Standard Hollywood Depravity--A Ray Electromatic Mystery

by Adam Christopher

  “Four men representing two gangs. Okay.”

  “There are three more pictures. One of them I think is a guy called Aspen. Word was he worked for a guy who worked for a guy called Boxer, but that info is out of date.”

  The band was still playing in the other room. I watched the door and pressed the telephone to my metal cranium.

  “Where did you get all this from, anyway?” I asked.

  “I’m going to assume that’s a rhetorical question, Ray. Because a girl doesn’t reveal her sources.”

  “I thought that was newspaper men?”

  “I forget,” said Ada. “Truth is the information is a little patchy on this. My data banks could use an update.”

  “Remind me next Christmas.”

  “I may just do that,” said Ada. “Anyway, the only other one I can identify is a guy who works for Zeus Falzarano. Now, there’s a piece of work.”

  A circuit lit up somewhere inside me. “Falzarano. He came up in conversation. Something to do with a million bucks in cash.”

  “Hold on there, Ray, I’m going to need to sit down. A million bucks?”

  “Apparently so. My new friend said he hoped I’d brought a lot of dough, because it could go as high as a million bucks if Falzarano was involved.”

  “Oh, Raymondo,” said Ada. She was positively cooing. “I could use a million bucks.”

  I should have known better to start talking to Ada about money. She was a computer that was programmed to run a profit. That was why she’d tweaked my master protocols in the first place, turning me from a second-rate private eye to a first-rate killer for hire. Turns out squeezing people until they stopped breathing was quite the earner.

  “It’s a sale,” I said. “Has to be. Everyone is here to buy something. Something that could go as high as a million bucks.”

  “To buy,” said Ada, “or to bid.”

  “Right,” I said. That made a lot of sense. “An auction. They’re all here for an auction, on the same night that we get a contract to take out a go-go dancer at a club that’s being used as the auction venue.”

  “Sounds like a world of trouble, chief.”

  I paused a moment. Ada must have felt it in her circuits.

  “Now what?”

  “The pictures,” I said. “Anyone there from Tieri’s mob?”

  “That’s a negative.”

  “I thought there was one picture you couldn’t hang a name on?”

  “There is and not yet. But if that guy was from Tieri’s mob I would have expected the name to pop like the rest.”

  “Unless he’s hired someone new whose photograph hasn’t landed on some law enforcer’s desk yet.”

  “You could be right. Like I said, I might be a little behind the times. But I’ll keep working on it.”

  I nodded to myself. Then I thought of something else.

  I said, “Oh.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that oh, Ray.”

  I checked that there was nobody around me. There wasn’t. The band played on.

  “I think I know where Tieri’s man is.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s in the bathroom.”

  “Nature’s call, Ray, nature’s call. Am I going to have to teach you about human biology now?”

  “I know enough about human biology to know that they tend to leak red stuff when they get punctured.”

  “Oh,” said Ada. “He’s not coming out of the bathroom, is he, Ray?”

  “He is not.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Okay. That place is full of creeps and they’re all after something expensive. Someone loses patience and decides to take out a bit of the competition. I can see how that works.”

  “True enough,” I said, “but that’s not what happened.”

  “Okay, so who killed Mr. Unlucky from NYC?”

  “Honey did.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I heard the shot and saw her stash the weapon.” I patted my coat. “I’ve got it on me.”

  “Less funny.”

  “We know who she is?”

  Ada made a sound like an old woman clacking her tongue. “We know her name and her location and the sad fact that she needs to stop breathing sometime before dawn. That’s all we need to know. No dice on anything else.”

  I shorted my vocal unit to make a humming sound.

  Ada sighed. “You want my advice, Ray?”

  “I’m all ears, Ada.”

  “My advice is that you need to get in and do the job and then get out. The grand charity auction of the Black-hearted Pooh-bahs isn’t any of our business, nor the murderous habits of a rogue go-go dancer. What is our business is making sure she doesn’t get out of that building alive. You know where she is?”

  There was a sound behind me. I looked around.

  “I have a feeling,” I said.

  The front door of the club had opened. I saw a little of the street outside. Sunset Boulevard was busy. The lights on the corner were green. Cars cruised by in both directions.

  Then the door closed and the girl who had come in stopped and looked at me. Tasseled red two-piece and high white boots and an expression on her face somewhere between a frown and a pout. Her eyes moved over me but that was all of her that moved. She stood as still as I did.

  “I’ll call you back,” I said into the telephone, and then I hung the telephone up. I thought I heard Ada say “Good luck,” but I wasn’t sure and the receiver was already back on its cradle when Honey walked right up to me.

  We were alone in the lobby. The coat-check girl hadn’t rematerialized and the last time the big double doors had swung was when my new friend had disappeared back inside the club to catch the Hit List’s second act.

  I glanced over Honey’s shoulder. The restrooms were behind her. There was already one body in there. Now it seemed like I had the chance to stash another. And why not? It was as good a place as any. There were other restrooms in the place. All I had to do was find an “out of order” sign and hang it up and Tieri’s man and the mystery girl could rest in peace. At least until the cleaners came in.

  I reached for the girl and she didn’t flinch. In fact as I moved my arm she took another step forward and then she leaned in to my chest. She was at least a foot and a half shorter than I was and she had to look almost straight up.

  I looked down at her. Her eyes were green.

  “Let’s talk,” she said and she said it in a voice that was not afraid and was not trying to keep anything in particular quiet.

  Then she stood back and she looked at the arm I still had outstretched. I’d been planning on taking a hold of her neck, but now she was standing too close. I felt a little silly with my arm out like that so I let it drop.

  She jerked her head toward the restroom door and she went over and disappeared through it.

  She sure was making it easy for me.

  But as I crossed the lobby I decided that I’d ask her a couple of questions first.

  Maybe Ada was right. Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking like this, shouldn’t be asking questions that had nothing to do with the job.

  Maybe Ada was right and she should take a look at my programming, make some more adjustments, expunge this streak of curiosity that seemed to have appeared among the transistors and neuristors inside my head.

  But as I pushed open the restroom door I wasn’t sure I wanted Ada to do anything of the kind.

  6

  Honey was leaning against one of the basins. She had her arms folded over her bare midriff and she was looking at the fourth cubicle along. I’d closed the door behind me when I’d taken a look earlier but now there was a large circle of blood pooling out from under it.

  I stood next to Honey and I didn’t say anything. She nodded at the door.

  “That was unfortunate, but necessary,” she said. The echo off the white tiles made her voice sound deeper than it had out in the lobby. I put her accent somewhere in Easter
n Standard Time.

  Then she nodded again, but this time it was toward the back of the restroom, beyond which was, by my guess, the parking lot. “I dumped the piece. They’ll find it easy enough once they find Bob here, but we’ll be clear by then.”

  “If you say so,” I said. When I spoke, Honey turned and looked up at me and her lip curled at the edge. Her eyes went up and down then resettled on my optics. The lip curled some more. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed to like it.

  “I’m glad they sent you. Things could get a little heavy.”

  I considered this. Sure, things were going to get a little heavy, but not in the way she was thinking.

  But there was another surprise.

  She’d been expecting me.

  The thought buzzed around my voltage control stack like an angry wasp. It sure was a doozy. Not only had she been expecting help, but it was no surprise that they’d sent a robot. Even though I was the last of them left walking.

  I wondered whether I should point that out to her.

  Instead I took a step toward the cubicle, keeping out of the blood. The grout that held the white tiles to the floor was also white and it was staining badly. The janitor was going to throw a fit.

  “So who’s Bob?” I asked. I took a bet. “One of Tieri’s?”

  Honey nodded. She moved to my side and peered into the cubicle. “Tieri’s right hand. I met him last year in New York. I knew there was a fair chance he or one of the others would be here, but I was counting on him not recognizing me with this get up.”

  I looked at her. She held her arms out, indicating the two-piece and boots. I noticed that her shiny black hair was a wig.

  “I didn’t know you’d been out to New York,” I said, which was the truth and nothing but. Honey glanced back at the dearly departed Bob, but she nodded in response.

  “Boxer was putting feelers out,” she said, “trying to get Tieri onside. You know, after the recent troubles. We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. But Tieri was being difficult so of course Boxer sent his girl out, to try to smooth things over. Didn’t go over too well.” Honey grimaced at the memory. Then she looked at me. “But you know Boxer. When he gets an idea, wild horses can’t stop him.”

  I nodded and as I nodded I wondered how out of date Ada’s information on the gangs of Los Angeles was. She’d mentioned this guy Boxer and it didn’t take a private detective to understand that Honey was Boxer’s “girl” and on his payroll. And she thought that I was too.

  I was starting to get a better grip on the events of the evening. I’d walked into the middle of a mob auction for a mysterious something worth a million bucks. Gangsters from all over town and beyond were here to bid, putting aside grievances and territorial disagreements just for one night.

  Except for Boxer. He’d sent Honey here, and Honey was not only in disguise but had taken out Bob from Tieri’s outfit for fear he would recognize her from New York.

  Which meant Boxer was not playing by the rules. If his kingdom was crumbling, his alliances—including a potential one with Tieri—failing, then he might be short of funds. And if he was short of funds, then he couldn’t afford to bid at the auction for a mysterious something worth a million bucks.

  But it was something he still wanted. Wanted enough to send someone in to get it, by any means that did not involve money.

  I looked down at Bob’s body. His face was white and getting whiter as the blood trickled out of him about as fast as the water trickling out of the leaking toilet cistern.

  Honey was not only an assassin. She was a thief. She was here to steal the mysterious something.

  “Wild horses,” I said, and maybe I said it to myself. Honey just looked at me but the frown on her face didn’t stick around very long. I pointed at the body. “Shame about Bob,” I said.

  Honey dropped her arms. “Didn’t leave me much choice. Boxer’s playing his last card on this one.” She nodded at the body. “I picked a piece from one of the Malone mob and used that. He’ll find it missing before the night is out. Chances are he’ll notice it’s gone before they find Bob here, and then when they start looking they’ll find Bob and then the gun and the spotlight goes onto Malone. By then we’ll be fifty miles away with the package. They’ll be too busy fighting among themselves to even think of coming after us or Boxer.”

  “Neat plan,” I said. Then I thought about my new friend in the too-small hat. “I think I might have bought us some more time, too. One of the buyers out there thinks I’m from Tieri’s mob—they think I’m Bob. So maybe they won’t be looking so hard if they see me around.”

  Honey’s eyes went wide. She had pink makeup around them and the pink got paler as her skin stretched. Underneath those wide eyes was a big smile.

  “Even better,” she said. “They’ll be expecting Tieri’s lug to be at the auction and now they think that’s you. That’s good. That’s very good.”

  I nodded like I meant it, and I had to admit I did. She made a good point. Anything that made my job—my real job—easier tonight was no bad thing.

  “Okay,” I said. “How do we get the package?”

  Honey turned away from Bob’s cooling body. She walked back to the sinks. She stopped and looked at me in the mirror. She said, “How much did Boxer tell you?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Nothing, in fact.”

  This was true given that I had never met him.

  Honey pursed her lips. Seemed like she was considering something. She still had her arms folded. She turned her head to look at the door.

  “Okay, I can fill you in,” she said. “Fix the door. We don’t have much time. The auction starts at midnight.”

  I looked at the door, then I walked over to it. Hanging on the back was a small sign on a piece of string. It was turned over to show the blank side. I turned it around. The sign said OUT OF ORDER. I flicked it off the hook, opened the door, and hung the sign the right way around on the outside.

  I checked my internal chronometer. It was eleven thirty. A half hour to the auction.

  Then I turned back to Honey. I looked at her. She was leaning one hip against the sink. Her arms were folded. She seemed pretty relaxed. I guessed that she was used to this kind of thing.

  Then I thought about finishing my job here and now and getting out, like Ada had said. All of this business was none of mine. I needed to be somewhere else. I needed to avoid getting involved.

  I considered the target. I estimated maybe forty seconds to put Honey’s lights out in a permanent way. Make it a round sixty. No point hurrying. Stash the body. Give me another minute as I’d have to tread carefully to keep out of Bob’s blood. Then I could leave and there would still be twenty-eight minutes before the auction started and Bob was missed. Malone’s boy might have patted his pocket for his gun before then, but it still felt like I had a comfortable cushion.

  The job that had looked difficult suddenly looked a lot easier.

  And then Honey asked, “How long have you been with Boxer?”

  “Not long,” I said. I said it without hesitation because I was still telling the truth and the truth tends not to take too long.

  She nodded. She smiled. She lifted her head. “Good thinking of him,” she said. “Even if it cleaned him out.”

  I said nothing. She lifted her head a little higher. “Hiring a robot. The last robot. I wondered where all his money went. But you seem like a good investment.”

  I still said nothing, but I gave a small shrug that was, frankly, rather noncommittal, and hoped Honey would change the subject.

  “You ever run into Falzarano’s gang?” she asked. As I considered her question I felt a circuit board inside me start to cool down nicely.

  “Falzarano,” I said. “I know the name, but not much more than that.”

  “He was the kingpin of LA,” she said. “Ran every racket going. Some people even say he ran the city itself. Those people might not be wrong either.”

  That chimed with Ada’s comment about Falzaran
o being a piece of work. “Was?”

  Honey shrugged. “He went into retirement. He’s old now. He’s got a mansion up in the hills—big place, fortified like a castle. We don’t think he’s stepped out of the front door in years.”

  We. Her and Boxer.

  “Okay,” I said. “So tell me about the auction.”

  Honey licked her lips. “We heard about it weeks ago, something being organized, a meeting. Then two weeks ago Boxer got me to fold someone from Bay City back into the water, and I found an invitation in his jacket. Turns out every outfit in town had got them—everyone except Boxer, of course. I felt around for more information, got word that it wasn’t just LA—the auction was national. People were coming in from all over just for this.”

  I nodded. “People like Bob from New York.”

  “Oh, and a lot more than that,” said Honey. “Reps from just about all of the lower forty-eight are here.”

  Twenty minutes to midnight. I wished I’d taken more photographs for Ada to ID.

  “And with everyone under one roof, and without an invite, Boxer just sent you in?”

  Honey smiled. “Well, I am the best he has. And anyway, he didn’t just send me, did he? He sent you as well. He didn’t tell me because he must have figured the less each of us knew, the less likely we’d accidentally tip the others off.”

  “Ah, right,” I said. “But I still don’t like the odds.”

  “Things go the way we’ve planned, the odds are very much in our favor.”

  I paused. I narrowed my optics at her but I’m not sure she noticed. There was one thing that still bugged me.

  The package. The mysterious something worth a million bucks that Honey here was going to somehow steal from out under the noses of every gang from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

  I still didn’t know what it was.

  So I asked her, and this time it was Honey’s eyes that narrowed. “Boxer didn’t tell you much, did he?”

  “Boxer was pretty busy,” I said.

  Honey paused.

  “Okay, so the package,” I asked, “how are you going to get it and get out of here with all of your limbs still connected?”

  Bob’s blood was nearly lapping at my loafers.