Braineater Jones

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  He must’ve known I had a gun. Either he didn’t care or didn’t believe I would shoot him. Probably thought I was so desperate for the truth, I would hear him out to the end, no matter what line of bull he fed me. Maybe he had telephoned some mooks and was waiting patiently for them to come. Hell, maybe he was a trusting soul and just hoped he could convince me not to shoot.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said, bringing his fingers, shaped like a house, to his lips. “If you killed me, would you dump me in your own swimming pool? Or would you dispose of the body?”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to.

  “Better yet,” he said, “maybe you would try to frame an old enemy. Or at least make life inconvenient for him by having to clean up your mess.”

  “Your corpse mess?” I asked.

  “Your corpse mess, yes,” he said. “You were killed as a warning to me. Because I cared about you deeply. Because you were important to me. And you were dumped in my pool to add insult to injury. I was to be forced to fish you out and bury you properly without drawing any unwanted attention. What your killer didn’t count on, I imagine, was that you would come back and start looking for him.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “You know him, I believe. One of your community. That’s what you deadheads call one another, isn’t it? Our community? Our kind? Like the Sicilian mob.”

  I had my gun out. I scratched under my chin with it. Probably a little chunk of skin came off. Scratching yourself while dead just isn’t the same as it is alive.

  “Lazar,” I said. “That’s why he tries to keep me under his thumb. He’s slipping something into the booze to keep me from remembering. Only he’s not one of ours. He’s a play-actor.”

  In that instant, it all clicked in my head. Who had been with me from the start? Who had played my friend? Who disappeared into the Altstadt and abandoned the community? I stared into the glass of brandy.

  “I do recommend you get your alcohol elsewhere from now on,” Rothering said. “But I believe the bootlegger was only drugging you for money. He doesn’t know any more about you than you know about yourself. He has his own patron, after all.”

  The Old Man. Why would that little fetus want me dead? It didn’t make any sense. I lived above his bar. Why keep me alive, walking, rotting evidence of his misdeeds? “What are you running out of the docks?”

  “That whole operation,” Rothering said, “is nothing more than a little… let’s call it a diplomatic mission. I am, as you’ve no doubt guessed, absolutely loyal to the regime in Berlin. We’ve brought in a few loyal Germans, but that will only get us so far. We need Americans sympathetic to the cause. Americans such as yourself, William.”

  “I ain’t no turncoat,” I said.

  “Oh, on the contrary, America and Germany could be great allies. The greatest. Loyalty to a transnational ideal is, in itself, a higher form of loyalty than one could feel toward a single country.”

  “Oh, spare me, professor,” I said.

  It was funny, but I could see the hurt in his face. We really had been friends once, or so it seemed. “It’s… a shame to see you this way. I’m glad, don’t get me wrong, to see you alive. In a sense. But to have forgotten all that makes you you? That is a sad ending.”

  “Maybe I’m better this way,” I said.

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  “What’s in the crates?” I asked.

  “Machines, mostly,” he said. “Higher tech than what you have here. Our scientists are quite advanced.”

  “What kind of machines?”

  “Mostly clockwork nightingales,” he said. “Toys and charms for the rich and famous. To keep the Altstadt indebted to us. We run them through your bootlegger. Those are the proper channels, after a fashion. Other pieces are more useful. Technological marvels.”

  “What are those for?”

  “Bribes, mostly. Some of the crates are simply money. But some of the machines are just there to establish better working relationships within the city.”

  I stood up. “I ought to kill you.”

  “Have I failed to answer some of your questions?” he asked, as though he was a child working for a disappointed teacher.

  “No,” I said, “but I know you’re involved in all this stuff.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, William. I hope you do get your memory back soon so we can go back to the way things were. If you must kill me, do please do it now. Otherwise, I recommend you search closer to home for your killer.”

  I pointed my boomstick at him. I put my finger on the trigger and tried to make myself squeeze it. I really did. There was no point. I left.

  “Lazar?”

  I waited a heartbeat or maybe longer, who can tell? It wasn’t like I had a watch. Or a heart. The answer finally came.

  “You got the wrong number, fella.”

  I held the phone and stuck my beak out into the rain. The sky was the color of granite, and the little glass box wasn’t keeping out any of the oppression. I came back in and put the phone to my sodden head. “No, this is the right number. I’m looking for Lazar. He might not go by that name all the time.”

  A heartbeat? Two? Ten?

  “Nah, he doesn’t live here anymore.”

  I wiped a juicy sluice of rain out from under my nose. It made me feel as if I still had boogers. The truth was, I was more worried about taking my whole honker off with that maneuver. I did it anyway.

  “It’s Jones,” I said. “I know it’s you, Lazar. You can play games and you can play games, but don’t ever fucking play games with me.”

  All the falseness and joy disappeared from the voice on the other end. It became flat, affectless, like a doughboy with a thousand-yard stare. “I told you not to come to me again. I told you that.”

  “Yeah, well, I figured I’d wait two days.”

  “You must not have a friend in the world,” he said after a moment.

  “Yeah, well, that’s true. I’ve got you, and I’ve got memories. That’s about it.”

  “I ain’t your friend,” he stated, flatter than flat.

  “You ever seen a braineater before?” I asked. “I mean a real one. Not just one of us. One of us after a stint at AA.”

  I thought I heard him licking his lips, but between the rain and the connection, I’m sure it was just my imagination.

  “There’s nothing scarier than a sober deadhead,” he said. “Nothing.”

  “I’ve got a quandary,” I said.

  “Not my problem.”

  “It is your problem,” I said. “And the problem of every living breather in the city.”

  “All right, I’m listening.”

  I took a deep breath. There was no reason, physiologically speaking, for me to do that. It seemed like a thing that couldn’t be avoided doing.

  “It was the Old Man,” I said.

  I let that sit for a minute. He’d be thinking. Maybe he didn’t know what I meant. Probably did. Probably was mulling over all the possibilities.

  “Don’t do it,” he said finally. “Leave sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Not a big fan of dogs,” I said, glancing down at the severed foot reattached to my shin with twine.

  “You nailed it on the head,” he said. “What you want, it’s not just your problem; it’s everybody’s problem. Living, dead, and all points in between. You kill the Old Man, and you kill the flow of liquor into the Welcome Mat.”

  “Maybe it’s better that it’s not in his greasy little flippers,” I said.

  “Are you listening? Are you listening, Jones?” That finally got a rise out of him. “You’ll lose what little is left of your soul. Everyone you know will turn into a flesh-munching ghoul. The cops won’t be afraid to come around the Mat then. They’ll put you all down. That’ll be it for your kind in Ganesh. A bullet in the head and probably no pauper’s grave, even. Maybe you’ll luck out, and they’ll dump you all in the canal and you can be fish food.”

  “I’
m talking about the man who killed me, Lazar,” I said. “My whole reason for being.”

  “No, no! No! You’re Braineater Jones, jumbee P.I. You catch bad guys. You do it because the authorities won’t help the dead.”

  “No,” I said, “I do it for revenge. Look, you can help me or you can’t. You can make the liquor flow again after the Old Man is gone.”

  “I can’t do that, Jones. I’m done with all that. Too dangerous.”

  “Then let what happens next be on your head,” I said. I let the phone fall out of my hand. I didn’t bother to hang it up. I heard his last shouted words as the receiver swung back and forth on its cord.

  “You can’t avenge yourself, Jones! You don’t even know who you are!”

  I grabbed the phone again. “Correction: I don’t know who I was. I know who I am.” Then I hung up.

  November 30, 1934

  Hallowed Grounds. The big mook was standing behind the bar, and wouldn’t you know it, he was rubbing a big white hole in the wood with his bar cloth.

  I hated to do it. Hated with every fiber of my being to spill a drop of that precious ambrosia. I did it, though. I smashed the neck of my bottle of Crow, leaving a nice jagged hole.

  You might think I screwed up, that I should’ve taken off the bottom flat part to use it as a weapon. You’d be wrong.

  I set the bottle down on the bar, neck up, of course. “Hell of a thing, life.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” the mook growled.

  I nodded. “Me neither. Thanks to you.”

  He had one of those looks of surprise on his face, like when you walk in on your old lady screwing the milkman behind your back. It didn’t matter because by the time that stupid look crossed his face, I already had his big bald head in both my hands.

  I slammed him down as hard as I could. I didn’t need to be no karate master to do that. The jagged bottleneck pierced the soft spot between his neck and his chin and plunged all the way through. Destroy the brain. That’s the only way to destroy one of our kind.

  Never did get his name. Didn’t care.

  I hated to waste a perfectly good bottle of Crow like that. A few patrons were looking at me. They didn’t say nothing, but I could tell they were judging me. I leapt over the counter. “For the record, he’s the one who killed me.”

  2. Who was the hatchet man? Physically? The big gorilla. Who masterminded the hit? The motherfucking Old Man.

  There was some nodding and generally agreeable noises. In our community, that kind of vendetta was acceptable. Maybe it’s acceptable in any community.

  I dropped down into the creepy labyrinth below. I didn’t really know my way, but I was starting to get a feel for the sleuthing business. The old gorilla who murdered me had left a heavy tread, and he took the same route to the Old Man’s little machine every time. I just followed the footfalls.

  I had hoped to catch a break, but of course, no such luck. The Old Man was awake, and he was plugged into his Swedish murder machine. He claimed it had no legs, so I tried to stay out of its reach, but then, who knew how far that was.

  “Braineater Jones,” the Old Man growled.

  “Actually, it’s William Hinzman.”

  I could almost detect a spark of recognition and horror on that freak’s deformed little features. Like there was almost some give-a-shit that soaked through.

  “Recognize the name?”

  “I do,” he said through that funny aquatic microphone, “but I suppose you still don’t have your memories back.” He snapped his claws at me.

  As I’d hoped, I was just out of reach. I took another step back though, to be sure. “Nope, I’ve had to piece it all together.”

  “And you listened to that Nazi scum over an American. And one of your own kind. You should be ashamed.”

  “Well, you haven’t said anything yet. Go ahead. Convince me.”

  “You think I had you killed?” the fetus said. “You know you were in bed with the Nazis. They took care of you the same way they took care of your boy Röhm. Just a little housecleaning. I took you in and gave you a home and a place to feel like you had a family. Remember that.”

  He had one of those little pull-wires, like on a bus to signal your stop or in a bank when it’s getting robbed. He kept pulling it, real subtle-like, as if I wouldn’t notice or something.

  “If you’re waiting for that big mook upstairs, he ain’t coming,” I said. “Permanently. What was his name, anyway?”

  “Who gives a shit?” the little jar-feeder hissed.

  Snap. Snap. The mechanical claws were like dogs on a leash. Reminded me of Rothering’s damned Dobermans or something equally ugly and vicious.

  “You should know you were a casualty of a war for the future of our people,” he said.

  “I don’t know what that means, and being as I was the casualty, I don’t much care.”

  “It means,” he said, “that even I am going to turn into a braineater soon. Just being exposed to the air for a few minutes a day will make my brain turn to goo. And I’ve got the most longevity of any deadhead unalive. These machines can change that.”

  I looked around. Sure, we might all live underground like Morlocks, but what kind of a life was that? “Yeah, you’ve said that before. I don’t see it.”

  “Our kind is nothing but a functioning brain in a meat bag,” the Old Man said. I guess he had practiced that speech a million times. “We take out the brain immediately and seal it up in alcohol. Never expose it to the air. Just dump it in one of these metal bodies, and we could live forever, as far as I know.”

  I scratched the back of my neck. I didn’t really want to get drawn into all his mad scientist mumbo-jumbo, but what could I do? A villain’s got to have his say. I suppose a hero can indulge him in that. “You may not have noticed this, pops, but you’ve got two stubby little fins in there to work the machine. A brain has nothing. A brain in a jar rotting? That’s not life, that’s not even unlife. That sounds like Hell.”

  He slammed his metal fist against the wall. Those damn hydraulics must’ve been powerful, because I’ll tell you what, the whole chamber shook. The wooden beams holding the place up started to splinter.

  “We’ll get there! We’ll get to where we can plug a brain in. I’ve been buying stuff from the Nazis. Electrodes and dials, all the stuff I need to make it work. They’re decades ahead of us in this kind of research.”

  “Is that why I had to get shot?” I asked. “Some kind of trade-off went bad?”

  The Old Man started laughing. Creepiest thing I’ve not only ever seen, but that I could ever imagine. Some little festering unborn jumbee baby breaking out into a cackle. Still makes me shiver just thinking about it.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he said. “You’re a nelly. You and Rothering were lovers. That’s why you were there. That’s why your money clip was in his bedroom. That never occurred to you to wonder about?”

  “I-I-I figured someone put it there.” I knew I was stuttering, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Nah”—he adjusted the machine to make it look like a creepy crouching frog—“you were nothing more than collateral damage. From what the bartender told me, you were taking a dip in the pool, after a long night, maybe. Your lover wasn’t there anymore. It was supposed to be Rothering. Always supposed to be him. But after we killed you, he backed off. Hurts to lose a lover, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t know whether to be angry or confused or satisfied or what. I mean, that was it, basically. The whole shebang. Who killed me, why, who I was before I died. I was William Hinzman, some Nazi’s girl on the side. I got killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Left dead as a message.

  Only, it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like me. Didn’t I love Kumaree Tong? Of course, see how well that worked out. I couldn’t deny there was something about Lazar that stimulated me, and it wasn’t his sparkling dinner conversation. The little shit had no reason to lie to me about Rothering. Was there such a thing as bei
ng half a nelly?

  That would have to wait. I shook my head like a kid trying to get the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to stick together. “So, the big mook turns me over, sees I don’t fit the description you gave. He searches the house, finds my billfold, takes my ID, and starts to panic. But because he’s a moron, he leaves the billfold where it was, all covered with his bloody fingerprints. So you call in a cleanup crew. Only you don’t do it personally, cause that’s not how you operate.”

  “You got it,” the Old Man said. “You really ought to be a detective.”

  11. Who is “WH” and why was his billfold in Rothering’s house? Addendum: he was my lover.

  1. Why did they bump me off? It was a mistake. But once it was done, they left it done, as a message for Rothering.

  I heard loud clanging behind me. I wheeled around. There were about six machines, like miniature versions of the Old Man’s giant prototype, only they had legs. They were stomping toward me like the Tin Woodman of Oz.

  “What’s this shit?” I muttered.

  “Oh, I lied before about not having the technology yet,” the Old Man said. “I just wanted to keep you talking until a few of my friends came.”

  “They’re just brains in jars,” I said.

  “Yup,” the Old Man said, “and they know who keeps them in axle grease. Kill him, you suckers!”

  The Tin Men leered toward me.

  “I’m one of you! Your kind!” I yelled.

  There might’ve been some base instinct to preserve the community left in them. They might’ve just been startled to hear me yell. Either way, they stopped for a second. That second was all the time I needed.

  I turned and fired my pistol at the Old Man’s little jar. I wasn’t exactly a deadeye dick, but I could hit a baby’s corpse in a jar from a few yards away. Don’t know why, exactly, he never thought to preserve that most important part. But I knew being stuck between a rock and a hard place, I preferred the hard place—assuming the Old Man was the rock. Was that the worst mixed metaphor of all time? Was it even a metaphor?

  Unfortunately, I only punctured the Old Man’s fragile little body. As the liquor drained out of his jar, he began to choke like a fish out of water. Without hitting the head, he still wasn’t dead. I probably made my first mistake right then. Well, not my first mistake ever. Not even my first mistake of the night. But the first mistake in a little while.