by Mel Gilden
His big workman's hands came up to touch the knot of his pale blue tie. He wore a white sport coat and pants as gray as mouse fur. Shoes were black and highly polished.
Nobody was paying any attention to him. I strolled over and put out my hand. "Mr. Toodemax?" I said.
The androids closed in, and he looked at me. The cold eyes were the color of the bottom of a tin washtub and they did not blink. He said, "Yes?"
"I just wanted to say hello. I'll be at the lab with Mr. Will day after tomorrow."
He said, "You don't look like the kind of person who Mr. Will would employ."
He was right, of course, but the air was heavy with credulity gas. He would believe anything I told him. I said, "Yes I am. I am just the sort of person he would hire. But he forgot to tell me where the lab is. It's a good idea for you to tell me."
"I know nothing about a lab." He looked beyond me. I don't know what he saw but it drew his mouth into a straight line.
"Mr. Will wants you to tell me."
He spread his hands and said, "Look, mister. I expected to be harangued tonight. I guess that's why I'm here. But this wasn't the subject. Understand?"
"Sure. I've talked to tough guys before." My confidence was all bluff. Mr. Toodemax frightened me, and not just because he was bigger than I was.
"Tough can be arranged," he said, as sinister as if he'd been wearing a black caul.
"Sorry," I said. "I thought you were somebody else." I stepped aside and let him pass. A crowd stood around us. Nobody in it said a word. I'd seen faces like theirs on hood ornaments. Mr. Toodemax had been looking at the crowd over my shoulder. Now it opened an aisle and Mr. Toodemax used it to get into the rec hall.
I followed the crowd into the building and stood near a door with Bill beside me. I only half-listened to the meeting. Because of the credulity gas, Mr. Toodemax was having an easy time explaining why he wanted to plow the houses under and plant condos. People who'd been wanting his skin tacked on a wall now nodded and smiled.
The part of my brain that wasn't listening to the meeting was working hard on the conversation I'd had with Max Toodemax. I threw another idea into my shoe box and the other ideas slid into place all around it. I didn't know where Zamp and the others were yet, but I knew what Mr. Will's game was. If I could stop him I could save everybody, including these folks having the meeting. If I couldn't stop him, nothing mattered. Not who lived where, or even whether I saved anybody. We'd all be picking grit out of our teeth. Those who had teeth.
The meeting was dull, and, given the credulity gas, predictable. I backed out of the warm room with Bill and strolled toward Whipper's house. The air seemed cooler now, but maybe I'd just gotten used to the heavy warmth in the rec hall.
The night was beautiful, and I could even see a few stars floating over the ocean like angels. Far out on the water, one of the stars could have been a boat. The rec hall was far behind me along with the credulity gas, and I had another few blocks to walk. At the moment, I was passing a lot of closed stores that during the day sold food or souvenirs or clothes. They were as gray and cold as tinsel in a dustbin.
Somebody grumbled into the right side of my head, "You and your bot walk down toward the water, jaunty-jolly, you know what I mean?" He stuck something into my ribs for emphasis. I didn't think it was his finger.
As I walked toward the ghostly surf I chanced a glance over my shoulder. Prodding me and Bill along were all four of Max Toodemax's androids. They were not holding carrots.
Chapter 18
Home Is Where The Murder Is
ESCAPING would be too easy if all I had to do was tell Bill to whoop as loud as he could, but I tried it anyway. He whooped and nearly froze the ocean with the noise but the four androids kept walking. Earplugs. They had learned their lesson well.
Pretty soon we would be on the hard sand down by the water and everybody's footing would be more secure. I turned before we got there and held my open hands to my sides, showing I wasn't heeled. Good old Bill, standing next to me, did the same. "Hang on!" I said quietly against the thunder of the breaking waves. The androids couldn't hear me. I was betting they couldn't read lips.
I grabbed Bill by the wrist and swung him at the nearest android, knocking him down. At the end of Bill's arc I let go and he flew off. While the other three, automatically and without thinking, were watching Bill fly through the air, I climbed the first android, grabbing his blue plastic collar on the way to the top. I leapt from the top of his head and was on the other three before Bill hit the sand, knocking them one into the other. They would be confused for less than a second. In that time, I plucked their collars one-two-three.
The four androids lay unmoving in the sand. I sat on the chest of one of them, breathing hard. The whole evening's entertainment had taken maybe three seconds, but my body would be hollering about it for weeks.
"You OK, Bill?" I called.
Bill pulled his head out of the sand. A small whirring motor began inside him and sand sprayed from his mouth in a plume. The whirring stopped and as he walked toward me, he said, "I let go, Boss." "Don't worry about it. Bill. You did good."
"I do good work."
I agreed with him. I dropped the blue plastic collars near the bodies and walked down to the hard wet sand. The waves curled and fell with crashes, then sneaked up onto the land. Bill trotted next to me on my other side and we went home. Breathing was still my major concern. While I did it, I wondered if I would ever be safe again. Androids were everywhere, and all of them were made by SA. I'd never know which one had been ordered to kill me till I found out the final permanent way.
Evidently somebody had gotten tired of my snooping around. Whether it was Whipper's father—who less and less looked like a saint—or Mr. Toodemax, or somebody else, they would keep trying to off me until they got the job done right. Of course, I could stop snooping, but that didn't seem like much fun.
By the time I got back to the house I was breathing normally and I'd stopped thinking about Mr. Toodemax and his goons altogether. There was no point scaring myself. I had a job to do. Sure. I'd stopped thinking about them. Stand in the corner and don't think about strawberry yoyogurt.
I opened the door and heard the TV. I walked through the living room, didn't see Doewanit, and assumed he was in the bathroom. In the kitchen, Bill sat on the sink counter while I made a phone call. "Got the number of De-Wilde's Bunch?"
Bill gave it to me and I dialed. After three rings an answering machine came on the line and told me what business hours were. The machine graciously offered to take a message. At the beep I said, "This is Zoot Marlowe leaving a message for Caria DeWilde. I was there a few days ago with Whipper Will asking impertinent questions about credulity gas. I have a theory you might want to test. Try mixing Melt-O-Mobile gas and android cooties with outside air and see what you get. Let me know." I hung up, suddenly wondering who besides Caria DeWilde would hear that message and if it was just another nail in my coffin. Then I decided it didn't matter.
I considered calling Mr. Daise about my credulity gas theory, but in his present form I didn't think he'd appreciate the information. I'd liked him better as a camel. A lobster, even.
I hoped that Doewanit was still in the mood to watch TV. I still wanted to find Zamp and the others but I had no idea how to continue. Stopping Mr. Will seemed even more unlikely. Watching TV would give me an excuse to sit in one place and not think about anything.
I went back into the living room and the TV was showing somebody in diving gear making a lot of bubbles. Then I saw him. I hadn't seen him from the kitchen because of the couch. I didn't want to see him now, not the way he was.
Irv Doewanit lay faceup on the floor with a look of strangulated terror on his face. His mouth and eyes were wide open, his bow tie was askew. His clothes—what was left of them—looking like shredded wheat. His hair was too stiff to be mussed, but it was mashed down, as if somebody'd sat on it. His face was scratched with bloody parallel lines, over and over until not much of that fac
e was left. His limbs were twisted in unnatural ways, in ways that would be painful if he weren't beyond pain. Some big animal had killed him. Some big animal like a saber-toothed tiger. An android.
I looked at him for a long time. I got up to turn off the television, then went back to look at him again. Irv Doewanit had been a nice guy who wanted nothing more than to walk the walk. He'd purposely turned his back on a million-dollar job so that he could solve crimes out of a ratty little hole of an office in Hollywood, like Philip Marlowe. He should have stayed where he was. Maybe we all should have. I saw again the surprise on the android's face when I'd swung Bill at him. No android would fall for that again.
One of Doewanit's hands was open but the other clenched something. I pried the fist open and found a tip of wood painted blue. It might have meant nothing at all but I knew what the thing was—the tip of the wave on the back of the "Surf City" music box Darken Stormy had given to Whipper Will, the little keepsake she'd been so attracted to.
The music box wasn't on the mantel. I looked for it all over the room, starting with the fireplace, which held nothing but the curled brown breakfast-food remains of last winter's fire. The surfers were not the neatest people I knew, so I found a lot of things that didn't matter: stuff like half-sandwiches that were so old the bread was like a layer of sponge and the filling was now dried slime, as tempting as old snot; like crumbling brown newspapers; like bobby pins and pencil stubs and change.
I didn't find the music box anywhere in the living room, so I started on the rest of the house. I got Bill to help me. He was fast and efficient, but didn't have my passion. I worked quickly with the viciousness of a man not really looking but just tearing things apart because he's angry and there's nothing else to do.
I turned up things that had been undisturbed for years and no longer had names. That and tons of dust I got hot and tired sneezing at. I found no music box. It wasn't there. If it had been there, I'd have found it. I had to assume that or go even more crazy. Irv had not just grabbed the music box as it fell. Somebody had taken it, probably after a struggle.
A little wild-eyed, I went back into the living room and dropped onto the couch. I could hear Bill in one of the bedrooms moving things around. I'd been all through that room and I didn't think he'd find anything. I looked at Irv Doewanit lying silently on the floor. You're never that silent in life, not even when you're sleeping, not even when you're sick. He was too silent to be good company.
While Bill and I were at the tenants' meeting somebody or somebody and his friends had come here with at least one saber-toothed tiger. This somebody had come here either for the express purpose of killing Irv Doewanit—in which case the fact the music box was missing was just a blind—or to get the music box itself—in which case the murder of Irv Doewanit was incidental. His only crime was that he'd been home. Murdered for a music box. Irv might like that.
It was good enough for a Charlie Sundown episode. I didn't know of anybody who was after Irv except Fran Ignatio of SA,and she probably was not the type to commit murder or even have it done. If she acquired cell donations for the company she was probably just hired help. SA couldn't murder everybody that turned them down. It must happen all the time. Word would get around.
Therefore, either Irv had enemies he hadn't spoken about—not even during that one drunken night—or my one and only suspect was Darken Stormy. Nobody else would kill to get a cheap, not very pretty music box. Unless there was something about the music box I didn't know, which was certainly possible but unlikely.
Irv Doewanit had not exactly been a good friend, but we had been pleasantly acquainted, and he had come here seeking sanctuary. I owed him something. Because he'd asked for help, and because in dying in this terrible way he'd given me a certain amount of leverage against Darken Stormy. Even if she hadn't murdered Irv or ordered it done, she might see the logic in the police thinking she had. If I could prove otherwise, that might be worth something to her, something like the present location of Zamp and the surfers.
I stared at Irv again and said out loud, "I wish you were here, Irv. I'd like to talk this over with somebody." Irv didn't answer me.
I went into the kitchen, punched a number, and got the night operator out at Willville. In a frayed voice I said, "I'd like to speak with Whipper Will."
A woman who sounded as if I'd just awakened her said, "I'm sorry, sir. I'm not authorized to give out that information."
Sounding a little more angry than I wanted to, I said, "Look, I don't want the combination to the safe. Just connect me. Tell him it's Zoot Marlowe and see if he'll talk to me."
Without saying anything she went away leaving me with relentlessly jolly music. I tried not to think about this evening again, but it kept coming back to me like a nightmare or a greasy dinner. The music went back to the bird cage where that kind of music goes and a phone began to ring. After half a ring Whipper answered it. He asked where I was and I told him.
"Any progress?" he said.
I glanced in the direction of the living room floor and said, "I have a lead. It's kind of complicated. Tell me about that 'Surf City' music box Darken Stormy gave you."
"Just a music box."
"Could it be some kind of collector's item?"
"Maybe. But only if you're a very desperate kind of collector."
"Why keep it?"
Silence hung at his end. I couldn't even hear him breathing. He said, "Tell all, Zoot. You didn't call in the middle of the night just to question my preference in souvenirs."
Whipper was good at keeping secrets. Mine, his, I didn't know who else's. I told him what I'd found when I came home. It was his house. He ought to know anyway.
More silence came from his end, then a single inhalation of breath, and then he spoke in a voice that was calm and solid as an old tree. He said, "As far as I know, it was just a music box, made out of wood and having a cheap Swiss movement. I kept it because Darken and I used to be a hot item and even after we cooled off I still liked her well enough to want to be reminded of her occasionally."
"Bingo must have enjoyed that."
"She didn't mind. She has old boyfriends too. They mean as much as old King Tut."
"We're losing the point here. Can you think of anybody but Darken who might want that music box?"
"No."
"Then I'll have to talk with her. Do you have her address and phone number?"
"Wait a minute." He went away across rugs and hardwood floors. A TV set played. Far off a door closed. Then he came back and gave me an address and phone number he assured me were in Los Angeles County. I told him thanks.
Tensely, he said, "You think she killed him?"
"Her or a friend. Mr. Will can afford good friends."
"My father isn't a murderer."
"You're probably right. Thanks again." I hung up in his face. Whipper was Iron Will's son and it was expected he would try to put the best light on anything his father did. I didn't have that problem.
I told Bill to remember Darken Stormy's address and phone number, then called her. When she answered I pushed down the plunger, hanging up. I should have known she'd be home. It was late. She had to work the next day. But I didn't really want to talk to her yet. I had other things to do first.
I took my finger off the plunger and got a dial tone. I took a deep breath, and dialed 911. When an eager young voice came on the line I said, "I want to report a murder. Sergeant Preston will want to know about it."
The voice took some information from me, and I hung up. I sat down in the kitchen to wait. The living room was a little crowded.
Somebody knocked at the front door, but it was too soon for the police. Besides, they would have arrived with a blast of sirens and a knocking like a rain of bowling balls. This was a tap-tap-tapping from the other end of the world. At first I hadn't even been sure I'd heard it.
I met Bill in the hallway walking in my direction. He said, "Nothing, Boss."
"You still do good work. Bill."
> "Yeah." I took a big chance and opened the door. You never knew who'd be knocking late at night. Deadly androids, friends needing money or a place to stay. Anything. I opened the door. Standing there on the mat, smiling shyly, was Grampa Zamp.
Chapter 19
Alone Again Again
TO say that I had not been expecting Zamp was to say that Custer had not been expecting Indians. I'm afraid I gaped.
Zamp said, "Can I come in?" He seemed to be enjoying my surprise, which he would, so that was all right. Little else about him made sense. He was dressed in flowered walking shorts and a maroon turtlenecked sweater. He'd been wearing the shorts when the androids dragged him away from the Convention Center, but I had never before seen the turtlenecked sweater.
Just to see what would happen, I said, "Good. You're here."
He looked puzzled, then laughed and came in. I led him to the kitchen. On the way he saw Irv Doewanit. His eyes got very large and he said, "I know trouble is your business, but I didn't know you took your work home."
"It happens in the best places. Know him?"
"No. Should I?"
I shook my head. This was getting me nowhere. I said, "So, where have you been?" He looking at Irv Doewanit's body as if it were a fish pond. "It's a long story. I've been around. You know?" Old Irv made me nervous. I walked into the kitchen and sat in one of the chairs. Bill and Zamp followed. When we were all cozy, I said, "I have plenty of time. How did you escape?"
"Got a brewski?" Zamp said.
I got him one. He opened it and took a sip. He put the can aside and studied me.
I said, "It must be one swell story. I'm waiting to hear it. 'Zamp's daring escape from the clutches of evil.' " He nodded and said, "Come on. I want to show you something."
He led me back through the living room and then paused to let me go first through the hall. I went first. A moment later, his hands were around my throat and squeezing hard. I backed into him and crushed him against the wall. He made an involuntary "Oof!" and his hands loosened briefly. I turned, brought my hands up between his arms, and knocked them aside. In his eyes was the madness of a rabid dog. "Don't you recognize your old Grampa Zamp?" he said, and laughed, reminding me of jungle documentaries I'd seen on PBS.
