by Mel Gilden
‘I never liked to be alone.’
‘Me neither.’ Bill stood up and stretched his little metal body as if he’d done a day’s work, though what a little metal body would have to stretch, I don’t know. ‘Let’s go visiting,’ he said.
We were heading for the garage when the telephone rang. I stood at the front door with my hand on the knob. I could have turned it and walked out, but I didn’t. I waited. The phone kept ringing. I was just about to go answer it myself when somebody came in from outside and picked it up. A moment later Bingo called out, ‘Zoot!’
‘Yeah?’ I called.
‘It’s for you.’
I walked down the hall thinking about who might be calling me. Not many people had my number. In the kitchen I looked at the phone waiting on the counter. Just waiting there for me, and for no reason at all it had taken on the appearance of an ominous creature. I stood there for a moment, waiting for my hand to decide to pick up the receiver. When it did, I had to swallow once before I said, ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Marlowe?’
‘Yes?’
‘I never thought I’d get the chance to say "Hello, Marlowe" to anybody.’ The voice was old and comfortable and had a swing all its own.
‘Just to people named Marlowe. Hello, Mr Chesnik.’
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘A lucky guess. What can I do for you?’
‘Always with the patter.’ The volume of his voice went into a dive, and I caught only the first few words of what he said next. ‘What I called about is humna humna humna ...’
I asked Mr Chesnik to speak up.
‘YOU can’t be too careful,’ he said. Then he went on, his voice a harsh whisper, ‘You asked me to call you if I heard anything about surf-bots.’
‘Good memory.’ He liked the patter. I’d patter at him.
‘Good enough. Yes, good enough.’ He wet his lips with a smack, and said, ‘Big things are going on at a warehouse downtown.’
‘How big?’
‘Big enough for a wally like you.’ On Chesnik’s end of the phone, the compressor began to chug. Over it, Chesnik said, ‘SSR has hired a lot of people to help them with a project. They weren’t too specific, but I think it has something to do with surf-bots.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I been in this business a long time. I got an instinct.’
‘They hire you too?’
‘Another lucky guess.’
‘What’s the address of the warehouse?’
‘You don’t need it. You can come with me. Anybody asks, you’re just hired help.’
‘Reading those Chandler books has done you some good,’ I said.
‘A good memory. Come soon. We don’t want to be late for our shift.’
I thanked him and hung up.
Bill said, ‘What’s the good word?’
‘Clue. That’s a good word,’ I said over my shoulder. I was halfway down the hall. In a second I was in Whipper Will’s room looking for work clothes. I found a blue cotton shirt and a pair of cutoff jeans. The shirt ballooned around me, but the jeans, cut off as they were, were about the right length. My shoes would have to do.
Bill had watched me change. He said, ‘You figure visiting that address will be heavy work?’
‘We’re not visiting that address. At least, not right now.’ I walked fast to where the car was.
‘I thought you wanted to find Heavenly Daise.’
‘I found her. If she has a mailing address, she probably isn’t in much trouble. On the other hand, it looks as if my surf-bots are about to boil over.’
It was about midaftenoon by the time I pulled up in front of Acme Robots. The place did not look any more prosperous than it had the first time. When we got out of the car, Benny began to bark through the fence. Then he forgot about it and sat down to scratch behind one ear.
Mr Chesnik opened the front door and hurried us inside. He seemed to be dressed in the same sweater and slacks as he had been the last time I’d seen him. His hair was still perfect. In the dim light, he squinted through his glasses at Bill and said, ‘Who’s this?’
‘The robot duck you paid for. His name’s Bill.’
‘Can we trust him?’
‘He’s an SSR robot. You tell me.’
Mr Chesnik shook his head as he laughed a little to himself. It was not an energetic laugh, but it did the job. He stopped abruptly and said, ‘Come on. We don’t want to be late.’
Chapter 21
Hired Help
MR CHESNIK led us through the stuffy garage to the fenced-in yard. Benny bounded over to us, got a whiff of me, and backed away. Mr Chesnik said, ‘Bad Benny! Bad dog.’ We piled into the old Oldsmobile and soon were out on the street with Benny, locked up behind the gate barking and scratching.
Nobody said anything as Mr Chesnik drove up Venice Boulevard
to the freeway and then east. Traffic was heavy going our way, but it was as nothing compared to the stuff going west. Going west the traffic looked like mile after mile of car park. All that high-priced flash, all dressed up and nowhere to go.
We got off at Alameda and turned north into the industrial district. Heat and dust rose from asphalt that had been corrugated by the weight of heavy trucks that climbed over the street day and night. Mr Chesnik swore as the Oldsmobile jumped in and out of potholes and over long bumpy stretches. To make the ride even more interesting, railway tracks ran down the middle of the street, shiny as the stripe on a headwaiter’s trousers. Big tractor-trailer trucks roared around us like lions fighting over meat.
‘I hate downtown,’ Mr Chesnik said as he wrestled with his steering wheel.
‘There must be worse places,’ I said.
‘Find one,’ he said and pulled up to a red light. A truck pulled up beside us like a building, rolling on wheels that came halfway up our windows. The truck’s engine gargled gravel until the light turned green, then began to move forward so slowly, it barely seemed to be moving at all.
Knots of men stood in doorways. They wore shabby clothes with dirtier places at the wrists and elbows. Some men were talking or even shouting at each other. Mostly they stood, waiting for something that would never happen, and they knew it would never happen. The smell of cooking grease came over the heat like cheap devils looking for Hell.
Further up there was nobody on the sidewalks but the occasional man or woman dressed for business and walking past warehouses very quickly. Mr Chesnik turned a corner on to a street where warehouses lined up on either side, getting smaller until they met in the distance. Mr Chesnik said, ‘Union Station is around here somewhere. You remember?’
‘Yeah. It’s in Playback:
‘A terrible book. Chandler should have stopped before he wrote it.’
‘Sometimes it’s hard to stop.’
Mr Chesnik glanced at me and said nothing, but grunted fairly eloquently.
We came to a warehouse where a lot of men were rushing around, carrying clipboards, pushing dollies, all busy and intent on their business. Mr Chesnik pulled up to a barrier next to a guard station in the shape of an upended shoe box and spoke to the guard who stepped out the door. He was an SSR guard, and he looked a lot more awake than the guy in the SSR lobby. The guard peered into the car and said, ‘They work for you?’
‘Hired help,’ Mr Chesnik said. He shrugged.
The guard shook his head, but he stepped back into the guard station to push a button that raised the barrier. We drove into what looked like a small town of warehouses. Racing among them was a pack of small, powerful vehicles — Mr Chesnik called them forklifts — their engines whining about all the heavy lifting they were doing.
A guard waved us to the right. Further on, another guard waved us into a parking lot where a lot of cars and trucks were already standing. We followed a crowd of men through a gate at one end of the parking lot. I wish I had a nickel for every glance Bill and I got.
With the other men, we walked into a warehouse where there were six or e
ight lines to get into. We chose one and stood in it.
‘This is my hired help,’ Mr Chesnik said when he got to the front of the line.
The man on the other side of the table wore crisp work clothes that had never seen work heavier than pushing a pencil, but he had a face that had once been used as a dance floor. Sparse reddish hair was slicked down in waves across his lumpy head. He took a look at me and Bill and mumbled something about the trouble being an equal opportunity employer. But he gave each of us a yellow slip and told us to move along.
Mr Chesnik read his yellow slip and said, ‘I got the office.’
I had warehouse A-2. Bill had the same. Bill and I each shook hands with Mr Chesnik and thanked him. He said, ‘I wish you luck.’
‘You think we’ll need it?’
‘You’ll need that and more, schweetheart.’ He laughed as if that were funny and was still laughing to himself when he turned and walked towards the office. Bill and I went to look for warehouse A-2.
Warehouse A-2 was nothing special, just a big metal box where people with big secrets could keep them. We checked in with the foreman, a tall thin man with a long face and plenty of jaw. He wore a dirty white coat over his clothes and carried a clipboard, but I never saw him look at it. He said his name was Barbies and that we’d get along just fine if we did our work. He sneered at Bill and said, ‘You ain’t no heavy-duty ‘bot.’
‘I’m small but I’m wiry,’ Bill said. ‘Wiry, get it?’ Bill tried out his laugh on Barbies but got nowhere. Barbies just looked at him.
Then he looked at me. ‘You ain’t so heavy-duty yourself.’
I just smiled at him. When the smile penetrated into his brain, Barbies swore and told us to each take a dolly and transport crates from the warehouse on to one of the waiting trucks.
I looked over at the truck being loaded. It was unmarked but for a serial number on the cab door. SSR was keeping a low profile
We joined the conga line of men pushing empty dollies back into the big cool space of the warehouse. We each had a turn taking a crate loaded by a couple of beefy guys who should have been big enough to satisfy even Barbies.
The crates were the size and shape of coffins. And after pushing one of them on a dolly at too low an angle, I found out that they were heavy. I accidentally pushed my dolly into a pallet of cardboard boxes, and the guy behind me growled at me to watch it. I walked my crate across the metal tail the truck had let down and into the truck, where the dolly rumbled angrily on the distressed wooden floor. Two beefy guys who might have been the brothers of the guys at the other end man-handled the crate off the dolly, and another guy stacked it neatly. While I took a breath and waited for my arms to stop shaking, one of the manhandlers told me to move along.
‘How you doing?’ I asked Bill as I rolled the empty cart back into the warehouse.
‘Hey, look, if you think hiking around in that sewer again would help, let me know.’
‘Yeah.’ I took a sudden right turn between crates stacked over my head, and kept pushing my dolly down the narrow passage. Somebody who I hoped was Bill was right behind me. I didn’t have time to look. Not yet.
The first chance I got, I turned left along another narrow passage, moving back into the warehouse. The sounds of men working grew dim with distance, and with the walls of crates between them and me. I turned right the first chance I got, and then left again, always with somebody behind me. At last I came to the wall of the warehouse. It was made of corrugated iron covered with dents and skid marks and scratches that told me it had been treated as gently as an old pipe wrench. I turned and looked at Bill. Bill was looking at me, waiting.
I said, ‘I need to get inside one of these crates. Any ideas?’
‘Just one,’ he said. He stood up his dolly and went to one of the crates nearest us, rubbing his hands together. He then stuck the edge of his beak into the crack between the crate and its lid. He worked his beak up and back like a crowbar and soon, after not making more noise than the Inner Sanctum squeaking door, he pried the lid loose.
‘That’s a hell of an idea,’ I said. I put my hands on the lid and held them there, not moving. I listened for the sounds of somebody coming to investigate the noise. I heard men working, but that was all. The squeaking had been one more industrial noise in a world full of industrial noises.
I lifted the lid off and saw just about what I had expected to see. Inside the crate was a golden surf-bot packed in plastic foam cut to fit him exactly. He wore an SSR band around his head and a very small yellow bathing suit that made the gold of his body look dingy. Next to him, on edge in another foam compartment, was a white surfboard. The robot’s blue eyes were open and looking at me, or through me to nothing at all.
Stapled to the outside of the box was a flat plastic bag with papers inside. I looked through the plastic at the top sheet and saw that this particular crate was one of six going to a Mr T. Schmidt, Malibu CA. Delivery date was the next day, the day of the Surf-O-Rama. Still looking at the paper, I said, ‘My friends can’t compete in the Surf-O-Rama because somebody destroyed their surf-bots and then made sure no other surf-bots were available. This surf-bot and five others like it are to be delivered to a Mr T. Schmidt, Malibu CA. Would you care to bet against the T standing for Tankhauser?’
‘Not me,’ said Bill. It occurred to me that Bill could not possibly know what I was talking about.
‘If these surf-bots don’t show up in Malibu tomorrow, Gotterdammerung won’t be able to compete in the Surf-O-Rama either. That’ll make things nice and even.’ I turned to Bill and smiled. I imagined that it looked like the smile on the face of a body that’s been dead three days. I don’t know what it really looked like. I said, ‘What if they gave a Surf-O-Rama, and nobody came?’
Bill opened his mouth, about to say something, but I never heard what it was. Lightning flashed in my skull, and then black clouds closed in.
Chapter 22
A Family Resemblance
BEFORE I opened my eyes, there was the smell of the ocean. It filled my universe. It was all there was. Then I heard the hiss of gentle waves petting the shore like a lover who couldn’t get enough. I lay there on my side for a while, inhaling and listening. Whatever was below me crunched as I breathed. Little crunches, like two crumpled pieces of waxed paper kissing.
I didn’t feel bad, or not as bad as I would expect to feel after being sapped. I felt grey and fuzzy, as limp and out of focus as the lint that collects in the screen trap at the back of a clothes dryer. Still without opening my eyes, I touched the back of my head, the place from which the lightning had come. A tender hump back there sent pain along my nerves like rivulets of molten silver.
Then I heard the clicking sound. It seemed impatient. It had been impatient before, in a secret room beneath the SSR building. I opened my eyes a little, squinting against the light of a bright summer day. The ceiling was sky blue, painted with unmoving clouds. I sat up, trying not to be sick. I succeeded, but it was a close contest.
My eyes teared but were able to open a little wider. We were on a beach, or an incredible imitation. It reminded me of the beach diorama at the Daise mansion, but this one was more complete. Instead of looking down on tidal pools and breaking waves. Bill and I were sitting in a sandbox about twenty paces across, from which we looked out at what could almost pass for the Pacific Ocean. I could just see where the sand ended and the painting of beach began. The horizon where the water met the sky was not quite right. The painter had tried, but maybe nobody could get it just right.
Bill stood next to me with a piece of paper attached to the top of his head. On it was the same notice that had been on Bill’s head when I’d uncrated him. I pulled it off, and Bill cried, ‘Look out!’ I looked around suddenly, sending more pain zigzagging through my head. Behind me, leaning casually against a big and artistically weathered rock, were three gorillas. They were having a good time watching us.
‘Look out!’ Tiger squeaked, not sounding much like Bill.
Duke just smiled and pulled a banana from somewhere. He chomped on it, not closing his mouth very much while he did it.
I said, ‘You guys are still the same fun-loving matched cufflinks.’
‘Huh?’said Tiger.
‘Shut up,’ Spike said.
‘I must have blanked out,’ Bill said.
I said, ‘You had help,’ and nodded in the direction of the gorillas. ‘Meet the Larry, Moe, and Curly of organized crime.
‘What kind of crack is that?’ said Tiger.
‘Shut up,’ said Spike.
I shook my head — but gently — and said, ‘You guys need a new writer.’
‘How about this, then?’ Spike said. ‘We got the Surf-O-Rama all locked up.’
‘What’s that to me?’
‘What’s that to your friends?’ Spike said.
‘I guess you’re not interested in Heavenly Daise anymore, then.’
They looked around, suddenly nervous. Even Duke stopped eating. ‘Nix,’ said Spike. ‘Nix.’
‘That’s enough,’ a new voice said. It was a scratchy voice out of a nightmare. A not-quite-human voice, but carrying baggage that a human would understand. I looked at the spot from where the voice had come. By this time I could see pretty well, and what I saw was worth seeing.
The voice had come from a big lobster as long as both my hands spread out and touching. It paced a little on the rock where it was sitting, the tips of its thin legs making the impatient clicking sound against the hard surface. Its feelers never stopped gently whipping the air. The lobster said, ‘Get out, the three of you. I want to talk to Marlowe and his ‘bot alone.’
Spike growled, but Tiger said, ‘You can’t talk like that to us. We’re customers.’
Spike didn’t have a chance to tell Tiger to shut up before the lobster said, ‘You have your robots, or will soon. I have my money. Our association is at an end. When I say "Get out," I mean it.’
Duke looked for a plate to drop his banana peel, didn’t see one he liked, and gloomily tucked it back where he’d gotten it when it was full. He followed Spike and Tiger through a door that slid open in the wall, ruining the illusion that we were outside, giving the setup all the charm of a plaster cupid. A green wall, the same institutional green that grated the walls at the Malibu police station, was all I could see through the doorway.
