The Blacktop Blues: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 1)

by Richard Levesque

  “What if someone needs it at the other end?” I asked as I followed her in disembarking.

  “There’s a call button. It comes down automatically.”

  She led me along a well-lit path through what looked like a continuation of the jungle from down below. Tropical plants hung their huge leaves over our heads as we went, and I heard some rustling in the bushes that I assumed was made by lizards or birds whose rest we were disturbing by walking through the miniature jungle.

  “We’ll come back through here in the daytime, too,” Annabelle said, holding my hand as we went. “Uncle Cosmo has a whole zoo in here. There’s monkeys and little antelopes and even a couple of tigers.”

  “In cages, I hope.”

  “Of course, silly.”

  We walked on and were soon at the mansion, a large Spanish style affair with more chimneys than I could count sticking up into the night sky. “Uncle Cosmo did pretty well for himself before the talkies came in,” I commented.

  “He doesn’t like talking about that,” she admonished. “And he doesn’t like it when people notice how much money he’s got.”

  “Good thing he doesn’t flaunt it,” I said as Annabelle led the way through a huge set of double doors that were decorated with a stained-glass clock that split in two when the doors opened.

  Inside, everything was as opulent as you’d imagine. Tapestries hung on the walls, and chandeliers lit the great room that the main doors opened onto. All the furniture looked to be upholstered in red velvet, and there were potted ferns and other tropical plants lining the walls—bits of the jungle brought indoors. At the end of the room were a piano and an immense fireplace around which were gathered a small group of people who looked to be having a pretty good time. They were an odd mix; all looked moneyed, and while some of the men wore tuxedos and the women fancy dresses, there were a few men in striped pajamas and women in silk robes with fur trim. We were into the early hours of the morning now, and I got the feeling that the party was ending for some and just beginning for others. All of Uncle Cosmo’s houseguests had glasses of champagne or harder stuff within easy reach. Several of them were smoking, a few using fancy cigarette holders. I recognized one of the men; he’d played second banana in a crime film I’d seen in the mess hall overseas, but I had no idea what his name was.

  One woman and one man stood out from the others. The woman wore all black, and her outfit consisted of pants and a blazer rather than a fancy dress. On the upper arm of her jacket was a band I’d seen more than once in the war—red with a white circle, and in the middle of that a black swastika. She had her hair piled up tight, and she gave Annabelle and me a quick, dismissive glance before returning her gaze to the gentleman at the center of the group, the one man who also didn’t quite fit in.

  He was Asian; I would have guessed Chinese. He sat in the center of the circle with a big red guitar on his knee. I could tell it was a new Harmon but of a variety I’d never heard of. It had a socket in its side, and plugged into this was a cord that led to a little blond box on the floor. Amazingly, the box amplified the Harmon’s sound, making it sound much louder and crisper than any guitar I’d heard before. The Harmon also had knobs next to the pick guard, and I guessed that these controlled the tone and volume. There were beautiful women and ornate antiques all throughout the room, but my eyes were fixed on that guitar, one of the finest I’d ever seen. It made me wish for the one I’d pawned back east and would never play again, although that sweet little number sounded like a cigar box strung with rubber bands in comparison to the axe this Chinese fellow was grinding. The musician slid a metal cylinder up and down the strings as he played a fair approximation of American blues; though he sang in a heavy accent, it wasn’t hard to pick out the words.

  Well I love you little mama, but you sure do treat me bad

  Loves you little mama, but you treat me oh so bad

  You’re the worstest gal that I ever had

  Got the mean ol’ Cali blues, so I’m headin’ down the road

  Got the mean ol’ Cali blues, so I’m on that lonesome road

  Gonna leave you, mama, worst I ever knowed

  He followed this with some virtuoso work with the slide all up and down the neck, ending with a vibrato twang that echoed off the big room’s walls and ceiling. This prompted applause and shouts of glee from the people gathered around the musician, and more than a little envy from me. When the noise died down, he set his guitar aside and lit a cigarette, a broad smile on his face.

  The fellow who’d had the bit part in the crime film looked at Annabelle and me standing at the edge of the circle and raised his glass. “Have you brought a new friend?” he asked.

  Annabelle hooked her arm into mine again and put her other hand possessively on my chest. “This is my friend, Jed,” she said.

  “Welcome, Jed,” came from many people’s lips then, and a few of them toasted me. The woman with the swastika was not one of them, I noticed, but she did give me a cool look of appraisal.

  “Will you be staying with us, Jed?” asked one of the women in a fur-trimmed robe.

  I shrugged. “We’ll see,” I said, glancing at Annabelle for a cue. “All I know for sure is that I’m here for the moment.”

  “That’s all we have are moments,” said the musician.

  “Yes!” said several of the others at the same time.

  “What do you do, Jed?” the actor asked, and I saw his eyes fall toward my lousy suitcase.

  “A little of this and a little of that,” I said.

  “Jed was in the war,” Annabelle volunteered, and I saw the swastika woman sharpen her gaze just a bit more at this information.

  “And before that?” the actor asked.

  Again, I shrugged. “Like I said, this and that. I did a little bit of selling, a little bit of building. Some tearing down.”

  “A jack of all trades!” said the swastika woman. “How exciting!”

  I smiled at this, trying to be polite. I did not want to smile, though, especially not at her.

  “Jed’s a musician, too,” Annabelle said, and I wished right away that she hadn’t. “He played guitar in New York before the war. In a nightclub.”

  There were several sounds of approval from the group, and I watched uneasily as the musician held up the red guitar, as I had known he would the second Annabelle opened her mouth. “Would you like to play?” he asked.

  With his accent, the last word sounded a bit like “pray.”

  It was a tempting offer. The strings and frets of the electrified guitar practically called out to me. There were several gestures of encouragement from the crowd. The thought of playing that guitar, so similar in appearance to the ’38 I’d reclaimed and relinquished so recently in New York, filled me with trepidation. The last time I’d plucked a string, I’d ended up convinced I was losing my mind, and I didn’t want a repeat performance.

  I was on the verge of declining when I felt Annabelle’s hand on my back, pushing me forward. When I heard the partygoers start clapping, though, I didn’t feel like I could refuse, so I stepped up and took the guitar by its neck. Taking a seat on the arm of a plush couch, I strummed an A minor chord to get the feel of the guitar.

  At that point, I realized that the only song I could think of was “The Blacktop Blues.” Every other piece that I knew had just flown from my memory. Fighting back the urge to run away, I forced myself to play the song’s intro.

  Nothing bad happened, so I kept going.

  Part of me knew that the lyrics might strike a nerve in Annabelle, but another part of me felt she deserved any guilt the song stirred in her, so I launched into the verses. The experience of playing here—in a well-lit room full of people whose faces expressed enthusiasm and enjoyment rather than in a dark club filled with smoke and heartbreak—made everything feel so different than it had at the Break O’ Dawn that by the time I launched into the solo, I wasn’t worried anymore about something crazy happening. It felt amazing to play the song on the ele
ctrified red guitar. I gave it everything I had, and I was gratified to hear the little crowd erupt into applause when I let the last chord ring out and fade.

  “That was very good,” one of the women said before blowing cigarette smoke into the air.

  “Thanks.”

  I glanced Annabelle’s way and saw her smiling proudly. If the lyrics had stung, she wasn’t showing it.

  “What do you call that?” said the actor.

  “It’s called ‘The Blacktop Blues,’” I said. “A guy named Travis Perkins recorded it a year or so ago. All the GIs I knew were crazy about it.”

  Several people nodded their appreciation, but no one seemed to have heard the song before, not even the Chinese fellow whose guitar I still held.

  Feeling a little strange, I held the guitar out to him.

  “Play another,” he said, the expression on his face telling me he’d enjoyed listening to what I could do with his instrument.

  I almost said yes.

  But in that moment, I saw how easy it would be to feel like I belonged among these people, and I knew that I didn’t. Every one of them probably had the same tattoo I’d seen on Annabelle, on the wall in the alley, and on the corpse photos O’Neal had shown me. Sometime, not too long ago, Annabelle had met people like these for the first time. It had been in Manhattan, and for whatever reason she’d probably been feeling lonely, maybe discouraged, maybe scared. A group just like this had made her feel welcome. And she’d stayed among them, leaving everything she knew and following them all the way across the continent.

  Just like I’d followed her.

  I hadn’t come on this journey for the same reasons, of course. Even so, I still faced the same choices now.

  I made myself say, “Thanks, but no. Maybe another time.” The guitarist nodded his understanding and took the guitar from me, smoke from his cigarette curling around his head.

  “Have a drink,” the actor said. He began to make room for Annabelle and me on the couch beside him, and several of the other partygoers chimed in with a chorus of affirmation to echo the invitation.

  I gave Annabelle another glance, hoping I wouldn’t see in her eyes any eagerness to join the party. She looked back at me, and I saw eagerness but not for this kind of company.

  “It’s late,” she said. “Jed’s had a long day. We’ll see you all in the morning.”

  There was another chorus of goodbyes and a few non-committal protests at our rejection of the offer to join in the fun. The woman with the swastika said nothing, just smiled at me and watched us turn as the musician started picking out the notes to a new song on his guitar.

  I let Annabelle lead me upstairs. After the day I’d had, I should have been enervated, but I felt just the opposite with each step I took, her slender hand holding mine and making promises in its gentle squeeze. My guard was still up at the thought of the way she’d been manipulated into seeking me out and bringing me into Cosmo Beadle’s lair, but at the same time, I knew I was not exactly playing into the hands of whoever had directed Annabelle to find me, as I was sure I’d seen through the manipulation and was ready for whatever her handler’s agenda might be. Beyond that, I doubted that the next strike—whatever it was going to be—would come in the middle of the night. The wee hours, after all, were the time when it was the machinations of my mind rather than anyone else’s that were my biggest threat.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I awoke with the sun streaming into the east-facing room and the image of Buddy Stiles’ missing face in my mind. Again, I was plagued by the thought that my sanity was on the razor’s edge. Logic told me my own face was fine, but that didn’t stop my hands from flying up to feel my cheeks, lips and nose. There were tears on my cheeks and sweat on my brow, and I turned my face into the pillow to wipe it all away before Annabelle could see my distress.

  When I lifted my head again, I saw that my efforts at hiding had been for nothing. Annabelle was not there, and I wondered how long she’d been gone. She had laid out a robe for me at the foot of the bed, though, and on it was a little note saying she’d be back soon. It was signed with little exes and hearts to signify kisses and hugs, the veracity of which I had to wonder about.

  Letting out a long breath of gratitude at finding myself still whole, I put on the robe and went to the window, taking in the view of the ocean stretching out beyond the beach at the bottom of the hill. The sun was higher in the sky than I was used to seeing it upon waking, but that was okay. I’d had a late night after a long day, and I felt recharged rather than groggy, the way I usually did when I slept in much past sunrise.

  The morning brought perspective, and I knew I was going to need to get some answers to my questions pretty quickly. If not, I knew I’d have to head back to the mainland, even if that meant letting go of Annabelle yet again. The feelings I’d had for her for years were all jumbled up now, and the unions we’d formed the night before had succeeded in adding to the jumble. I felt possessive of her, bonded with and connected to her on the one hand. And on the other I was asking myself if the connection I felt wasn’t simply to the past, to the way we’d been before those years of separation, before the bombs and bullets, before the tattoo and everything that went with it. None of which is to say I didn’t think we could get past the things that made me feel uneasy. I just didn’t think I could do it here on Catalina.

  I hoped I’d be able to talk her out of whatever she’d gotten herself into with Uncle Cosmo and his cronies. It would be possible, I knew, to spend a lifetime with Annabelle even with that bizarre tattoo reminding both of us of how she’d almost slipped away. I had scars of my own that she would have to get used to as well; some of them ran deeper than even I was able to see, and I knew there was still a better than 50-50 chance that I might still slip over the edge of sanity, which was something I was going to have to come clean about before much longer. I worried that she wouldn’t go for it. The light of day was probably working on her perspective as well, and Cosmo Beadle’s plush mansion, fancy car, and fancier people probably looked more inviting to Annabelle than anything I could offer her with my veteran’s pension, calloused fingers, and tenuous hold on reality.

  It was only a few minutes before Annabelle returned, entering her room without knocking first and wheeling a silver cart in front of her. It had two covered plates on it, a pot of coffee, and everything else that you’d expect to get on a fancy room service tray—silverware wrapped in cloth napkins, little containers of cream and sugar, and coffee cups with fancy scrollwork in the handles.

  “I see you’re finally up,” she said as she started uncovering the breakfast she’d brought—eggs the way I like them, a steak the size of which I hadn’t seen since before the war, and cubed potatoes that had been fried golden.

  “Very nice,” I said as I stepped away from the window. She gave me a little kiss, and then we sat down to eat.

  The first bite let me know I had been starving and just running so high on adrenaline since the night before that I hadn’t really noticed how empty I was. The only food I’d had the day before had come on a tray and had been passed to me through the bars of the jail wing at police headquarters. It had been enough to keep a person going, but that was about it. Now the hunger kicked in, and I dug into the food, not mindful of any of the things that had been roiling in my head since I’d cracked my eyelids open. About halfway through the meal, though, I began feeling less like a starved wolf and more like myself. Swallowing a mouthful of potatoes, I reached out to pour us both more coffee before speaking.

  “This is quite a place,” I said.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” she gushed back, her whole face lighting up at the thought of all this opulence.

  “You’ve certainly made some nice friends here. How exactly did you find your way into this crowd? You said a few things about them in your letter, but that wasn’t exactly the part I paid a lot of attention to.”

  “I know,” she said, her expression a bit of fear, a bit of sadness.

&nb
sp; “I’d like it very much if you’d tell me,” I said, trying to keep my tone as gentle and neutral as I could.

  She sipped her coffee. “Well,” she began, her eyes on her nearly empty plate, “you know I was working in an airship factory during the war, right?”

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “Well, when the truce was reached, there were a lot of rumors. People said we’d all be fired when the soldiers came home, and also that things like airship factories were going to be shutting down all over the country because of the demand slipping away. You know?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said around another mouthful of potatoes.

  “Well, there was this girl I knew there, Rochelle. We got to be pretty good friends, and she told me she’d been invited to this party by a fella she’d met in a nightclub and would I go with her ‘cause she was a little nervous just showing up and not being too sure about this fella. And…” Her face lit up as she told this part. “The people at the party were all friends of Uncle Cosmo’s. They’d been visiting Manhattan and were about to head west again, and they were all so nice and…”

  She shrugged, her smile still wide.

  “And you didn’t have to worry about losing your job anymore,” I said.

  “That’s right,” she said. “They took care of my ticket out here and the first few weeks at the hotel, and then I moved out here.”

  I swallowed the last of my steak and drained the cup of coffee. Knowing that what I needed to say next might tear things, I took a deep breath and said it anyway, “And all of this generosity is in exchange for what?”

  Her gaze shot up to meet mine as she said, “Now don’t get excited, mister! It was all on the up and up.”

  “I wouldn’t think otherwise.”

  She narrowed her eyes, clearly trying to judge how truthful I was being.

  “Honest, Jed. Uncle Cosmo’s not like that. And neither is anyone else here. I mean…some sparks must fly with a few of the friends out here on the island, but I swear to you no one has put the moves on me once, and no one ever suggested I’d need to, um, pay for all of this, if that’s what you’re getting at.”