Automatic Woman Read online

  Antiphon the Philosopher said that time is an illusion. Buddha agreed with this sentiment. Fucking bollocks! Time is the reality of each and every moment and sometimes it’s long and sometimes it’s short but regardless it is the sling throwing us toward our inevitable demise. It catches us out of our mother’s womb and hurtles us towards whatever our last day is and we have no choice but to live within it. I lived within time, waiting for McGraw, minutes as hours, hours as days, and on, and on, and on.

  Four

  Jolly has three reunions, some more pleasant than others

  At some point I’d fallen asleep with my gun clutched to my chest. I’m not an easy sleeper, so sleeping with my gun was a bit of poor judgment. One bad dream, one twitchy finger, and I could have woken in the fluffy hereafter. Given the circumstances, sleeping altogether was poor judgment, but the body wants what it wants.

  My wounded hand throbbed and pulsed. I unwrapped the shirt bandage and found the laceration framed with red lines. Pus rimmed the edges of my skin. Not good. I took a towel from a stack in the closet. It smelled like bleach and glowed white despite the lack of sun or room light.

  I shook my disoriented head and wondered why I’d woken at all. I suddenly remembered. A knock on the door. Now came another. Not Mary, but a man’s knock. I wondered where Mary was for a moment, then diverted my thoughts. Best not to dwell on the evening goings-on of sex workers. I ran my fingers through my hair. It felt like a bird’s nest of mats and tangles. All things considered, my hair ranked low on my worries.

  I opened the door to a clearly irritated Metro.

  “Are you Jacob Fellows?” The Met asked.

  “Yeah.” I had nothing clever for the man. No one is clever in the minutes after they wake.

  The Met pushed my door all the way open. He got a good look at me.

  “Is that for me?” He motioned to the gun I was still holding. I’d forgotten it.

  “No. Sorry about that.” I threw it on the bed. The Met went back into the hall and pushed a wheelbarrow into my room. The contents were covered by a king-sized blanket. The Met pushed the barrow to the rug and tilted it. Everything dumped onto the ground in a cacophonous crash. I winced at all that precision machinery, dumped like garbage. There she was, the Swan Princess, laid in a pool of screws and cogs, looking exactly as I’d left her. The cracks and scars I’d inflicted on her skin seemed like sacrilege. Like I’d gone and ripped into the Mona Lisa.

  “McGraw mentioned you’d have something for me,” the Met said in absolute disinterest. I pulled the Boschon card from my jacket pocket and handed it to him.

  “Give McGraw my compliments,” I said.

  The Met smiled. “Won’t have to. He gave me a message, real clear. He said that if he spots your ugly face any time between now and when you’re executed by the state, he’ll put a fucking bullet through it, savvy?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Good then.” And the Met left.

  I looked the Swan over, timid at first, like she was going to pop up and bite me. The bruises left by her teeth lined my stomach and shoulder, a sickly yellow but no worse than the damage I’d incurred since our fateful dance.

  I lit the gas lamps of my room. I’d want to say for a better look, but the truth was she spooked me. I needed the light for comfort, like ancient men gathered around the campfire.

  Her eyelids were open; one socket black and empty where I’d destroyed the orb, the other lifeless glass, like a neglected doll blown up to man size. I rang the bell for the night porter. By the look of the stars fading against the sky, I’d guess it was four or five in the a.m.

  Around the Swan lay screws and cogs and all the little bits and pieces I’d ripped from her god-forsaken body. The night porter let himself in. A little rat man, suited for his place and purpose.

  “Get Jacques Nouveau; bring him here as fast as you can. Tell him Jacob Fellows did his job. You’ll find him here.” I pressed a scrap of paper with Nouveau’s address into his little rat hands.

  The porter looked like he was going to mount a protest, probably something about leaving his post or blah blah blah. I silenced dissent with hard currency.

  “Get on your wagon, then.”

  The porter went on his merry way and I went back to my study of the Swan. I was baffled as to her nature. What causes ivory and brass and glass and steel to up and kill a man? To try for two? I didn’t want to delve into the spirituality of it all. If God could induce life into clay and mud, had Saxon found the equivalent for clockwork? If he’d found the secret to life, why had she turned? Is it in the nature of all living things to destroy, to turn on their makers? I let my mind fall into these questions, these terrible, unanswerable questions. In the midst of my ponderings, something caught my eye. Specifically, one of the Swan’s master cogs, an item I’d torn out form her back, an item which had traveled from crime scene, to evidence storage, to my lovely and seedy room at the Piece Work. It looked like polished brass, but when I lifted it, the weight told me it was a gold-based alloy. The disk was slightly bent, rimmed with half-inch teeth, and covered in etched symbols. I ran a finger down the etchings. They were crosses and triangles and X’s neatly placed in straight lines, maybe some foreign script, maybe a code. The flip side of the disc revealed a different set of symbols, though similar in their placement of triangles and crosses. I checked another loose cog. Same material, different symbols, and it was the same with another cog, and another. What the hell? The symbols were yet another unknown factor, like the Swan’s life, like Mr. Safari, like Nouveau’s boss.

  I stood up but the room spun out. I realized for the first time since waking that my body was covered in sweat and my hand throbbed worse than ever. I left my room and stumbled down a dimly lit hall. My own shadow played the wandering scarecrow; bed springs and passionate callings accompanied the early hours and covered the sounds of my steps from closed doors of nearby rooms. I shut my eyes and clutched the wall.

  Things turned surreal, like my body was melting into the ethereal. I remember clutching a door knob. I remember collapsing in front of the fireplace in the opulent lobby, retrieving bits of charcoal. At some point Mary was at my side, guiding me back to my room, and then I fell far, far away. I was in my father’s shop. He was sharpening a leather knife on a whetstone. The sounds of that knife against the rock, long and shrill. Over and over he pressed the blade and let it slide. Shirk. Shirk. Shirk.

  “Father,” I said. I suddenly realized that I was a child. That father’s shop was too large and my place in it was the corner. Always the corner where I watched him trim leather and nail soles and stitch the finer points of boots. Father stopped his sweeps, his shirk, shirk, shirking.

  “Boy,” he said. “What did you do to your hand?”

  I looked at my hand; it was black and inflated like an American football.

  “I cut it climbing,” I said.

  Father nodded at this, like it was something he already knew.

  “Of course you did, boy. Did you clean it?”

  “No.”

  “What did I tell you about being smart?”

  “You said I need to be a smart boy.”

  “What would a smart boy have done with that laceration?”

  “Cleaned it in soap and water.”

  “And what happens to dumb boys?”

  “Dumb boys get the strap.”

  Father stood and retrieved his razor strap from the wall.

  “You know what comes next.”

  I woke to a needle stabbing my hand. Mary was standing over me. A man in his late twenties, smart looking with a handle bar mustache, jabbed my hand again with a large medical syringe.

  “Sorry, friend,” the young man said. “Stay calm, I’ll be but a minute.”

  He jabbed my hand again. Then he put a needle into my wrist and filled it with some cold solution, or at least I imagined it cold. I passed out again and came too with the morning sun and Mary and her friend looking down at me.

  “That’s q
uite an infection you got there, Mr. Fellows. You’re lucky your friend came to me when she did.”

  I pulled myself up to a sitting position. The Swan Princess was gone. Nouveau must have come during my convalescence. Shite.

  “Thanks for your help, Mister…?”

  “Doctor. Doctor Conan Doyle.”

  The young man extended his hand and I shook it with my uninjured one.

  “I’ve put a lot of penicillin in your system, and a little morphine, too. You’re not going to feel right for quite a while. At least few days, I recommend you stay put until that hand heals.”

  I put my feet on the floor.

  “I appreciate your assessment, Doc. Now help me find my shoes.”

  Dr. Doyle got a sour look on his face but had the good sense not to say anything about it. Mary found my shoes and helped me up and out of bed.

  “Look friend, my advice stands. If you need to work something out, this will give you a short boost.” The doctor handed me a capped syringe. “Extract of the coca leaf. Seven percent solution. That syringe has two doses. Only use half at a go. And remember what I said about taking it easy. I’ll show myself out,” the young doctor said.

  “What do I owe you, guv?”

  “The lady paid your bill.” The doctor gave a curt nod to Mary and left us to ourselves. I put a hand on her shoulder, more out of support than affection.

  “I owe you one, Mary.”

  “I know, you’ll pay in good time.” She kissed me on the corner of my mouth again. Christ.

  “I need to see a Frenchman. Was he here last night?”

  “Yes, he came while you were out. He took the broken lady statute.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Yes, but it was in French. I don’t speak French.”

  “Fair enough. Did he leave anything?”

  “No, he took his statute, said those slick weird words, and was on his way. Not soon enough. That man is a creep.”

  “Says the prostitute.”

  She took offense.

  “I still have standards. And I still don’t like creeps. I’m not numb to the world around me and all the people of the world.”

  She looped her arm around mine and walked me to the door of my room.

  “He took her and left. I kept your rubbings for myself, though.”

  “Rubbings?”

  “Last night, in your delirium you demanded I make charcoal rubbings of two of the cogs.”

  She reached into her bodice and withdrew a thick folded paper. One side was covered in black reproductions of the cog symbols, the strange foreign letters.

  “I love you,” I said.

  Mary smiled at that. “Don’t be a fool, Jolly. For at least once in your life, don’t be a fool.”

  I took hold of both her shoulders, hollow bird-boned shoulders. I could have lifted her off the ground and cradled her in my arms.

  “What’s your day rate, love?”

  “You know what I charge, Jolly. Hasn’t changed.”

  “No. For the whole day I mean. What does your day cost?”

  “Five pound gets you to the morning after.”

  I pulled a five pound note from my pocket.

  “Wait for me in my room. Please.”

  “Hurry back.” She gave me another peck on the cheek, then went tip-toe and kissed my closed eyelid. Mercy.

  I left the Piece Work on wobbly feet. Whatever the doc had loaded into my system was drawing every bit of moisture from my mouth and eyes and throwing it forth in layer after layer of cold sweat. I soaked my clown shirt on the walk from the Piece Work to the tube station. By the time I got off near Nouveau’s gallery, my jacket collar was soaked and my sleeves were heavy.

  Nouveau’s place stood as rustic and pretentious as ever, a country barn standing in a poshy high-rise neighborhood. Why not?

  The barn door swung open at my knock. The main gallery was empty. The paintings were gone. Sculptures, pedestals, the fancy green velvet ropes separating men from art, gone. I walked to Nouveau’s banquet room, the place we’d had our first chat. Empty, of course. The barn door table, the automatic servers, even the chandelier and light fixtures. Gone.

  My stomach rumbled and twisted. No notes, no words, no signs of who was here or what had transpired. I tried to calculate the manpower of an exodus of this magnitude. Had they left last night? Had he been moving since my bail three days ago? I made a mental note to talk to the porter I’d sent here the night before.

  Outside Nouveau’s barn, street merchants and wagoners occupied the dirt roads with their comings and goings. A horseless carriage puttered by. I tried to swallow but my mouth was free of spit and coated in sticky goo. I sat on the curb and let my mind reach out.

  I could lean on a pawn broker or two, see if news of Nouveau’s departure had crossed their network. This seemed a bum lead. Anyone who’s thorough enough to pull the fixtures off the wall would do well enough to cover news of the departure, or set some false story for the looky-loos.

  If Nouveau had wanted the Swan so bad, if his connections were this good, why involve me at all? The unknown loomed over me. I could glean the existence of a bigger picture; I just couldn’t see the details.

  Lord Barnes, my former boss and trainer, suddenly came to mind.

  “Always start at the beginning,” he’d say. “If you lose your way, just go back to the beginning.” Lord Barnes, master thief catcher, master blackmailer, pain in the arse boss.

  I hired a hansom cab and went back to Saxon’s penny theater, back to the beginning of my story, back to the scene of the crime.

  The door to Saxon’s theater was busted off the hinges. No surprise. I drew my Engholm and entered the theater on full alert. Saxon’s place had been worked over like my apartment. Glasses cases were smashed and emptied. Posters were ripped from the walls and left in shredded pieces. In the theater, all the chairs had been broken to sticks and piled into the orchestral pit, like an unlit bonfire. The key on my trigger guard jingled and jangled in the otherwise dead silence. I went backstage. Torn curtains and cut ropes marked the continued mayhem. A little staircase ran to the second story. I followed it, gun low and ready. The stairs lead into Dr. Saxon’s office and living quarters. It was a cramped studio with a smashed bed, gas hotplate, and an oversized workbench bolted to the north wall. I barely had room to turn around. Dr. Saxon’s life was his work in the most literal sense. Here were the living quarters of a man who cared nothing for luxury. His bed had been converted into a pool of feathers like mine. The shelves of his work bench stood open with smashed locks. They probably had held files, though everything had been salvaged from them. Axe scars marred the surface of the table. I ran my hands over the marks, the wounds. I imagined Saxon looming over this table, pressing cogs and gears, tweaking small parts into larger machines, everything for the dancers below, the Doctor’s beautiful dancers.

  I opened my eyes. Between the table and wall a tiny corner of paper peeked out. I tried to pinch it, but my fingers were too thick to get a hold. Whatever the paper was, it was firmly wedged between the bolted table and the wall. I gave the table a good shake. Nothing. I grabbed a corner of the table and gave it a good tug. The bolts held and I accomplished nothing but making my infected hand even more tender. I looked around the room for some sort of tool, something to assist. I lifted a plank from the busted bed, cracked it over my knee, and pulled a splinter the size of pencil loose.

  I was jabbing at the envelope when I heard shuffling down below. I gave the splinter one last shove and the paper slid under the desk. It was an open envelope, empty, addressed to C. Darwin, 12 Upper Gower Street, London.

  There was another noise down below, this time a crash. I pocketed the envelope and crept to the door, gun back in my fist. The doorway to Saxon’s living quarters came out onto a bird’s eye view of his theater. With the curtains gone, that view included the orchestral pit and seating. My new friend, Mr. Safari, stood center in audience rows, black suit, elephant mask, pistol clut
ched in hands crossed low over his hips, still as a corpse. Left to right Safari had friends. Mr. Lion, Mr. Ape, Mr. Goat, Mr. Tiger, all masked and suited and hefting nickel-plated long pistols.

  “Come down, Mr. Fellows. We have a proposition for you,” Safari called up to me. He punctuated his sentence by cocking the hammer of his pistol. I backed into the workshop and shut the door. For a second I thought I’d imagined the whole thing. That somewhere in my sick, drug addled mind I’d hallucinated the maskers. Then a bullet punched through the door and ripped the skin off the edge of my ear. That brought me back real quick. Boots stomped, men ran. My time slowed. I tried to swallow again, was met with sticky filth again. I was dizzy, sweating. I reached into my pocket for the Engholm, but instead found Dr. Doyle’s syringe. Why not? I popped the cap with my teeth and jabbed the needle in my leg. I pressed the plunger to the end before remembering the doctor’s warning about double dosing. Too late. Bollocks.

  Another bullet tore through the door. There was no lock, but the door was a single, small entrance. One man at a time was coming through and I liked the odds of myself against any one man.

  Blood rushed into my face, my sweat turned from cold to hot. I was hyperventilating, like my body couldn’t get enough air. I gritted my teeth and ground them in a low crackling sound, masked wholly by the blood pounding in my ears. Cheers to Dr. Doyle.

  The door opened. I roared and charged. Goat mask leveled his gun. I like to think he looked surprised under the mask. That maybe he was expecting a cowering man, or a rational man. What he got was the holy living shite kicked out of him. Literally, one kick square in the chest with every bit of weight I could shift into it. Goat mask fell back, hit the guardrail, flipped over it and went crashing to the stage below.

  I don’t remember ripping Saxon’s hotplate off its gas pipe, but zoom, there it was. The blood pounding in my ears turned into a pulsing hum. Tiger mask took Goat’s place in the doorway and I flung the hotplate at him like a discus. The bulky appliance bounced off the beast man’s shoulder and I swear I heard a crunch. Tiger shot once into the ground, then shifted his gun to the arm that wasn’t broken and shot wild into the room. His bullet struck metal and fanned sparks that ignited the natural gas filling the room from the open appliance line. I got my hands on him, wrapped my arms around his body and dragged him into the burning room, into the mouth of hell. I might have been screaming at this point. I know he was.