Nova 2

by Anthology

  “Yours,” Ellis was saying about another model, “for a flat fifteen”—he paused and shot me a friendly glance—“oh hell, for you, Jim, make it twelve and a half and take it from me, it’s a bargain. Comes with the original upholstery and tires and there’s less than ten thousand miles on it—the former owner was a little old lady in Pasadena who only drove it to weddings.”

  He chuckled at that, looking at me expectantly. I didn’t get it. “Maybe you’d just like to look around. Be my guest, go right ahead.” His eyes were bright and he looked very pleased with himself; it bothered me.

  “Yeah,” I said absently, “I think that’s what I’d like to do.” There was a wall phone by an older model and I drifted over to it.

  “That’s an early Knudsen two-seater,” Ellis said. “Popular make for the psychedelic set, that paint job is the way they really came . . .”

  I ran my hand lightly down the windshield, then turned to face the cheerful Ellis. “You’re under arrest,” I said. “You and everybody else here.”

  His face suddenly looked like shrimp in molded gelatin. One of the mechanics behind him moved and I had the Mark II out winging a rocket past his shoulder. No noise, no recoil, just a sudden shower of sparks by the barrel and in the far end of the garage a fifty-gallon oil drum went karrump and there was a hole in it you could have stuck your head through.

  The mechanic went white. “Jesus Christ, Jack, you brought in some kind of nut!” Ellis himself was pale and shaking, which surprised me; I thought he’d be tougher than that.

  “Against the bench,” I said coldly, waving the pistol. “Hands in front of your crotch and don’t move them.” The mechanics were obviously scared stiff and Ellis was having difficulty keeping control. I took down the phone and called in.

  After I hung up, Ellis mumbled, “What’s the charge?”

  “Charges,” I corrected. “Sections three, four and five of the Air Control laws. Maintenance, sale and use of internal combustion engines.”

  Ellis stared at me blankly. “You don’t know?” he asked faintly.

  “Know what?”

  “I don’t handle internal combustion engines.” He licked his lips. “I really don’t, it’s too risky, it’s . . . it’s against the law.”

  The workbench, I suddenly thought. The goddamned workbench. I knew something was wrong then, I should have cooled it.

  “You can check me,” Ellis offered weakly. “Lift a hood, look for yourself.”

  He talked like his face was made of panes of glass sliding against one another. I waved him forward. “You check it, Ellis, you open one up.” Ellis nodded like a dipping duck, waddled over to one of the cars, jiggled something inside, then raised the hood and stepped back.

  I took one glance and my stomach slowly started to knot up. I was no motor buff but I damned well knew the difference between a gasoline engine and water boiler. Which explained the workbench—the tools had been window dressing. Most of them were brand new because most of them had obviously never been used. There had been nothing to use them on.

  “The engines are steam,” Ellis said, almost apologetically. “I’ve got a license to do restoration work and drop in steam engines. They don’t allow them in cities but it’s different on farms and country estates and in some small towns.” He looked at me. “The license cost me a goddamned fortune.”

  It was a real handicap being a city boy, I thought. “Then why the act? Why the gun?”

  “This?” he asked stupidly. He reached inside his coat and dropped the pistol on the floor; it made a light thudding sound and bounced, a pot metal toy. “The danger, it’s the sense of danger, it’s part of the sales pitch.” He wanted to be angry now but he had been frightened too badly and couldn’t quite make it. “The customers pay a lot of dough, they want a little drama. That’s why—you know—the peephole and everything.” He took a deep breath and when he exhaled it came out as a giggle, an incongruous sound from the big man. I found myself hoping he didn’t have a heart condition. “I’m well known,” he said defensively. “I take ads . . .”

  “The club,” I said. “It’s illegal.”

  Even if it was weak, his smile was genuine and then the score became crystal clear. The club was like a speakeasy during the Depression, with half the judges and politicians in town belonging to it. Why not? Somebody older wouldn’t have my bias . . . Pearson’s address book had been all last names and initials but I had never connected any of them to anybody prominent; I hadn’t been around enough to know what connection to make.

  I waved Ellis back to the workbench and stared glumly at the group. The mechanic I had frightened with the Mark II had a spreading stain across the front of his pants and I felt sorry for him momentarily.

  Then I started to feel sorry for myself. Monte should have given me a longer briefing, or maybe assigned another Investigator to go with me, but he had been too sick and too wrapped up with the politics of it all. So I had gone off half-cocked and come up with nothing but a potential lawsuit for Air Central that would probably amount to a million dollars by the time Ellis got through with me.

  It was a black day inside as well as out.

  I holed up in a bar during the middle part of the evening, which was probably the smartest thing I could have done. Despite their masks, people on the street had started to retch and vomit and I could feel my own nausea grow with every step. I saw one man try and strike a match to read a street sign; it wouldn’t stay lit, there simply wasn’t enough oxygen in the air. The ambulance sirens were a steady wail now and I knew it was going to be a tough night for heart cases. They’d be going like flies before morning, I thought . . .

  Another customer slammed through the door, wheezing and coughing and taking huge gulps of the machine-pure air of the bar. I ordered another drink and tried to shut out the sound; it was too reminiscent of Monte hacking and coughing behind his desk at work.

  And come morning, Monte might be out of a job, I thought. I for certain would be; I had loused up in a way that would cost the department money—the unforgivable sin in the eyes of the politicians.

  I downed half my drink and started mentally reviewing the events of the day, giving myself a passing score only on figuring out that Pearson had had a stash. I hadn’t known about Ellis’ operation, which in one sense wasn’t surprising. Nobody was going to drive something that looked like an old gasoline-burner around a city—the flatlanders would stone him to death.

  But somebody still had a car, I thought. Somebody who was rich and immune from prosecution and a real nut about cars in the first place . . . But it kept sliding away from me. Really rich men were too much in the public eye, ditto politicians. They’d be washed up politically if anybody ever found out. If nothing else, some poor bastard like the one at the end of the bar trying to flush out his lungs would assassinate him.

  Somebody with money, but not too much. Somebody who was a car nut—they’d have to be to take the risks. And somebody for whom those risks were absolutely minimal . . .

  And then the lightbulb flashed on above my head, just like in the old cartoons. I wasn’t dead certain I was right but I was willing to stake my life on it—and it was possible I might end up doing just that.

  I slipped on a mask and almost ran out of the bar. Once outside, I sympathized with the guy who had just come in and who had given me a horrified look as I plunged out into the darkness.

  It was smothering now, though the temperature had dropped a little so my shirt didn’t cling to me in dirty, damp folds. Buses were being led through the streets; headlights died out completely within a few feet. The worst thing was that they left tracks in what looked like a damp, grayish ash that covered the street. Most of the people I bumped into—mere shadows in the night—had soaked their masks in water, trying to make them more effective. There were lights still on in the lower floors of most of the office buildings and I figured some people hadn’t tried to make it home at all; the air was probably purer among the filing cabinets than in th
eir own apartments. Two floors up, the buildings were completely hidden in the smoky darkness.

  It took a good hour of walking before the sidewalks started to slant up and I knew I was getting out toward the foothills . . . I thanked God the business district was closer to the mountains than the ocean. My legs ached and my chest hurt and I was tired and depressed but at least I wasn’t coughing anymore.

  The buildings started to thin out and the streets finally became completely deserted. Usually the cops would pick you up if they caught you walking on the streets of Forest Hills late at night, but that night I doubted they were even around. They were probably too busy ferrying cases of cardiac arrest to St. Francis . . .

  The Sniffer was located on the top of a small, ancient building off on a side street. When I saw it I suddenly found my breath hard to catch again—a block down, the street abruptly turned into a canyon and wound up and out of sight. I glanced back at the building, just faintly visible through the grayed-down moonlight. The windows were boarded up and there was a For Rent sign on them. I walked over and flashed my light on the sign. It was old and peeling and had obviously been there for years; apparently nobody had ever wanted to rent the first floor. Ever? Maybe somebody had, I thought, but had decided to leave it boarded up. I ran my hand down the boards and suddenly paused at a knothole; I could feel heavy plate glass through it. I knelt and flashed my light at the hole and looked at a dim reflection of myself staring back. The glass had been painted black on the inside so it acted like a black marble mirror.

  I stepped back and something about the building struck me. The boarded-up windows, I thought, the huge, oversized windows . . . And the oversized, boarded-up doors. I flashed the light again at the concrete facing just above the doors. The words were there all right, blackened by time but still readable, cut into the concrete itself by order of the proud owner a handful of decades before. But you could still noodle them out: RICHARD SIEBEN LINCOLN-MERCURY.

  Jackpot, I thought triumphantly. I glanced around—there was nobody else on the street—and listened. Not a sound, except for the faint murmur of traffic still moving in the city far away. A hot muggy night in the core city, I thought, but this night the parks and the fire escapes would be empty and five million people would be tossing and turning in their cramped little bedrooms; it’d be suicide to try and sleep outdoors.

  In Forest Hills it was cooler—and quieter. I glued my ear to the boards over the window and thought I could hear the faint shuffle of somebody walking around and, once, the faint clink of metal against metal. I waited a moment, then slipped down to the side door that had “Air Central” on it in neat black lettering. All Investigators had master keys and I went inside. Nobody was upstairs; the lights were out and the only sound was the soft swish of the Sniffer’s scribing pens against the paper roll. There was a stairway in the back and I walked silently down it. The door at the bottom was open and I stepped through it into a short hallway. Something, maybe the smell of the air, told me it had been used recently. I closed the door after me and stood for a second in the darkness. There was no sound from the door beyond. I tried the knob and it moved silently in my grasp.

  I cracked the door open and peered through the slit—nothing-then eased it open all the way and stepped out onto the showroom floor. There was a green-shaded lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, swaying slightly in some minor breeze so the shadows chased each other around the far comers of the room. Walled off at the end were two small offices where salesmen had probably wheeled and dealed long ago. There wasn’t much else, other than a few tools scattered around the floor in the circle of light.

  And directly in the center, of course, the car.

  I caught my breath. There was no connection between it and Jack Ellis’ renovated family sedans. It crouched there on the floor, a mechanical beast that was almost alive. Sleek curving fenders that blended into a louvered hood with a chromed steel bumper curving flat around the front to give it an oddly sharklike appearance. The headlamps were set deep into the fenders, the lamp wells outlined with chrome. The hood flowed into a windshield and that into a top which sloped smoothly down in back and tucked in neatly just after the rear wheels. The wheels themselves had wire spokes that gleamed wickedly in the light, and through a side window I could make out a neat array of meters and rocker switches, and finally bucket seats covered with what I instinctively knew was genuine black leather.

  Sleek beast, powerful beast, I thought. I was unaware of walking up to it and running my hand lightly over a fender until a voice behind me said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  I turned like an actor in a slow-motion film. “Yeah, Dave,” I said, “it’s beautiful.” Dave Ice of Air Central. In charge of all the Sniffers.

  He must have been standing in one of the salesman’s offices; it was the only way I could have missed him. He walked up and stood on the other side of the car and ran his left hand over the hood with the same affectionate motion a woman might use in stroking her cat. In his right hand he held a small Mark II pointed directly at my chest. “How’d you figure it was me?” he asked casually.

  “I thought at first it might be Monte,” I said. “Then I figured you were the real nut about machinery.”

  His eyes were bright, too bright. “Tell me,” he asked curiously, “would you have turned in Monte?”

  “Of course,” I said simply. I didn’t add that it would have been damned difficult; that I hadn’t even been able to think about that part of it.

  “So might’ve I, so might’ve I,” he murmured. “When I was your age.”

  “For a while the money angle threw me,” I said.

  He smiled faintly. “It’s a family heirloom. My father bought it when he was young, he couldn’t bring himself to turn it in.” He cocked his head. “Could you?” I looked at him uneasily and didn’t answer and he said casually, “Go ahead, Jimmy, you were telling me how you cracked the case.”

  I flushed. “It had to be somebody who knew—who was absolutely sure—that he wasn’t going to get caught. The Sniffers are pretty efficient, it would have been impossible to prevent their detecting the car—the best thing would be to censor the data from them. And Monte and you were the only ones who could have done that.”

  Another faint smile. “You’re right.”

  “You slipped up a few nights ago,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Anybody could’ve. I was sick, I didn’t get to the office in time to doctor the record.”

  “It gave the game away,” I said. “Why only once? The Sniffer should have detected it far more often than just once.”

  He didn’t say anything and for a long moment both of us were lost in admiration of the car.

  Then finally, proudly: “It’s the real McCoy, Jim. Six cylinder inline engine, 4.2 liters displacement, nine-to-one compression ratio, twin overhead cams and twin Zenith-Stromberg carbs . . .” He broke off. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “No,” I confessed, “I’m afraid not.”

  “Want to see the motor?”

  I nodded and he stepped forward, waved me back with the Mark II, and opened the hood. To really appreciate it, of course, you had to have a thing for machinery. It was clean and polished and squatted there under the hood like a beautiful mechanical pet—so huge I wondered how the hood could close at all.

  And then I realized with a shock that I hadn’t been reacting like I should have, that I hadn’t reacted like I should have ever since the movie at the club . . .

  “You can sit in it if you want to,” Dave said softly. “Just don’t touch anything.” His voice was soft. “Everything works on it, Jim, everything works just dandy. It’s oiled and greased and the tank is full and the battery is charged and if you wanted to, you could drive it right off the showroom floor.”

  I hesitated. “People in the neighborhood—”

  “—mind their own business,” he said. “They have a different attitude, and besides, it’s usually late at night an
d I’m out in the hills in seconds. Go ahead, get in.” Then his voice hardened into command: “Get in!”

  I stalled a second longer, then opened the door and slid into the seat. The movie was real now, I was holding the wheel and could sense the gearshift at my right and in my mind’s eye I could feel the wind and hear the scream of the motor . . .

  There was something hard pressing against the side of my head. I froze. Dave was holding the pistol just behind my ear and in the side mirror I could see his finger tense on the trigger and pull back a millimeter. Dear God. . . .

  He relaxed. “You’ll have to get out,” he said apologetically. “It would be appropriate, but a mess just the same.”

  I got out. My legs were shaking and I had to lean against the car. “It’s a risky thing to own a car,” I chattered. “Feeling runs pretty high against cars . . .”

  He nodded. “It’s too bad.”

  “You worked for Air Central for years,” I said. “How could you do it, and own this, too?”

  “You’re thinking about the air,” he said carefully. “But Jim”—his voice was patient—“machines don’t foul the air, men do. They foul the air, the lakes, and the land itself. And there’s no way to stop it.” I started to protest and he held up a hand. “Oh sure, there’s always a time when you care—like you do now. But time . . . you know, time wears you down, it really does, no matter how eager you are. You devote your life to a cause and then you find yourself suddenly growing fat and bald and you discover nobody gives a damn about your cause. They’re paying you your cushy salary to buy off their own consciences. So long as there’s a buck to be made, things won’t change much. It’s enough to drive you—” He broke off. “You don’t really think that anybody gives a damn about anybody else, do you?” He stood there looking faintly amused, a pudgy little man whom I should’ve been able to take with one arm tied behind my back. But he was ten times as dangerous as Ellis had ever imagined himself to be. “Only suckers care, Jim. I . . .”