Galley City by John T. Cullen

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Streamliners an Art Deco Fantasy novel DarkSF by John Argo

Page 16.

Streamliners by John ArgoStavros said: "Well, Mr. Beering sometimes sends for things. He checks out odds and ends now and then, who knows why."

Jeff leafed through a number of the yearbooks. "These are interesting, but I think I could really use Volume 2, the missing book, that details the period 1900-1962. Has someone checked it out? Do you have a record?"

"Of course," Stavros said stiffening slightly. "Let me just check.

Jeff followed him to his mahogany cubicle, a desk surrounded by bookcases. Stavros produced a canvas-bound record book, changed eyeglasses, and perused the pages. As he did so, he seemed to grow alarmed. "I'm afraid there is no record of anyone checking that book out." He slammed the ledger shut. "I'll have to check into this. Perhaps there has been some mistake. Mr. Beering is very meticulous about recording his activities. Oh God, I hope there has not been a theft."

Jeff patted Stavros sympathetically on the back. "I hope not, okay? Will you let me know immediately if the missing book turns up?"

Devastated, Stavros nodded.

Jeff puttered around for a few more minutes, then left his phone number with the curator, who was on the phone and in a sweat.

Back on the street, Jeff experienced another of those odd brilliant-pink moments. For an instant, he thought he saw an antique looking car pull around a faraway corner. But a voice interrupted that reverie.

"Maxxon!"

Jeff whirled.

Vince McCarthy stepped out of the shadows, wearing a blue seersucker suit and wide-brimmed straw hat. "Maxxon, you look like you've seen a ghost."

Jeff made a dismissing motion. "I'm just lost in thought, is all. Don't tell me, you've been following me."

"Nothing at all like that," McCarthy soothed in his burry voice. "I just happened to catch sight of you here, and I was wondering if you knew about our latest clock killing."

"Of course," Jeff said, "it's been in the papers."

"Of course," McCarthy echoed. "I was just wondering. Have you ever heard the name Tom or Thomas Armaday?"

Jeff said: "We're into missing names now, huh? I'm still trying to find out who Louis Beering is."

McCarthy said: "There were manuscript pages all over the clockworks. A bloody mess, literally. We're still piecing the manuscript together but look what I found." He produced a tattered page rusty with spattered, dried blood. He pointed to an elusive trail of damaged letters and read out loud: "The Future of the Race by Thomas Armaday." He looked up.

Jeff met his gaze. "You think a neo-Nazi killed Courtney?"

"It's worth looking into," McCarthy said. "How's this for a scenario. There's a nut out there writing neo-Nazi books. He sends them to editors. Then he arranges meetings with them and if they don't want to publish the books, he kills them. Marie Sondergood did receive a manuscript by a Thomas Armaday, and she rejected it the day she was killed."

Jeff whistled. "Wonderful," he said. "Remind me to stay away from clocks, McCarthy."

"Only if you receive any weird manuscripts first."

As Jeff walked down the street to his car, the air changed again. From that bland warmth between summer and Indian summer, to a colder, pinker light that had more contrast in it, between dark pink and bright citron. A shiver ran up and down his spine. The street was empty of traffic, as at three a.m. Yet he heard a distant cacophony of cars and voices; he felt a touch of warmth that wasn't warmth; he smelled the tire burns and vanilla ice creams of a summer afternoon. He heard a snatch of syncopated music, and a man's voice warbling in song. As he walked past a boarded up shop window, and read the faded letters above (Gustoff, Fine Furs) he clearly smelled something like hundreds of brand-new leather gloves or shoes.

He shook his head to clear it. He stopped and held his temples. His head felt ready to explode. Horrified, he stared through swollen eyeballs as though he were miles under the ocean.

Swathed in pink light, an antique looking police car crossed through the intersection a block away. It was black, and shaped like one of those gangster cars in the movies, that you expected to begin blazing Thompson machine gun fire any second. But the car simply winked out of existence around the corner. Just when the pain in his head became unbearable, the phenomenon suddenly let up.

"Are you okay, mister?"

Jeff felt the dazedness ebb. "What?"

Two young girls in red-green punk hair stared up at him with concern. They wore earphones, tight black shorts, and white tank tops barely covering wiggly little breasts. They wore fingerless gloves and wiped sweat from their foreheads.

"Yes," he said, "I'm okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot."

Giggling, they rumbled away on roller blades, throwing back puzzled looks, swaying their teenage behinds to some rock tune.



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