Killing Is My Business

by Adam Christopher

  His hand shot out. I took it. His grip was firm and I let my forearm be jogged a few times. With our hands still clasped the man leaned in and spoke out of the corner of his mouth, one hand cupped around his lips as though to keep his conversation private.

  “Except maybe Michelangelo here, eh?” said Alfie in a voice that was somehow louder than when he had introduced himself. “He doesn’t seem to make friends easily.”

  Falzarano laughed somewhere behind his desk. Michelangelo—if that was his name—pressed his lips together until they were white.

  Alfie clicked his tongue and then he stood back where he had been before. He grinned and looked out at me from behind his lenses.

  “Ray,” I said. “It’s just Ray.”

  Alfie clicked his tongue again and glanced at Michelangelo. “Oi, cheer up son, might never happen, eh?”

  “You’re English?” I asked Alfie. This made Michelangelo hiss between his teeth. I glanced at him and saw he was scowling.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah,” said Alfie. “You know what they say, eh?” He laughed like that explained everything. “Born and bred within the sound of the old Bow Bells.” He laughed again then sighed and cocked his head like he was remembering a happy childhood somewhere in what I knew was the East End of London. I had that much on my permanent store, anyway. “Anyway,” he said, “a lad has to broaden his horizons, right? Right. City of Angels, the American West, right? Not to mention the Hollywood dollies. Oh, birds like you wouldn’t believe, eh?” He laughed and then the laugh died and he sighed wistfully again and he said “Eh?” again. It sounded like a question but I had no idea what he was talking about. I just smiled on the inside and hoped he could see it.

  Maybe he did, because he turned back around to Falzarano’s desk. Michelangelo’s lips managed to untwist themselves and he turned around too without a word.

  I slotted into the middle between them. Falzarano looked up at us and blew blue smoke at the ceiling. He looked pretty happy with himself.

  “My friends, my friends,” he said. “I’m so pleased you are all here. Alfie, Stefano—Ray is here to join our little family, no? Yes, yes, yes.” He gave a little nod at me with eyes half-closed. “We are all a family here, Ray. I think you will be very happy here.”

  I bowed a little and lifted my hat again. Falzarano’s eyes went all the way down to closed. I put my hat back on and wondered if the old man had fallen asleep.

  Michelangelo—Stefano—shifted on his feet next to me and hissed again like a man disappointed with his racehorse. On my other side, Alfie leaned forward around me.

  “Oi, Romeo, what’s your game, eh?”

  I didn’t know what that meant and if Stefano did he didn’t respond. Instead he uncurled one hand and waved it at the boss behind the desk and he spoke low and fast in a language I think was Italian. Falzarano hadn’t opened his eyes but he was nodding and then he replied to his boy in the same language. So he was awake in there.

  I made a note to ask Ada if I could get some foreign dictionaries plugged into my permanent store, Italian at the top of the list. Seemed like it could be useful for the job.

  Then Stefano’s head turned and glared at me as best he could with hidden eyes and an expression that was as fixed as my own.

  I looked at the boss. “Is there a problem here, Mr. Falzarano?”

  Falzarano laughed and he only opened his eyes when he was done. He pointed at Stefano with his cigar.

  “Stefano only wishes to point out that he was here first, and that he doesn’t need any help from anyone, and especially not from a man of steel.”

  Man of steel. I liked that. I made a note to tell Ada about it.

  Then Stefano spoke again. He spoke for a long time. Falzarano listened and on my other side Alfie seemed to be studying the grain on the boss’s desk.

  When Stefano was finished, Falzarano shrugged with one shoulder and then the next. He repeated this a few times, like he was weighing up a couple of different options.

  “Well, yes, yes, yes, there is a point there, yes, I suppose, yes.” He leaned back in his chair. His face lit up and he slapped his desk again. “I tell you what, my sons. You are my family. Yes? You are my boys.” He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and made a figure-eight in the air with it. “But we cannot have any feuds in the family. Such things as this are not good for anybody. Okay? I leave it to you to work out, okay?”

  Stefano seemed about ready to exhale his own blue smoke. While he vibrated next to me, Alfie nodded at Falzarano, said “righto, guvnor,” then unbuttoned his jacket and reached inside.

  He pulled out a gun. He held it by the grip and his finger was inside the trigger guard, but he didn’t point it at anyone. Instead he showed it to Falzarano.

  “Sir, Mr. Falzarano, may I introduce you to Barbara.”

  Stefano hissed. “Barbara?” he said.

  “Oh, so you do speaka-da-English, eh?” said Alfie. He looked back at Falzarano. “Now, sir, Mr. Falzarano. Barbara and me, we’ve been through a lot together, right? The works. I met her in the war, behind the lines, right, and I have to ask you, sir, Mr. Falzarano, if you believe in love at first sight. Because that’s what it was. Right? Love at first sight. The moment I laid eyes on her.”

  He spoke quietly and slowly with a reverence that was genuine and would even have been moving if it wasn’t for the fact that he was talking about an old firearm.

  Alfie lifted the gun up and fiddled with it.

  “Mauser Schnellfeuer,” he said in perfect German, “probably 1938, maybe later. Preferred weapon of the Waffen SS. Fully automatic or single shot, you take your pick.”

  He ejected the magazine, showed it to Falzarano, who seemed only mildly interested, then replaced it and did something else which I suppose made the gun ready to fire. The Mauser looked fairly serious and a little too complicated for such a small weapon. I knew enough about guns but I preferred to not use them, as guns left all kinds of signs they’d been used, the least of which was the hole left in the body.

  “Now, Babs here has never let me down,” said Alfie, grinning inanely at Falzarano. “Not the once, not ever. She’s a little beauty, is Barbara. I’d trust my life with her, I would. Never leaves my side.” He laughed. “Sir, I tell you, I even sleep with her under me pillow!”

  He looked at the gun. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss it.

  Then he pointed it at my chest, and he pulled the trigger.

  Falzarano’s study was well insulated with all the thick carpet and low ceiling and lots of books and soft furnishings to absorb the sounds of gunfire, but standing next to that little hand cannon it was still damn loud. Louder, given that when the bullets came into intimate contact with my chassis they were bent out of shape and sent ricocheting around the room. Out of the corner of my optic I saw a sliver of bright wood peel off the corner of Falzarano’s desk and a couple of books over on the far wall jerked on the shelf.

  Alfie fired five shots, each the same absurd volume, each fired at me at point blank range.

  Then the gun went click-click-click in his hand.

  “Oh, bollocks,” said Alfie. He lifted the gun, checked the magazine, and pulled something back. Then he pointed it again.

  Only this time it wasn’t at me. It was at Stefano. The gangster had managed to crack a smirk which now disappeared along with his last breath as he groaned and crumpled to the floor, his tight suit and shirt perforated and both quickly staining with bright red after Alfie sent another five shots into his center mass. Stefano’s sunglasses never moved from his face.

  I looked at Alfie. He gave a little nod which I thought was more to himself than me.

  I looked at Falzarano. He was still sitting in the chair and he seemed pretty comfortable. The cigar was between his teeth and he was grinning around it like a carved wooden carnival head. He nodded slowly and then he brought his big fat hands together and clapped.

  “Bravo, my son, bravo.” Then he pulled the cigar from his mouth and gesticulated at
me. “See, in this family, we fix problems simply, you understand? Now we have the right number of men.” He replaced the cigar and chuckled.

  I glanced down at my side. My trench coat and suit jacket and shirt were torn and smoking. You could see my bronzed bodywork through the rents in the fabric.

  I looked at Alfie. He gave me a smile and laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “Oh, well, no hard feelings, eh, Charlie boy?”

  I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing. I’d been shot at twice in two days and if I could have remembered the first time I would have said it was becoming a drag. That was two suits I’d lost and now I needed a new coat as well. Ada was going to have to break out the petty cash and she wouldn’t like that one bit.

  Alfie held his malfunctioning Mauser in one hand as he walked around me and knelt down next to Stefano’s cooling corpse. Then he unbuttoned the dead man’s jacket and reached inside. Stefano had been wearing a shoulder holster, a thing of tooled brown leather that looked as expensive as the rest of his outfit.

  Alfie unclipped the business part of the holster and pulled out a gun. It was new and modern, an automatic pistol a good size larger than his precious Babs and far more elegant. It looked well oiled. Stefano had treated the weapon well, only he hadn’t felt the need to write it lovesick poems.

  Alfie stood up, a gun in each hand. He hefted them both, like he was weighing them up.

  Then he tossed the Mauser onto Stefano’s body.

  “Bloody useless thing,” he said. He looked at his boss and lifted Stefano’s gun. “I think I’ll keep this, if that’s okay, Mr. Falzarano, sir. Old Michelangelo won’t be needing it no more, eh?” Alfie looked at me from behind his double glazing and he laughed like a drain and when he was done he looked back at his new gun. “I think I’ll call her Susan.”

  He grinned at me. I didn’t grin back. I just shook my head a little bit and wondered what kind of psychopath Alfie Micklewhite of East London really was.

  Then he snapped his head around and looked at me with his amplified vision. “Here, what’s your story, anyway?” he asked. He nodded sideways at the boss without taking his eyes off my optics. “What brings you into Mr. Falzarano’s sphere?”

  “Ray saved my life!”

  I turned to Falzarano and gave a slight bow. Alfie gave a low whistle.

  “Stone me,” he said. “Saved the guv’nor’s life, eh? That little business last night, eh? Stone me.”

  I opened my mouth grill to speak and then shut it just as fast when Alfie said what he said next, which was, “Thing is, I thought you were a private investigator, like.”

  I did a few calculations. Then my logic gates flipped and I realized that Alfie Micklewhite was not saying anything that wasn’t public record. I was the only robot in town. Of course people knew me. Some people, anyway.

  I glanced at Falzarano. His eyes were narrower than they had been before. He looked like he was holding his breath. Weighing the possibility in his mind that he’d made a rather fundamental mistake bringing me here.

  Time to play it cool.

  “He’s right,” I said. “I am a private investigator. Licensed and bonded. You can look me up.”

  Alfie folded his arms. Falzarano returned the cigar to his mouth.

  “But last night was lady luck, nothing more. The PI business isn’t good for someone like me. Nobody wants a robot but a robot still has bills to pay. So let’s just say I’m looking for … alternative options.”

  “Which include working for the other side of the law?” asked Alfie.

  I recalled a line I’d read just this morning from the paperback book.

  “Let the affairs of humankind lie where they fall,” I said. It was a direct quote from the Computer King of Tau Retore, the bit on page nineteen where he gives a big speech to the plucky astronaut hero and his alien girlfriend before leaving them at the mercy of the Beasts of Vega. And while the author wasn’t going to be in the running for the Nobel Prize in Literature anytime soon, I was hoping he would at least get me out of a bind.

  Alfie smirked and nodded. He looked impressed enough. Then Falzarano clapped his hands again.

  “Bravo, my sons, bravissimo!” He heaved himself out of his chair and took the long way around the desk before slotting himself between me and Alfie. He looped his arms through our own and turned us around and walked us to the door of the study.

  “I love you like you are my sons, yes, my sons,” he said. Alfie seemed to like this and muttered something about Falzarano being very kind. I kept my voice synthesizer off.

  We made it to the door.

  “Listen, I will have a job for you soon, a little errand I will need you to run,” said the boss. “But in the meantime, Alfie will show you around. Alfie, find Carmina, she will have a room ready for Ray here. Now, go, and I’ll see you later, yes? Yes.”

  Falzarano sent us on our way with a wave and then he closed the doors.

  Alfie and I stood in the corridor. Alfie was still holding his new gun. He looked at it like he didn’t know what it was, and then he clicked his tongue.

  “Oh, bollocks, I forgot to get Romeo’s fancy holster. Ah well.” He stuffed the gun into the back of his pants. Then he tapped me on the chest with the back of his hand.

  “Now, let’s get you settled. You bring any bags?”

  “Ah … no, as a matter of fact I did not.”

  “No worries, mate,” said Alfie. “We’ll find you a room and then we’ll see about getting you a new whistle.”

  He led the way across the sea of carpet. I had no idea what he was talking about but I followed him all the same.

  16

  The rest of the day at Falzarano’s castle passed without incident, or, in fact, anything much happening at all.

  Alfie found Carmina. She seemed overjoyed to see him like she had seemed overjoyed to see me earlier and now she couldn’t decide who she was in love with more as she led us up the stairs that swept up from the entrance hall and then turned into the big wide landing on the second floor. The landing was almost another room just by itself and was stuffed with furniture and hung with more of the abstract paintings that Falzarano found the need to spend his ill-gotten gains on. There were a lot of doors up here and more passages leading farther off into the house. Four guards with guns and glasses and unpleasant expressions watched us from a distance.

  Carmina went up to one of the doors and threw it open with a flourish you might call dramatic. This led to a bedroom that was small and functional in the same way that the Ritz-Beverly Hotel was a roadside flophouse. The carpet here was as thick as it was in the rest of the house except here it was pink. There was a bed that looked a good deal bigger than a king and a wardrobe and some curtains that were pink like the carpet.

  I figured Falzarano let his lady friend handle the interior decor.

  Alfie stayed in the doorway as Carmina showed me the room. I told her it looked nice. She made a big deal of the bed, going so far as to lie down on it and pull her legs up so the split in her dress fell open and her legs were naked to almost the waist.

  I said the room would be fine. She writhed on the bed a little, like a cat stretching out for a nap, and then she said she would leave me to it and she headed out, looping an arm through Alfie’s as she went.

  Alfie gave me a wink over his shoulder and then closed the door behind him and then I was alone in a room all of my own.

  I looked around again. It was bigger than my alcove but all it did was give me the urge to head back to the office. Then I thought the idea of a robot being homesick was a little ridiculous so I reset a few internal switches and walked over to the big window to take a look outside.

  The pink curtains were held back by pink ropes hooked onto golden hooks but there were also blinds on the window. I twisted the rod and was presented with a view of a big flat lawn you could have played field hockey on and beyond the lawn were shrubs with waxy dark green leaves and purple flowers that bordered a low wall made out of pale
stone and beyond the low wall were tall pine trees made short by the way the property sloped steeply away into the valley. The house sure was well buried in the rugged landscape that loomed over Hollywood. I checked my internal compass and aligned myself at the window and pretended I could see the Hollywood Bowl on the other side of the hill in front of me.

  This side of the house was apparently to the west of the entrance and my room looked to be the last of a row. I leaned out a little and looked to my left and saw four more windows like mine. Below each was a wooden trellis painted a dark green and each trellis was wound with the tendrils of a plant that were thick and wet looking.

  There were people on the lawn, more of the guards with their guns. Then I saw a hat appear from behind a shrub and float along the top of the low wall before turning around and making the return journey. There must have been a path on the other side, lower than the main gardens, higher than the stand of pine trees. I had a feeling the guy wearing the hat was also carrying a rifle. From somewhere else I could hear a dog barking and a car on gravel. Then the sound was gone and there was nothing but the whisper of the wind in the pines and the buzz of insects in the foliage below my window.

  I stood there and drank the view for quite a while. Over the pine trees I could see more Hollywood hills. I could see the appeal. Perhaps Falzarano’s pile was too big and filled with too many people carrying guns, but it was the location that struck me. A house in the valley. That was nice. Hollywood was a short drive away but hidden here in the hills it felt like you were on another planet.

  Maybe Falzarano did too.

  I stood and did nothing. I wanted to call Ada but there was no telephone in my room and I didn’t feel like going out to find one with the men outside my door watching me. I figured I’d give them a little time to get used to me before I snooped any. I knew I was a novelty but maybe that novelty would wear off in time.

  At three in the afternoon Alfie came back. He was smoking a cigarette and wearing a black trench coat that was short and had a wide belt that was cinched tight and a big collar that was turned up. He said nothing but he jerked his head and then walked out again.