Automatic Woman

by Nathan L. Yocum

  I picked out the card and turned it in my fingers. All those little holes, each a mouth ready to tell its story to an awaiting Difference Engine; to those brilliant government computation/information devices. The new gods of our new world.

  McGraw was my key, the third thing on my growing to-do list, after a fresh shirt and brunch.

  My musings were interrupted by a knock on the door, another solid official knock.

  “Who’s there?” I called out. I was answered first with silence, then a heavy thump as the door buckled and shuddered. Someone was trying to kick his way into my flat!

  “Shite,” I whispered. The assailant kicked my door again. I swept all my loose effects back into the lockbox and latched it shut. A third kick. A fourth.

  I threw my lockbox out the window onto the street below. Angry day walkers scattered at the impact. I reached out and caught a firm grip against the building’s drain pipe. The door imploded. A man with an elephant mask charged in with pistol raised. I flung myself out the window. Gun fire popped. The top end of my window exploded and rained glass. I half-slid, half-fell down the pipe to the street below. A loose holding plate sliced my right hand but good. I hit the ground hard. Cobble stones exploded around me. I got to my knees, my feet, my bloody hand found my box and I took off.

  Imagine a fat man charging through and finding cover among the day time denizens of Whitechapel.

  The man in the elephant mask exited my building unmolested and gave chase. I ducked and weaved past buggies and carts and horses and all the regular eternal toiling of peasants.

  I had a block of a head start on Mr. Safari and was zagging against a clear line of fire. My back and legs burned. I peeked behind myself and watched Safari making gains.

  I forced an extra burst of speed into my legs, my football sprint if you will. I then spun myself into an alley, dropped to my knees, and pulled the Engholm pistol from my lockbox. I took the low ground and planned to ambush Mr. Safari with a gut shot. Maybe two, maybe four.

  Blood roared in my ears. I tried to take control of my breathing, but it poured out in hot gasps. At the last second, I remembered to draw back the hammer of my gun. Wagons passed. Men passed. Beasts of burden passed. All at a leisurely stroll, like the day was fine and no villainy was afoot.

  Mr. Safari must be a keen one. He opted not to show for my ambush. I got up and peeked around the corner. He was nowhere, vanished. Maybe he took an alley all his own. Maybe he took off his mask and blended with the regulars. Now that I think about it, I was so distracted by his mask, I didn’t catch what the man had been wearing. I stuffed the Engholm into my jacket pocket and proceeded with my morning business.

  I reentered the street and let the smells and noises of London wash over me. I tried to see everything at once, hear everything at once, smell everything at once, the clomping of hooves against the barks and cries of wagoners against the scent of manure and roasting nuts and my own stale whiskey shirt. No man gets the drop on me in my home territory.

  I entered my tailor’s shop and was met with wide-eyed stares from friendly Elester and his two assistants.

  “You look the dog’s body,” Elester said.

  “I’ve been busy,” I replied. “Got a shirt in my size?”

  “Off the rack?”

  “I’ve not time for better. Trousers too.”

  Elester vanished behind a curtain. One of his assistants leaned in close.

  “You’ve got feathers in your hair,” he whispered.

  I ran a hand through my mop and knocked loose a few white feathers.

  “I pow wow on my off days,” I told him.

  The assistant cocked his head to one side. I’d once seen a cocker spaniel do the same thing. Elester returned with a giant blue and red striped button-up.

  “Christ, Elester! Motley?”

  “Sorry, Jolly. I can have a better shirt for you by tomorrow.”

  “Trousers?”

  “Tomorrow. You’re dripping blood on my floor.”

  I closed my eyes. I’m not religious by nature but I do believe the Lord tests men on some days more than others. I pulled off my jacket and threw it to the ground. My pistol fell out, of course. I took off my whiskey shirt and exposed my teats and belly in all their glory. I pulled the clown shirt on and tucked it smartly. Then I ripped a great big strip of cloth from my dirty shirt and wrapped my bloody hand in it. I donned my jacket and returned the pistol to its pocket. Elester and his assistants watched in silence. I projected an air of “don’t fuck with me or I’ll start cracking skulls.” Successfully, I might add.

  “What do I owe?”

  Elester waved his hand. “Nothing today, Jolly. Just promise you’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll have such lovely things for you to buy.”

  I thanked the tailor for his intention if not his execution.

  The day was growing late. I skipped brunch and decided to meet McGraw hungry and mean. Officer McGraw, now Sergeant McGraw, the man with something to lose.

  I strolled into his precinct twenty minutes later. The dispatch officer recorded my name and went to retrieve McGraw at my request. The precinct buzzed like the Bow Street Firm buzzed, all clacks and clinks and the frequent whoosh of pneumatic tubes.

  Sergeant McGraw approached me with a pissed-off look on his face. At first I thought he recognized me from his investigation, then I remembered my shirt and face and the fact that I now resembled a crazy duffer.

  “You’ve got a feather in your hair, Mr…?” He let the question hang.

  “Fellows.” I presented a hand. “Jacob Fellows, of Bow Street.”

  McGraw slowly nodded his head. He ignored my hand.

  “Formerly of Bow Street, if I’ve heard right,” he said. “Unless there is another Jacob Fellows, maybe one not thrown out of Bow Street.”

  So began our game. No different from all the games of men. Words for advantage. Words for power.

  “You’re right. I’m being punished for misbehaving. You can say I’m a specialist at misbehaving.” I smiled. McGraw didn’t.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “Misbehaving,” I replied.

  “Get out!” McGraw motioned to his dispatch officer. The young man put hard hands on my shoulders and tried to leverage a push to get me through the doors. I ignored the little fella.

  “I heard you could get me a deal on gemstones. Fine diamonds and such,” I said.

  McGraw shoved the dispatch officer aside and put his own forceful hands on me. I let him duck walk me to the front door.

  “Six o’clock. Meet me at Weeks Café,” McGraw whispered and shoved me out into the street.

  “And lose that bloody shirt!”

  So I found myself with time to kill. I took in a meal of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I wandered to the tube station and hired a locker for my lockbox, putting all those cards and scotch and most of my savings under lock and key. I strung the key to the trigger guard of my pistol for safe keeping and walked out onto the station platform.

  People come and go and come and go. To and fro. The tube station is new. All the brass is shiny and reflective despite the hands and bodies that press and lean and shift. The steam engines of the tram belch a sulphurous miasma upon every arrival and departure. City managers spent a sultan’s fortunes on low-light flowers, and perfumes, and agents and myriad counter scents. Anything to beat the foul sulphur rot. In practice, the new scents just add a layer on top of the sulphuric belches. All smells present and accounted for. Some days smell like sulphur and sage. Some like sulphur and roses. Today was sulphur and ambergris. It bled into my new shirt, my old jacket, into the cuffs and frills of all the dapper commuters returning to the beautiful country from their posh jobs. I took the measure of them, and went on my way.

  Weeks Café specialized in pretentious coffees and teas. I ordered a Snap Dragon Delight, whatever the hell that was. A young barista, dressed precariously in a blacksmith’s apron and chemist goggles, squeezed a ball of leaves into a mesh pouch. H
e then gently placed the pouch in my cup and blasted it with a copper steam pipe connected to a bustling apparatus that occupied the entire north wall of the establishment. Pipes shook and rattled and soon the young man was consumed by a cloud of steam. He eventually emerged with my cup. During the assault, the pouch had burst and everything, barista, cup, saucer, was covered in beaded moisture.

  “Make sure you let that cool, sir,” the barista said.

  Heat radiated from the cup. I could no longer see the young man’s eyes through the precipitation of his goggles. At some point in the process, my sinuses cleared for the first time since winter. I took a table and blew on my cup.

  Officer McGraw entered the establishment. He’d changed to plain clothes for our chat. Being inconspicuous I guess. A man trying to hide is unbalanced by spectacle, which meant it was time for me to be difficult.

  McGraw spotted me and walked to my table with long straight strides. His was the walk of a man with purpose. No tea, no coffee, no looking about, straight to the confrontation. I shoved a stool out with my foot and beckoned McGraw to sit. He disregarded the seat and loomed large and imposing over my little tea table.

  “What do you think you have?” He asked.

  I casually took a sip of my tea and was instantly overtaken with burns on my lips and tongue. Hot as bloody hell! I wiped my chin and was happy not to see dead skin and blood.

  “You know what I have. Take a seat, mate. Order a cuppa. You’re making a spectacle.”

  McGraw took a seat.

  “Your shirt is a spectacle,” he replied. No point in a retort, the shirt was indefensible. I reached into my pocket and pulled his Boschon card.

  “Bow Street knows about your cousin. We also know about the diamonds. No need to explain, mate. Innocent or not this card paints you like Dorian Grey.”

  “Is that the only copy?”

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  “What makes you think I won’t just reach over and take it from you?” He said and puffed up his chest.

  “Look into my eyes.”

  He looked.

  “Now down my chest.”

  Oddly enough, he complied.

  “Now down my arm, my hand, the one in my jacket pocket. What do you think that bulge is?”

  “Give me two guesses?” He asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Your lumpy biscuit.”

  “Give it a second guess?” I cocked the hammer of my Engholm. The click was distinct and audible even in the café bustle. The waiter who’d come to take McGraw’s order turned and suddenly found someplace better to be, somewhere far away from the big ugly men. McGraw gave me his best tough guy grin. Bloody filth.

  “So what’s the offer? What does that card cost?”

  “Costs nothing, mate. I need friends, not currency.”

  McGraw’s face turned red with frustration. Some men have no stomach for clever words and riddles.

  “You want me to be your friend? That’s it?”

  “Sure. Of course, all my friends owe me favors.”

  “Listen, fats. I’ll have it in plain English. What do you want?”

  “If I had a friend, a good friend, he’d come to my home with gifts. I love Swan Lake, particularly scenes with the lovely Swan Princess. Call me a fan.”

  McGraw caught on. He looked around real careful to make sure we had no listeners. He leaned in and gave me his library voice.

  “You’re mad, fats,” he said. “I read your file before coming here. You murdered an old man. Claimed his clockworks came to life and did the deed. Wonkers.”

  “Not all his clockworks. Just one,” I whispered back.

  “And you want me to lift this clockwork from a secure location? Past Metro guards?”

  “Yes.”

  McGraw tilted back in his stool. I attempted another sip of my fine Indian magma.

  “I don’t get the benefit,” he said. “You’re a dead man, a hangman’s place holder. I don’t know what favor got you bailed out, but making the Swan disappear won’t save your case. She’s not anywhere near the best evidence against you. You’ve got Metro witnesses placing you smack in the middle of mayhem. You’re the only living man near a dead man and a room of absolute nutter carnage. Have no delusions friend, you will swing for this.”

  “Maybe I’ve unfinished business with the Swan. Something I want to wrap up before my big day.”

  McGraw stopped smiling and gave me a long regarding look, like he was trying to spot the crazy on me.

  “Alright, if you’re playing the fool, then I’ll give you a fool’s bargain. The Swan for my card.”

  “And all the pieces found near her.”

  McGraw nodded. I took my gun hand out of my jacket pocket and we shook on the deal.

  “Come find me at the Piece Work Inn when you’re done. When will you have her?”

  “Soon, fats. Real soon.”

  McGraw got up and left in the same deliberate point A to B line he’d entered with.

  I abandoned my molten cup. Our waiter was talking to a manager and from the way he glanced over at me, I’m sure the conversation was not complimentary. I’m not an expert in the finer points of law, but I imagine armed conflict in a tea shop violates the terms of my bail. So I left.

  The Piece Work Inn was really more a brothel than an inn. It was an inn in the barest sense. There were furnished rooms that a gentleman could hire for long or short terms. The building itself stood three stories, making it the largest structure in its neck of the city. It even contained a lift, a modern marvel strangely placed among the whores and desperate men. Prostitutes dominated the first floor. Women of all ages and not a few races, made common to each other in their dress. They wore bright silks and fur like plumage on tropical birds. Also like birds, they cooed and squawked and loosed words without meaning. Faces painted like Zulu warriors. The dominant smell of the lobby was talcum layered onto the musk of sex. I’d like to say that my past dealings with the Piece Work were purely professional. I guess they were if you take into account the oldest profession.

  What the Piece Work lacked in respectability, it made up for in discretion. I’d met the doorman and clerk on half a dozen occasions, but never exchanged names. The sign-in ledger read like a Smith-Jones family reunion. Ever the contrarian, I signed myself in as “Hugh Jarse” and proceeded to my room.

  The room itself was clean. The walls were cleaned and scrubbed; a faux-Persian rug centered the room. Regardless, I stripped the quilt and sheets off the bed. Gross is gross and I’ll not risk sleeping in the residue of strangers. I took stock of my surroundings. The Piece Work had natural security in the form of a pimp conglomerate, who technically stood as the owners of the establishment. On the down side, my window was nailed shut, a preemptive measure against customers skipping out on their tabs. There was a knock on my door. Not authoritarian this time, but soft, polite, almost apologetic. Far too early for McGraw, I hoped for one person to be on the other side of that door. I opened it, and there she was.

  Mary Kelly, often called Dark Mary, but never by me. She claimed to be Black Irish and possessed the dark curls to prove it. I knew better. Her eyes were cornflower and her voice turned to Welsh inflections when she got excited, meaning she was about as Irish as a Scotch terrier. Mary smiled at me.

  “Jolly, I saw you in the lobby. Here for fun?”

  She invited herself in and put a hand on my swollen face. Her fingers were weightless, like chicken bones ready to break at a rough grasp. The skin of her face was covered thick in beige makeup, then blush. Her eyes were painted gold to compliment the cornflowers. Some of the shadow seeped into crow’s feet. She had once been beautiful, but her face was losing shape from too much drink and long nights of being a whore.

  “My poor big baby,” she cooed. I never liked that pet name.

  “Listen, Mary.” I reached up for her hand with my own. She grasped my bandaged paw with both of hers.

  “Jolly, this is serious.”

  The wound was tu
rning red and tender. I figured a doctor’s visit would be in order when all this business wrapped up.

  “Nothing is serious, love, nothing but death and debt. I’d love to talk, but I’m on the job.”

  Mary looked into my eyes and smiled. We had a past, one I don’t want to talk about. Though given her profession I guess the math is simple. We knew each other.

  “You need someone to take care of you, Jolly. You look like you fought a bear.”

  “You should see the bear.”

  She giggled and put her hand over her mouth. “You want me to come back? When your business is over?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t have to think hard about that one.

  “I’ll leave you to it then.” She turned but I grabbed her hand and searched for more to say. It’d been a long time since I’d heard a friendly voice, and Mary, well, ladies of ill-repute often have specialties, things they are known for. I never asked, but I can guess Mary’s specialty is making blokes think she cares, like a wife or a sweetheart. Whenever we talked she looked into my eyes. When I joked she smiled and laughed. The times we’d been together. Well, there I go again.

  “Thanks, love. Don’t mention to anyone I’m here.”

  She gave me a look that said the request was unnecessary. Discretion was law in this house.

  “Let me know if any strange blokes stop by. Any non-regulars.”

  “Of course.” She kissed my cheek. Paused for a moment, then kissed my mouth. It was just a peck, but… Lord. Why did God make creatures as complex as women for creatures as simple as men? Before I could say anything smart or funny, she left and closed the door behind her. I sat on my mattress and started the waiting game, the long wait. The unpredictable length of time from the now to the moment McGraw returned with what’s mine.