The Fedora Fandango: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 5) Read online

  From the largest and most lurid headline, I learned that Seth Wheatley, the LA District Attorney, had been murdered in his Los Feliz mansion, gunned down in his living room. The shooter, police were speculating, had been Mrs. Wheatley, who’d then put the gun to her temple and taken the party to the next level. Apparently, a neighbor had heard the shots—two of them—and had called the police. By the time the cops arrived, it was too late for the Wheatleys, and there was no sign of any other party to the crime. Sensational descriptions of the scene stretched the boundaries of journalistic integrity, which told me that either a reporter had been admitted to the crime scene after the coroner had finished up or that some of the cops had talked.

  Is this what the kid saw? I wondered. O’Neal had said it was likely he’d seen his parents killed. Had it been this murder/suicide?

  The story made no mention of the DA and his wife having any children. Surely, such a detail might have been dropped into the end of the article and cut to make room for more purple prose in the descriptions, so I couldn’t rule out the Wheatley murders as the source of Jack’s trauma. Seeing such a thing could certainly knock a kid—or anyone else—off balance for a while. But at the same time, I couldn’t be sure.

  There were two other murders, less sensational, reported in a sidebar on the front page. One was a result of a robbery south of downtown, and I cringed a little to consider that I’d spent time in that general region the night before when another Jed Strait had steered me toward that gambling den. I didn’t think the other Jed or I had robbed or killed anyone, though. The other murder had occurred when a husband had come home early from his nightshift to find his wife with another man; only the cuckold had left the bedroom alive.

  Here, too, it was possible that a child could have witnessed either crime, but in neither case was such a thing mentioned, nor was it both parents dying in either story, as O’Neal had described the night before. So, my money was on the Wheatleys as looking good for Jack’s parents, at least for now.

  At the bottom of the page, the headline competing with the Wheatley case for density of ink, was one more story—this one the murder of an off-duty cop outside a trendy coffeehouse in Atwater Village. I wanted to grab a map and double-check, but I was pretty sure that Atwater Village butted up against Los Feliz, the two neighborhoods separated by the Los Angeles River. That was a task for later, though. Recalling what O’Neal had said about a cop being killed trying to protect Jack, I assumed the story I was looking at now spelled out the details. Assumptions went out the window, however, when I saw the name of the dead cop—Wayne Dietrich.

  “What are the chances?” I whispered as I stared at the name, thinking of Wanda Dietrich and how she’d seemed almost enervated while standing on my porch during the night, the raindrops on her face not fazing her. I thought, too, of how she’d looked especially pained when O’Neal had mentioned the need to tie up loose ends. Because of the familiarity I’d spotted between O’Neal and Dietrich the night before, I was reasonably sure that Wanda and Wayne hadn’t been married, but what if he’d been her brother? Had seeing to his body been one of the loose ends O’Neal had been referring to?

  The paper made the murder sound like a professional hit. Dietrich had been sitting in his car outside the coffeehouse, possibly waiting to meet someone before going inside. This was before the rain had started falling. Witnesses from inside the coffeehouse reported that another car pulled up to Dietrich’s vehicle and gunfire erupted almost immediately. This resulted in pandemonium inside the coffeehouse, but one witness apparently had enough composure to be able to watch the killer get out of his car, examine the interior of Dietrich’s vehicle, and then get back into his own car before speeding off. The dome light in the dead cop’s car had revealed the killer as a man in a hat and overcoat, with the hat’s brim pulled down so none of his features could be seen.

  The bolt on the bathroom door scraped its way open ahead of the knob being turned, so I had to fold the paper in half and put an end to my research. I half sat up and then slid the paper underneath myself, dropping down onto it as the bathroom door opened and the little boy appeared, his hair still wet and plastered down smooth—probably with my comb.

  * * * * *

  By eight o’clock, we were pulling up in front of Guillermo’s. The little house in Chavez Ravine was quiet, and the sliding door on the workshop that was Garcia Industries still had its padlock firmly in place. Our arrival could not be kept secret, however.

  No sooner had I killed my engine than Perdida came trotting across the front yard, dodging clumps of dandelion and barking joyfully as she went. As I got out of the car and circled around the front to open the door for Jack, I bent to pet the little mechanical dog’s head and then turned toward the house where the screen door had opened with a squeak. Guillermo stood in the doorway waving.

  I returned the gesture and then gave him a sign that I hoped conveyed what I wanted—that he should wait a moment and prepare himself for something unusual. Then I turned back to my car and opened the passenger door.

  Inside, Jack looked up at me and then down at Perdida. He half smiled when he looked at her and then went back to the grim stare he offered me most of them time.

  “Come on out,” I said, and as he complied, I added, “This is Perdida. She’s my friend Guillermo’s dog, and I’m sure she’s going to like you.”

  I closed the car door and got Perdida to sit. Then I showed Jack how to get the dog to shake hands.

  “You want to try? She’s really good at it,” I said, but he wasn’t interested. “All right, then. Let’s go up to the house. I’ll bet Guillermo’s got something sweet in the kitchen.”

  I started walking. The boy and the dog followed, both acting mechanically.

  Guillermo was waiting on the front porch, a quizzical look on his face.

  “Who’s your friend, lobo?” he asked.

  “This is Jack,” I said as I shook his hand and then turned toward the boy. “You remember Detective O’Neal?”

  “Si.”

  “Well, she asked me to keep an eye on Jack here until a few things can be sorted out. It’s sort of a…top secret operation if you know what I mean.”

  “I see,” he said. Then he bent toward Jack and put out his hand. “Nice to meet you, señor. My name is Guillermo. Welcome to my home.” He shook the boy’s hand, and we went inside.

  Osvaldo was in the living room working on a new version of the wand toy he’d had when I first met him. This prompted more introductions, which were not as odd as I had expected. There was a boy who wouldn’t speak and a young man who usually chose not to speak, but despite their incommunicativeness—or maybe because of—it looked to me like each found the other interesting almost right away. Soon, Osvaldo was silently showing the boy what he was doing with a soldering iron, and Jack was watching with rapt attention.

  Once Guillermo was sure everyone was happy—and I made sure Jack wasn’t going to get into anything that was going to get him hurt or cause me to get an earful from O’Neal—the old man and I retired to the kitchen, where I gave him the rundown on what had transpired with O’Neal, what I’d seen in the paper this morning, and the rough ideas I was forming to put everything together. I also told him about what had happened the night before when I’d come to consciousness in the gambling den.

  If he looked disturbed at the discussion of bloodshed and the possible traumas Jack had endured, then the expression on his face when he learned of how long I’d been under the influence of the other Jed was nothing short of horrified.

  “I don’t like this, lobo,” he said with a shake of his head. “It’s not good at all.”

  “Because he had me shooting craps and drinking in my car?”

  “No. Because it’s lasting so much longer now. We have to get this under control.”

  “And if we can’t?” I asked.

  He let out a long sigh before saying, “Then I don’t think it’s a good idea that we let you cross over. Not if it’s gett
ing this bad, yes?”

  “Guillermo, I have to cross over. Elsa Schwartz stole a whole truckload of Chavezium on the other side. You know what she’s capable of doing with it, even if she hasn’t cracked the code in Klaus Lang’s notebook yet. And let’s not forget I’ve got this guy Hennigar lurking around like a weight tied to my neck. He wants Elsa, and I aim to see that he gets her.”

  “You think that’s really a good idea? To let this man have what he wants? He’s dangerous, yes?”

  “I think so. He’s certainly putting out enough signals that he is. But don’t worry. I have no intention of playing into his hands. Even so, I still need to get Elsa out of the world I left her in.”

  “I know, I know,” he said with a fading of his smile. “We’ll see, though, yes? We’ve got to keep you safe, lobo. It’s the only way.”

  He had all the same equipment on the kitchen table as he’d had a few days before—an oscilloscope, an amplifier, several other gadgets that might have been functional and might have been works in progress. Everything seemed wired together, though, so I assumed he was ready for the next phase of things. Leaning against a corner in the kitchen was the old guitar he’d modified.

  “Let’s see if we can get anything today,” he said, holding out a hand toward a rickety kitchen chair.

  “All right,” I said, trying not to sound doubtful.

  The last time we’d done this, he had put little suction cups on my forehead with wires running from them back to his equipment. Today, he had something different. It looked like a net, but there were little squares of steel attached at about a dozen spots. Looking these over, I saw wires and chips of Chavezium attached to the metal.

  “What is this?” I asked as I sat down.

  He showed me one of the squares and said, “I got some good readings from the ring I had you wear. So, I plugged the data into one of my machines, and it gave me the formulas I needed for this.”

  “And what is it?”

  “Here. I’ll show you. Take off your hat.”

  I removed my fedora, and then let him slip the net over the top of my head. He pulled down at its edges, giving me no opportunity to pull away or object. It felt like a heavy hair net.

  “What machine are you talking about?” I asked.

  “My smartest one.”

  “Carmelita?”

  He chuckled by way of answer, and I had to shake my head at the thought of my robot assistant having been in on this new invention without telling me anything about it.

  “What’s it going to do?” I asked.

  “Nothing if you don’t play that guitar,” he said.

  With an indulgent sigh, I picked up the guitar. Guillermo flipped the switch to turn on the amplifier, and I tuned the guitar while the amp’s tubes warmed up.

  “Have you given any more thought to your daughter?” I asked as I gave the B string’s tuning peg a little nudge.

  “I have,” he said. “But, you know, she’s not exactly my daughter, yes?”

  “Next best thing.”

  He shrugged. “Genetically identical to my Elvira, but…”

  “She came from a different Guillermo,” I offered.

  “Si,” he said. “What does that make me to her? Her to me?”

  “I don’t know, Guillermo. It’s a brave new world.”

  “I don’t know how brave,” he said. Then he added, “I’m writing back to her. When we make things safe for you to travel, maybe you’ll deliver it for me.”

  The thought that there’d be any doubt in the old man’s mind that I would do him this small service made me smile. “Of course,” I said as I grabbed an A minor chord and let it ring through the amplifier. “But is that all? Just a letter?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, turning dials on the scope and the other devices that were wired in to the amp and the odd net on my head. “It depends on whether we can make this travel safe or not. Maybe I can go visit her someday. Maybe she can come here. Who knows?” He shrugged as he asked this question of the universe, but I knew the casualness was feigned. Finding out that alternate versions of his wife and daughter were still alive in another world—probably in more than one—was something that had filled Guillermo with a greater sense of wonder than just about anything ever had before. The issue of how to deal with this discovery was probably all-consuming, but apparently he didn’t want me knowing that. Given the growing problems I was having with maintaining a hold on my consciousness, Guillermo pretty clearly wanted me thinking he was working to find a solution every hour of the day, and I let him believe that was what I thought.

  “I think I’m ready,” I said. “Before I start, though, can you go check on the kid and make sure Osvaldo’s not going to let him get hurt with that soldering iron?”

  Guillermo’s smile was disarming, his silent way of saying I worried too much, but he obliged me anyway, sticking his head into the front room for a moment and then coming back to the kitchen. “They’re playing with that toy he’s making. They’re fine.”

  “All right. Just keep an eye on them, will you? I can’t let anything happen to that kid.”

  “He’s fine, lobo. Fine.” He nodded toward the guitar. “Play now, eh?”

  I obliged him, launching into a blues piece to get myself warmed up and hitting a real groove when I got to the solo. The notes seemed to bend of their own accord, and for a moment I thought I might be slipping into one of my states. The feeling of the net on my head was distracting, though, keeping me from being able to get as completely lost in the music as I had in the past.

  So, when I ended the song, I waved toward the net and said, “I don’t think this thing is working, Guillermo. It feels like it’s actually keeping me from going into one of those visions.”

  He was looking at the wave patterns on the oscilloscope and glancing at his scribbled notes. With an impatient wave of the hand, he said, “Don’t think about that. Just play again. You were almost there.”

  “I know that. And this thing on my head kept me from—”

  Again, he waved his hand, not looking away from the scope. “Just play, lobo. Play.”

  “Play,” I echoed with a sigh and launched into “The Last Lie You’ll Tell.” It wasn’t the same without Sherise singing the lyrics, but then again without her involvement I could stretch the song out as long as I wanted to, adding in flourishes and mini-solos wherever I felt like it and without worrying that I was going to mess up her rhythm.

  Somewhere in the middle of the third verse, just before the main solo, I slipped away.

  There was no more guitar in my hands, and I wasn’t in Guillermo’s kitchen anymore. Instead, I was in bed, and I wasn’t alone.

  My eyes were closed, and I was kissing a woman’s neck. Her body was beneath mine.

  I opened my eyes and saw dark hair on the pillow.

  Sherise, I thought. Good.

  But then I realized that there was something in her hair. Not a ribbon or a barrette. It was a cord, a leather thong.

  Stony G, I thought as I recalled the way the eyepatch was fastened with a cord like this. The hair was different, but…

  I pulled my lips away from her neck, afraid to look down at the woman’s face but feeling compelled to look anyway.

  Before I could see her face, though, the light in the room changed.

  Early morning light or maybe twilight coming through a window.

  And blonde hair on the mattress.

  Annabelle looked up at me, her eyes eager with desire. Her arms were around my bare shoulders, and she pulled me down to her.

  And she was Elsa.

  I pulled away, but she held me tight, and I knew that I was in Jetpack Jed’s mind. How he could find this woman desirable was beyond me, but he did. I felt her nails in my back as she pulled against my resistance.

  And then the light took on a pink tinge, like a rose-colored veil had been draped over a lamp, and the woman beneath me changed again—mercifully. But now, it was Katrina Mulligan. Not the confident K
atrina who’d killed the woman her husband had brought into their bed. This was the battered Katrina, the Katrina of the broken nose and needle tracks who seemed to have found comfort in the bed she was sharing with me now.

  I didn’t want to be here, not with any of them. Just Sherise.

  At the same time, there was a part of me that knew it would be cruel to deny Katrina, that the version of Jed she’d brought into her bed was giving her something she thought she’d lost.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to choose.

  A moment later, I was back in Guillermo’s kitchen, the last notes of a solo blasting out of the little amplifier.

  Stunned, I dropped the guitar and stood up, the kitchen chair falling over behind me as I tore at the net Guillermo had placed on my head.

  The old inventor looked shocked and frightened at this outburst.

  “Lobo! What’s wrong? What happened?” he said, now yelling over the cacophonous sounds coming out of the amplifier.

  I stared at the net in my hands, breathing hard. After a few seconds, I managed to say, “That was not something I wanted to experience.”

  “You had a vision?” he asked, excited.

  “Yes.” I set the net down on the kitchen table while Guillermo switched off the amp.

  “You’re all right, though, yes?”

  Taking a deep breath, I nodded and then said, “Yes. I’m pretty sure.”

  His smile widened. Then, without another word, he turned to his instruments. “That’s good, lobo. Muy bien.” He started turning knobs on the scope and then turning to consult other meters and dials on the instruments spread across the table.

  I picked up the guitar as Osvaldo and Jack came into the kitchen. The young man looked a bit concerned at the noise I’d just created, and the boy looked alarmed.

  “It’s all right. Just a song that didn’t go well,” I said, aiming my words at the boy in what I hoped was a tone of reassurance.

  Without taking his eyes off me, Jack reached for Osvaldo’s hand, and then the pair turned and went back to whatever they’d been doing.