Killing Is My Business Read online

  I drove and Falzarano held the napkin to his forehead with one hand and with the other he pointed, giving me directions with stabs of his index finger. This way. That way. Take a left. Right. Left. Never a street name, never a place. After a while he said, “Head north and keep going,” so I did what he said and we drove in the Hollywood night, the robot and the mafioso.

  Falzarano fell silent. I kept on driving. As I drove I thought that the plan was working, although I hadn’t expected that level of carnage at the restaurant. The attack had been overkill but it had sure got Falzarano’s attention, which was exactly the plan. Scare the old man back to his castle in the hills, only now with me at his side.

  So far, so good.

  We drove another half hour. The lights of the city vanished as we cut into the inky darkness of the hills. Falzarano kept his eyes on the road. Then he reached out and jerked his hand and I slowed and took a left.

  There was a big gate in the way. It was a towering thing, arched and elaborate like the gates on an old cemetery. There were two big stone lions on either side, their claws raised and jaws agape but their anger frozen. They had no idea what was going on.

  As we came up the car’s headlights swept over two men in suits and hats who had emerged from the darkness and were jogging toward us on the other side of the gate. They were carrying rifles in their hands and they slowed and bent down and shielded their faces from the lights as they peered into the car.

  Then they saw their boss sitting there with a bloody forehead and an angry look and they both jerked like they’d touched a live wire. One of them waved furiously at the other, like they weren’t two feet apart. The other guy got the message well enough. He slung the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and got to work on the gate’s giant lock.

  The gate swung open and I pushed the accelerator. The Buick cruised down the sloping driveway. It took a full minute to get to the end, where the driveway looped around a fountain that stood in front of a big stone house. I brought the car to a rest and tried very hard to raise an eyebrow as I looked up out of the windshield.

  To say the house was big was to say the Mona Lisa was a cute little sketch. I knew the place as Falzarano’s castle and that was closer to the truth than I had expected. The whole thing was assembled from great gray stone blocks, their edges mathematically true but their faces rough. At each corner was a big square tower with windows and the windows had balconies. The tops of the towers were castellated but then so was the rest of the house, and behind those jigsaw teeth stood more men with rifles. I was almost disappointed they weren’t armed with longbows.

  The European Gothic effect was spoiled a little by the palm trees that lined the driveway and the big flowering plants that crowded around the castle. It was as though Count Dracula had uprooted and moved to the Bahamas and taken the best of Transylvania with him.

  The fountain was big and it was in full swing, the water shooting up ten feet at the very least before turning around and heading back to Earth. When I turned the car off the sound of the fountain and the sound of crickets mixed in a pleasing way in the evening air.

  Then came the sounds of feet running fast on gravel and of doors opening and closing. Next to me Falzarano was busy examining his bloody napkin.

  Within a moment or two there were four people standing outside the car, leaning in to look, waving at each other with the big rifles they all seemed to carry. Everyone wore a suit and everyone wore a hat and they all had sunglasses on despite the hour. They weren’t as pretty as the Beefeaters at the Tower of London but I’m sure they would have been just as good at guarding the crown jewels. On the other hand, his boys keeping watch down at the Bacchanalian had been the next thing to useless, apparently overlooking the obvious possibility of a drive-by assassination attempt.

  Or maybe it was just obvious in retrospect. Or maybe they were in on it.

  Falzarano hissed something in a language I wasn’t programmed with and he unwound his window. He leaned out and waved the napkin like a bloodstained flag. He spoke fast and his men sprang into life, running around doing whatever men with high-powered rifles did when their boss was in a bad mood. Securing the perimeter, manning the lookouts, dusting off the rack, and boiling cauldrons of oil, etc.

  Then Falzarano turned and waved the napkin at me and he pointed through the windshield.

  There was a big garage set just off to the side of the castle and I could see it was attached to the main building. The garage was low and about as wide as a football field and had no fewer than four separate green double roller doors. As Falzarano shook his pointing finger in its direction the second door along folded up, more men on the inside silhouetted against the light as they pushed it up over their heads.

  The inside of the garage was white and bright and there was an empty space next to a car that looked pretty sporty.

  I got the drift. I put the Buick in gear and rolled her into the space. I stopped and looked at the car next to me. It was a Jaguar, in dark green. It was long and low and it crouched like its namesake, ready to pounce. The steering wheel was on the wrong side. An import from England.

  There were other cars in the long garage. Two were parked on the left of my Buick and after the Jaguar were four more. All of them shone in the bright garage lights.

  I turned to Falzarano to apologize for not getting a scrub and wax before I parked my own car in his fancy garage but he was already heaving himself out. One of his boys in charge of the garage-door-opening ceremony ran over and gave him a hand. Falzarano tried to brush the man off but the man held true to his convictions and got his boss out and on his way.

  I watched them disappear through a door that by all accounts led into the connecting passage that led into the main house. While I watched them I reached for the handle of my own door only to find it wasn’t where I expected it to be. I turned my head and saw two of the riflemen standing by my open door and the barrel of one of the guns about six inches from my face.

  The man behind the rifle smiled and pulled the bolt of the gun with a clack-clack and then his finger tightened visibly around the trigger.

  13

  They took me up an awful lot of stairs. I walked in front and the two riflemen walked behind. I was at the end of their guns, which meant they were quite a long way behind. That suited me. It must have suited them too. I didn’t think they liked me and I guessed they wanted me as far away from them as possible. When I’d gotten out of the car I’d made a production out of brushing my tattered suit down, just to give them some idea of how much damage their rifles would do against me.

  But they seemed to like being in charge and I wasn’t going to spoil their evening any more than it was currently being spoiled by an attempt on their boss’s life.

  We went up the stairs and eventually the passage opened up into the house proper. I stepped across the threshold and sank to the top of my shoes in a carpet that was the same color as the wine at the Bacchanalian. The house was warm. The walls were a mix of dark wood paneling and finely brushed granite. There were pictures everywhere but of what I couldn’t rightly say, just shapes and colors and not much more than that. The light fittings were big and gold and looked more suited to a cobblestoned street being stalked by Jack the Ripper if it weren’t for the fact that the glass in them was a peculiar reddish purple color. Call it magenta. The whole place smelled of juniper berries, which wasn’t unpleasant.

  We walked on.

  The place was very quiet. We had the carpet to thank for that. I could almost hear the beating hearts of the two men behind me.

  We turned into what must have been the castle’s main entrance hall given the huge set of double doors laid with stained glass on our left. The floor here was a black-and-white checkerboard. We crossed it and went through some more doors and back into another carpeted hallway.

  After trekking for a while I was about to suggest we make camp and wait until it was light when we arrived at our destination. Ahead were two big double doors in dark w
ood. One was closed and the other was open and I could see a big room beyond with a low ceiling. The carpet switched from red to green at the threshold but it looked just as thick in the other room. I could see part of a desk the size of a table tennis table and part of Zeus Falzarano as he stood beside it.

  I walked through the door. It was a study, or a library, or both. In the corner to my left as I came in was a concert grand piano. Behind it, and all around, the walls were lined with books. There was a scattering of couches in red leather that were studded with buttons in all the right places. There were no windows. The desk was about four-fifths the way across the green carpet and it was as impressive as the folding drinks cabinet that stood beside it. The cabinet was open, the two halves of the top split like an egg and folded down on a hinged mechanism that lifted an array of bottles up for careful selection.

  Beside the drinks cabinet stood Zeus Falzarano. He had a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other. The bloodstained napkin was on the corner of the big desk and the gash on his forehead looked pretty angry but at least it wasn’t leaking anymore.

  Falzarano was talking to two more of his men. Like all the others, they were poured into tight suits and wore equally tight black fedoras indoors. One of the pair had sunglasses on while the other had his pair in his hand. He was flicking one arm open and closed with some level of irritation.

  I stopped at a polite distance. Falzarano stopped talking and he took a swig of his liquor as he looked me over. The two men with him looked at me and the guy holding the glasses stopped fiddling with them. His eyes went from me to his boss and back again a few times. Nobody moved. They were well-trained poodles, the lot. Nobody could even breathe without their boss giving the order.

  Then Falzarano came up for air and he waved his brandy balloon around.

  “Get the hell out of here!” he yelled at the walls. I took it it wasn’t an instruction for me because the two men by the drinks cabinet nearly leapt up to the ceiling before rushing out as fast as their tight pants would let them. I heard a variety of metallic clicks and slides and clacks from behind me and I turned around to find the two riflemen running out of the room as well. They left the doors of the study open.

  I turned back around. Zeus Falzarano was still at the drinks cabinet, making an adjustment to the level in his glass. When he was done he reached down and pulled an empty glass out of the cupboard in the base of the cabinet and he held it out toward me without looking.

  “What’ll it be?”

  Falzarano looked at me and he bobbed the glass in the air. I held a hand up.

  “No, that’s fine, I—”

  “I have a good scotch here.”

  “I’m sure, but—”

  “Of course they say it is brandy, brandy, is what you need for your nerves.”

  I lowered the hand. Falzarano was bent over the bottles with his back to me.

  “I have heard that, sir, but—”

  “Now what the hell is this?”

  Falzarano shoved his cigar in his face and he extracted a bottle from the stand. The glass was mottled and the liquid inside was bright green.

  “Crème de menthe? Who the hell drinks crème de menthe?”

  “Well, I—”

  Falzarano turned to face me but then I realized he was facing the door behind me.

  “Carmina!” he yelled, throwing his head back and his stomach out. He bent back far enough I thought he was going in for a handstand on the desk. “Carmina! Bambina, you been messing around in my study again? Come on, own up!”

  There was no reply from Carmina or anyone else. I shifted on my feet and listened to the swish of the thick green carpet. It sounded like waves cresting on a shallow beach.

  “So you want a brandy?”

  Falzarano’s attention was back at the cabinet. I opened my mouth to speak—that is, I opened the little slot that sat behind the grill on the front of my face and my voice synthesizer powered up—but then thought again as Falzarano swung back around to me.

  “You don’t want a crème de menthe do you?” he asked with a puzzled expression, like I was the one who had put the bottle there and not the lovely Carmina.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Falzarano, really.” I held my hand up again. This time he seemed to notice. A smile split across his face and he showed me a lot of small white teeth. Then he winked and put the green bottle back and he took the brandy out again. He gave himself another top-up even though his balloon was very much at high tide already.

  “Listen, you saved my life back there,” he said, all his attention on tipping the bottle by the neck. He sucked his cigar and bluish smoke curled out and clouded his face. “You saved my life and I don’t even know what to call you.”

  “Electromatic,” I said. “Raymond Electromatic. But Ray will do, Mr. Falzarano.”

  Falzarano unleashed a laugh in a single syllable. He put the brandy down. “Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray. Pleased to meet you, Ray. You saved my life back there, Ray, you really did.”

  “All in a day’s work, sir,” I said.

  Falzarano nodded intently, like he knew exactly what I was talking about.

  “Listen, Ray. Me, I don’t get to thank people very much. My line of work, see, I don’t have to.” He pulled the cigar from his mouth and used it to point at himself. “My line of work, people thank me. But you, Ray, no. You deserve it, Ray. You saved my life tonight.”

  He took a step closer. I was at least eighteen inches taller than he was. Maybe more. He looked up at me and he used his cigar hand to pat my chest. “You, Ray, you get my thanks. You saved my life.” He returned the cigar to his mouth. “And, Ray, you gave me an idea. An idea, Ray, an idea!”

  I nodded. “Don’t mention it, Mr. Falzarano—”

  “Zeus, darling!”

  The exclamation came from behind me. Falzarano’s face froze, and then he sidestepped me and held his arms out.

  “Carmina, Carmina, come to your Papa, my bambina!”

  The woman at the doorway was young enough to be Falzarano’s daughter, but the way she fell into his arms and the way he rested his head against her chest I decided that she was anything but. She had long dark hair that fell to her waist and had honey-colored streaks in it. Her skin was almost as bronzed as my own and I knew that because she was wearing silk nightwear that was split from ankle to hip down one side and from navel to neck up the middle. She muttered to her Papa and stroked his head while he blew cigar smoke across her bosom. She had a deep voice and she muttered in a language in a rich accent that suggested an origin somewhere far south of the United States.

  I let the two lovebirds get on with their reunion. I wanted to head back to the office to report to Ada, but I needed to make sure Mr. Falzarano had fallen for the bait first.

  I cleared my throat, or pretended to. It sounded like someone grinding the gears in that green Jaguar down in the garage as they tried to back it out.

  The green Jaguar.

  There was something about that car that rang a bell, but the more I thought about it the more that notion floated away along with a fresh cloud of blue cigar smoke.

  “Ah, Carmina, Carmina, Carmina!” said Falzarano as he extracted himself from his lover’s embrace. He kept his arms wide apart and he rotated his body a few degrees until it looked like he was going to give me a hug too. “This is the man who saved your Papa’s life, Carmina! His name is Ray. Say hello, Carmina!”

  Carmina jerked away from her beau and grabbed at the front of her nightie as she turned toward me, acting like she hadn’t seen a lumbering robot standing right there in the middle of the room. She scowled and her knuckles bleached as she clutched at the insubstantial fabric, and then she looked me up and down and her attitude changed at once, the fear and surprise I knew to be fake melting away along with her modesty. She let go of the top part of her nightie and it fell open just enough, and then she twisted one leg and her knee found the split and poked out, bringing with it a good acreage of naked skin.

  She stood in this po
se like she was waiting for me to take a picture for a magazine. Then she swanned over to me across the carpet and I swear she was purring when she got within touching distance.

  Either Falzarano didn’t notice what Carmina was doing or he did and he liked it, because he chuckled into his brandy and then he pulled on his cigar while his girlfriend twisted in front of me.

  “Thank you for saving Old Man Zee,” said Carmina. Her eyes ran me over a few more times. “Tell me, how can I ever repay you?”

  I pursed my lips like I’d been practicing and I tried to come up with an answer but then Carmina got very close indeed and she ran the back of one finger along the side of my cheek. As she did so her lips parted and I could see the tip of her tongue. I imagined my skin was cold to the touch but Carmina sure seemed to like it.

  “I think, Carmina, we will be seeing a lot more of our new friend Ray from now on, ah, ah, ah?”

  Carmina nodded. “I think I would like that, Zeus,” she said. “I think I would like that a great deal.” Somehow she managed to pull her body away from mine, although her eyes seemed more reluctant to leave. Then she moved back to the old man and draped herself over him again. Zeus wrapped one arm around her waist and then he gave me a little nod.

  “Come by at ten, Ray,” said Falzarano. “Ten o’clock. We’ll talk, Ray, we’ll talk about this wonderful new idea!”

  I paused. I did some long arithmetic to pass the time. Just for effect. The silence in the room only lasted two seconds but in that time Falzarano and Carmina didn’t take their eyes off of me.

  “Talk?” I asked.

  Falzarano nodded. “Talk, as they say in this country, turkey.”

  Then he drained his brandy and then buried his face in Carmina’s neck and he started whispering something that made her giggle. Over his bowed head she kept her eyes on my optics the whole time. Then Falzarano came up for air. “Ten o’clock, Ray, ten o’clock!”

  He went back in for a second helping.