Chapter 6

The Soul of Wit

I WAS ALLOWED to walk back unaided to where Max Kliener was waiting. But two Hanks followed closely behind me, each holding an identical pistol in their identical hands. Max Kliener, meanwhile, had transformed into Max Show-off.

He seemed only slightly put out when I interrupted his spiel to say: ‘It was you that sent those thugs to kill me last night after the party, wasn’t it?’

He opened his hands in a ‘what can I say’ gesture. ‘After Rock told me he should have recognised you and didn’t, I was worried how much you knew.’

‘Which Rock was that?’ I asked, pleased I’d timed my question to coincide with walking past several of them propped up inside their bell jars. We really were in the country of the bizarre now.

‘It’s best to plan ahead,’ Kliener told me. ‘You never know when you might need a new star.’

‘So the first Rock was right when he said someone was out to kill him.’

Kliener shook his head. ‘Wrong on every count, lady.’ He was starting to annoy me.

But I smiled to show otherwise. ‘Oh?’

‘He wasn’t the first Rock, not by a long way. And no one was trying to kill him. It just… happens.’

Light was beginning to dawn. I could understand the attraction of having a ready supply of the world’s best-known movie stars standing by. If they were in the habit of dying off, that made even more sense.

But where did Kliener get them from? I glanced back at the coffin-shaped tank and he clapped his hands approvingly.

‘I think the dame’s got it,’ he said. ‘Clever girl.’

‘Lady, dame, girl, make your mind up.’ All right, so my mind was on working out the plot rather than witty dialogue right now. ‘You have a way of making someone look how you want – am I right?’

‘Top of the class, doll.’

‘You asked about my height and weight, so I’m guessing it’s to do with moving bits round rather than hacking them about.’ I had a vague idea of how it might work, but he’d need the sort of power supply that wasn’t readily available in 1930s New York.

‘That’s right.’ Kliener took his cigar out of his mouth for long enough to examine it and seem surprised it wasn’t lit. ‘It’s all to do with redistribution of flesh and bone matter.’ He knocked on the nearest bell jar and it made a dull ringing sound. ‘These are all different people. But now, thanks to my work, they look the same.’

‘But they’re asleep,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re even more bored with what you’ve done than I am.’

He chomped his cigar. ‘Funny girl. They’re just waiting till I need them. As you know I got a costume store, and a prop store and a scenery store. Now I got a star store too.’

I peered through the glass at a sleeping Giddy Semestre. She looked just like the real thing. Though, I realised, I’d probably never met the real thing. I wondered who she used to be.

‘What happens to them?’ I was asking myself as much as Kliener. My breath misted the glass as I spoke, blurring the woman’s sleeping features.

‘They die.’ He said it easily, like it was no big deal. Like it wasn’t the most important event in his star’s short life. ‘The process doesn’t last. A couple of weeks, then they pay the price for being beautiful. I guess you burn too bright you don’t burn for long.’

‘They get old,’ I realised. I remembered the old tramp outside Nick’s when I was on my way to the launch party. That had been the Rock Railton I met the day before – the one I had promised to help. Too late for him now.

‘They just sort of crumble away,’ Kliener said. ‘Sad. But, hey, that’s life. Or rather…’ He paused to guffaw unpleasantly. It was the sort of sound a donkey might make if it was in intense pain and beyond embarrassment. ‘Or rather – that’s death.’

I didn’t share his amusement. ‘So they die, and you just wheel out a new version. An identical copy.’

‘You got it. Have to animate them first – wake them up. Then the clock starts ticking. Two weeks they got, if they’re lucky. That’s why I keep a few spares. I find a suitable candidate, and I process them ready for when I need them. A word to the press that they’ve set their sights on Hollywood and no one’s the wiser.’

‘But what,’ I asked as sweetly as I could stomach, ‘if they don’t want to cooperate? It might be news to you, but not everyone in this world wants to be a famous movie star.’

‘That’s no problem. They forget. They forget everything when they wake up. They think they really are Rock Railton or Giddy Semestre.’

‘Or Hank?’

Kliener’s eyes narrowed and his cigar drooped slightly. ‘Or Hank,’ he agreed.

‘You have a template,’ I guessed. ‘They only have the memories the real person had at the point that was made. Which is why a new Rock Railton doesn’t know what the last one got up to or who he met. Same with Giddy Semestre. Same with Hank.’

His eyes had narrowed so far now that they were in danger of disappearing altogether. He knew it was coming, so before he could work out what to do about it, I turned to face the two Hanks with guns.

‘So how long have these guys got?’ I asked. ‘Before they “just sort of crumble away”?’

Neither Hank showed any sign of understanding the point I was trying to make. Kliener had obviously chosen their template for physical rather than mental acuity. I glanced back at the third Hank who was making some adjustments to the coffin-tank. I doubted he knew what ‘acuity’ meant either.

Beyond him, a fourth Hank had appeared in the doorway. He was escorting the severe-looking middle-aged make-up woman I’d seen in the studio. From her expression I reckoned I’d rather let Lizzie Borden work on my looks than this hatchet-faced harridan.

Between them, the new Hank and hatchet-face were supporting another woman. It took me a moment to recognise Giddy Semestre. As they approached, I heard Kliener gasp beside me. It wasn’t hard to tell why.

Giddy’s face was drawn and her hair was turning grey. Her forehead was lined, and crow’s feet framed her eyes. She looked like she had aged twenty years since I last saw her about an hour earlier.

‘Already?’ Kliener said.

‘It’s getting quicker,’ Harridan-Woman said. ‘We need another one quick – they’re still shooting.’

Giddy looked up at me, confused and afraid. Maybe she recognised me as the one person here who might have some sympathy. Well, she was right there.

‘What’s happening to me?’ she asked in a throaty rasp. Her face looked even more wrinkled than it had just moments before.

‘Nothing to worry about, doll,’ Kliener said. ‘The show must go on.’

And with that he stepped forward, drew a pistol from inside his jacket pocket, and shot her clean through the head.

I say ‘clean’. In fact, it was anything but. It would take Make-Up Lady a few minutes to sort out herself and Fourth-Hank.

The bloodstains also spattered the curtain that partitioned off a small area off to the side of the equipment attached to the coffin-tank. I’d noted the cables and wires snaking underneath the curtain earlier. Well hey – I’m a detective. I notice things. And the thing I noticed now was that the curtain shimmered, as if in a breeze. From behind it came a noise that was partway between a sigh and a sharp intake of breath.

If Kliener noticed, he didn’t show it. ‘Less than two days this time.’ He sounded worried – and it wasn’t the sort of concern one might naturally expect to feel after shooting dead one of the world’s most famous women.

He knelt beside Giddy’s body, which was lying face down. He turned her over. There was a neat hole drilled through her wrinkled forehead and she looked, well let’s face it – dead.

As we watched, the wrinkles deepened, the flesh sagged, the skin became translucent. Impossibly, she was still ageing. I tried to calculate how fast I could get to Kliener without being shot by a Hank. It didn’t take me long to decide it was impossible. And in that same short time, the late Giddy Semestre – or whoever she had really been – crumbled to dust. A few moments later, and all that was left was a faint outline on the floor. Even the blood had flaked away, disintegrating to leave only a vague stain.

No one else seemed the least bit surprised or shocked by all this. I gave up on surprise a long time ago, and I’m not easily shocked. But Kliener’s casual viciousness appalled me. With two of the Hanks still covering me with their guns, and another two busy nearby, there was nothing I could do. Not yet.

Besides, I have to confess I was curious to see what happened next. Everything about me is pretty and a lot of it is shrewd. So I had a pretty shrewd idea what was going on.

The two spare Hanks – by which I mean the ones who were not busily watching me and waiting for an excuse to shoot – moved to the nearest bell jar. Inside, a sleeping Giddy Semestre leaned against the glass. She was wearing a plain white dress, her features every bit as young and beautiful as in the film posters. Or as I had seen her at the party and then again on set.

One of the Hanks produced a large axe. The other Hank, Kliener and Mrs Make-Up stood well clear as Axe-Hank swung at the bell jar. The glass exploded, showering down on Hank. He seemed as oblivious to it as he probably was to the meaning of the word. Giddy slopped out, one slender arm thrown forward, a shapely leg visible where her dress had got hitched up. No one seemed worried she might get cut on the glass. Someone was going to have some sweeping up to do. Big time.

Hank and Hank lifted Giddy with surprising delicacy. They carried her over to Kliener, standing her on her feet. She swayed like a sleepwalker, and Kliener supported her – head lolling on his shoulder, his arm round her. With a helping hand from the make-up harridan, he walked Giddy across to the curtain.

The make-up woman pulled the curtain open just far enough for me not to be able to see behind it, but sufficient for Kliener and Giddy to pass through.

A few moments later, they were back. Giddy was still relying on Kliener for support, but now she was awake. She looked disoriented and confused. She looked a little, well, giddy.

She saw me, she saw the Hanks, she seemed to recognise none of us. Only Kliener and the make-up woman – the only people the real Giddy Semestre had known when she was ‘templated’.

‘Giddy!’ I called out. I got a pistol jabbed in my midriff for my pains. It didn’t shut me up. ‘They’re using you, Giddy. Don’t believe a thing they tell you. Don’t even believe who you are. Try to remember who you used to be, who you really were!’

The gun jabbed harder, and I shut up. Not because of the gun, but because from her expression Giddy obviously thought I was mad.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘I’m due on set and I have lines to learn. It will take me a while.’

‘Way things are going,’ I said to her back as she left, ‘it could take you a lifetime.’

I turned to Kliener who was watching his latest protégé leave. He looked about ready to bite the end off his cigar, he was so pleased with himself.

‘You said yourself, it’s accelerating,’ I reminded him. ‘How long does she have, do you suppose? A whole day if she’s lucky? A couple of hours, maybe?’

Kliener’s smile might have been pasted on his face for all the change there was in his expression. He walked slowly up to me.

‘I’d better make sure I have her replacement lined up, then.’ He nodded at the line of Giddy bell jars. ‘As many replacements as I can find.’

‘You’re insane,’ I told him.

I don’t think he was even listening. His face was looking as pleased as punch – which was what I was going to do to it just as soon as I got the chance. Cigar and all.

Kliener leaned towards me, even though the top of his head was roughly level with my shoulder. ‘Bet you’re wondering how all this is possible,’ he smarmed.

It was a shame to puncture the moment. Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. I enjoyed looking him in the top of the head and sighing patiently as if I was explaining things simply to a rather dim-witted child.

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘You obviously have an Angel.’