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

by Richard Levesque

  “I’m sure. But I didn’t say I knew Perdida. I said I know about her. From your father.”

  “You would have been a boy when my father died. What would you have been doing hanging around in Chavez Ravine?”

  I sighed, telling myself it wasn’t too late to turn and walk away. Instead, I said, “On the phone, I told you there was something else. Not just Perdida.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I have one of your father’s inventions with me. May I show it to you?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead,” she said, clearly skeptical still.

  I hesitated. “It’s a…a weapon, ma’am. I’m afraid if I take it out, you’ll think I’m threatening you. And I wouldn’t want any of your neighbors to see me standing here with it.”

  “Show me,” she said, sounding like a woman not used to suffering denials of anything she asked for.

  I sighed and tapped my right coat pocket. “It’s in here. I’d rather you took it out.”

  Giving me a look that was part skepticism and part fearlessness, she reached forward and stuck her hand into my pocket. When she felt the weapon, her expression shifted to incredulity, telling me she hadn’t really believed there was anything dangerous in my coat. I looked down as she pulled the gun out, handle first. The little “Garcia Industries” manufacturing plate was visible on the bottom of the handle that her fingers grasped, and when I looked back into her eyes, they were wide and rimmed with tears.

  She dropped the gun back into my pocket and said, “My father would never have made a gun.”

  “It’s not lethal,” I explained. “He created it as an alternative to projectile weapons. Trying to save lives. Does that sound more like something he would make?”

  “It does,” she said with a nod. “But I still don’t understand how you got it.”

  Looking down at the threshold where she stood, I gathered my courage and then looked her in the eyes again. “I told you I’m not from around here. It’s not exactly a different location geographically. More…cosmically, I suppose. Your father could explain it a lot better if he was here.”

  “But he’s not.”

  “No. He’s not. It’s just…I got here thanks to him. An invention of his. It sort of opens a doorway…from another world and into this one. I’m sorry if this is a shock to you, but in the place where I’m from…Guillermo is still alive. It’s his wife, Carmella, who died in the fire.”

  Her face went pale, and I saw her knuckles go white where she gripped the door. It was about to slam.

  “You’re crazy,” she whispered, ice in her voice.

  “Guillermo saved my life,” I blurted, hoping that if I kept talking, she might not shut the door in my face. “Or his inventions did. More than once. He’s brilliant. He has a dog, a little dog named Perdida, but…she’s mechanical. He must have…missed the dog he had when you were younger. He built an exact replica of her.”

  Mrs. Ruiz held the door still, not making a move to slam it in my face. Her cheeks stayed pale, though, and it looked like her breathing had turned rapid.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. “I know this must be very upsetting to hear.”

  She shook her head, and I watched her take a few deep breaths. When she seemed a bit calmer, she spoke very slowly, seeming to consider each word before she said it. “What you are saying…is something I have wished for. A million times. But…it can’t be true, can it? First, this radio stunt. Now this. How do I know this isn’t all a cruel prank?” Then a new light came into her eyes, a light that looked fueled by anger. “You work for that stadium, don’t you? Is this some ploy to get me to drop the suit? If it is, you’re going to regret it!”

  Her fiery temper reminded me even more of Carmelita, and if I hadn’t been so worried that she was going to order me off her property, I might have smiled at the similarity. There was no smiling now, though.

  “Mrs. Ruiz, please. You have to believe me. I have nothing to do with the stadium. I was shocked to see it. Where I come from, your father still has a house in Chavez Ravine. His workshop, too. Garcia Industries. I visit with him almost every day.”

  A car hovered past the house, and she looked up as it went by. Then I saw that her eyes lingered on a spot somewhere over my shoulder. The cemetery. She was staring at the grass and the graves that stretched into the distance, thinking who knows what.

  Finally, she said, “You’d better come inside.”

  I did as she asked, closing the front door behind me. She offered me a seat on a floral print sofa, and before she sat opposite me in a matching overstuffed chair, she grabbed a little object from a nearby shelf. Whatever she picked up, it was small enough to hold in her hands, concealed from view. She stared at her cupped hands for a moment and then leaned forward, setting what looked like an old cast iron kid’s bank onto the coffee table between us. The top was cast in the form of a dog that resembled Perdida more than a little. It had been painted once, but much of the color had chipped off. The dog had its mouth open, and I could see that its neck was jointed; in front of it was a box with a slot big enough for a coin to drop into. There was a keyhole in the bank’s base, and I guessed that if a key was inserted and an inner spring wound with the key, the dog would tip its head to drop a coin into the slot—presuming the user put the coin in the dog’s mouth in the first place.

  Mrs. Ruiz tipped the bank over, exposing the manufacturer’s plate riveted to the bottom. “Garcia Industries,” it read. The lettering was worn from years of friction, but it was clearly the same as the plate on the gun in my pocket.

  “He made me that when I was seven years old,” she said. “In that workshop in the ravine. He made a lot of things, always with that plate mounted on his inventions.”

  “And I’ll bet he never patented his inventions,” I said. “Or made any money from them.”

  She smiled, sadly. “Yes. That’s true.” A little sigh escaped her. “Tell me everything.”

  She was ready to believe me. That much was obvious. So, I spilled my whole story, starting with the accident I’d lived through during the war and ending with how I’d stolen Jetpack Jed’s hovercar and come here, hoping to find the truth about this world’s Guillermo Garcia. Guillermo’s daughter listened to everything I said, and when I was finished she simply said, “Do you think he’s happy? Has he been all right since he lost my mother?”

  I shrugged. “Guillermo doesn’t talk about himself, so it’s hard to know for sure, but…he smiles all the time. He seems like an eternal optimist. I give him bad news and he finds a way to flip it around. Would it upset you to know he’s found a girlfriend in the last couple of months?”

  She smiled and wiped at tears gathering in her eyes. “That’s good to know,” she said, her voice quiet.

  “I’m sorry to have upset you,” I said. “I just needed to know for sure that there was no way this woman from my world could find him and make him do her bidding. Now I know. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m still not sure if I should believe you or not, but everything you’ve said about him sounds so much like the way I remember him.”

  “I’m sorry you lost him the way you did.”

  She looked thoughtful, remaining silent for a moment. Then she said, “Are you going back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you…would you be willing to take a letter to him?”

  “I think so,” I said. “He’ll be surprised by it, but…I don’t think it could do him any harm.”

  She smiled at this. “Thank you.”

  Then, re-thinking what I’d just said, I added, “But maybe just a note rather than a whole letter? I should probably go as soon as I can.”

  She nodded, told me she understood, and then got up, walking to a roll top desk in the corner and opening a drawer. Grabbing a sheet of paper and a pen from the desk, she came back to the coffee table and bent over it to start writing.

  I noticed letterhead at the top
of the page, not unlike the fancy stuff I’d been handed in Imelda Bettencourt’s office. “Elvira Ruiz, Attorney at Law,” the letterhead read.

  “You’re a lawyer,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said as she wrote.

  “You mentioned a lawsuit before. About the stadium?”

  She shook her head and looked up, disgust in her eyes. “Those thieves…they found a way to force out all those families and gave them almost nothing in exchange. My mother…all the families I grew up around. I doubt I’ll win the suit if it goes that far, but I hope to make enough noise in the press so they’ll pay out a decent settlement to the residents to put an end to the embarrassment.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  She’d been looking in the direction of the street, and I saw her expression change quickly from disgusted to alarmed. I turned toward the window and felt my stomach drop.

  A police hovercar had parked next to Jetpack Jed’s vehicle. It looked a lot like the police cars of my world—black and white and with a flashing light mounted to the top. Fortunately, the light wasn’t flashing now, which meant that the driver was just investigating, not calling this a situation for alarm—at least not yet.

  I watched with dread as the driver’s door popped open and a uniformed officer got out. He walked around the car, bending close to peer through the tinted windows. Then he went back to his car. I thought he might hover away, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled a device free of his car’s console and started talking into it as he stood there in the street, his head pivoting back and forth as he looked left and right, no doubt scanning the area for me.

  “He’s radioing in,” I said.

  “I’ll go talk to him. Tell him I saw the driver run into the cemetery.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “I’ve already put you in danger by coming here. I shouldn’t have been so stupid as to park a stolen car in front of your house.”

  Outside, the officer reached back into the car to return the radio to its cradle. Then he looked at the house, seemingly staring right at me. I imagined him smiling smugly, but I couldn’t see his face well enough to be able read his expression. What I knew for certain was that he was waiting for back-up. The expression on his face didn’t matter.

  “I need to leave,” I said. “Can I go out the back door?”

  She turned her gaze away from the window, her jaw firmly set. More than before, I saw Carmelita in her face—the determination despite overwhelming odds.

  “Yes,” she said. “But they’re likely to be here any moment. You won’t get far on foot.”

  “I can’t take your car. I’m afraid I’ve already gotten you into some trouble with them.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I can talk circles around the cops.” She quickly scribbled an end to her note and signed it. Then she folded it in half as she stood up and handed it to me. “And I’m not talking about you taking my car. I think you should take my jetpack instead.”

  * * * * *

  I didn’t like not having my eyes on whatever was happening out front, but the jetpack was in the house’s back room, just off the kitchen. That was where the back door was, too, so that was where I went, following Elvira Ruiz.

  The jetpack looked different from the primitive set of cannisters and straps Guillermo had lent me on more than one occasion. This unit was sleek, the twin power packs made of bright chrome and fashioned into narrow cylinders that tapered to points at the tops. Guillermo’s daughter helped me adjust the straps, which were very similar to the ones I was used to. Another difference, though, was that this unit had a chest plate, and the controls were built into it where Guillermo’s controls were little more than a box with buttons attached to the cannisters with a flimsy cord.

  Mrs. Ruiz gave me a quick explanation of the controls, and I was practically able to finish her sentences.

  “My father built one like it?” she asked.

  “He did. It’s gotten me out of a few jams.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’m sorry for all the trouble. I don’t know how you’re going to get this back.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I can get another.”

  I had no idea how much such things cost or what a lawyer in this world earned. At this point, none of that mattered.

  She opened the back door, and I stepped onto the porch.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” I said.

  “It’s nothing,” she replied. “The thanks are all mine. You don’t know what it means to me to have heard what you said. Maybe someday…I can see him?”

  “Maybe. There are some risks. We haven’t figured them all out yet. But if it’s possible, then yes. I’m sure Guillermo will want to see you, too.”

  Even if he never knew you existed? I asked myself.

  We heard voices from the street out front. More police, I thought. Elvira must have thought the same thing, as she said, “You’d better go now. Stay low over the fence and the houses nearby so they don’t see you from the street.”

  “All right,” I said. Then, giving her a nod, I hit the power button on the jetpack.

  Where Guillermo’s flight pack gave off a whoosh sound and the telltale odor of consumed Chavezium, this jetpack produced a bit of heat and a much louder hiss as it lifted me off the ground and away from the doorway. I remembered almost too late to keep my flight low the way Guillermo’s daughter had advised, flying up almost to the height of the rooftop before realizing this jetpack was more powerful than the one I’d flown in a different Los Angeles. At the last second, I eased off on the power and then turned the control so I could fly across the back yard and over the neighboring fence. As I did, I turned my head to look back and down to see my newest friend and savior waving goodbye before turning to go back into the house. In less than a minute, I expected she’d be at the front door, lying to the police with ease about the car out front and its missing driver.

  I stayed low just as I’d been advised, skimming the tops of houses as I retraced my way back to the bridge that spanned the Los Angeles River. At that point, there were no more structures to shield me from view, and it must have been then—as I flew across the river and decided to gain some altitude—that I picked up the attention of the police. Maybe the cops talking to Elvira had put out an APB concentrated in the Boyle Heights area once they realized they weren’t going to get anywhere with her. Or maybe it was a random officer hovering across the bridge who spotted me high above the river, possibly seeing the jetpack as an anomaly for the area and then connecting what he’d seen to the reports about a man on the run. How they made me doesn’t really matter. The fact is that by the time I was on the city side of the river, my journey toward Echo Park was no longer being made in secret.

  As I skirted the downtown area to the north, I spotted a phalanx of hovercars below me. When I flew farther north, they matched my movement on the grid of streets below. How they were able to follow so well had me confused until I chanced a glance behind me and saw a group of five more cops flying their own jetpacks in the distance—all coming toward me and closing the gap pretty quickly. They must have been in radio contact with their fellows down below. It was looking like I might not make it back to Echo Park.

  Glad that Elvira had been thorough in showing me all the controls, I cranked the jetpack’s speed all the way up and shot a little farther ahead of my pursuers. The cops below me were flying above Sunset Boulevard, their vehicles taking the same higher elevation route that Jetpack Jed had slipped into when faced with traffic. For the police, there were no rules about dropping down to street level when there was no traffic, so they could fly along at a speed close to mine, guided as they were by the other cops behind me.

  Knowing I had to lose at least a few of my pursuers, I veered away from the boulevard when I saw what used to be Chavez Ravine approaching, flying over the Blasters’ stadium and leaving the hovercars with no way to follow. I watched with a little smile as they pulled into the stadium parking lot and came to a st
op. Then I got farther and farther away from them as I crossed the hilly country around the ravine, Echo Park on the other side of one more ridge.

  Of course, my airborne pursuers were still with me, and they were still gaining, but now that I had a shot at landing without being in a nest of officers, all with their guns drawn, I figured I had a fighting chance.

  That was when I thought about what was waiting for me in the Echo Park garage. Unless the timing was right, it would be an empty space. If I was lucky enough to make it there, I’d be dragged out minutes later if I didn’t time my arrival with the scheduled opening of the portal—assuming Guillermo hadn’t given up on me by now.

  I checked my watch and saw it was a minute after noon. If my timepiece was accurate and matched Guillermo’s, I had four minutes to get to this world’s equivalent of my house, get into the garage, and step through the portal. The jetpack’s speed was already cranked up to its maximum, but I pushed on the speed control anyway, hoping it would make even a second’s worth of distance.

  From above, it was a little disorienting once I got over the last ridge. Echo Park spread out before me—the more expensive houses nestled into the hillside and the more affordable ones like mine spread out in a grid beyond. But which street did I need? Had I been on the pavement, it would have been easy to tell, but from up here all the streets looked alike.

  Worse, off to my left I caught the sight of the first police hovercar turning into the neighborhood from Sunset. In another minute or two, they’d be right back under me, my ruse above the stadium rendered pointless.

  And then I caught sight of a landmark—a neighborhood grocery store on a corner below me. There was no way to know for certain that it was the same corner as in my world, but if it was, I knew that my house was two short blocks beyond it and one to the right.

  I hit the controls hard and angled down as sharply as I could, my pursuers less than a hundred yards behind me.

  Now, I was flying up the street I normally would have driven on, and I was rewarded moments later with the sight of what I thought of as my house. Hoping to confuse the cops and buy myself a precious few seconds, I jumped over to the next street but kept my eye on my target—the little garage where the portal should still be open for another minute, maybe two.