The Jetpack Boogie: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 4)

by Richard Levesque

  We’d been working on our act for a while, and the night that everything had gone wrong at Guillermo’s had been the night I’d chosen for our debut. I’d needed the release, and it had worked. The two songs we’d perfected had played well for a crowd already used to my solo work and Sherise’s dance moves. That she could also belt out a tune was an added bonus, and it had taken a bit of the sting away from the otherwise disastrous evening.

  A few days later, Sherise had booked time in a little studio four doors down from Darkness. The owner—a fellow named Charlie—was a sometime patron of hers and had been amenable to Sherise doing a little negotiating for a cut rate in the recording booth. I expect she traded the time for free drinks in Darkness for most of the rest of Charlie’s life. We’d laid down our two tracks, and that had been it. After that, I’d gotten involved in my first case with Imelda while trying to help Guillermo ease Carmelita into the new reality she was facing as a less-than human being. I wouldn’t say I’d forgotten about the recordings, just that they were far, far from my radar.

  Until now, of course.

  “You had the record pressed?” I asked, having to shout to make myself heard above the sound of my guitar.

  “Better,” was all she said as she held a finger up for me to wait.

  The intro wrapping up, Sherise’s voice came ripping through the speakers’ paper cones as she sang the first verse of “The Last Lie You’ll Tell.” The song was a bouncer, fast-paced and full of energy. It didn’t matter that there were no other instruments on the recording. The sound was full and intoxicating.

  I got up, ready to come around the bar to listen with her, but—again—she held up a finger to stop me.

  She’d been waiting for the chorus, where my voice joined hers.

  I hated it. My voice sounded awful, the wrong tone completely.

  She must have seen it in my eyes. Her smile faded as she yelled, “What’s wrong?” over the blaring guitar and vocals.

  I shook my head, not wanting to have to explain over the music—and also not wanting to ruin her moment any more than I just had. Clearly, Sherise wasn’t hearing what I was hearing in the song. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been so excited about it. I let the song play out, making eye contact with her only now and then and forcing myself to smile when I did.

  When the music started to fade, Sherise asked her question again. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d like it.”

  “I do,” I said. “I do. It sounds…it sounds great. You sound great. The guitar. Everything.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Not everything. I can see it in your face that it’s not everything.”

  I sighed a little. “I sound…weird.”

  She actually laughed a little at this. Then, catching herself, she pulled the laugh back in and said, “Have you never heard a recording of yourself?”

  “When would I have? Are you saying that’s what I really sound like?”

  “Mm-hmm.” She nodded like she had just been tasked with explaining a simple concept to an even simpler toddler. “Charlie explained it to me. Your jaw distorts your own voice when the sound travels up to your ear. What you hear isn’t what the rest of us hear.”

  I furrowed my brow in concentration at this simple concept. “So, you’re saying you don’t sound like yourself either?”

  “Exactly. Trust me, Jed. You don’t sound weird. You have a great singing voice. It’s just that you’re not used to hearing it the way the rest of the world does.”

  “All right,” I said. “If you say so.”

  “I do.” She let a little pause hang there and then said, “So, now what do you think of it?”

  Taking a moment to think about it, I said, “I like it. Definitely. Now, what’s the story with the record?”

  “Wait,” she said, her smile having returned full-force.

  “Still with the waiting?”

  “Yes.” She dropped down behind the bar again, and I caught Nicolai rolling his eyes. Moments later, the record started again, but this time it was our other number, “Dreaming in the Dark,” a slower song with a little more of a sultry tone coming from Sherise. This one had really gotten to the patrons at Darkness when we’d performed it, mostly because she’d thrown everything she had into the plaintive wails that led up to each chorus. I was in there, too, and though I still wasn’t thrilled with the sound of my voice, I knew it was something I’d be able to get used to—if I had to, of course. This last was doubtful.

  “Excellent,” I said when the song was over.

  Sherise smiled at this, and Nicolai gave an obligatory nod. I wondered how many times he’d had to listen to our efforts this afternoon.

  “So, what gives?” I asked. “Does another one of your customers have a record printing factory?”

  She laughed. “No. It’s Charlie. He’s got connections. And he loved the record, both sides. He said it was like nitro. Our sound, I mean. He says it’s not like anything he’s ever heard.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s good. But…the record?”

  “It’s not like I got us a record deal. But, yeah, I did get us on a record.”

  She was beaming. She bent down now to pull the record from the machine, and when she stood up, she held it out to me—a 10-inch disk with a bright blue label, “Moon Tide Records” printed across the top with a little logo showing a wave under a crescent moon. At the bottom of the label was the name of the song, with parentheses below it enclosing “J. Strait-S. Pike” and under that the name of the act—the Sunsetters.

  “The Sunsetters?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “I had to call us something. Didn’t want to use our names.”

  “Why Sunsetters?”

  She shrugged. “Sunset Boulevard for one.” She pointed to the front doors and the thoroughfare beyond. “Plus, it just seems like a name for us. The sun going down. Darkness rising. Both songs have that minor chord edge of sadness. Do you not like it? We can change it.”

  I thought about it for only a second. “No. No, actually, it’s fine.” I smiled and handed the record back to her. “It’s great. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Are you sure you like it?”

  “Absolutely. So, how is it a record but not a record deal?”

  “Well…” she said, drawing the word out. “It’s a little like a vanity project right now. The record company agreed to put us on the label, but I had to pay to have twenty copies pressed. And now we need to take them around to radio stations and see if we can talk a few DJs into putting us on the air.”

  “Ah,” I said, my mind on my wallet now. “And how much did these twenty copies cost?”

  “Don’t worry about it. This was my idea and I’m footing the bill. If we get any interest, then we can talk about money with the record company.”

  I shrugged. “All right, then. Sounds good. But now…what’s next? Anything?”

  “Well…I’ve already got a few calls in with some of the radio stations. I’m waiting to hear back. In the meantime, we write a few more, practice them here on the crowd, record a few more. See where it goes?”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “Can we try something else right now?” she asked.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Let’s sing with it.”

  “What?”

  I didn’t like the idea of singing without my guitar.

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “But Nicolai’s likely to burst an artery if he has to hear that record again,” I protested.

  “Nicolai can go grab a smoke in the alley,” she said.

  “An excellent idea,” the bartender said. Then, without another word, he turned away from the bar and disappeared through the doorway Sherise and I had come through earlier.

  Sherise smiled and said, “Ready?”

  “I guess.”

  “Come on.”

  She put on “Dreaming in the Dark” again, and we launched into it, singing together across the bar from one another. It
took maybe half a minute for me to get comfortable hearing my distorted voice alongside what had turned out to be my actual voice, but when I did, I felt a moment’s excitement rising in me. It was like there were four of us in that little nightclub singing the same song. And when Sherise let her wail slide out of her lips before the chorus, perfectly matching the sound coming from the speakers, I felt astounded—not just that this was us but that she was mine. In this world where I wasn’t supposed to be, the one that had taken everything from me when I’d first arrived in it, I had now landed on my feet with a job I could live with, friends I could count on, and a woman who wanted me. The harmony of the record, our voices, and my thoughts all slipped into the same groove as the chorus began.

  And then I was gone.

  Cruelly, I thought.

  Just when things had seemed perfect.

  I was no longer in Darkness, no longer with Sherise. No music played. The only sound came from my knuckles tapping on a door, brass numbers on it identifying it as the door to room 254. I looked left, then right. The plush carpet and wall sconces told me that 254 was not the number of an apartment, nor was it part of a suite of offices. It was a hotel room, and I had just knocked on the door. Why? I couldn’t say.

  I turned back to the door, but it had changed, and I knew the whole world had changed; it was like someone was tuning a radio, but instead of switching stations, I was switching worlds. Now the door was scarred. The 2 had fallen off, and I saw little holes in the wood from the nails that had once held the brass number in place. Scanning left and right again, I saw trash on the floor and graffiti on the walls. No bulbs burned in the sconces. The only light in the hallway came from two windows about halfway down.

  There was no point in knocking. I knew this instinctively, just turned the knob and pushed my way inside.

  The room was a wreck. Trash and pieces of broken mirror littered the carpet, and the wardrobe had been overturned. A breeze blew in from a broken window, fluttering a torn curtain.

  On the unmade bed, the mattress askew on the box spring, sat a dark-haired woman whom I recognized as Katrina Mulligan. She wore a white slip with one shoulder strap hanging loosely on her upper arm. On the bed beside her were a belt, a spoon and a candle. Heroin, I thought. When she looked up at me, I got the feeling that there was something wrong with her face, but I couldn’t place the problem.

  The room shifted before I could get a better look at her. I was back in the posh hotel, the one where all three numbers were still on the door. Only now, I was inside the room. It must have been a suite, a large room with a bedroom beyond it. Though this room hadn’t been destroyed by vandals, it was still a mess with broken glass on the floor and pictures knocked off the walls. Across from me, the door to the bedroom looked like it had been kicked open, the wood of the jamb splintered where the bolt had been forced inward. One of the hinges had come loose from whatever violence had been done to the door, and I expected to find Katrina Mulligan’s body inside the room.

  It was empty, though. All I saw was more disarray; it looked like a struggle had taken place here, but there was no missing woman to be found.

  I heard a click behind me and turned to see the hotel room restored. It was the picture of luxury, but no longer a suite.

  Katrina sat on the bed, just where she’d been before. Only now she was in a flowing red negligee. It was see-through, revealing matching red underwear beneath. Her face looked just the way it should have. Instead of heroin paraphernalia on the bed beside her, there was a white telephone. She had just picked up the receiver, the source of the click I’d heard in that other room that was no longer behind me.

  “Get out!” she hissed and moved her hand to start dialing the phone.

  From its speaker came the last verse of “Dreaming in the Dark.”

  And I was back in the nightclub, Sherise giving the end of the song everything she had. Her eyes were closed. The music had her. I had no idea if I’d been keeping up or not, but she seemed not to have noticed that I’d left her for a good part of the song.

  The record ended, and she opened her eyes, a big smile on her face.

  “We should get Charlie to double-track our voices for some harmonies on the next—”

  Her voice dropped off like her sentence had just fallen down an elevator shaft.

  “What’s wrong, Jed?”

  I’d told Sherise about the ways I sometimes lost my moorings in the middle of musical moments. She’d never seen it happen, though. And, apparently, if I hadn’t given it away, she wouldn’t have known that she’d just seen it now.

  I wasn’t that good of an actor, though.

  “I’m sorry, Sherise,” I said.

  “For what?” She looked confused.

  “I…went away there for a minute.”

  There’s no way to know what she saw on my face. Fear, maybe.

  What I do know is what I saw on her face: compassion.

  Ignoring the clicking from the speakers as the needle went round and round the end of the record, she reached a hand out across the bar, touching first my cheek and then my lips.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Is it…frightening when that happens?”

  “Not anymore. Now I know what it is. But it’s still unnerving. It catches me off guard. It’s never happened when I wasn’t playing the guitar.”

  She nodded, one hand still on my face while the other found my palm on the bar top and squeezed it.

  “Do you want to say where you went?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know where it was. Someplace I’ve never been with…people I’ve never met.”

  “And it’s all gone now?” she said. “You’re…a hundred percent here? With me?”

  “More than a hundred if that’s possible,” I said.

  She leaned across the bar and kissed me, her lips locking against mine as her hand circled around my neck, pulling me to her. I felt something different then, a different sort of leaving my body. Almost floating.

  When we finally pulled away from each other and Sherise whispered, “Come on,” I slipped into step with her automatically. She led me back to her office and closed the door.

  Nicolai knew not to knock.

  Chapter Four

  I left Darkness an hour later. Sherise shooed me out the back door, saying she needed to start getting changed and get her make-up done for the evening’s customers. We embraced in the doorway, and then I told her I’d see her the next afternoon. All day, it had been my intention to tell her about the planned crossover tonight, but after what happened while we were singing to the record, I couldn’t bring myself to say another word about other worlds and the ways I was planning to dabble in them. She’d known since the night Elsa crossed over that this would be coming, but now I figured it would be best to keep the specifics to myself until it was done. Otherwise, she’d just spend the whole night worrying, which was something I didn’t need as an added distraction. The strange visions of Katrina Mulligan were going to be distraction enough. I would tell Sherise tomorrow about crossing over, after the fact. There was a fifty-fifty chance that she’d be sore about being kept in the dark, but that was a chance I was willing to take.

  It was too early to go back to Guillermo’s. He and I had agreed that I’d make the jump after it was dark. So, a few blocks away from the club, I pulled over to the curb and went to a payphone, ringing the office. Peggy answered on the first ring, right there at her desk like I’d come to expect.

  “Jed Strait, Private Investigations,” she said, her tone the embodiment of professional.

  “Hi Peggy,” I said, the embodiment of something less than professional.

  “Jed,” she said, sounding like a teacher calling on the class clown and knowing she was about to regret it.

  “Have you gotten anywhere with that list?”

  “How quickly do you expect me to work on this?” she asked.

  “At Peggy speed,�
�� was all I answered.

  “Mm-hmm. Well, Peggy speed has gotten you two addresses and one phone number. You want ‘em?”

  “I do, actually,” I said, pulling my tablet and pencil from my coat pocket.

  Neither street she rattled off meant anything to me, so once I’d written everything down, I asked if she’d looked either place up on a map.

  “I knew you were going to ask that. Don’t you have a map in your car?”

  “Of course. But if you’ve already looked…”

  “You’re incredible.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Then I waited out her patience.

  “Fine,” she finally said. “Esther Merriweather is on Rexford in Beverly Hills. And Jeanette Pruitt is out at the coast, Pacific Palisades.”

  “Thanks, Peggy. You’re a plum,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  After hanging up, I looked at the two addresses for a moment. Beverly Hills was closer, but my experience with that area was of houses hidden behind fancy gates and high hedges. Talking my way in wouldn’t be easy, especially if the lady of the house got a sniff of what I was looking for. The Palisades address was farther away, which would mean not just a longer drive there but another long drive back to Guillermo’s. And yet…The Penny King murder had happened in the Palisades area. The congruence gave me a better feeling about that address and the woman named Jeanette Pruitt.

  The payphone I’d stopped at was in front of a burger joint, so I grabbed a quick bite to fuel the coming ordeal of stop signs and tail lights. I ate in the car, my perfectly good map spread out across the steering wheel, and studied the route to Pacific Palisades and the street in question. When I was finished, I got on the road.

  It took almost an hour to make it out to the coast, but when I neared Sunset Boulevard’s terminus at the beach, I didn’t turn off in the direction of Jeanette Pruitt’s house. Instead, I followed the road all the way to the coast and then turned north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Not half a mile above Sunset were the concrete stairs that had been pictured in the Record on the day the Penny King story broke. They spilled down the hillside like a frozen, jagged waterfall that connected the wealthy residents of the Palisades on the hills above with the white expanse of beach on the other side of the coast road.