The Double-Time Slide: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 2)

by Richard Levesque

  “What contact?” I asked, cutting her off. “Since when do you have contacts with the newspapers?”

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Jed.” Somewhere in her brain, the knob for smiling had been cranked up again, but this time a switch labeled “sly” had also been flipped.

  I tried to keep my exasperated sigh at bay, but it probably slipped out of its own accord. “So, what did this contact tell you?” I asked after a few seconds.

  “I didn’t think you wanted to know.” She was teasing me now, and I smiled in spite of myself, not because she was so funny or clever but because I knew I was being bested by a machine. After a few seconds of letting me stew, she said, “It wasn’t Peale. It was a man named Felix Madrigal. I played a hunch and called Paragon Pictures, and it turns out he was an executive there.” She paused now, her smile pulling even harder at her synthetic skin. “Guess what he’s an executive in charge of, Jed?”

  “I give up.”

  “Scripts.”

  Silence hung between us as I took a moment to process the information.

  “He’s the one Peale thought Flynn was sleeping with to curry favor?” I finally asked.

  “I can’t say for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”

  I nodded at this and leaned forward to glance at her notes. They weren’t in English. It looked like code, a jumble of letters, numbers and symbols. “What is that?” I asked.

  “Code,” she said. “I came up with it on my own. Pretty smart, right?”

  “Very smart,” I said. “Unless someone like me needs access to your notes when you’re not around. Then it’s not so smart.”

  “I guess you’ll just have to keep me around then.” The playfulness in her tone had not abated, and I thought again about the possibility that it had been her hands squeezing the life out of Mercy Attentater this morning. I had never been convinced, just open to the possibility. Now in Carmelita’s presence, the window of possibility was closing to the slightest sliver. True, there was a chance that the same programming that allowed her to pass for human—even to herself—could enable enough duplicity to get me and Peggy and Guillermo to believe her incapable of murder, but her smile was disarming enough to get me to almost completely disregard the idea.

  Almost.

  “Some things are out of my hands,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Did your contact give you anything else?”

  “No. But I’ve got more digging to do.”

  I nodded. “Any chance you can do your digging from home?”

  She gave me a blank stare. “No. I’ve only got three days. Everything I need is here. I can’t afford to waste the rest of today just sitting at home.”

  “What if I give you a fourth day? And I don’t count Sunday?”

  “The case just broke. It’s hot right now. I need to move on this today. It’s the same thing you would do if you still cared about it.”

  “I do care about it, Carmelita. It’s just...” There was no point arguing about it. Making a show of acting like something had just occurred to me, I said, “You didn’t stop anywhere on the way to Ginny Flynn’s, did you?”

  She raised a perfect eyebrow. “Stop? No. Where would I have stopped?”

  I looked at her for a moment, trying to see if there was something hidden behind her expression, a little bit of guilt, maybe, at having made a quick detour to strangle a woman on the way to her surveillance job. There was nothing there, though. This was not necessarily evidence in her favor, of course. Knowing that Carmelita had the ability to lie to herself about things like eating and sleeping and using the ladies’ room, I figured there was a good chance she could also lie to herself about murdering perfectly nice dancers in their perfectly nice kitchens.

  “Nowhere,” I said. “Forget it. Just a…random thought is all.” Then I added, “Hang on a minute.”

  Stepping back into the lobby, I asked Peggy if I could pay her for the rest of the day. All she’d need to do would be to hang around the office, do her crosswords, and then drive Carmelita home at the end of the day. I also added a whispered, “And keep her out of trouble.”

  She looked at me as if to suggest that this last bit was going to go into a different column, the one filled with favors I owed her in return. It was already a pretty packed column, but I saw no choice other than to add one more item to it.

  “Thanks, Peggy,” I said. “Now can I get that ride up to Hollywood so I can get my car back?”

  “What about...” She nodded meaningfully toward the inner office.

  “You’ll be okay here for an hour, Carmelita?” I asked.

  “Yes,” came the reply.

  “Don’t go anywhere ‘til Peggy gets back.”

  “I won’t.”

  Peggy gathered her things and stood up to come meet me in the doorway. Now it was her turn to call out to Carmelita. “Want me to bring you something to eat?”

  “No, thanks. I just ate.”

  Peggy and I exchanged smiles, and we headed out. I locked the door after I shut it, more to keep trouble out than to keep Carmelita in. If nothing else, the locked door would serve as a reminder to her that she was supposed to stay put in case she decided that an afternoon walk was in the cards.

  Chapter Seven

  By the time we got back to Ginny Flynn’s, the police barricades were gone, and everything on the street looked like it had returned to normal. The gawkers had all gone back inside, no doubt still filling each other’s heads with speculation and lighting up the phone lines from Hollywood to Iowa, bursting with news of what had gone on among the movie people they found themselves among every day. I toyed with the idea of knocking on Miss Flynn’s door to see if I could get her to talk to me. At the same time, I knew it would be a mistake. Carmelita had managed to get away from the scene without her name being thrown into the hopper, and I needed to keep it that way. Sure, it was possible that the cops might have taken down the license plate number on my car parked across from Ginny Flynn’s place, which would mean I might expect a phone call or a visit in the next couple of days. For now, though, Carmelita and I were in the clear, so I figured I should keep it that way. I had plenty of other complications to deal with instead.

  I said goodbye to Peggy, resisting the temptation to remind her to keep an eye on Carmelita. Then I got in my car and drove out of the neighborhood, heading toward Sunset Boulevard.

  It was around three when I found a spot in a parking lot near the Rose Room, a little early to start canvasing a burlesque house. I hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast, so I opted for a diner half a block down the street—partly to fill my tank and partly to give myself a chance to think everything through. Exactly one ham sandwich later, I paid my tab and walked to the Rose Room.

  They were open, but just barely. There was no one manning the door, so I simply walked in. Music played on tinny speakers, a slow jazz number probably spinning on a record somewhere backstage. The only person I saw was the bartender, a man in his fifties who was checking the bar’s stock with a tablet and pencil in his hands. As far as I could tell, I was the only person in the place who might have passed for a patron.

  I walked up to the bar and asked for the manager.

  The bartender gave me a doubtful look and then said, “Hang on.”

  When he disappeared through a doorway, I turned to lean against the bar and gave the place another look. Tiny, mismatched tables and chairs filled the little club, and there was a small raised stage opposite the bar. As I waited, I saw a figure emerge from the area behind the stage, a short fellow with dark hair and thick eyebrows who sauntered over to the door and took up his post there. The doorman, I surmised, probably just coming on to his shift. I nodded toward him and he gave a nod back. Then I heard footsteps from behind me. Turning, I saw the bartender returning with another man, a tall, thin Asian fellow in a white suit. He looked to be about the classiest thing about the whole place.

  �
�Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I hope so.” Pulling a card from my coat pocket, I said, “I’m a private detective. Jed Strait.”

  He took the card and looked at it for a moment. Then he looked back at me, an eyebrow raised.

  “I was hoping to talk to you about one of your dancers.”

  The manager nodded. “The cops have already been here,” he said.

  That didn’t surprise me. Still, I figured I’d better make everything clear. “This is Mercy we’re talking about, right?” I asked.

  “The same,” the manager said with a nod. “I don’t think I should talk to you.”

  “Did the police tell you not to?”

  He looked a little uncomfortable at this, but he said, “No.”

  “Mercy talked to me last night and again this morning. She said something unusual happened here a couple days ago, and I think it had something to do with the unfortunate occurrence this morning.”

  This was not exactly true. I really had no idea what had happened to the little dancer; I was reasonably certain my robotic assistant hadn’t had anything to do with it, but reasonable certainty wasn’t much to go on. Even so, the manager didn’t know that I was grasping at strings, so I threw a theory at him just to see what would happen.

  It worked.

  “In back,” he said with a nod of his head. Then he spun on his heels and withdrew. I followed.

  The office was tiny but neat. I’d been picturing a cluttered mess with framed photos of burlesque queens on the walls, but the place was austere and the only decoration on the wall was a simple landscape in an ornate frame. A few pieces of paper and a telephone were the only things on the desk.

  The manager sat at the desk and pointed to a chair opposite. Before I had planted myself, he said, “I’m still not sure I should tell you anything.” His tone was acerbic.

  I raised an eyebrow at this and then raised both hands in a gesture of openness. “I feel like we’re getting off on the wrong foot here, Mr.—” I paused, waiting for him to fill in the blank. When he didn’t, I went on. “Mercy told me there was a guy in here the last night she worked who was a ringer for her dead husband. She said she made a fuss when the guy played dumb and it got her an unpaid vacation. You know anything about that?”

  The manager stayed silent for a moment. I figured he was weighing his options. “The police came to me with that story, too,” he finally said. “Mercy wouldn’t have told them about that. She was dead when the cops got to her, right? So, how’d they get the story?”

  Now I had it figured. “They weren’t too gentle with you, were they?”

  His stare could have boiled a lobster in its tank, but he said nothing.

  “Threaten to pull your permits if you didn’t cooperate? Things like that?”

  The manager’s nod was almost imperceptible.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make trouble for you. I just met this nice lady last night, and this morning she’s dead. All I want is to find out who did this to her. Sometimes the cops need a little help, you know? I don’t know you or your business, so you have to believe me when I say I wasn’t giving you up to the cops. If you’ve got something to hide here, I don’t know a thing about it, and I assume the cops don’t eith—”

  “There is nothing to hide!” he said, anger boiling up in his tone and a vein starting to pulse in his forehead.

  “All right, all right,” I said, holding up my open palms again. “Look, can you just tell me if you were here the night of Mercy’s outburst?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you see the guy?”

  Another nod.

  “You ever see this guy at any other time, before or after?”

  He sat there smoldering for a moment and then said, “No.”

  “Did you tell the cops the same thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have no idea who this guy was?”

  “None.”

  I nodded, trying to keep my expression neutral in the face of this dead end. Then I said, “Well then. I guess that’s all. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  He made no move to escort me out, so I stood and left the office on my own without bothering to look back. I made my way through the storeroom behind the bar, ignoring the cases of liquor and kegs of beer.

  At the door, I saw the little guy who’d nodded to me before. He looked like he’d fall over if a stiff wind hit him unawares. His pencil mustache and bushy eyebrows set up a contrast that was almost comical.

  “Good afternoon,” I said.

  “Afternoon, sir,” came the reply.

  I stepped out into the mid-afternoon light, wondering what I was going to do next. A few ideas were already roiling around in my head, but they all seemed equally slim.

  “Hey!”

  The voice came from behind me, and I turned to see the little doorman coming after me. I thought maybe the manager had changed his mind about being a sandbag and had sent the doorman after me.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “You’re trying to help Mercy?”

  He spoke with an accent. I couldn’t be sure where it was from.

  “I’m sorry, but Mercy’s beyond help. I assumed everyone who worked with her already knew that.”

  “No, no. I know that. I mean help her get her justice. Now that she’s gone.”

  I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but I saw the point in what he was saying. “Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to do. Were you on the door the last night she worked?”

  “No. I can tell you who was, but I talk to him already. He don’t know anything.”

  “I’d still like to talk to him.”

  “No. You’re not talk to him. That’s the same as the cops do. He doesn’t know anything. Really.” He tapped the side of his head. “Not so smart.”

  “Ah.”

  “I tell you who you talk to. Old man. He come in to drink nights when Mercy doesn’t dance.”

  I gave him a puzzled look. “I don’t get it.”

  The doorman cast a nervous glance back toward his post, probably figuring the manager would come out any moment and see us talking. He sped up what he was saying, and his English got worse the faster he spoke.

  “Mercy tells all doormen watch for this old man. She never say why, just he come when she not there and we get him in, no cover charge, couple free drinks, and gone again. Is like that.”

  “And you think he knows something?”

  “He knows Mercy. This all I know. Sasha at the bar gets old man talking some, says he know Mercy from years.”

  “Did he say how he knew her?”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t think the cops know about this guy?”

  “Manager don’t know. So…” He gave a matter-of-fact shrug. “Cops don’t know.”

  My wheels were turning. Given the nature of Mercy’s act, if this old man who knew her came in for his free drinks only on nights when she wasn’t dancing, it seemed likely to me that he avoided her because seeing her that way would make one or both of them uncomfortable. But who would that make him? Her father? An uncle? An old family friend? There was no way to know, just as there was no way to know what light the old man might be able to shed on Mercy’s life or death. But if this was a lead the cops didn’t have, it might be worth following.

  “When do you think he’ll come in again?”

  “Since Mercy get suspenders by the boss, old man comes every night.”

  “I see. Around what time?”

  The doorman shrugged. “Some nights eight. Some ten.”

  “If I came back here tonight, you’d be able to point him out to me?”

  “For certainly.”

  “Good. You got a name on this guy?”

  “Clowns.”

  “Clowns?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not a name. It’s an occupation. Sort of.”

  The doorman shrugged. “Clowns is all I know from Sasha.”

  “
All right. Thanks. You’ve been very helpful.”

  I reached for my wallet, and when I slipped a two-dollar bill out, the doorman’s hands went up in a shielding gesture like I’d just offered him a picture of his mother in the altogether. “No,” he said. “I don’t take your money for this. Is for Mercy.”

  “All right,” I said, not troubled at the economics of the situation. I pulled out a business card and handed him that instead. “You call me if anything else occurs to you. I’ll be back here by seven this evening.”

  He nodded with enthusiasm. “Okay. Good.”

  * * * * *

  It turned out that the old man didn’t arrive until almost eleven. As a result, I had to find creative ways to drink for close to four hours. When I got to the Rose Room, the doorman ushered me in and found me a spot not far from the bar but in a dark corner near the back of the room where the manager wouldn’t notice me when he cruised through the club to check on the night’s business. Even so, I knew I needed to keep a drink in front of me if I was going to avoid drawing negative attention. Though I nursed a succession of the least potent drinks I could think of, by the time the old man came in and took his seat at the bar, I was significantly lubricated.

  And, of course, this meant that I’d been subjected to the Rose Room’s main form of entertainment—woman after woman who came onto the little stage and danced provocatively to the music that played over the tinny speakers. I recalled what Mercy had told me: that the Rose Room’s acts were neither kiddie shows nor were they likely to inspire the LAPD to come in and raid the place. After the first act, I saw that her description had been accurate, and this observation was confirmed and confirmed again by dancer after dancer. Like Mercy, they were all full-figured young women, some tall and some short, all earnestly working for their wages and tips, all talented in their own ways. Even so, that brand of entertainment—along with the liquor—had me feeling depressed by the end of the fourth act. By the time the dancers were on their third rotation, my mood was positively pitiful.

  So, it was a complete relief to see an old man with a full white beard come shuffling up to the bar after being nodded in by my friend at the door. When I glanced toward the doorman for confirmation, he gave me a wink, so I knew I had the right old man. Then I sat and watched as the bartender poured a shot of whiskey and set it on the bar. The old man brought the glass to his lips, paused to tip the glass toward the bartender in a silent toast, and then downed the liquor all at one swallow. I wasn’t close enough to hear him make a noise, but it looked to me that he let out a satisfied sigh before he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then set the glass back on the bar. He gave the bartender a hopeful look, like a dog who’s just wolfed down a table scrap and waits for more.