Tubular Android Superheroes

by Mel Gilden

  Every condo looked the same from the outside—like a big old wood-frame house. They were white and had tasteful gray window frames and doors with a little scrollwork around them. Box hedges grew under each window. All very tidy. All very boring. I followed the numbers down the street and found Darken's condo. Just for the sake of anybody who might be watching, I walked up to the front door and knocked. Nobody home, of course.

  In a low voice, I said, "You have a skeleton key for this place, Bill?" "Me, Boss?" Bill said, sounding shocked.

  "That would be illegal." A small door in his belly opened, letting loose a cable that whipped around. At the end of the cable was a flat piece of metal with bumps and slots in it. "Standard equipment?" I said, a little shocked myself. "It's a diagnostic sensor. Perfectly legal."

  "Sure," I said. "It's all in how you use it."

  "Right, Boss."

  "Open the door, Bill."

  "Right, Boss. Watch my dust."

  He plugged himself into the door and stood still. I blocked him with my body. Not even the cable moved. Tiny electronic tones came from the keyhole. They stopped and the door clicked.

  Bill extracted his diagnostic sensor and it was sucked back into where it had come from. I imagined the eyes of the world were on me. I wanted to look around, but I didn't dare. I had already been standing at the door for a long time. I turned the doorknob and pushed the door with my shoulder. It allowed itself to be pushed and I went inside.

  I was in a small entryway blinking into the dimness and the smell. The smell reminded me of the thick human musk at Whipper's house;

  Darken's place was not a lot cleaner.

  Before me, stairs went up to a second floor, each step displaying a shoe or article of clothing. To one side was a dining room with papers and dirty dishes on the table and beyond that a small living room. The kitchen was off the dining room. It had been well used.

  A lot of paintings were on the walls, big blotches of color that some people would call art. The furniture was nice, but she'd had it awhile. For reasons of her own Darken had tried to keep the living room more or less clean, though I did find dust. Three books were piled cunningly on an end table, looking more like an exhibit than something she would read. Next to them was a standing photograph of some young guy who had dark curly hair and enough chin to break up ice floes. Scrawled across his hairy arm were the words "To Darken. Always, Danny."

  The mantel over the stone fireplace held hundreds of tiny models of automobiles that I had trouble getting Bill not to play with. Still, he followed me around going, "Vroom! Vroom!" softly to himself. On the wall opposite the fireplace were a lot of photographs in matching frames. Darken, looking pampered and all grown up, was the central figure in each of them. In some she was lounging on shiny new cars, and in others, standing next to people I recognized from TV and movies. In some of them she was being menaced in a theatrical, posed kind of way. One or two even showed her hanging off the arm of Danny, the decorative dude in the photo next to the books. Upstairs was a bathroom that looked and smelled like the stockroom of a cosmetics concern, and two bedrooms, one of which Darken evidently used for an office. Along with more little autos, photos of Danny the dude were everywhere—in evening clothes, in bathing suits, in some kind of uniform out of a science fiction epic. Unless Darken kept his photo around just to fill space, Bingo had nothing to worry about.

  In which case Darken's interest in Whipper must be entirely business. Another piece for the shoe box. I sat on the top step next to Bill, thinking about those pieces. Nothing new came to me, so I stood up and went through the condo again, this time with a sieve. I opened every door that I could find. I looked in drawers and behind furniture. Behind the desk in the office I found an old dusty phone bill a few months out of date and left it there. I looked into kitchen cupboards. I fought my way through rack after rack of clothing. A couple of cockroaches might have escaped my gaze, but they would have had to be very fast.

  When I was done I sat on the top step to wring out my brains again. If Darken Stormy had the "Surf City" music box, she wasn't keeping it here. I tried to make it work that somebody else had taken the music box and killed Irv Doewanit, but I couldn't. She might have mentioned to somebody how much the music box meant to her. She might have mentioned that Whipper Will had it at his house. She might have taken it to the Moon on gossamer wings. Coincidences happened, but for somebody else to want the music box or to know of its importance to Darken and to know where it was located was too much of a coincidence for me. She was as mixed up with this as chocolate chips were in a chocolate-chip cookie.

  I walked slowly down the stairs, one heavy step at a time. Of course, I didn't have to find what I was looking for. It wasn't a rule that the big shot detective had to succeed.

  I was about halfway to the bottom of both the stairs and my mood when a key rattled in the front-door lock and knocked the blues out of me. I froze and did my best to think like Philip Marlowe. He might have said some magical detective thing and disappeared in a puff of classic black-and-white smoke, but all I could do was stand there and let her pin me with her eyes. It was Darken Stormy, dressed in a very businesslike gray suit and carrying a black briefcase.

  The expression of astonishment and concern on her face made her look like a little girl, despite all the paint. When she recognized me the astonishment and concern drained away, leaving only anger. Anger did not suit her.

  She did not say anything to me but crossed to the wide window between the kitchen and the dining room, and picked up the white phone that sat on the counter. When she lifted the phone from the cradle, I said, "You may not want to call the police after you hear what I have to say."

  Indecision worked so strongly in her that she almost vibrated. She wanted to chew her lip, but she didn't want to muss her lipstick, so she just twitched it. She put the phone down and tried to drill me with her eyes, but not even she was that good. "All right," she said, and crossed her arms.

  "Irv Doewanit is dead." Her mouth had stopped twitching. She said,

  "Who?"

  I shook my head. There was no reason she should have known Irv. I started again. "Somebody stole the music box."

  "What music box?"

  I smiled and said, "Very good. You really are an actress, aren't you? Very good, but not very smart." "Maybe the police can figure out what you're talking about," she said, and lay her hand on the telephone. It lay there for a while and didn't pick up the receiver.

  I said, "You seem to have caught me at a little burglary, Ms. Stormy, but I still think we can do business. After all, Irv Doewanit is dead and you made it happen."

  Red fingernails swiftly tapped on the telephone. Darken Stormy said, "I still don't know who Irv Doewanit is." She was getting control of herself again. She was playing the moment as if it were a scene out of Charlie Sundown. "But I do know that you are a boring little man. Or maybe you're just boring." She couldn't help smiling. I was gratified that Bill didn't laugh.

  "Irv Doewanit is the guy who was at my house when whoever you sent to get the 'Surf City' music box tried to pick it up. Irv must have objected. I found a piece of the music box in his fist."

  "Make me care."

  "I don't know anybody else who would kill for that music box. Do you?"

  "I wouldn't kill for it. I'm not a killer."

  "No," I said, "but you're the perfect suspect."

  Her breath came in sharply and then she closed her mouth over it. She unfolded her arms and pulled her briefcase up onto the dining room table. She opened it and stood with her back to me while she looked inside as if a crystal ball were in there. "And you want to help me, right? What's in it for you besides I don't report you to the police for breaking and entering?" "Where are the surfers and my grampa Zamp?"

  She pushed around some papers on the dining-room table, selected a few, and put them into her briefcase. Without turning around, she said, "Maybe I don't know."

  "Maybe. The police might see it differently."
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  "Blackmail." "A funny kind of blackmail. I just want to do good." She snapped her briefcase shut and turned to look at me with it dangling from both hands in front of her. "Look," she said, "Mr. Marlowe. I don't know where they are. If you want to talk to the police, please be my guest. We wouldn't be having this conversation if you'd found the music box here. You wouldn't find it here because it's not here. That makes it considerably more difficult for you to connect me with the murder of your friend. Maybe impossible. I have alibis. I have friends. And most importantly of all, I didn't do it."

  She strutted to the door like Miss America on the runway, and looked at me over her shoulder. "Coming?" she said. She opened the door and held it wide as Bill and I slid out past her. After pulling the door closed with a bang she came down the walk and stood with us next to her car. It was low and red and had enough sex appeal to get whistles at a stag party.

  Darken said, "So, how did you get in, anyway?" I shook my head and smiled. She shrugged and said, "OK. Just don't pass the information around. This place isn't much, but it's home." "As long as you pay your own rent." She patted me lightly on one cheek and showed me plenty of black-stockinged leg as she got into her car. The engine caught on the first try and a window hummed as it went down. She said, "Mr. Will isn't a killer either." "That's what Whipper keeps telling me." She gave me one of her atomic smiles as the window hummed up. The car rolled slowly away from the curb, then suddenly took off as if somebody had thrown a rock at it. It screeched around the corner and soon even the sound of its engine was gone.

  "Gosh," said Bill. "What a babe." There was nothing so very special about the way Darken Stormy drove her car down the street. Except that as she pulled away I got the clue I'd been waiting for.

  Chapter 22

  Clue In A Bun

  ON the rear bumper of Darken Stormy's slinky little car was a sticker like the one on the back of ID Advertising truck number eighty-two. It said STOP TRUCK STOP. I still didn't know what that meant, but it must mean something. I wasn't buying any new coincidences today.

  I said, "Anything in your bubble memory about Stop Truck Stop?"

  "It's a truck stop," Bill said.

  "I get it," I said. "You're Abbott and I'm Costello. Now I'm supposed to say, 'What's a truck stop?' and you say, 'brakes,' and I get very excited and the audience goes crazy with laughter."

  "If you say so. Boss."

  This seemed the day for me to start all wrong. I said, "OK, Bill. Forget all that. Tell me about Stop Truck Stop."

  "It's a truck stop," Bill said.

  He seemed serious, but I still felt as if I'd fallen into the middle of "Who's on First?" Hoping for the best, I said, "What's a truck stop?"

  "It's a place where long-haul truck drivers stop to eat and get gas." He laughed.

  I interrupted when I said, "You know where the Stop Truck Stop is?"

  "Sure, Boss. It's in L.A. County."

  That meant it was in his bubble memory. "Let's go there right now."

  Without Bill's help I found my way back onto the Santa Ana Freeway and rode it north past square glass buildings that looked very proud to be so clean, and shopping malls that were no more than pimples in the middle of oceans of flash. Evidently Melt-O-Mobiles did not sell as well out here as they did in the more fashionable parts of town.

  The buildings got bigger and dirtier, and soon we were creeping through downtown with sunlight reflecting into my eyes from tall buildings that were half-empty because nobody needed all those tall buildings except the construction companies that built them. Cars changed lanes seemingly at random and without bothering to signal. As I jockeyed into the proper lane for the Hollywood Freeway, some genius rushed up in a big cream Continental to sit on my bumper and honk in a way that made me slow down. The Continental swung angrily into the lane next to mine, cutting off somebody who also owned a horn, made a nasty remark to me with one finger, and got off at Fifth Street

  .

  We rode through canyons of ivy that had the dusty remains of old Hollywood hovering above them. After the Hollywood Bowl turnoff, we were in the valley and the traffic thinned a little. That was OK because the air got hotter, making driving just as unpleasant. We rode through a lot of light industry and tract houses, and then the hills closed in around us like the contours of reclining green women. Up near Sylmar, Bill told me to turn off. The offramp let me out onto a hot wide street that carried as many trucks as cars. The trucks thundered by like eldritch gods, making the wind to blow and the ground to shake.

  I passed sheds that were too big to enjoy the luxury of looking like sheds and yards full of diseased-looking automobile hulks. This stuff went on mile after mile, like a blighted forest.

  I saw the sign before Bill told me where to turn. It was three or four stories tall—tall enough to be seen from the freeway if anybody were looking for it—and set on a tripod that made it look like a war machine from a science fiction movie. In neon that looked faded in the sunlight the sign said stop truck stop, and in—smaller letters, welcome, pardner!

  I turned into the large parking lot, most of which was taken up with trucks, some of which were long enough to extend into the next county. In one corner of the lot was a square one-story building with brown shingles over the windows like bangs. Through the big windows I could see people eating. The smell of cooking grease boiled out of rotating turban vents on the roof like some genie hired to bring in the customers. I remembered how hungry I was.

  Next to the restaurant was a gas station, inside which everything was a little too big to be real. It was designed for the use of giants.

  I had driven a long way to get here, but I felt no closer to the lab or to the people I was looking for than I had at Darken Stormy's apartment.

  I parked the Belvedere and just sat listening to the engine be off for a change. Warm wind carried the smell of burgers and fries through the car. Now that we were stopped, Bill hung out the window like a dog. I wanted to think, but my brain was too tired and crowded with maybes.

  It had taken me a lot of work to get this far. Not only had I not saved anybody, but Irv Doewanit was dead and Zamp had been taken away too. Mr. Will could do a lot of terrible things to Zamp and the rest. If the courts got hold of this case, they would have fun deciding what Zamp was and whether laws about humans applied. I rolled up the windows, cracked the door of the Belvedere, and got out.

  The heat of the asphalt came up through my shoes as Bill and I walked across to the restaurant. Behind me and to one side a truck coughed, rumbled, and then settled into an idle I could have danced to had I been in the mood.

  The restaurant was cold and thick with the greasy smell of short-order cooking. The gabble of talking was almost as thick—it was a busy place. Occasionally one of the cooks would shout a number and a waitress would wander back to pick up plates that she would arrange up and down her arms and take out to a table. A few families sat in booths. They were sunburned and tired-looking and either eager to get back on the road or stretching that last cup of coffee to avoid it.

  Most of the customers were truckers and they liked to eat at the long counter that curved along two sides of the room. They came in all shapes and sizes, but they were generally big men who wore workshirts or plaids loud enough to keep them awake on long, lonely drives. Hats were popular and seemed to be about equally split between the baseball and the cowboy variety. If there was a no-smoking section, I never found it.

  A thin woman wearing a uniform in two shades of coffee walked up to me. Her shoes were ugly enough to be comfortable and she wore a lace fan on her chest that was big enough to cool the king of Siam. Her wrinkled horsey face was all business. "Table for two?" she said, looking at a spot between me and Bill.

  "Not just yet," I said. "I'd like to talk to the manager."

  She glanced behind me and said, "One?" "Counter's OK, Mabel," said a big guy in a voice like a squeaky wheel. He nodded to us as he lumbered by.

  "I'm the manager," she said. She wasn't c
hewing gum, but I'd have sworn she snapped it then. "What's the problem?"

  "I'm a detective working on a case—"

  "That's nice, honey. Three?" She was looking over my shoulder again.

  She showed a man, a woman, and a very skinny kid to a table, and came back. Evidently I was not the most important person in her life. We were interrupted five more times before I found out that she knew nothing about Superhero Androids or any lab.

  "I seen them androids on the news." She shook her head as if over somebody who wore diesel-powered underwear. "There's a lab down at the college in Pasadena," she said, really trying to help. "Two?" she asked the space behind me.

  When she came back I told her we'd like to sit at the counter. She nodded and stepped aside. We were no longer of any interest to her whatsoever.

  Bill and I sat at the counter. I ordered a Stop Burger for me—advertised as the best burger in the galaxy—and an order of fries for Bill, which I would eat. The guy next to me was about the same age as Whipper Will, but had more muscles. I said, "Howdy."

  "Howdy," he said, swallowing the word as if he regretted having said it.

  "You know this territory?" I said.

  "Some."

  "Know anything about a lab?"

  "You mean a Labrador retreiver? I got a shepherd, myself. But he's at home keeping the wife honest." He chuckled as he sipped his coffee, then puffed a cigarette that had been burning in a glass tray. The smell was manly, but I'd rather have had Brillo stuffed up my nose.

  I talked to the fellow on Bill's other side, but got an answer that was just as meaningful.

  The burger came, and it was a thick, juicy job. The waitress took the time to watch me bite into it. I nodded as I chewed, and as soon as I could grab a mouthful of air, I said, "You're right. It is the best burger in the galaxy."

  She watched me just a shade too long and said, "I guess you would know, at that." Looking thoughtful, she marched off to fill coffee cups.