Made to Kill

by Adam Christopher

  So I stepped on it. The Buick roared and it seemed to move forward a little faster, but not much.

  The telephone next to my hip rang. I kept one hand on the wheel and kept the car pointed at my target as I picked up the receiver with my other hand.

  “Now is not the time, Ada.”

  “You’re a robot, Chief. You can multitask now and again. Good for the circuits.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, pulling tight around a corner and feeling grateful there wasn’t traffic coming the other way, the way I had crossed the center line. A robot was liable to have an accident, chasing cars like this.

  “I’ve got the pictures you took outside the house. You’re good at portraits, Ray. Nice and clear.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but you could have complimented me back at the office.”

  “Now now, Ray. No need to get feisty.”

  “Sorry.” The road began to climb more steeply. We were going up.

  “I’ve got an ID on Charles David’s tattooed gardener.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. His name is Artem Rokossovsky.”

  “Sounds Russian.”

  “We’ll make a detective out of you yet,” said Ada. “Rokossovsky is military. Soviet special forces.”

  “That’s some gardener.”

  “That’s not all he is. He’s part of an elite unit that was stationed at a place called Shchyolkovo-14.”

  “Sounds nice.” I took a left turn too fast and then a right turn not fast enough. Then I came over a rise and saw the black car.

  “They also call it Star City,” said Ada.

  “Sounds nicer. How did you get his info?”

  There was a creaking sound like someone leaning back in the office chair and then a squeaking sound like that same chair was being turned around so the person in it could look out the window. I didn’t know if those sounds were real or phantoms conjured by my hot transistors.

  “A girl has her secrets, Ray. And friends in high places. But the tattoos are like fingerprints. The gardener is Artem Rokossovsky, no question.”

  “So what is friend Artem doing tending Charles David’s roses?”

  “Just sit tight and listen hard, Chief,” said Ada. “Star City is one big science research complex. Rokossovsky was shipped out there and placed under direct command of one of their top brainboxes. Guy called Vitaly Bobrov. And Bobrov has been on the CIA watch list for a decade now. The U.S. government has even tried to turn him a couple of times, but it never worked.”

  “So if Artem is here, then maybe his boss is, too?”

  “You’re on fire today.”

  “What was Bobrov doing in Star City? The CIA must have targeted him specifically for recruitment.”

  Ada laughed. I didn’t like it.

  “You’re going to get a kick of this one, Chief.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “Our Vitaly Bobrov is a robotics expert.”

  Of all the things I had heard today that I didn’t like, I didn’t like that one the most.

  “He was supposedly working on automated systems for Soviet lunar missions,” Ada continued. “Star City is the Russian Cape Canaveral. But the CIA thinks his position there was itself a cover.”

  “So if he wasn’t making robots for the moon, what was he doing?”

  “That they don’t know. But what do you bet it has something to do with glass cubes that pump out enough energy to kill an unsuspecting squirrel at fifty paces?”

  The road straightened up as the car crawled on a plateau covered by forest. It was nice. The light was dappled. It felt cooler.

  I slowed and looked around, checking the front, rear, sides. Then I slowed some more, just coasting along.

  “Problem, Ray?”

  “I lost the black car.”

  “Hmm,” said Ada. There was a scratching sound. Then there was a puffing sound and a sniff.

  I pulled up under a big old pine with broad, twisted branches and took another look around. There were plenty of roads leading off the main strip, most of them just brown dirt. It was the perfect place to lead a tail and then lose him.

  I had to hand it to the guy in the black car—he was good. Whoever he was. Charles David’s CIA handler. A Russian agent. Maybe it was the mysterious Bobrov himself, although if it was then he’d had lessons in how to shake a tail.

  I swapped the phone from one side of my head to the other, like that would make any difference at all. I sat in the car. I thought and thought some more.

  I wound down the window of the driver’s door. The day was getting long. The sound of insects and birds filtered in. It was nice. I liked it a lot. Maybe I was turning into a country robot.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m heading back to town to pay the late Mr. Rockwell a surprise visit.”

  Then I heard a car coming. I looked in the rearview and saw a cloud of dust growing at the horizon, where the road came up over the hill. It got closer. I couldn’t see it through the dust. I didn’t give it much thought. It was a free country and I was a robot minding his own business, talking to his computer boss on a nice sunny Thursday afternoon.

  “Report back as soon as you can, Ray,” said Ada. “And be careful.”

  The car was close now. It was silver. Wide at the front. There was a hood ornament rising from the radiator cap like a gun sight. The car trailed a cloud of light brown dust that lit up in the sun like a comet coming in for a once-in-a-lifetime pass.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for strange Russian robotics professors, sure.”

  As I hung up the phone the car pulled up alongside me and stopped. The driver kept the car running as they leaned across the passenger seat and wound down the window. I wound down my window and we stared at each other a while. I was frowning on the inside and the driver of the other car was smiling on the outside. It was a cute smile, the way it made dimples in her cheeks.

  “Get in,” said Eva McLuckie. “We need to talk.”

  23

  Her car was something European, spacious and well built, with room enough to take my bulk and suspension that didn’t protest too much when I got in.

  “I’m glad you stopped by,” I said, “because I have some questions, and those questions need some answers.” I nodded out the windshield. “You can talk and drive at the same time. The Temple of the Magenta Dragon, please. I think you have the address.”

  Eva McLuckie drove with both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road. She drove pretty fast but it was steady and it was smooth.

  “So where the hell have you been?” I asked. “You were supposed to call the office.”

  Eva shrugged behind the wheel. “I was busy.” Her eyes flicked in my direction, just for a second, before returning to the road ahead. We were nearly off the hills and the traffic was getting thicker. “So consider this my call. What have you got for me? Is the job done?”

  I wondered what to tell her. The truth, I supposed. Or at least part of the truth.

  In a moment, anyway. My own agenda had one or two action items on it.

  “So this case of nervous exhaustion. I understand it’s in all the papers. It would be a pretty good cover in case you needed to drop out of sight for a while, right?”

  Her grip tightened on the wheel and we picked up just a hint of speed. She didn’t seem to want to answer that question, so I tried another one.

  “You want to tell me what was going on down in that basement the other night?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know?”

  We pulled up at some lights. The car’s engine purred smooth as silk somewhere a long way in front of me. Eva took a deep breath and turned to face me.

  “Look, metal man, did you do the job or not?”

  I looked at her. “Charles David is dead, if that’s what you’re asking me.” I looked at her some more.

  The lights changed. Eva McLuckie drove the car. I glanced at her. She was staring at the road. Her nostrils were doing what they did w
hen the person in charge of them was trying to keep calm and suck in enough oxygen to keep the brain going.

  “You should be pleased,” I said. I raised an eyebrow, or at least it felt like I did. I watched her face but her expression was hard to read. She was holding something in. Holding lots in. I got that. But she was good at controlling it, or hiding it at least.

  She was an actor, after all.

  “You don’t look pleased.”

  Her lip curled and she let out a big breath. “Why should I be pleased, robot?”

  I turned back to admire the front view. “I mean,” I said, “I can understand why you did it. Charles David was a double agent and you found out. Then he found out that you found out and he ran. You had to eliminate him before he got back to his handlers and blew the plan your Red friends had concocted wide open.” I shrugged. “You needed someone to find him first, though. You couldn’t do it yourself. So you came to me, because you knew I could handle both aspects of the case. How did you know, by the way?”

  Eva squeezed the steering wheel like she was using it to keep herself upright.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Okay,” I said. “Of course I’m wondering why you couldn’t just get your friends to help. But I’m guessing that’s because you didn’t want them to know. You and Charles were partners—a team, maybe. The Russians put you in pairs.” I thought about Fresco Peterman and Alaska Gray and liked my theory. “Each responsible for the other, neither able to get direct help from other teams in case it blew the cover. Neat.”

  We drove on. I watched the traffic.

  “But the gold is the really interesting part,” I said. “You’re a movie star. I imagine you have a bank balance big enough to make grown men weep. But you didn’t want to use any of that money to pay me. I get that, too. That could be traced too easily if someone were to get an idea. Instead you used gold. Completely untraceable. Only it wasn’t your gold. And I have a feeling the rightful owners weren’t too pleased when they found out you’d borrowed it.”

  Eva licked her lips.

  “You know I have a contract to kill you, Ms. McLuckie?”

  She might have been shaking or it might have been her holding onto the steering wheel too tightly.

  “You’re not saying much there, driver.”

  “You seem to like the sound of your own voice. It seemed rude to interrupt.”

  I frowned on the inside and turned to watch the streets of Hollywood slip by my window. “Question is, whose gold is it?” The question was directed mostly at myself. “The gold isn’t the normal kind. Unmarked ingots, small enough to be transported easily. Say, transported secretly. Across borders. Across continents, even.” I turned back to Eva. “Say, from Mother Russia? The gold is Soviet. You’re working for them and you knew they had it. So when things went slippery with your partner Charles David, it was up to you to fix things. You knew they had the gold, so you took it. That’s neat. It doesn’t come back to you, and maybe if they found it gone they could pin it on Charles David. All you needed to do was find him and eliminate him before that happened. Present it all wrapped up neat. There was no risk with me on the case. You stuck around a little—long enough to attend the next meeting of your Hollywood Communist club—but then someone noticed the gold was missing and they think you took it. Bam, your plan is history. Now you’re on the run from your own people, right? That’s quite a situation, I must admit.”

  Eva didn’t say anything but she shook her head a little. I don’t know if that meant I was wrong or I was right and she was merely shaking her head in admiration of the deductions my electromatic brain was capable of.

  Professor Thornton would have been proud. That I did know.

  “Do you know what’s going to happen on Friday?” I asked. “Charles David talked about a phase three and a phase four. I assume you know what they are. This is the point where you can start talking, and start talking fast.”

  That was when Eva pulled to the curb sharply and stopped. She left the engine running and looked at me and then pointed out the window. I turned to look.

  We were on Sunset Boulevard. We’d stopped outside a door that was black with a gold number on it and underneath the number was a Chinese character.

  I turned back to Eva and she nodded at the door. “Fresco will be inside. He can fill you in on the plan and what we need you to do.”

  “Me? Have you been listening to a word I’ve said, lady? I’m not looking to be part of any Soviet master plan.”

  “You already are,” she said. “We all are.”

  We stared at each other for six and three-quarter seconds. “You’re coming in, too,” I said. Eva nodded.

  I reached for the door handle and opened the door and stepped out. I closed the door.

  Then Eva drove off. I frowned on the inside and watched her go.

  And then I watched as a black car with soft suspension driven by a man in black hat came down the street and followed her a couple of car lengths back.

  I was supposed to kill Eva.

  And now I wondered if someone else was going to do the job for me. Her own organization, most likely. They’d used me to find her and now they figured they could finish the job themselves.

  Ada wasn’t going to like giving them a refund, even a partial one.

  I turned to the black door and looked for the handle, but there wasn’t one. No bell, no knocker. No window.

  Not that any of that mattered when it was opened by a Chinese girl wearing a black silk dress with red trim. She held the door open and she bowed low and gestured for me to enter.

  So I did.

  24

  The Temple of the Magenta Dragon might have looked swell at night with the lights down low and the air full of smoke—I didn’t remember of course, I just had Ada’s word that I’d been here before—but during the day it was a dump. Every surface was painted black, that kind of flat matte black that the backstage of theaters were painted so they didn’t reflect any light. The ceiling was a mess of pipes and buttresses and the walls weren’t much better. The black paint made everything look cheap, tacky, especially because the place was lit with harsh fluorescent strip lights that somehow stained the flat black walls a sort of dirty gray. There were no windows. You could lose time in a place like this.

  What wasn’t black-painted pipework was Chinese decoration. Fake bamboo. Fake clouds. Fake dragons. Under the strip lights they looked rough. Just another set of stage props. Nestled among these disappointing features were other lights set at various angles. Theater lights, their apertures controlled by metal slats, some of them with their bulbs obscured behind what looked like red cellophane. Of course, with the main lights off and the special lights on, the place would look different. The walls and the ceiling would disappear and you’d be in an Oriental wonderland.

  Just not before nine p.m.

  The main room was filled with round tables and there was a bar on one side. The bar itself was a deep reddish wood, carved in swirls and loops as the contours of an elaborate Chinese dragon took shape. It looked like the bar had been brought in from somewhere else and the surroundings hacked into shape to match this centerpiece.

  The far wall was done out in red studded leather and there were some private booths against it, the tables shielded by pierced Chinese folding screens that looked like they could be moved around at will.

  There was no sign of the woman who had let me in but at the far end of the bar was another Chinese woman. She was standing behind the bar, her arms folded. She was wearing a sleeveless black tunic with a high collar and had silver bracelets wrapped around her biceps and her hair was pulled back and held in place by some fancy Chinese woodwork. She didn’t look amused so I left her to it and headed toward the one booth that was occupied. The man stood up and held his arms out like he was welcoming his new wife home from work.

  “Sparks, how you doing? Why don’t you come join me, big fella.”

  Fresco Peterman was wearing a white shirt with the s
leeves rolled up and a big dirty napkin tucked into the collar. There was something colorful folded on the seat next to him—it took me a moment to realize it was a casual jacket—and on the table were an open ledger book and a bowl of noodles. The noodles steamed. He had a set of chopsticks in one hand.

  I took a seat. Fresco sat down and gestured at his bowl.

  “Don’t mind if I eat, do you? Bit of a working dinner, you know how it is.”

  I glanced down at the ledger Fresco had next to his elbow. I didn’t need Ada’s help to see it was some kind of accounts record, lots of columns of numbers and simple math.

  “Doing the books?”

  Fresco dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “Gotta keep up with the books.”

  “You run this place?”

  He nodded. “I own it. Bit of a hobby, I must admit. Actually, I’m co-owner. One of eight.”

  I glanced up at the matte black ceiling and the strip light that was directly over our booth. The light was flickering one hundred and twenty times a second, about double the frequency of the main power. To most people it produced nothing but a flat white light. For some people, that flat white light became irritating after a while. That was the flicker. They couldn’t see it, but it had an effect all the same.

  I could see the flicker. One twist of my optics and the fluorescent bulb flashed and flashed again like lightning glimpsed beyond a distant horizon. With a little adjustment, I managed to match the flicker of the light with the clicking of my Geiger counter. I returned my attention to the source, which was right in front of me: Fresco Peterman, famous actor, part-time nightclub co-owner.

  “It takes eight people to run this joint?” I asked.

  Fresco shrugged. “Less for each of us to do. Like I said, it’s a hobby. You know this place used to be a fruit market. Pineapples and peaches, can you believe it? On Sunset Boulevard? I mean, come on. Who likes pineapples?”

  I couldn’t answer that nugget so I didn’t. Fresco took my silence as agreement. He nodded and the leather of the booth’s bench seat creaked under his famous ass.