Made to Kill (18 page)

I frowned on the inside and eyed the payphone on the corner. I should have called Ada. Given her an update. Let her know what I was up to.

But I wanted to move, and move fast. I wasn’t sure how long the heat of my new trail was going to last.

So instead I looked around and got my bearings and turned my Geiger counter up. It began a steady tick and I began to follow the breadcrumbs.

Radioactive
breadcrumbs.

I found my way around the block and followed the trail a few yards until I could see the back of the club and the roller door of its loading bay. Then I turned around and followed the trail back up the street the other way.

Chip Rockwell was on the move.

And I was on his tail.

***

I walked for a while. I ignored most people around me and most did the same. That was fine. More than fine. I wished them all long and happy lives in which they could ignore me at their leisure.

I just hoped that future extended beyond Friday night.

At intersections cars came and went and some drivers slowed to look at me as they cruised around the corner and one, a young man in a tight white T-shirt, even leaned on the horn as he did so. But he gave me a cheery wave out the window as his tires squealed and I waved back and he seemed happy enough.

I kept on walking and kept on following the crackle in my head. It came and went—they’d moved Chip in a vehicle from the loading dock, that much was obvious, and the trail they left went through peaks and troughs that probably matched the ebb and flow of traffic.

That traffic was particularly bad this evening thanks to the lane closure right outside a red, green, and gold-colored fake temple that I soon found myself standing outside.

Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Where the curtain would go up on the premiere of
Red Lucky
in about twenty-four hours.

I checked the Geiger and checked it again.

The theatre was red hot.

Chip Rockwell was inside.

There was a phone booth a couple of doors down and it started to ring. I walked up to it and stood half-in, half-out of the booth. They weren’t made for mechanical men of my dimensions.

“Enjoying the sights and sounds of Hollywood, Ray?”

“Hello, Ada.”

Ada took a sip of something she couldn’t possibly be drinking. “You know we still have two payments to go.”

I pulled the phone’s heavy metal cord a little between two steel fingers and turned as I stood half-in the booth to look down the street back toward the theater.

“Two payments on what?”

Ada sighed. “The
car
, Ray. I sure hope you didn’t leave the keys in it.”

I patted my pocket. They keys were there.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll pick it up later. Listen to this.”

I filled her in and when I was done she whistled.

“Great,” said Ada. “So Charles David was working for the CIA and he wanted to kill you. Fresco Peterman works for the KGB and he wants you for the mysterious phases three and four. Hey, maybe I could hire you out? How much would you say the rental is on a robot like your good self?”

“Ada!”

She laughed inside my head. “Tuxedos. Vintage dresses. Killer robots. What’s the difference, Ray?”

I ignored her and kept my optics on the theater. It was closed. It shone in the last light of sunset. It had had a fresh coat of paint.

Ready for the premiere.

“It’s all going down on Friday,” I said. “The movie premiere.”

“Phase three.”

I nodded. “And I’m phase four, apparently.”

“Makes you wonder what phases one and two were.”

I shrugged. “You and me both.” I stood there and listened to the hiss on the phone and the cars on the street. “What do you want me to do about Eva, in case I see her again?”

“Well, we’ve been paid in full, Ray. I’d hate to have to give that money back.”

“No luck with the client then?”

“Nope,” said Ada. “But I think you’re right and it’s the Russians wanting to take her out for taking their gold.”

“Couldn’t they have done that themselves? I would assume a simple hit on one of their own agents would be a pretty easy job.”

“Why don’t you ask your old pal Chip when you see him? Anyway, she’d taken off. They needed someone to find her first.”

“I don’t like the idea of working for the Soviet Union.”

“Says Mr. Phase Four.”

I shook my head. “Charles David said we had to stop phase three first. And I’m starting to feel that’s a pretty good idea.”

“So what are you going to do about this feeling, chief?”

I looked at the theater. While I was looking it sounded like Ada put something down on the desk in the office. I wondered idly what I would find out if I did a reverse directory on the calls.

I wondered idly if I did that every day and never remembered the answer.

Then that sound was gone and all was left was a ticking sound. It wasn’t the Geiger counter this time. This was the sound of a watch, a small pocket watch, the second hand racing ever onwards. It was the sound of the computer room back at the office.

The sound of Ada’s heartbeat.

“Mission control to Raymond Electromatic, come in please,” said Ada.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s time I spoke to Chip Rockwell.”

“Just don’t forget to buy a ticket before you go in, Ray.”

I smiled on the inside. I hung up.

I walked up the block to the Chinese Theatre.

The lights were on inside the theater but the main doors were locked and there was a sign on the door with one arrow pointing to the box office and another pointing in the opposite direction suggesting that contractors use the tradesmen’s entrance. There was a second sign next to the first, hand-lettered on a big white card, to say the place would be closed until next week due to Friday’s “nationwide gala premiere of motion-picture history,
Red Lucky
.”

I tried the doors again but they just rattled like they’d rattled the first time. Only now the noise had caught the attention of a man in a flat cap and denim coveralls with a white T-shirt underneath the straps and a thick moustache under his nose. He was walking from my left across the theater lobby, carrying something long and wrapped in a painted-spattered cream cloth.

He stopped and looked at me. Then he rebalanced the object on his shoulder and walked up to the doors. He looked at me some more. I looked back, and touched the brim of my hat in greeting. The man jerked to life and leaned his cargo against the wall and then fussed with the door from his side. There was a hearty thunk as he twisted the lock and a squeak as he pulled the door open just a crack.

He nodded at me through the crack, his eyes seemingly resting on my hat rather than my optics. The moustache didn’t suit him. It made him look older than he probably was. And he needed a haircut. I kept these thoughts to myself.

“Hi,” he said, in a tone that suggested saying hello to a robot had brightened his day a little. “Can I help you, man? Just the theatre is closed, y’know, for the premiere.”

I reached into my jacket, took out the wallet with the badge in it, and opened it to show him. He nodded as he looked at it and straightened up. With one hand he adjusted the cloth-covered object he’d leaned against the wall and with the other he opened the door a little wider. I wasn’t just anyone walking in off the street, after all. I was a robot detective on a case. He seemed real eager to cooperate.

“Oh, so, man, what’s up? Anything I can do to help—” he slapped his thigh—“I’m your man. Name is Jake but you can call me Sparks.”

I smiled at this. He didn’t see it, of course.

“Electrician, huh?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Listen Sparks, I’m working for Mr. Fresco Peterman,” I said. That wasn’t true but Sparks seemed to like what I was saying so I kept on saying it. “I was just in the neighborhood, thought I’d take a look at the theater. Just a preliminary check, you know how it is. A quick sweep and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Sparks nodded. Then he looked over his shoulder. The theater lobby was covered in as much gold and green and red as the outside of the place. I thought then I knew where Fresco had got his interior design ideas from.

Sparks turned back and nodded again. “Okay, you wanna come in and wait, man, no problem, no problem at all.” He jerked a thumb over one shoulder. “I’d better just go get Walter. He’s the manager. He’ll be looking after everyone, y’know, on Friday too. Wait here, I’ll go get him.”

I nodded and lifted my hat and Sparks jogged away from me. Then he stopped and turned and clicked his fingers in my direction. “Fresco Peterman?” Then he slapped a leg and said “wow-whee” in a way that sounded like he meant it, and then he was gone.

I turned back to the doors. I looked out of them. Then I twisted the big lock home. Didn’t want just anyone wandering in, after all.

I heard footsteps and a telephone rang somewhere and some people called out somewhere else. The lobby might have been empty but it sounded like Friday’s crew was still prepping the theatre.

I turned my Geiger counter up and used it like a compass to get a nuclear-powered bearing.

I waited a few minutes. Walter was clearly a busy man. I stood there and thought about what I would say and what I would ask and then I thought I probably didn’t want to speak to him at all, seeing as I didn’t work for Fresco Peterman and I wasn’t here to check on security arrangements for Friday. Every A-lister in town would be standing in this lobby in just over twenty-four hours and chances were Walter knew exactly what the security arrangements were and how they most certainly didn’t involve a robot pretending to be a PI.

The telephone kept ringing and the people kept calling out and I slipped over to the doors to the main auditorium cracked them open and slipped inside.

***

I wasn’t sure what I expected to find inside the auditorium. I was standing at the back looking out over a sea of red velvet seats with gold woodwork, the whole thing sloping gently toward the stage. I didn’t know how many people could worship the silver screen in one sitting but it looked like an awful lot.

The walls were gold and red as well and I had to admit they were something else. They showed friezes of woodland scenes separated by great gold columns. The ceiling right over my head was the floor of the circle above and from it hung great gold chandeliers shaped like Chinese lanterns. Beyond, the ceiling vanished into the stratosphere in order for the auditorium to accommodate what was clearly a very large screen indeed hidden behind the red curtains that continued the Oriental forest theme in elaborate gold embroidery.

It seemed like a nice place to hold a film premiere.

I was alone in the auditorium. There didn’t seem to be much to set up in here, after all. The curtains were closed. The lights were on but the glow of their blazing light was swallowed by the soft velvet depths of the place. As I walked forward my footfalls sounded dull and far away underneath the ever-increasing rattle of my radiation detector. The acoustics in the place were impressive.

I turned around to get the full view. There was a big star-shaped chandelier right in the middle of the high ceiling and what I’d thought was the circle was actually a couple of boxes flanking the windows of the projection room.

There were a couple of people in one of the boxes. One was bent over a chair and was hammering something. The other had his back to me.

I didn’t want Walter to find me and I didn’t want the two workmen to see me so I tap danced down the aisle and found an unmarked black door next to the stage.

Chip Rockwell was close.

I let myself through.

***

Backstage at Grauman’s reminded me more of the Temple of the Magenta Dragon than the front-of-house did. Out of public view, the whole place was endless matte black that did strange things to the light and it had a smell that was like the inside of a hot air cupboard.

I tiptoed a few tight corridors. There was nobody around but I could hear hammering and voices from somewhere.

And, in the darkness, the pop and fizz of my Geiger counter. The signal got louder and denser the farther I went, so I went farther. After only a short time I came to a set of short black steps that led up into a black space lit by a pale light that had a greenish tint.

I went up the steps and found myself in the wings at the back of the stage. About twenty yards to my right was the actual back of the silver screen. It shone in the dim light like quicksilver.

The screen only got some cursory attention. What really caught my eye was the machinery behind it.

It was black metal, and lots of it, all girders and struts arranged into a series of sharp angles. At first I thought it was a scaffold, something temporary or maybe even permanent to allow staff up to the back of the screen or to something equally high. I looked up and there was nothing there. No lighting rig. No high-altitude walkways and ladders hanging from chains from the ceiling.

The big metal thing had a disc on the front
of it and that disc
was pointed at the back of the movie screen. The disc, like the screen, was silver. It was twenty yards in diameter and in the center was a pointed cone, the point aimed at the movie screen’s bulls eye.

I moved again, looking up.

Behind the big disc was a fat cylinder, from which sprouted cables that were fixed to the scaffold by metal straps and led away down to the floor and then down the steps on the opposite side of the stage. The fat cylinder had a curved back and there was a protuberance sticking out of the back, like the end of an axle.

Which is just what it was. The fat cylinder was a motor. The big silver disc was built to turn.

I didn’t know what it was but I knew it wasn’t the kind of standard equipment you’d find in a movie theater. Maybe it was part of the fancy new transmission system, the exciting wizardry that was going to beam every frame of
Red Lucky
straight into cinemas all over the country.