Killing Is My Business

by Adam Christopher

  Unsettling was one way of describing it, that was for sure.

  I switched the telephone to the other side of my head.

  “This doesn’t feel right, Ada.”

  “Yeah, well, life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me something?”

  “Chief, there’s a lot I tell you and a lot I don’t and not all of it you remember, remember?”

  “Something doesn’t add up. Who’s the client?”

  Ada didn’t say a thing.

  “Who’s the client, Ada?” I asked again. “Do you know?”

  “You need to hurry back to Falzarano,” she said.

  I looked around the laboratory. I looked at all the equipment. I ran the list of components I was supposed to collect through my code parse compiler.

  “What was the late Carmen Blanco a professor of, exactly?”

  Ada said nothing.

  “It was robotics, wasn’t it? Ada, what aren’t you telling me?”

  “Just trust me, Ray? Okay? There’s not long to go now.”

  And then the phone went dead and I was left holding it in the radioactive laboratory of my creator.

  31

  I was back downstairs with the goods in another five minutes. Alfie didn’t say anything when I got into the car, he just gunned the engine and we took off. He drove with two hands on the wheel and his elbows locked. He drove fast, like a race car driver, his chin tucked into his chest, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. The cigarette was gone, as was the ever-present curl of his lip as he mused on a private joke.

  I watched him a little while. Alfie Micklewhite, also known as Francis Cane. I wondered if Falzarano knew his real name. Probably not and he probably didn’t know his lady Carmina was Carmen Blanco, a deceased robotics professor from a secret lab in Colombia that had very conveniently been reduced to rubble with her still inside it.

  Supposedly.

  The Buick was big and heavy, an inelegant thing built for a specific purpose, to carry a very heavy robot around town as he went about his private detecting business. It had customized shock absorbers and transmission, customized steering, customized engine. Under my steel and titanium hands it was perfectly fine in the same way that riding an elephant through an Asian jungle was perfectly fine.

  But under Alfie’s hands the car sang. After the initial slow acceleration and lurching deceleration he seemed to understand the engine, and after the first two tiling curves of the road he seemed to understand the machine as a whole.

  All of which is to say he was a good driver and we made excellent time.

  Thornton Industrial was in Pasadena, a ways north of Los Angeles proper. Falzarano’s castle was buried in a canyon to the west. Alfie’s route of choice was the most direct, which meant winding the car up one hill and down another with nothing but the wind rushing around us and the night sky spinning high above.

  “We all right, Charlie?” asked Alfie, never once taking his focus off piloting my big and heavy car along narrow and winding roads.

  “We are,” I said. The components from the lab were inside my chest, pressed against my memory tape, the curve of the new panel providing ample room. I checked a few readings. My Geiger counter was having a hell of a time trying to work out why I was radioactive on the inside but not on the outside, so I turned it off. The leak of atomic energy through my chassis was slow but sure, but we’d be fine so long as we got to Falzarano’s place soon. Which, with the way Alfie threw the car around the hills, we would.

  “You’re not cooking me liver or anything, sitting there?”

  I glanced at Alfie. “No, there’s no radiation leakage.” That wasn’t quite the whole truth. “You’re perfectly safe, but all the same, we should get this stuff back to Falzarano as soon as we can.” That was a little more accurate.

  Alfie nodded and if anything he pushed his foot farther toward the floor and pushed the car faster along the road. The headlights swept this way and that as we drove up the side of a valley. Falzarano’s was not far. There was no other traffic.

  Then Alfie unwrapped one hand from the wheel and dived it inside his jacket. I watched as he pulled out his packet of cigarettes and, without giving it any thought at all, extracted a new one with his teeth. Packet returned to his jacket, he began fishing around for his lighter.

  “Here,” I said and I reached over, holding two fingers a hair apart. I shorted the solenoid and the inside of the car was lit by a blue spark.

  Alfie made a clicking noise with his tongue which I took to be his way of saying thanks. Then he cracked his window about an inch to let the smoke out.

  That’s when I heard it. Alfie’s attention was back on driving and he wasn’t slowing down. But there was another noise from outside.

  I turned in my seat and wrapped an arm around the back of Alfie’s so I could really get a good look out the rear windshield. The road was lit red by our taillights and the tarmac was moving under us at a good pace.

  Then I saw a glint. Nothing more. Then it was gone. Then it glinted again.

  We reached the crest of the hill and began to spiral down it. I glanced at Alfie.

  “Kill the engine.”

  “What?”

  I turned back around to look out the rear. “I said kill the engine. Let it coast for a moment.”

  “If you say so, Charlie.” Alfie twisted the key and the motor died. We glided on down the hill under the power of gravity.

  Then Alfie stiffened in his seat. He squinted into his wing mirror.

  “Oi, we’re being followed.”

  I nodded. “We are. They’ve got their lights off.”

  Alfie gave the Buick a rolling start and then gunned the engine. I turned back around.

  Alfie looked at me and I looked at him.

  “Lose them,” I said.

  “No sooner said than done, mate,” said Alfie. He pulled the gear stick and pressed the accelerator and the engine roared and the Buick kicked up on its rear wheels and we scrambled down the hill.

  Somewhere behind us the headlights of our tail flicked on. They knew they’d been made and now they were going to try to catch up.

  Alfie threw the wheel to the left and we crossed the centerline to get a better run down the hill. It was late and the road was empty and for that I was thankful.

  I checked my wing mirror. The lights of the car following us loomed brightly and were getting brighter.

  “They’re gaining,” I said.

  “Well yeah, that’s because they’re faster than we are. I mean, I like your car, Charlie, but it’s not going to win at Monte bloody Carlo, now is it?”

  I pursed my lips on the inside. The lights behind us got bigger and bigger and then they were on us.

  And then the Buick kicked again, but this time it wasn’t Alfie’s driving. The car behind nudged us, nose to tail. I turned around again and saw the headlights recede then suddenly loom again and our car was rocked for the second time as the tail rammed us.

  “They’re trying to force us off the road,” said Alfie. “Bloody hooligans.” He checked the mirror, then he hissed and turned around in his seat to check out the rearview himself.

  “Eyes on the road, Alfie!”

  “It’s the same bloody car!”

  I turned and looked too but the car had backed off, a cat preparing itself for another pounce.

  “What car?”

  Alfie wrenched the gearshift and returned his focus to the darkness ahead. “The one the other night, the one we nearly ran into. Wasn’t far from here, either.”

  I didn’t remember anything about any near miss, but there was nothing too unusual about that so I was prepared to take Alfie’s word for it. I pointed through the windshield, somewhat unnecessarily.

  “Okay, so let’s shake them, Alfie,” I said. “Come on, you said you liked to drive cars fast, so show me what you got.”

  Alfie didn’t answer but he did smile. With one arm locked on the wheel, his
other fell to the parking brake down by his seat.

  The road opened out as another came off it, the intersection forming a big oval and that oval was lit by a yellow sodium lamp. I checked behind and saw the other car materialize into corporeal existence as it came under the harsh lighting.

  The car was black or near to it, sleek and brand new. There were two people in it. I couldn’t see them well but they looked like they were wearing hats. The driver was hunched over the wheel. The front bumper of the car was chromed and it had a nasty dent across the front.

  “Hold onto something,” said Alfie. I grabbed a hold of the handle above my door and wished us the best of luck as Alfie accelerated into the intersection, then spun the wheel and yanked the handbrake. The car traveled horizontally, tires screaming, the intersection filling with a great cloud of acrid smoke. Alfie wrenched the wheel in toward the opposite lock and the car bucked and threatened to roll. Then he straightened up and floored it and I discovered we were traveling back in the direction we had come.

  Toward the other car. Alfie had said we’d nearly hit that very same car the other night. It didn’t look like we were going to miss a second time.

  My grip tightened on the handle. If we crashed, I’d be fine. The car, not so much. Alfie, certainly not.

  I hoped he knew what he was doing.

  The whole thing took three seconds. I saw our headlights travel up the hood of the black car. I saw the passenger draw one arm up over his face as he recoiled. I saw the driver staring wide-eyed and worried.

  Alfie pressed the accelerator and he did something else too.

  He laughed.

  And then the black car swerved, but not fast enough. We were heavy, an unstoppable force. The black car was far from immoveable. It turned to our right and shot off toward the edge of the road as the Buick clipped the rear end. The bang was like a gunshot and something long and chrome came at us at an angle and cracked against the windshield. The glass held and the chrome piece slid off our hood as we blasted down the hill.

  I looked in the rearview just in time to see the taillights of the other car lift up way too high and then vanish as the car went over the side of the road. The hills here were steep and it was a long way down to the bottom.

  I didn’t want to estimate the survival chances of the driver and his passenger.

  I turned back around. Alfie laughed and we drove down and down and down.

  I’d been wrong about the windshield. Right in the center of my vision there was a chip about the size of a pea, a tiny white star in a field of black.

  “We’ll put in some miles, Charlie,” said Alfie. “Then we’ll go back around to Falzarano’s the long way, okay? Anyone who was following the car what was following us won’t be able to find us and they’ll be too busy getting their friends out of the wreck. It’ll put us behind schedule though.”

  I nodded. “I think this counts as extenuating circumstances. We got what Falzarano wants and Falzarano will just have to like it.”

  Alfie nodded and laughed, and then he glanced down between his legs.

  “Oh, bloody hell.”

  “What is it?”

  “Dropped me cigarette in all the commotion.” He looked at me. He didn’t look happy. “I’ve only gone and burned a hole in me bleeding trousers.”

  I smiled on the inside and then I laughed. It made a sound not dissimilar to the sound the gearbox made when Alfie pulled the handbrake turn.

  Alfie glanced at me and the road and me again. And then his face cracked into a grin and then he laughed too. He wound his window down and his blond curls blew around his face.

  I helped Alfie laugh but wondered all the while why Ada wanted me to stay away from Francis Cane.

  We laughed all the way to Falzarano’s castle, and there the laughter stopped.

  32

  We were met at the house by Falzarano’s boys. Lots of them, along with lots of rifles and mean looks and dogs that barked and snapped and spit. The big garage was open and Alfie raced toward the empty spot that was waiting for us only to slam the brakes on as one of Falzarano’s guards stood right in our way with a hand up. With the Buick stationary and only half in the bay, the guard jerked a thumb back up at the house.

  I reached for my door handle only to find the door being opened by another guard. I glanced at Alfie and saw that his door was open too. He gave me a look and pulled his cigarette pack out of his jacket pocket.

  I got out. The guard by my door nodded back toward the house. I looked around. All the guards were looking at us—the guards at the house, the guards at the garage, the guards lining the driveway all the way from the big gates and stone lions at the top down to the ornamental fountain at the bottom.

  And all spooked in equal measure. More than before. Something was up. Maybe they’d found Ellis?

  Or—

  “What’s happened?” I asked. “Is Mr. Falzarano okay?”

  “Inside, and sharp,” said my guard. He grabbed my arm like he meant it and he squeezed just as hard.

  My escort and I hustled around to the steps but I pulled up and glanced behind me. Alfie—Francis Cane—was in conference with the guard by the car. He saw me looking and waved at me.

  “Go on,” he said. “I’ll see what the fuss is. Get that stuff to the old man, quick!”

  I nodded and trotted up the steps and then went through the front door and walked across the checkerboard of the entrance hall. The hall was lined with guards and there were more on the stairs and up on the landing above me.

  “Ray!”

  Carmina came out of the long passageway. She was wearing one of her trademark split dresses but most of it was hidden under a long white coat made of a stiff and heavy fabric. A lab coat, not entirely unlike the ones left to rot back at Thornton’s laboratory.

  Just like the ones a professor might wear when they were on the job.

  Carmina—Carmen Blanco—was moving as fast as my guard had been.

  “What’s with the circus?” I asked.

  Carmina’s brow creased into a V shape and she shook her head. “Circus? Ah, circus. The men, they have heard about their leader. Word spreads more quickly than fire.”

  “What’s happened to him?”

  She ignored me. “What took you so long?” she asked. She took my arm much like the guard did and together we migrated down the long passageway toward Falzarano’s study. I thought about Ada’s warning about Professor Carmen Blanco and how I was supposed to keep her at a little more than an arm’s length.

  “We had a little trouble on the way back from the laboratory,” I said as we sailed through the carpet.

  “Trouble?”

  I nodded. “We were followed. Two guys, black car. No idea who they were. Alfie thought he’d seen the car before but they were pretty keen on running us off the road.”

  Carmina stopped where she was. I took a few more steps before realizing I was out on my own. I stopped and turned back around. Carmina was sinking into the carpet and her expression wasn’t a happy one.

  “What happened to them?”

  “We ran them off the road first.”

  Carmina wrung her hands together. She looked pretty worried. I wondered if she’d seen the car before, too. Like Alfie—the other person in this building who was using another name.

  It occurred to me that one of the uses for a false name was to hide yourself away. Particularly if the world thought you had died in your laboratory during a civil war. Falzarano had taken in Emerson Ellis for his own protection—albeit against the businessman’s will.

  Was Falzarano hiding Professor Carmen Blanco here too? Only, unlike Ellis, it didn’t seem to be against her will.

  Anything but. Falzarano was building a factory. A robot factory. He had the land, he had the plans, he had all the experts—the late Vaughan Delaney, the missing Emerson Ellis. The not-dead Professor Carmen Blanco. The parts I’d grabbed from Thornton’s lab, they weren’t for Falzarano. He was an old man, the last of his generation
of mobsters, an émigré from the old world whose star had risen long before the great robot revolution of the 1950s.

  Carmina was the roboticist. She would know exactly what to do with the parts. Quite what that was, I still didn’t know.

  Maybe the guys in the car had. That same car had been in the hills before. Then they’d tailed Alfie and me from Thornton’s lab. More than tailed—they’d wanted to stop us from getting back to Falzarano’s. They’d wanted to stop us making the delivery to Carmina.

  They knew she was here. And if Falzarano was hiding her, then that meant word had leaked out from within his little family.

  My logic gates flipped and clacked and somewhere deep inside a light came on.

  Because there was someone else in this building who wasn’t who he said he was.

  Alfie Micklewhite. Francis Cane, according to his mother.

  Was he the mole? He wasn’t hiding. Falzarano had hired him. Like he’d hired me. Which meant Falzarano didn’t know his real name. And there was more than a fair chance he didn’t know that Alfie was already employed, but by someone else—an outfit called International Automatics. I didn’t know who they were or what kind of company that was, but from the name alone I think I could make a fairly wild guess.

  Robotics.

  But their angle, I didn’t get. They must have known Falzarano was up to something that fell within an overlapping field of interest. I could believe them sending in one of their own, infiltrating Falzarano’s organization to find out just what that something was. Once embedded, the man from IA finds out that the old man’s amour is a roboticist the world thought was dead. That information is fed back to his masters, they send more agents in to—

  To what? Capture her? Kill her? Or kill Falzarano?

  It would take more than a couple of guys in a car to do that. And if my pal Alfie was the leak then that meant the bit on the road was just a bit of dangerous theater for the benefit of nobody but me.

  Something wasn’t adding up. But the programming I had as a private detective told me I was getting close.

  I lifted my hat from my head and used it to point down to the doors to Falzarano’s study.