Made to Kill (16 page)

I had a feeling I knew exactly what it was.

Chip Rockwell.

I told Ada the same and she made a whistling sound. “From movie producer to nuclear man?”

“Well,” I said, “he wasn’t much of a man. Just a suit and a voice.”

“And a radioactive cube?”

I shrugged in the car seat. “There could have been anything under those bandages.”

I looked up and out across that big lawn. I could see nothing but one of the maid’s feet, raised in the air, her shoe swinging off her big toe. Seemed like a nice day for some yard work and I supposed even foreign spies were allowed some downtime.

Ada made a sound that was like the stirring of a mug of coffee that only existed within the matrix of her master program.

“Has Eva called?” I asked.

“Not a word.”

No surprise there. “Have you reached the client who took out the contract on her yet?”

“No dice,” said Ada. “Feels like they went to a lot of trouble to keep themselves hidden.”

“Okay. I need to get into that basement.”

“You think Rockwell is still there?”

I frowned on the inside. “He’s the key to all this and it’s time I paid a visit. If he’s both radioactive and trying to stay dead then a deep basement seems like a good place to hide.” I shifted in my seat. In an effort to avert my gaze from what was going on up on that great big green lawn I turned to look out the back window.

“Okay, Ray,” said Ada, “but be careful—”

“Hold that thought.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve got company.”

A black car had pulled up just down at the bend. There was a man in the car wearing a wide-brimmed hat. The car was still running.

I zoomed in as much as I could, but then the man changed gears and pulled the car out and around mine. He floored it and sped up the slope, the car bucking on the rear axle like a lion taking down a gazelle.

“I heard that, Ray. Who was it? Another tail?”

“Could be Charles David’s handler perhaps. If he was an CIA asset they’ll have someone keeping an eye out.”

“A someone who will start wondering where that asset is,” said Ada.

“Or it could be more Russian agents,” I said. “Ada, I’ll call you back,” and before she could say another word I dumped the dead telephone back on the cradle that sat between me and the passenger seat.

The black car was ahead of me at the end of the street, but was still in sight. Just.

I turned the ignition and pressed my foot to the floor.

The man in black was good, I gave him that. Better than Charles David anyway. The black car he was in was a pig, the suspension soft as anything, the thing pitching and yawing like a small plane about to make an unscheduled touchdown.

But he was a good driver doing his best work
and
he knew what he was doing. He took me out of the Hollywood Hills and back into West Hollywood. Then he took me out of West Hollywood and up into the Hollywood Hills again. After a few miles of winding left and right turns, all pretense of following him without detection was gone. We were alone up on the country roads surrounded by nothing but sage and pine and scrub and dusty rocky hillsides.

I steered the course. The black car was never close, not really. My Buick was a good machine but it was heavy, reinforced to take the weight of its unusual driver and then heavier again with the driver
in situ.
All in all it was slow, but not slower than the black car in front. We were evenly matched.

Ahead he took a bend too fast and the back end fishtailed out, catching in the loose dirt at the side of the tarmac, throwing up a dust storm and a shower of gravel. The gravel had returned to Earth by the time I entered the cloud but the dust was thick and danced in the slipstream of the black car. When I came out the other side the black car was getting smaller on the road ahead.

So I stepped on it. The Buick roared and it seemed to move forward a little faster, but not much.

The telephone next to my hip rang. I kept one hand on the wheel and kept the car pointed at my target as I picked up the receiver with my other hand.

“Now is not the time, Ada.”

“You’re a robot, chief. You can multitask now and again. Good for the circuits.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, pulling tight around a corner and feeling grateful there wasn’t traffic coming the other way, the way I had crossed the center line. A robot was liable to have an accident, chasing cars like this.

“I’ve got the pictures you took outside the house. You’re good at portraits, Ray. Nice and clear.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but you could have complimented me back at the office.”

“Now now, Ray. No need to get feisty.”

“Sorry.” The road began to climb more steeply. We were going up.

“I’ve got an ID on Charles David’s tattooed gardener.”

“Really?”

“Really. His name is Artem Rokossovsky.”

“Sounds Russian.”

“We’ll make a detective out of you yet,” said Ada. “Rokossovsky is military. Soviet special forces.”

“That’s some gardener.”

“That’s not all he is. He’s part of an elite unit that was stationed at a place called
Shchyolkovo-14.
”

“Sounds nice.” A took a left turn too fast and then a right turn not fast enough. Then I came over a rise and saw the black car.

“They also call it Star City,” said Ada.

“Sounds nicer. How did you get his info?”

There was a creaking sound like someone leaning back in the office chair and then a squeaking sound like that same chair was being turned around so the person in it could look out the window. I didn’t know if those sounds were real or phantoms conjured by my hot transistors.

“A girl has her secrets, Ray. And friends in high places. But the tattoos are like fingerprints. The gardener is Artem Rokossovsky, no question.”

“So what is friend Artem doing tending Charles David’s roses?”

“Just sit tight and listen hard, chief,” said Ada. “Star City is one big science research complex. Rokossovsky was shipped out there and placed under direct command of one of their top brainboxes. Guy called Vitaly Bobrov. And Bobrov has been on the CIA watch list for a decade now. The US government has even tried to turn him a couple of times, but it never worked”

“So if Artem is here then maybe his boss is too?”

“You’re on fire today.”

“What was Bobrov doing in Star City? The CIA must have targeted him specifically for recruitment.”

Ada laughed. I didn’t like it.

“You’re going to get a kick of this one, chief.”

“Lay it on me.”

“Our Vitaly Bobrov is a robotics expert.”

Of all the things I had heard today that I didn’t like, I didn’t like that one the most.

“He was supposedly working on automated systems for Soviet lunar missions,” Ada continued. “Star City is the Russian Cape Canaveral. But the CIA think his position there was itself a cover.”

“So if he wasn’t making robots for the moon, what was he doing?”

“That they don’t know. But what do you bet it has something to do with glass cubes that pump out enough energy to kill a squirrel at fifty paces?”

The road straightened up as the car crawled on a plateau covered by forest. It was nice. The light was dappled. It felt cooler.

I slowed and looked around, checking the front, rear, sides. Then I slowed some more, just coasting along.

“Problem, Ray?”

“I lost the black car.”

“Hmm,” said Ada. There was a scratching sound. Then there was a puffing sound and a sniff.

I pulled up under a big old pine with broad twisted branches and took another look around. There were plenty of roads leading off the main strip, most of them just brown dirt. It was the perfect place to lead a tail and then lose him.

I had to hand it to the guy in the black car—he was good. Whoever he was. Charles David’s agency handler. A Russian agent. Maybe it was the mysterious Bobrov himself, although if it was then he’d had lessons in how to shake a tail.

I swapped the phone from one side of my head to the other, like that would make any difference at all. I sat in the car. I thought and thought some more.

I wound down the window of the driver’s door. The day was getting long. The sound of insects and birds filtered in. It was nice. I liked it a lot. Maybe I was turning into a country robot.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m heading back to town to pay the late Mr. Rockwell a surprise visit.”

Then I heard a car coming. I looked in the rearview and saw a cloud of dust growing at the horizon, where the road came up over the hill. It got closer. I couldn’t see it through the dust. I didn’t give it much thought. It was a free country and I was a robot minding his own business, talking to his computer boss on a nice sunny Thursday afternoon.

“Report back as soon as you can, Ray,,” said Ada. “And be careful.”

The car was close now. It was silver. Wide at the front. There was a hood ornament rising from the radiator cap like a gun sight. The car trailed a cloud of light brown dust that lit up in the sun like a comet coming in for a once-in-a-lifetime pass.

“I’ll keep an eye out for strange Russian robotics professors, sure.”

As I hung up the phone the car pulled up alongside me and stopped. The driver kept the car running as they leaned across the passenger seat and wound down the window. I wound down my window and we stared at each other a while. I was frowning on the inside and the driver of the other car was smiling on the outside. It was a cute smile, the way it made dimples in her cheeks.

“Get in,” said Eva McLuckie. “We need to talk.”

Her car was something European, spacious and well built, with room enough to take my bulk and suspension that didn’t protest too much when I got in.

“I’m glad you stopped by,” I said, “because I have some questions and those questions need some answers.” I nodded out the windshield. “You can talk and drive at the same time. The Temple of the Magenta Dragon, please. I think you have the address.”

Eva McLuckie drove with both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road. She drove pretty fast but it was steady and it was smooth.

“So where the hell have you been?” I asked. “You were supposed to be calling the office every day.”

Eva shrugged behind the wheel. “I was busy.” Her eyes flicked in my direction, just for a second, before returning to the road ahead. We were nearly off the hills and the traffic was getting thicker. “So consider this my call. What have you got for me? Is the job done?”.

I wondered what to tell her. The truth, I supposed. Or at least part of the truth.

In a moment, anyway. My own agenda had one or two action items on it.

“So this case of nervous exhaustion. I understand it’s in all the papers. It would be a pretty good cover in case you needed to drop out of sight for a while, right?”

Her grip tightened on the wheel and we picked up just a hint of speed. She didn’t seem to want to answer that question, so I tried another one.

“You want to tell me what was going on down in that basement the other night?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t know?”

We pulled up at some lights. The car’s engine purred smooth as silk somewhere a long way in front of me. Eva took a deep breath and turned to face me.

“Look, metal man, did you do the job or not?”

I looked at her. “Charles David is dead, if that’s what you’re asking me.” I looked at her some more.

The lights changed. Eva McLuckie drove the car. I glanced at her. She was staring at the road. Her nostrils were doing what they did when the person in charge of them was trying to keep calm and suck in enough oxygen to keep the brain going.

“You should be pleased,” I said. I raised an eyebrow, or at least it felt like I did. I watched her face but her expression was hard to read. She was holding something in. Holding lots in. I got that. But she was good at controlling it, or hiding it at least.

She was an actor,
after all.

“You don’t look pleased.”

Her lip curled and she let out a big breath. “Why should I be pleased, robot?”

I turned back to admire the front view. “I mean,” I said, “I can understand why you did it. Charles David was a double-agent and you found out. Then he found out that you found out and he ran. You had to eliminate him before he got back to his handlers and blew the plan your red friends had concocted wide open.” I shrugged. “You needed someone to find him first, though. You couldn’t do it yourself. So you came to me, because you knew I could handle both aspects of the case. How
did
you know, by the way?”

Eva squeezed the steering wheel like she was using it to keep herself upright.

She didn’t answer.

“Okay,” I said. “Of course I’m wondering why you couldn’t just
get your friends to help. But I’m guessing that’s because you didn’t want them to know. You and Charles were partners—a team, maybe. The Russians put you in pairs.” I thought about Fresco Peterman and Alaska Gray and liked my theory. “Each responsible for the other, neither able to get direct help from other teams in case it blew the cover. Neat.”

We drove on. I watched the traffic.

“But the gold is the really interesting part,” I said. “You’re a movie star. I imagine you have a bank balance big enough to make grown men weep. But you didn’t want to use any of that money to pay me. I get that too. That could be traced too easily if someone were to get an idea. Instead you used gold. Completely untraceable. Only it wasn’t your gold. And I have a feeling the rightful owners weren’t too pleased when they found out you’d borrowed it.”

Eva licked her lips.

“You know I have a contract to kill you, Ms. McLuckie?”

She might have been shaking or it might have been her holding onto the steering wheel too tightly.

“You’re not saying much there, driver.”

“You seem to like the sound of your own voice. It seemed rude to interrupt.”

I frowned on the inside and turned to watch the streets of Hollywood slip by my window. “Question is, whose gold is it?” The question was directed mostly at myself. “The gold isn’t the normal kind. Unmarked ingots, small enough to be transported easily. Say, transported
secretly
. Across borders. Across continents even.” I turned back to Eva. “Say from Mother Russia? The gold is Soviet. You’re working for them and you knew they had it. So when things went slippery with your partner Charles David, it was up to you to fix things. You knew they had the gold so you took it. That’s neat. It doesn’t come back to you, and maybe if they found it gone they could pin it on Charles David. All you needed to do was find him and eliminate him before that happened. Present it all wrapped up neat. There was no risk with me on the case. You stuck around a little—long enough to attend the next meeting of your Hollywood Communist club—but then someone noticed the gold was missing and they think you took it. Bam, your plan is history. Now you’re on the run from your own people, right? That’s quite a situation, I must admit.”