened an eye. He looked at the gun. He nodded. “It was issued to me.”
“That a fact?”
“It is.”
“Issued by whom?”
Charles coughed. I let him go. He turned back around to lean on the desk. “The CIA.”
I frowned on the inside. “What, the CIA goes handing out firing pieces to movie stars, now?”
Charles laughed, and then the laugh turned into a cough that ended with a wet sort of slurping sound. He ran a hand over the back of his mouth. It came away bloody.
“I’m with them,” he said, wheezing. “They recruited me, about a year ago. I’m an agent. Undercover. Deep undercover. They had me investigating un-American activities in the motion picture business.”
Un-American activities?
Perhaps like, oh, a certain bunch of Russians meeting in the basement of a Hollywood nightclub? But since when did the CIA operate on American soil? Wasn’t that beyond their jurisdiction?
I was about to ask Charles about the very same but before I could he nodded at the photograph in front of his nose.
“Who sent you to find her?” he asked.
“The thing about being a private detective,” I said, “is that it’s private. That information is between me and my client, who shall remain nameless.” I left out the fact that I had no idea who the client was, along with the fact that I wasn’t sent to find her but to kill her.
Charles hissed in pain or anger.
“You don’t get it, do you, tin man?” he said. “I was sent in to uncover a Communist plot against this great nation, and that’s exactly what I’ve found!”
A Communist plot. A movie star—Charles—sent deep undercover by the CIA?
Oh, I was starting to get it, all right.
“Listen,” I said. “I believe you. I saw your co-star Eva McLuckie and her Red pals having a little dinner meeting just last night. Do you know what they’re planning?”
Charles heaved a breath. “It’s big. Very big.” Then he coughed and there was a pattering sound, like a cat pawing at a mouse trapped behind an air vent. It kept going and going and then I looked down at the desk and saw red splashes on Eva McLuckie’s face. Then I looked up and saw Charles was looking down at the picture, too, and he had his free hand to his face. That expensive beard was now stained a brilliant scarlet and more of the red stuff was coming out of his nose.
The telephone started to ring. I ignored it.
“You’re not well,” I said. “It’s radiation poisoning, isn’t it, Charles?”
Charles didn’t like that statement. Not one bit. He yelled something that didn’t have much in the way of words and he swooshed his arms over the desk, sending Eva McLuckie’s face spinning over the edge. Then he grabbed the telephone and yanked it. He yanked it so hard that he pulled the cable clean out of the socket, and then he fell backward and into the chair in front of the desk that used to be reserved for clients.
“I’m doing this for my country, dammit!” he yelled. “And you’re part of it. You’re part of it!”
“Part of what? Tell me, Charles. Tell me and maybe I can help.”
Charles laughed and coughed up more blood and laughed again. Blood flew from his mouth and hit the rug.
“Help? My God, help? You’re the problem. I came here to take you out, you stupid tin can. It’s the only way left to stop it. Don’t you see? You, too. You’re part of it, too!”<
br />
His gun was still in my hand. I squeezed it a little.
“It takes more than a peashooter to scratch my chassis, son,” I said. “And like it or not, I’m as red as President Kennedy.”
Charles shook his head. Then he coughed and when he spoke he had to punctuate his words with big gulps of air. “I had it all ready. All set up. But she was one of them. One of them. She couldn’t resist, not for so long. Me, neither. It was too much. And now. Now. Nothing left. But if I could take you out. Then they couldn’t finish. Couldn’t finish. Couldn’t finish. Phase four couldn’t finish.”
I had a feeling my time with Charles David was running out.
“What’s phase four?” I asked. “Charles, listen to me. I know about the Soviet cell. Tell me about Rockwell. Chip Rockwell. He’s running it, right? Do you know what happened to him?”
Charles’s eyes opened like doves taking flight. “Yes,” he said. “Rockwell, Rockwell…”
“What about Rockwell? Where is he now? What is he doing?”
Charles coughed. More blood came. A cupful, at least. It poured out of his mouth and down his beard and onto his shirt.
“We can help you, Charles,” I said. “And you can trust me. You’re sick, but I can get you patched up. But you have to listen to me, Charles. What’s their plan? What’s phase four?”
Charles blinked like he’d just woken up. He reached out and curled his fingers, his eyes wide. I figured he had something to say and not long to say it. I turned my audio receptors up.
“Phase four,” said Charles David. “They’re almost ready for phase four.” His voice was a croaky whisper.
“Yes, phase four,” I said. “What is it? Charles, stay with me. Do you know what phase four is?”
“You are, tin man,” he said. “You are.”
“What?”
“You are phase four,” whispered Charles David, “but maybe there’s time. Phase three. Stop phase three and you stop phase four.”
I frowned on the inside. I was losing him.
“What’s phase three, Charles?”
“Friday,” he said. “Friday.” Then he shook his head. “The house. You’ll find it in the house. You’ll need it. I had it all ready. All ready.”
I was going to ask him what was all ready but then Charles David grabbed the arms of the chair and pushed himself to his feet. I took a step forward and reached for him but he leaned on the desk again and waved me away. He stood like that with his head down, taking deep breaths. Seemed like he was recovering a little.
“Charles? What’s at the house? What’s on Friday?”
He shook his head again.
Then he yelled and launched himself at me. I was surprised and whether by accident or design, Charles took advantage of that fact. I was heavy and didn’t move but he wasn’t trying to fight me.
Instead he went for the gun still in my hand. Charles grabbed it and pulled, and I pulled back, dragging him toward me. He hit my chassis with his and he looked up into my optics and he kept pulling at the gun.
That’s when there was a loud bang and Charles David’s body jerked, once. He was still looking at me when I released my grip and let his body fall. His head clipped the side of the desk as he went down but I don’t think he felt a thing. As he lay on the office floor on his stomach, a pool of blood began to grow underneath him, not from his nose and mouth this time but from a hole somewhere in his gut. The gun was still in his hand, finger still on the trigger.
I frowned on the inside, then went over to the computer room door and opened it. Ada’s tapes spun and her lights flashed but she didn’t speak.
“Charles David is dead,” I said.
“So I heard. I guess we can keep the gold, then.”
“It was an accident. He went for the gun.”
“I believe you.”
I looked back at the body on the floor. “He was sick. Radiation poisoning, right?”
“He was exposed,” said Ada. “More than the others, though. That’s interesting.”
I walked over to the late movie star. On the floor around him and the blood were the white pills from his bottle and everything he’d pushed off from the desk. That included his glasses.
I picked them up. They were big and heavy, the lenses thick and tinted a deep gray-green. They were plastic, not glass. They looked less like sunglasses and more like the kind of eye protection you needed when welding.
Or working with something else dangerous.
Something … radioactive, perhaps.
I mulled over the actor’s final lines. I felt that shiver again and I turned back to the computer room and eyeballed a spot somewhere near the ceiling.
“So whatever is going down,” I said, “it’s going down on Friday.”
“Seems so.”
“You know what else is going down on Friday?”
“Do tell.”
“The nationwide premiere of that movie, Red Lucky.”
“Oh, I don’t like that connection, Ray.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “And then there’s the house. I’ll find what I need at the house. Whose house? His house?”
“Could be, Ray.”
“Get me the address. I need to go take a look.”
“Coming right up, Chief. But do you want to clean up the mess first?”
Charles David lay cooling on the bloodstained rug. I checked my Geiger counter. The reading was a little warm but nothing I felt worried about.
“Someone would have heard the gunshot and called it in,” I said. “The cops will be on their way. Maybe we need to leave this one to the proper channels.”
“Let me handle the proper channels,” said Ada. “For the moment I suggest we keep the sudden demise of famous film star Charles David our little secret for now.”
“Because?”
“Because we want to keep tabs on Eva McLuckie. She’s supposed to be calling for updates.”
“But she hasn’t yet.”
“No,” said Ada, “but she might still. The longer we can keep her on a lead, the more time we have to follow that lead back to Rockwell.”
“I got it,” I said, and then I took off my hat and I got to work.
20
When I woke up it was Thursday and I had work to do. Charles David’s house was the kind of Spanish Colonial Revival that Better Homes and Gardens would pitch a fit over. It was perched on a slope on a street that was perched high in the Hollywood Hills. The street was narrow and mine was the only car on it. The residence had a big, black iron gate right on the street, framed by tall stucco walls capped in terra cotta that formed the outer perimeter of the movie star’s private domain. Beyond the gate I could see a driveway that was long and curved around a lawn about the size of a football field.
I passed the gate and found a spot to pull up in and walked back down the street. It was a little steep. I stood by the gates and admired their craftwork. They had bars twisted into the shapes of tree branches and there were black iron birds sitting on those branches. At the top and bottom, framing the whole thing, were stylized beehives, complete with orbiting bees.
From here I could see the driveway ended in a capacious three-door garage that sat underneath one wing of the movie star’s mansion. The garage doors were closed.
The gate was secured by a chain and a padlock. I unsecured it and stepped through, sticking to the edge of the great lawn and the limited cover provided by a row of palm trees that skirted the edge. The big house towered over the lawn on two sides. On the third a retaining wall and hillside above marked the boundaries of the property.
I stopped behind the second palm. There was movement ahead. One of the garage doors opened. There was no car inside but a man with suntanned skin appeared. He was dressed in green coveralls and carrying a rake. He shuffled around and grabbed something I couldn’t see. Then he exited the garage pushing a wheelbarrow and made a tight right turn. There was a gate painted green at the side of the house. He opened it and went through. The gate
banged shut of its own accord.
I waited a moment to be sure the gardener had gone. I listened to the birds and the bees. It was a beautiful warm afternoon and that great big green lawn with stripes in it glittered with dew like a starscape in front of me.
Of course, a star like Charles David had to be surrounded by people, and not just gardeners. He had to have staff. A maid at least, maybe more than one. Cooks and cleaners. Secretaries and personal assistants. A manager and an agent. Chances were some of them were inside the house right now and none of them yet knew their star employer’s light had been snuffed clean out.
With the coast clear and no other movement around the house or in any of the multitude of windows that overlooked the lawn and driveway, I headed up to the house on the grass. Then I stopped and I headed up the driveway proper when I realized I was leaving a trail in the wet lawn.
The front door was a big double event made of dark wood with metal bands across it like it had come from a castle. I decided to leave it unmolested and went for the obvious option. The garage. The third door was still up and beyond the door there would be an internal door leading into the mansion itself.
The three-car garage was two-thirds full with a red Ferrari and a silver something that shared the same low angles of the Italian number and looked just as expensive. I was standing in the empty space that I guessed was home to a gold coupe with a white top. A more sensible car, the kind of car you cruise around town in, tailing people if the urge comes to you.
There was a door at the side behind the red automobile and there were stairs behind the door.
I went up.
Inside I came out into an atrium big enough to hold a three-ring circus with plenty of airspace for the flying trapeze.
I waited there a moment, turning up my audio receptors. I could hear the gardener outside, around the back, and I could hear the birds tweeting and the buzz of bees from the same direction. The bees in particular were loud. That explained the hive motif on the main gates. Of course Charles David kept bees. That much money, I’d keep bees, too. Why wouldn’t you?
I could hear just two people in the house, both on this level. One male, one female, their voices echoing in such a way that suggested they were sitting in a tiled kitchen not larger than the Hollywood Bowl. Two of David’s staffers, as expected.
Made to Kill Page 11