The hovercar edged forward, and moments later Jetpack Jed killed the power. The car settled smoothly to the garage floor. Like Mulligan’s house, Jetpack Jed’s was built into the side of the hill with the garage underneath the living space. A wooden stairway led up from the garage floor to a doorway above. I wondered if Mulligan’s place had the same set-up, which led to my imagining Penny King at the top of the interior stairs, knocking to be let in, begging perhaps, only to be denied and returning to what she thought was the safety of her posh vehicle on the garage floor.
The hovercar’s doors popped open at the touch of a button, signaling bright interior lights to illuminate the cab as my double climbed out of the driver’s seat. Not sure what sort of hospitality I was in for—and wondering if now would be a good time to bolt out the garage door to make a run for the trailhead and the dark beach across the highway—I also unfolded my legs and stood up in the garage.
Half turning, I was about to take a shot at good-naturedly letting him know that his garage was bigger than most houses I’d lived in—just an attempt to continue keeping the mood light while I figured out what my next move should be.
Before I could speak, though, I saw him turn and reach into the back of the car for his jacket. With the car door on my side still open, I had a full view of the backseat—and the clear plastic disk that fell out of his coat pocket as he took the jacket off the rear seat. It was a little bigger than the silver dollars I’d picked up at the bank the day this whole mess had started, and with the help of the hovercar’s cabin lights, I could easily see the wires embedded in the disk.
And the dark spot that I knew was a chip of Chavezium.
Glancing up from the disk to his eyes, I saw no regret at the mistake he’d made—only smug superiority expressed in a hint of a smile.
“You son of a bitch,” I said, my voice just above a growl.
And then all the irrational rage and revulsion I’d held back since first laying eyes on him spilled out. I don’t know if I leapt across the car’s nose or raced around it; either way, Jetpack Jed stood his ground and met me when I charged.
I threw a punch, aimed at his chin, which he blocked with his left forearm. Then his right caught me in the sternum and almost knocked me off my feet. I staggered back a few paces and regained my footing before he could come at me again. Planting my feet firmly, this time my punch landed on his chin, knocking his head back. He staggered under the blow, and I came at him again, nailing him squarely on the side of his face before he’d had a chance to straighten up again.
The force sent him careening into the side of the hovercar, which he slammed against before sliding to the garage’s cement floor.
Breathing hard, I reached into the hovercar for the Chavezium disk. Before my fingers were on it, though, I heard a noise from above—the whirring of a motor. Half a second later, I realized that the garage door had started closing automatically. A timer, I thought, and then I realized that a timer wouldn’t make sense. Not here. Not in this world and in this house. Not with…
Leaving the disk where it lay, I bolted for the opening, the door coming down like a medieval portcullis but still with plenty of room for me to get through. The trailhead beyond, I thought. The beach. I could collect myself there and then come back.
For Elsa Schwartz.
And that was when the energy pulse caught me in the back, shooting electricity through my body. So driven had I been a moment before that even as I fell forward, my arm shot out toward the darkness beyond the doorway. The last thought I had before blacking out was that if I’d gotten any closer to escaping before the beam caught me, my hand or my whole arm would have been in the path of the heavy wooden door as it came down. Small favors, I suppose, that I wasn’t faster.
* * * * * * *
When I opened my eyes again, I was seated at a kitchen table—wooden, painted white. Across from me, Elsa Schwartz sat wearing a dress of stiff green material, not exactly feminine but not full Nazi regalia either. Jetpack Jed sat to my left, and when he turned toward me, I was pleased to see his left cheek was swollen where I’d hit him. Elsa gave me a cruel smile when she saw that I’d recovered from her attack. Jetpack Jed did not smile, not even cruelly. I supposed it would have hurt too much, and that was all right with me.
I was in a wooden chair like theirs, only I was bound to mine, my hands shackled together behind my back. When I tried moving my arms, the resistance I felt told me that my wrists weren’t just bound together but also held fast to the slats of the chair’s back. My right hand ached and was probably swollen from the punches it had delivered. When I moved my torso at all, bursts of pain radiated out from the center of my chest where Jetpack Jed had landed his best blow.
The only thing on the tabletop was Elsa’s electronic gun—the same one she’d nailed me with multiple times in the world we’d come from and which I was sure she’d used on me in the garage just now. My best guess was that she’d been waiting on the other side of the door at the top of the stairs and had come through once she heard the sound of fighting, probably throwing a switch to start the garage door closing before she had me in range of her weapon. As far as I knew, protection from the gun could be had only through the little disk Guillermo had devised, and I doubted very much that my captors had seen fit to drop the disk into one of my pockets while they’d wrestled me up the stairs and into the house.
Elsa said nothing upon seeing that I had recovered. Instead, she simply picked up the weapon. When she reached for the little dial on the gun’s side and made a very obvious show of turning it all the way down, I narrowed my eyes at her, not sure of what she meant to do.
It became obvious soon enough.
From a pocket at her hip, she withdrew the little disk that she’d no doubt given my double as protection should I come at him with a zapper of my own. This had been a useless precaution since Guillermo’s non-lethal gun worked on completely different technology, from which there was no protection that I knew of. Knowing this, I wished I’d had Guillermo’s gun with me outside the police station, if only because of the look of disbelief Jetpack Jed would have had as he dropped to the sidewalk when I fired it at him.
“We need the old man,” Elsa said, “and we need his power source. You will tell me where we can find both.”
Ignoring her, I looked at my double and said, “Was any part of your story the truth? Or did Elsa coach you on the best lies to tell to get me to let down my guard?”
Elsa clearly didn’t appreciate being ignored. She pulled the trigger and gave me a jolt. It was little, not exactly painful, just enough to send a tingle through my torso. Then she turned the dial up, again making it obvious.
“All right, all right,” I said with a sigh. With not much time to get creative, I opted to riff on what I’d seen at the stadium and said, “As far as I can tell, in this world, the power source is all gone. In our world, Guillermo found the source on a piece of property north of the city, up in the mountains. I went there a few days ago—on this side of things—and it’s been paved over. They put up a resort. A big hotel. Parking lots. There never was very much of the stuff in the first place, and it looks like there’s not going to be any at all in this world unless somebody bombs that resort.”
“What is this resort called?” she asked.
I shook my head. “If anyone’s capable of bombing it, Elsa, it’s you. Or whatever cretins pass for your friends. I’m not going to be responsible for that.”
She pulled the trigger, and the zap was stronger. The bolt of energy was like a solid punch to my already bruised chest, knocking the wind out of me. I didn’t have to fake my distress, and when I looked up, I saw that Elsa had a cruel smile on her face.
When I had regained a bit of composure, I said, “If you’ve resolved to take that thing all the way to its limit and kill me, then you may as well save yourself some time and get it over with. I’m not telling you where to find the power source. You should be satisfied with knowing that no one else is goi
ng to get it either.”
She shook her head and turned the dial again.
I gritted my teeth, ready to get kicked by a mule, maybe even a blow of the same strength she’d nailed me with down in the garage.
“Hold on,” Jetpack Jed said. “He hasn’t said anything about your other question yet.”
She shot him a look of disgust, but she didn’t move her finger to the trigger.
“The old man,” she said. “Guillermo. How do we find him?”
I shook my head. “Your guess is as good as mine. The two of you have been trying for more than a week to snare him and it hasn’t worked. Not even with a thousand dollars’ worth of bait laid in the trap. Something tells me that in this world he’s not in Los Angeles, or he’s not in this world at all. He is pretty old in our world, after all.”
Elsa raised an eyebrow at this. Her finger caressed the trigger guard, but it didn’t slide toward the trigger itself.
“I’ll grant you it’s possible. You need to tell me everything you know about him, then.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until I let it out and then took a new one in. “All right,” I said. “I don’t see any harm in that. If he lived in Chavez Ravine in this world, then his house got bulldozed for that stadium to go in. But you already knew that.”
She nodded but said nothing.
“I don’t know much else. I’m not sure how old he is or what his birthday is. I assume he was born in Mexico, but that might not be accurate. How long he’s lived in Los Angeles in our world is beyond me, too. I know he was married and that his wife died in an industrial accident in the early 30s. A fire. I know he worked for the government during the war. He was on the team that cracked your codes.”
This last was meant to be a jab, and it landed, albeit not very solidly. Elsa’s cheeks flushed for a moment in an expression of what I’d like to think was anger. But then the color faded almost right away, and she gave no other indication that she’d been bothered.
The rest of what I’d said was all pretty safe, I figured. Nothing too specific. Nothing about Guillermo’s wife’s name or any of the other inventions he’d come up with. As I considered the evasions I’d just negotiated, I realized most of them weren’t evasions. After all the time I’d spent in Los Angeles, I still didn’t have much concrete knowledge about Guillermo or his life before I’d met him.
Elsa leaned forward in her chair. Her lips barely moving, she said, “More.”
I shook my head. “There is no more.”
Mirroring my movement, she shook her head, too. “More.”
I didn’t like the look of determination in her eyes. Repeating my denial would get me nowhere, I saw.
“I don’t think he’s lying,” Jetpack Jed said.
“You don’t know him,” Elsa replied. “Don’t confuse him for yourself. That would be a mistake.”
I recalled the time she’d spent with all the versions of Klaus Lang’s younger self. They’d probably given her plenty of material to consider regarding doubles from different worlds and the ways they related to each other. For all I knew, she understood more than I did, despite all the time I’d spent inhabiting other versions of Jed Strait. In all those situations, the men I’d occupied were just vessels while I remained essentially myself, doing nothing more than dropping in on their bodies but not their personalities.
“Five seconds,” she said, and I knew that at the end of that very short span of time, she’d pull the trigger again. And I’d wish she hadn’t.
My mind raced as I tried to think of something. What it gave me was only a patch, but that was better than nothing—and better than getting zapped again.
With maybe one second to spare, I blurted out, “All right! Don’t hit me with that thing again. There is one thing I know.”
Elsa gave Jetpack Jed a smug smile, indicating that she knew me better than he knew his double. Then she nodded, prompting me to go on.
“I don’t know exactly where Guillermo is,” I said, “but before I crossed over, he told me about his sister. She lives south of here, down near San Diego. All I have is an address. I was going to look into getting a bus ticket or a train or something when I got tangled up with the cops. The idea was that, if she’s still down there somewhere, she might know where he is.”
“And you wanted to find him why?” Jetpack Jed asked.
“To warn him,” I said.
“About me,” Elsa added, her smile widening. Then the hand not poised to nail me to the back of the chair opened on the tabletop. “Give me this address.”
“I hid it.”
The smile faded.
“Where?”
“The Hall of Records. I was going there to try to do some more digging on Guillermo when I ran afoul of the law. And I didn’t want them to find that address on me. Didn’t want them asking a lot of questions I wouldn’t be able to answer.”
“Where in the Hall of Records?” she asked.
I shook my head. “If I tell you, I’m a dead man.”
“If you don’t tell me…”
“You won’t zap me with that thing again. Could damage my brain cells. I might forget where I hid it.”
“That’s not the way this works.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But that’s the way I work.”
Torture me, I was saying, and you’ll never get what you want. Whether I could really stand up to her efforts wasn’t something I wanted to find out, but I knew I was planting enough doubt in her mind to make her consider the possibility that I would clam up for good if she played too rough. If I took the information she wanted to my grave, that was one place she wasn’t ready to follow me to.
She nodded almost imperceptibly. “What then?” she asked.
“Take me down there in the morning,” I said. Pointing at Jetpack Jed, I added, “I show it to him, not you. He writes it down. And you let me go. Then it’s a race. You get to the sister before I do, then you get whatever information she has first.”
Elsa stared at me for a long time, and I stared back. Neither spoke, neither flinched. Eventually, Jetpack Jed must have had enough of the mind games, as he broke the silence.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “But at the same time, I don’t see what choice we have.”
Elsa’s jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought she was going to pull the trigger, but then she set the gun on the table and pushed her chair back. Still staring at me, she handed the weapon to Jetpack Jed and then walked out of the room without another word.
Left alone with my double, I said, “How’d she get her hooks into you?”
He shook his head, picked up the gun, and said, “I can let you sleep in that chair or I can take you upstairs and lock you to a bed. What’ll it be?”
“I get to choose?”
He said nothing, clearly waiting for a more suitable response.
“What do I have to do to get the bed?” I asked.
“Cooperate. Don’t put up a struggle when I unlock you and take you upstairs.”
“Did you get into trouble in school like I did?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow and after a moment’s silence said, “All the time.”
I nodded. “Well, I outgrew it. Now, I’m the very picture of cooperation.”
He unlocked the handcuffs and then stepped back, making it clear he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on Elsa’s gun if I made a move against him.
“Lock ‘em again,” he said. “In front of you this time.”
Nodding, I did as he asked.
“Tighter,” he said when I had finished.
I rolled my eyes and then complied.
“Good boy. Now, up the stairs and to the right.”
I led the way, turning my head a little as I went to check for Jetpack Jed in my peripheral vision. He hung back, several steps below me on the stairs—too far for me to be able to launch any kind of surprise attack and remain conscious through it. So, I opted for a different sort of attack.
&nbs
p; “My guess is that you’ve really convinced yourself this is all about getting Annabelle back, right?”
“Just walk,” he said.
“You really think that’s what Elsa’s going to let Guillermo focus on if she finds him?”
He said nothing.
“You didn’t work for Guillermo at all, did you? That whole story was fabricated for my benefit to keep me from knowing Elsa’d gotten to you before I had, wasn’t it?”
We were at the top of the stairs now, and I had turned right like I’d been told. “Third door on the left,” Jetpack Jed said.
“I can tell you from experience that she’s a liar and a cheat,” I said. “She’ll shoot you in the back the first chance she gets once she’s grabbed up that old man even if there is no power source in this world.”
As I reached the third door, I turned and gave him a questioning look.
“Open it,” he said by way of answer.
I did, and then I used my bound hands to push the button on the wall to turn on the lights in the guest bedroom. It was nicely appointed with a bed larger than I needed, a dresser and vanity in varnished wood with chrome accents, and framed landscapes on the walls. The luxury of the room was offset by the sight of a length of chain fastened to the headboard and a utilitarian bucket two feet from the bed.
“Looks like Elsa’s been working as your decorator,” I said as I walked into the room. “She here all the time, or did you call her as soon as you heard from me?”
“Get on the bed,” he said.
“But darling, I hardly know you,” I returned.
This bought me a shove in the back that sent me half reeling toward the nice, soft bed. Instead of falling onto it, though, I found my balance and turned on my double, ready to lunge at him again—cuffed hands or not. He was ready for me with the zapper, and he didn’t hesitate.
The Jetpack Boogie: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 4) Page 14
