I Only Killed Him Once

by Adam Christopher

  I looked around the room again but it hadn’t changed any. Small, rectangular, empty. Some kind of storage cupboard. Maybe you’d call it a room if you were in a generous mood.

  I wasn’t.

  With one hand I looped up my cables and stowed the loop around one end of the trolley and then I pushed the trolley to the door. The door was big and heavy and it was locked and the lock was big and heavy. I was in some kind of industrial building, a factory or a warehouse or a depot.

  Fortunately I was bigger and heavier than either the lock or the door so I made short work of the former with as little sound as possible and then I stepped through the latter and drew it shut again behind me. From the outside the lock and handle looked intact so I thought that might buy me some time.

  I glanced at the tape recorder. The dials twitched. The tape had moved on more than I liked.

  The corridor was more concrete and it was still dark and I couldn’t hear anything in particular. I looked left and right. I switched my optics back to visible light and went through a few more filters and I adjusted the gain but that didn’t tell me anything so I switched back to infrared and once I’d made a couple more adjustments to the picture I picked a direction and took it with my little trolley rolling in front of me.

  16

  I walked down one corridor and then another and there was nothing much of interest in either. I didn’t know where I was and I was pretty keen to find out and I was ready to do some of that old-fashioned detective work to do so but no clues were offering themselves up. What I needed was either the front door or a telephone. Hell, even the back door. Maybe I’d even locate a person or two I could ask a couple of questions. Before or after I had cracked their heads, I hadn’t yet decided.

  I kept going. More concrete corridors. More darkness. More silence. Then I turned a corner and came to a door. It was smaller and far less substantial than the one I had just gotten past but like that one and every other surface in this building it was painted a dull military gray. I even switched my optics back to visible light to check. When I switched back to infrared the handle flared in my filters and when I looked away to let them compensate I was left with a trail like a comet in the middle of my vision.

  I tried the door. It was unlocked. I took that to be a promising development in the mystery and what else I took to be promising was the sound of a telephone ringing. It came from behind the very door I was staring at so I wasted no time in opening it.

  Maybe Ada wasn’t compromised. Maybe she was fine and the office was where it should be.

  Which meant it was me who had been compromised. I’d been grabbed and dumped here. My memory tape had run out and my captors had come up with the bypass to keep me going just long enough for . . . well, for whatever they wanted me for.

  Beyond the door was a square room with a low ceiling and the room was filled with boxes and dust and the sound of the telephone’s bell. As I looked around something flashed and flared in my optics bright enough for me to take a step back into the hallway and take pause. I had to cycle through a few more filters and adjust the voltage for the afterimage to clear and when it did I stepped back inside and I saw that I was facing a wall lined with mirrors set above some kind of bench.

  The telephone was ringing in the corner and when I got to it I saw it was covered in as much dust as the rest of the place. If I didn’t know better, I would have said I’d just walked into the dressing room of a theater. That didn’t do much to narrow my location down. Los Angeles was a big town and there were probably quite a number of joints like this one.

  But it was a start.

  I picked up the phone and there was a click in my audio receptor and for a second I heard the ocean, far away. Then it was gone and replaced with a rhythmic ticking, like there was an electrical outlet shorting somewhere close and the short was filling the air with radio noise.

  “Hello?” I said. The call had to be for me. Somehow Ada knew where I was at just the right moment. It was a gift, I had to give her that.

  The line just ticked in my ear. I spoke again but I got no reply, but the line didn’t disconnect either. I waited and I counted the ticks, and I measured the rhythm of them. It was regular, sure, but if there was a coded message coming through then I wasn’t getting it.

  “Ada, is that you?”

  Nothing but a hiss and a roar and a tick, tick, tick.

  I drew the mouthpiece close to my grille.

  “Ada, if that’s you, then listen, I’m in trouble. I don’t have much of a clue where I am and I think my memory tape has run out.”

  Tick, tick, tick.

  “Ada?”

  If silence could be said to be deafening then this one was breaking all kinds of city noise-control statutes.

  “Ada, are you there? Do you know what’s going on? Do you know where I am?”

  Tick, tick, tick.

  And then:

  “Ray?”

  Maybe the voice was in my head—scratch that, it was in my head, because that’s how we talked to each other, by coded signal buried in the voltage coming through the telephone. The actual line connection was merely an accessory to the crime, a little trick that meant we couldn’t be bugged because if anyone planted a microphone or tapped the line all they’d hear was the raw cry of the ever-expanding universe.

  “Earth to Raymondo. Come in, Ray,” said the voice. And then, “Hey, chief, you in there or what?”

  I paused. I adjusted my grip on the telephone. I even switched it around to my other audio receptor just in case it would make a difference.

  Because something wasn’t right about the call.

  I told myself to listen to the voice that wasn’t in my head, that right now was real and alive and coming down the telephone line, vibrating in the earpiece, making an actual sound like it was a real phone call from someone I knew didn’t exist outside a bunch of electric currents and fast-acting microswitches.

  “Ada, is that you?”

  The telephone continued to tick in the background and her voice was faint but unmistakable. As was her laugh. I listened and tried to count the loops but there were none.

  If I didn’t know any better, I would have said I was talking to somebody.

  “What do you mean, ‘Ada, is that you?’? Tell me, chief, who else would be calling you in the middle of the afternoon?” She paused. “Say, you haven’t got someone else on the side, have you? Someone you’re doing other jobs with? Actually, don’t answer that one, not today. Things are difficult enough as it is without going through all that right now.”

  I gripped the telephone receiver hard enough for the plastic to crack. I wasn’t sure Ada heard it against all the other competition on the line.

  “Listen, Ada, what’s going on? I’m not at the office. I woke up in some kind of storeroom. I don’t know where I am yet. Might be some kind of old theater, but I need to keep looking. Preferably for the way out.”

  “Well, lucky I called, right? Don’t tell me you thought I wouldn’t? Raymondo, have a little faith!”

  I turned around and let the telephone cord curl around me. I’d left the door of the dressing room open. I said “hold on,” and I said it quietly as I picked up the telephone and moved to the door and moved to close it. Then I paused and I stepped out in the corridor. The telephone wouldn’t come with me so I held it at an arm’s length as I looked to the left and the right.

  There. A sound. A door closing. Distance and direction were hard to judge, the way every little noise bounced around the concrete walls. The door had a swoosh, like it was closing against a cushion of air. I listened a moment. I turned my audio receptors up and then I turned them up some more.

  Footsteps. A good pace, too, and while they were a long way away their owner wasn’t making any kind of effort to be quiet. As I listened the footsteps got louder and by louder I assumed closer.

  I stepped back into the dressing room and I pushed the door closed. It clicked shut, but when I looked down at the handle I saw there
was a keyhole but no key.

  I moved back to my trolley and I lifted the telephone again.

  “We’re okay,” I said. “Someone might be coming. Listen, do you know where I am? I’m low on memory and—”

  “Yes, Ray, I know,” said Ada. “Now, you listen to me. I don’t have much time.”

  “You don’t have much time?” I glanced down at the tape recorder. “I’m out of memory and have been hooked up to some kind of, I don’t know, a bypass. An external tape backup.”

  “That’s great, Ray,” said Ada. “Perfect.”

  I pursed my lips. On the inside, anyway. I found I liked the way it felt. Helped me to think. “You and I need to have a little talk about what you think is ‘perfect’ and what really isn’t.”

  “It’ll have to wait, chief. This is not a secure line. Someone could be listening.”

  “You got a particular someone in mind?”

  Ada made a sound that could have been someone clicking their tongue in their mouth. I hadn’t heard her make that sound before. Then again, I wouldn’t have remembered even if she had, would I?

  “Listen. You’re not alone in there, Ray. Help is at hand, but you’ve got to follow along, okay? Can you do that for me, Ray?”

  “What help?” I looked at the tape deck on the trolley. “The same help that hooked me up to the bypass?”

  “They know what they’re doing. Everything is going to plan, but you need to make sure you play ball, okay?”

  “It would help if I knew what that plan was, Ada.”

  “No, it wouldn’t, Ray. At least . . . not for the moment.”

  She made the clicking sound again. Or maybe it was the noise on the line. The interference was getting worse.

  Then there was a sound like Ada had turned her head, the mouthpiece of her telephone brushing against her cheek as she looked at something.

  “Ada?”

  “Okay, sorry, I have to run. So, look, just hang in there. This is all part of the job, and I know you’re good at it, so trust me when I say you’ll find everything out in good time and this will all get straightened out.”

  There was a pause. I listened to the telephone. I could hear someone breathing and the breathing got faster.

  “Sorry, Ray, I have to go,” said Ada.

  “Are you saying this is all part of a job?”

  “Just like any other, Ray.”

  “Who is the target?”

  Ada sighed. For a moment I wondered if I heard her chewing gum, but the line ticked and crackled and I couldn’t be sure of anything.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out, Ray.”

  I felt incorrect voltages go the wrong way around a circuit or two.

  “That’s not helpful. In fact, you could even call it a hindrance.”

  “Well, a gal can only do her best, right? You’re a detective, detect! Keep your optics open and your audio receptors up and then you can report back and tell me what you’ve discovered.”

  “Including the identity of the person I need to get a little closer to than most?”

  “Identity, location, favorite color, how they take their coffee. Whatever you need, chief, whatever you need.”

  I almost sighed but I caught my vocalizer just in time. I was making enough noise as it was. From beyond the closed door of the dressing room I could now hear the footsteps loud and clear. They were very close and the dressing room door wasn’t particularly substantial, and with the whole place—whatever it was, wherever it was—as quiet as church on a Tuesday, whoever was coming was going to be able to hear me soon if they hadn’t already.

  I looked around. There was no other way out. This place didn’t seem to have any windows.

  The footsteps got closer.

  “I’ve got to go, Ray,” said Ada. She sounded flustered. Distracted. More than that, she sounded something else.

  Real.

  “Yeah, and I’ve got company coming,” I said.

  “Good luck,” said Ada.

  “I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”

  And then the telephone clicked dead and for a few seconds there was a silence as thick and heavy as a winter blanket on a cold night. And then the dial tone came back and the telephone buzzed in my ear. The tone was clear and loud with no interference.

  I must have had the telephone in my hand when the dressing room door opened, because the first thing I did when I turned around to face it was pull the curly cable away from where it had got caught on my collar, and the second thing I did was put the receiver back on its cradle after the man with the gun in the doorway asked me to.

  If this guy was Ada’s promised help then I had to admit I was a little disappointed, what with the scowl on his face and the way his gun twitched like he really, truly wanted to shoot me with it. It was a strange gun too, like a piece of modern art, a sculpture of blown glass and wires that likely shot something that would be much more effective than bullets against my chassis.

  “I’d put my hands up,” I said, “but I’m a little attached to this drinks trolley.”

  The man’s scowl twisted a little more. He was not quite middle-aged and the grimace couldn’t disguise the pleasing angles of his face. He had hair to match and a sports coat that needed its own feature in Life magazine.

  “You going to come with me, Sparks, or am I going to have to shoot you here and now?”

  He jerked his gun sideways and I got the picture. I pushed my little trolley in front of me and he made a wide circle around the dressing room to give me the required space.

  I paused at the doorway. He jerked his gun to the left.

  “Move it, buster.”

  I did what he said.

  17

  The man with the gun walked behind me. At first I was glad of that fact, as it meant I didn’t have to look at his jacket, but after a little while it became obvious this arrangement was not without problems. I didn’t know where I was going and he had to keep giving me directions and I wasn’t entirely sure he knew his way around the place any better than I did. More than twice he told me to push my trolley to the left only for this direction to be followed by a call to hold on just one gosh-darned minute! and there were a few other turnarounds accompanied by a selection of phrases including, Oh, for Pete’s sake, you think I’d know this place by now and she didn’t sign me up for a job like this one and one that caught my attention in particular, which was dammit, Sparks, why does life have to be so difficult?

  I didn’t say anything. He was having a bad enough day as it was and I didn’t want to distract him further, not least of all because his grip on his magical pea shooter had been tight when we left the dressing room and I could only imagine how much tighter it was now.

  Finally he told me to stop in the middle of another concrete block corridor and he said “please” when he did. I obliged and watched as he paced, the gun now pointed in every other direction than me as he got his bearings. I suppose I could have extricated myself right then and there but I liked the please bit. If I was going to be held up by a gangster then I liked one with a little class. There were too many lowlifes in Los Angeles without any manners. I didn’t know how I knew that. It must have been on my permanent store, a bit of general information along with more formal stuff about how to be a detective and basic forensic investigative techniques volumes one through six and a list of the national birds of the countries of Europe.

  Luxembourg had the goldcrest, by the way, which had the scientific equivalent of two first names: Regulus regulus.

  For some reason that made me think of someone I might have known once but then the feeling was gone and the business end of the ray gun was once more angled toward me and we resumed our grand journey.

  After a few minutes of walking we arrived at our destination, coming out into a narrow room with a very high ceiling. The room was filled with coils of cable, and ladders of various extendable dimensions were stacked against the wall opposite a pair of very narrow and very high doors. One of the do
ors was ajar and from beyond streamed bright light.

  I looked at my companion and in the light I saw he really was quite a looker and he had hair that was high and swept back and might just have been blown out of glass like his fancy gun—a gun that now swung loosely by his side.

  The man smiled at me and then the smile snapped off and the gun came up too fast, like he was embarrassed at being caught out. Of course, what he really needed to be embarrassed about was the jacket he was wearing. I took another look and then wondered if I could ask to have the lights turned off again.

  “Inside,” he said through a set of perfect teeth and through lips that moved as much as his pompadour, which is to say, not a lot.

  I nodded and poked my trolley through the gap in the door and then I made the gap a little wider with my free hand as I stepped through.

  “You’d make a good ventriloquist,” I said.

  “That’s enough talking.”

  “My point exactly.”

  I wheeled the trolley a little farther and then I stopped where I was. My guide stepped into the room behind me and then he slid past and he turned and walked backward, keeping the gun level with me as he moved toward the guy who was standing in what seemed to be a library of a late Edwardian country house.

  “Relax, Peterman,” he said, a tall party in a black suit and with black hair. “No need to be on edge. Everything is under control.”

  The man with the gun—Peterman—stopped and made to glance over his shoulder at his friend, only to realize that this would mean he couldn’t look at me at the same time, so he sort of leaned back and half-turned, his eyes swiveling in their sockets as he tried for the impossible.

  I looked around the big room, which might have looked like an Edwardian country library but was anything but. Sure, there were chairs and the walls were lined with leather-bound spines, but from my position by the big doors I could see that’s all they were. The books were fake, and the library was only half a room. It sat, disconnected from any kind of country manor, on a stage six inches from a floor of black painted cement covered with scuffs and marks and bits of old tape. There was scaffolding around the place and ladders and folding chairs and folding tables. The ceiling was somewhere high above, mostly hidden from view by a suspended metal framework from which sprung an array of lamps and lights like multicolored flowers. Ropes and chains hung down from the rig and were safely affixed to the walls.