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

by Richard Levesque

  The cabbie raised one hand to give me the OK sign. Then we waited.

  After more than a minute of static coming through the speakers, there was a click. We heard Mutt say, “Come in 32.”

  “32 here.”

  “Yeah, I think I got it. Address off of Beverly Glen that’s getting a lot of traffic this afternoon. You ready?”

  “Shoot it at me.”

  Mutt rattled off the numbers. The cabbie popped the car into gear before her dispatcher had a chance to sign off.

  “I told you I had a few tricks, right?” she said.

  “You did,” I said. “And I’m grateful to you.”

  “So, are we still in a hurry?”

  “Very much.”

  “Very much,” she echoed. Clearly thinking of her tip, she whipped the little car into a half-circle in the narrow street and gunned the engine to take us out of the ravine. As she shifted gears, I had to work at keeping my head from bobbing backwards and getting whacked against the little car’s rear window.

  “This little thing’s got some pick up,” I said. “You wouldn’t know it just to look at it.”

  “Yeah, they’re something else,” she said, popping the transmission into its next gear and making the little car leap forward in response.

  “I saw cars like this in Europe,” I said. “But you say this one’s Japanese?”

  “Yup.” There was a moment’s silence between us and then she added, a bit tentatively, “You say you were in Europe. Does that mean you were in the war?”

  I hesitated a second, remembering the virulence I’d received from Miller when the subject of my war record came up. Was this the kind of thing I could expect now that I was stateside? I hoped not, and there’d been nothing to indicate rancor on the part of Margaret West up to this point. So, I said, “Yes, I was.”

  I saw her head bob a little as she nodded, not because she was being jerked around by the car’s transmission. “Mind if I ask what you did over there?”

  “Infantry,” I said. “On the ground in Belgium and France, then Germany.”

  “Well…you made it back in one piece.”

  “That’s what I tell myself,” I said, my mind filled with the image of Buddy Stiles’ missing face, and then I realized there had been something unspoken in her comment. “You had someone who didn’t make it,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything at first, but I watched her head nod again in agreement underneath her cap. “My husband,” she finally said. “Nate.”

  “That’s rough,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve had a year-and-a-half to get used to it.”

  “Not enough, is it?” I asked, thinking of friends I’d lost over there. The emptiness they left their comrades with had to be a big zero in comparison to what a widow must feel, or so I had told myself more than once when things got bad over there.

  “Not even close.” She slowed for a corner and then punched the little cab’s accelerator again. “Work is a good distraction, though.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I could use some distraction myself right about now.”

  “Well, you could always drive a cab. This place is always hiring, it seems.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Leaving the ravine, she had headed away from downtown, toward the Hollywoodland sign and everything that went with it. Though it seemed an odd choice, she stuck mostly to narrow residential streets rather than opting for the big boulevards. As we passed perpendicular streets, I took the occasional glance left and right, seeing nothing but standstill traffic on the broad avenues that ran parallel to our route. It was getting to be mid-afternoon, and the streets were starting to jam up with people heading home from their workdays. The thought made me a little edgy as I considered how much of my remaining seventeen dollars and change was getting eaten up by this ride, and I wondered if I might end up doing what my driver had just suggested—driving a hack through this city that I certainly hadn’t come to love in the short time I’d been there. I tried to think of other things, but Annabelle kept popping into my mind, and that wasn’t any better.

  On the other side of Hollywood, the traffic got a little better, so the cabbie jumped over to Sunset and we flew westward, weaving our way among much larger, slower, and more expensive vehicles as we went. There were a few close calls, but even though there were blasts of horns—and probably some choice language shouted from within those more important cars—no fenders ever scraped, and no bumpers ever bumped.

  When the taxi reached Beverly Glen and made a right toward the hills, I glanced around, telling myself I should be looking for something. I had no idea what. All I saw were high hedges and deep expanses of expensive lawn with fancy cars parked in front of fancier houses. Still, I couldn’t shake the uncanny sense that there was something here that I was missing. The farther we got from the intersection, though, the feeling faded.

  We wound our way into a canyon, huge homes built up on either side. When we slowed to hang another right, I asked, “Are we close?”

  “Just up here,” the driver said with a nod. This street was absurdly narrow, and she didn’t gun the engine now, just let the little Japanese number climb farther upward with a low, grinding growl.

  “Have you got paper and a pencil up there?” I asked.

  She did, and she handed them back to me after rummaging through a little caddy that hung from the cigarette lighter.

  “Thanks,” I said, and I began scribbling a note. I finished as the cab came to a stop beside a broad gate done up in fancy metal scroll work. It was open, just my luck. I folded the paper in half and wrote “Detective O’Neal, LAPD” on the front. “What’s the damage?” I asked.

  “$8.30. Plus, that tip you were going on about.”

  “Yeah,” I said, surprisingly at peace with the small fortune I was about to give up. Taking out my wallet, I counted out twelve dollars and passed the money up front. Then I passed her the note I’d just written and another three bucks.

  “If you take this back downtown to police headquarters and run this inside, I’ve left instructions for this detective to give you another five dollars. Is it worth your trouble?”

  She turned in the seat once more, her uncannily familiar face lighting up. “Buddy, you’ve got to be kidding. What’s your game, anyway?”

  “It’s too long a story to explain now. If I get out of this, maybe we’ll grab a cup of coffee someday and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “It’s a deal,” she said, her face aglow at her good fortune.

  I got out of the cab with Guillermo’s gun in my coat pocket, the Luger tucked into my waistband, and $4.68 in my pants. Then I watched as one of the most helpful people I’d met in this crazy city turned her little Japanese car around and left me alone among the millionaires, some of whom would probably want me dead before the sun dipped below the horizon. It didn’t look good. I’d been in worse situations before, though.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Beyond the gate was a circular driveway, and beyond that sat a white two-story mansion that looked like a cross between a nouveau riche castle and an old Spanish mission. It even had a tower jutting up from somewhere in the middle of the structure, reminiscent of a mission’s bell tower or maybe the high ground in a castle from which the lord of the manor could fend off attacks from the commoners. More than a dozen cars were parked on the brick driveway around an ornate fountain. Surveying the driveway from the border formed by the open gate, I saw Duesenbergs, Esplanades, a Terranova, and several other big luxury cars that I couldn’t identify just from a quick glance. Though it made no sense, I couldn’t help scanning the collection of moveable money, looking for a big car like the one the other Jed Strait had taken an unpleasant ride in. Not seeing anything like it made me feel a little better about being there.

  This small level of comfort didn’t dissuade me from pulling Guillermo’s gun and switching off the safety. My preference if confronted was to go with
non-lethal and mostly silent. If pressed, I’d pull the Luger, but I didn’t want to have to use it; just knowing I was in possession of the gun that looked so similar to the one wielded by the redheaded Annabelle made me nervous. Scanning the driveway for lookouts and seeing none, I ducked down anyway and stepped through the opening in Masterson’s high wall. I moved quickly and stopped between an Esplanade and a Phantom, the gun held low but ready to go if someone came looking for me. Then I waited, hoping to get a sense of what was going on—and to see if something resembling a plan of attack came to me.

  A full minute later, I was still waiting.

  Crouching next to a sleek black Phantom, I had to wonder if it was the same car that had chauffeured Annabelle and me to the docks the night before. And this made me wonder if Edward Ross had made his way here from Catalina after I’d left him in Cosmo’s jungle. There was a good chance that he’d gotten into Beadle’s mansion before Elsa made her exit, and he might even have exchanged a few words with her as she was figuring out the controls of the flight pack. Might he have raced down to the docks and hopped aboard a speedboat, chasing after me but heading here instead of Chavez Ravine since he’d had no way of knowing I’d be going to Guillermo’s before crashing Lance Masterson’s wake? It seemed highly possible, and I wondered if I was going to end up regretting my choice not to zap him with Guillermo’s gun when I’d had the chance.

  I let a few more minutes go by before I made some tentative movements, peeking over the fender of the Phantom first to see if anyone was coming. There was no one around. I was pleased but also a bit surprised that my arrival hadn’t drawn any attention. Whatever was happening inside at Masterson’s wake, it must have been plenty interesting. Crouching there on the quiet driveway, I picked up on music and the sound of lots of voices coming from inside.

  The front door wasn’t my first choice. Making a big entrance wouldn’t serve me well at all. I pictured making every head turn as I burst into the party they were holding for Masterson, all the suits and fancy dresses frozen in a tableau of shock, champagne glasses poised in the air and cigarettes in fancy holders held inches away from expectant lips. There would be nothing but cold stares for the guy bursting in, wearing clothes that looked like they’d been slept in for a week.

  Instead of heading toward the front of the house, I started working my way around the side, always looking for someone who was ready to object to my presence. When I came to a side door, I checked it and found it locked, so I kept going. I soon found myself outside the kitchen where a door had been left open, presumably to invite the breeze inside. I knew there was no chance I’d be mistaken for a breeze, but I slipped inside regardless.

  The kitchen was long and narrow with a door at either end, and it wasn’t empty. With the fancy funeral party happening in the rest of the house, the kitchen was abuzz with staff, maybe a dozen people in black uniforms bustling around, working on hors d’oeuvres and tossing salads. I suspected they were from an outside company, brought in by Cosmo’s people for the event. None looked up when I entered; if anyone noticed me, they were too busy to pay attention, so I cut my way through the chaos, moving as fast as I could. As I went, I noticed a man’s black jacket hanging on a hook next to the door on the other side of the room, identical to those worn by the kitchen staff, and I headed right for it, not daring to let my eyes drift left or right lest they should make contact with the eyes of someone who really belonged here. I didn’t want my presence challenged.

  Leading a charmed life, I thought as I slipped the jacket off the hook and pushed the door open. I was standing in a short hallway now; an open door across from me revealed a small storeroom. There was another doorway at the hall’s end, and beyond that I could hear the hubbub of the wake. I stepped into the storeroom and shrugged my jacket off, pulling Guillermo’s gun from it before shoving the jacket behind a case of wine on one of the shelves. Then I put on the black jacket I’d just liberated and pocketed the gun. The jacket didn’t fit well at all—too big in the shoulders and too long in the arms. I’d still look like an outsider to anyone who gave me a close look, but the jacket might buy me a few precious seconds if it looked like I was about to get into a bind. Not feeling even close to ready for what might come, I took a deep breath, ready to move forward anyway. That was when I heard the door open at the end of the hallway, the sound of the party swelling for a moment and then fading again as the door clicked shut.

  I belong here, I thought. An employee. Just stepped into the storeroom to find a jar of caviar. Turning my back to the open door, I started acting like I was looking through the boxes stacked on the shelves around me. I felt rather than saw the figure in the doorway behind me. So much for a charmed life, I thought. It’s probably someone else come looking for caviar.

  I turned, ready to spout a line of talk, but the words died somewhere down in my throat. Edward Ross stood in the doorway. For half a second it looked like he was still going to ask the member of the wait staff whatever question had sent him into the service area of the big house. And then he must have figured out that the black jacketed man in front of him wasn’t a server.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  “The same,” I answered.

  Edward was a big man, and the doorway was no wider than average. He’d have been smart to reach into the room with both hands, grab me by the lapels and yank me into the hallway where he’d have had plenty of room for the wind-up and release, his big fist to my jaw probably taking me out of the game long enough to wreck my day.

  For all I knew, though, he wasn’t smart. Or maybe he was just angry at having been duped out on the island, taken in by the brothers-in-arms banter and made to look like an idiot once his boss found out how I’d gotten past him.

  Regardless, he opted to draw his fist back as he stood there in the doorway, and his elbow smashed against the doorframe as he did. That was my only opportunity. Strangely enough, I didn’t even think about pulling either of the guns. It would probably have been too clumsy a move, whether I’d gone for the Luger in my waistband or the non-lethal gun in my pocket. Instead, I rushed the big man as he half turned away from the doorframe and tried to recover his momentum. I smashed my shoulder into his solar plexus and drove him back, across the narrow hallway and into the kitchen door, which swung open behind him.

  A member of the staff had been on the other side of the door, no doubt ready to make his way into the party with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Edward crashed into the man, and both fell, the serving tray flying into the air before coming down on both of them, canapes raining down amidst the clatter and the shouts and screams of the rest of the kitchen staff whose eyes had been drawn to the commotion.

  My momentum almost carried me into the tangle of bodies on the floor and I had to grab hold of a countertop to keep myself from falling onto the two men I’d just bowled over. The waiter looked unhurt, just suffering the loss of all dignity. Edward, though, appeared to be unconscious. I guessed that he’d hit his head on the floor. Despite the fact that he’d just tried to swing at me—and would probably want to do it again when he came to—I still had the impulse to drop to a knee and render aid. I hoped he wasn’t badly hurt; to have survived the war only to be taken out of the game in a cascade of canapes and crab puffs was an injustice I wouldn’t have wished on anyone.

  My humanitarian impulses didn’t get any legs up under them, though. As I looked from the men on the floor to the rest of the kitchen, I saw ten sets of eyes all staring at me. Shielded by the chaos of their labor, I’d been able to slip past the kitchen staff unnoticed a few minutes before. Now, their work had stopped, and in every one of their eyes, I could see that they had me pegged for an outsider—an outsider wearing one of their jackets. It would be only a few seconds before one of them challenged my right to be there.

  “This man’s hurt,” I said, taking the initiative while I could and mustering as much authority as possible while pointing down toward Edward. “Have you got a phone back here anywhere?”<
br />
  One of the women who still had both hands in a massive bowl of salad greens turned to another, and then they both looked at a phone on the wall not far from an array of toasters.

  “Call for an ambulance,” I said. Then, as an afterthought, I added, “And the cops, too.”

  It wouldn’t do to direct the kitchen staff to Detective O’Neal, as I had done with both Guillermo and Margaret West, but that didn’t matter. At this point, having any sort of police presence in the house was going to be to my advantage—unless, of course, Cosmo Beadle already had the cops in his back pocket.

  Then, without another word, I turned and bolted from the kitchen, heading toward the door at the end of the hallway that Edward had passed through not two minutes earlier. When I got my hand on the knob, I took a moment to collect myself, knowing it wouldn’t do to go bursting into the party like there was a hellhound on my tail.

  After a few deep breaths and a couple of backward glances, I opened the door, and the music I’d heard from the parking area now came into the hallway. I took another deep breath and stepped through, finding myself at the edge of a massive room crowded with suits and slinky dresses just like I’d imagined. My heart still pounding from the adrenaline release that Edward’s attack had prompted, I moved forward and closed the door behind me.

  Act normal, I thought. You belong here. The lie did nothing to bring my heart rate down as I entered the fray, eyes darting left and right as I went, looking for any sign of Miller or Annabelle, Elsa Schwartz or Cosmo Beadle.

  Among the people at the gathering, I recognized a handful of minor celebrities and one or two major ones. Most were probably people like Annabelle, though—young and good looking and more than a little star struck, people who were a bit desperate for answers or inclusion and who had swallowed up the story about alternate realities in hopes of finding something different than what California had offered them until now. I wondered how many had read Cosmo’s cheaply made little book, how many had the same tattoo as Annabelle and the punks I’d seen in the alley on my first night in the city—not to mention Lance Masterson’s corpse. The people at the party were clearly different from those downtown punks, and I supposed there was a correlation between a person’s ability to pay a hefty tithe or fill a fancy gown and the likelihood that he or she would become one of Uncle Cosmo’s “friends.” One’s potential for crossing over into other realities probably had very little to do with the likelihood of being invited to a soiree like this despite what Annabelle had been told.