“Well, I’m a purveyor of cheap wares —”
“Any wares which have oil in them?”
“Excuse me?” Jaeger’s face broke. I tightened my grip on the revolver, but kept it in its leather cradle.
“There’s oil underneath your fingernails. You’ve wiped them carefully, but not thoroughly enough. Your jeans are torn at the knees and ankles, and your wrists and temples bear the marks of worn leather goods. Your demeanor and dress suggest a modest lifestyle. As well, from outside, the upstairs window reveals a lamp, a bedpost, and the edge of a small kitchen. I have also noticed several Automatic-specific items hidden behind some of the larger objects in this store. I do not, therefore, believe that there is more living space behind that door. In fact, based on the red chain mark on your left wrist, the burn marks on your shirt, the spark burns on your jeans, and the oil on your hands — the mint air freshener masked the smell of it well, but not entirely — it is my belief that the space in the back holds hoisting chains, welders, rewiring kits, and pneumatic pumps.”
Jaeger froze, wide-eyed, as did I. An Automatic that could think — that was not something I’d been prepared for. The old man hesitated for a few seconds before slamming his hands into the rear door, jumping out of his chair, kicking it toward me, barrelling through the rear door, and breaking into a sprint. I broke from my own stupor, pulled out my revolver, and hopped over the thrown chair after him.
“We don’t have a warrant, Detective!” the metal man yelled after me.
Most of the room was in darkness, but faint light revealed the back door standing ajar — obviously Jaeger’s objective. Next to said door was a small red cylinder: a fire extinguisher. As I ran, I levelled my gun, aimed at the extinguisher, and popped off a shot. The heated round instead slammed into the concrete wall, boring a hole the size of a dinner plate. The gunshot caused Jaeger to freeze, giving me plenty of time to catch up to him. The metal man sprinted past me to bind Jaeger’s hands in a pair of cuffs. I grabbed Jaeger by the neck and pointed the barrel of my revolver at his stomach, then nodded to the machine. It released our captive and went off to switch on the lights.
Needless to say, the machine’s hunch was right. The space looked like an old car garage. The car jacks in the floor had been mangled and converted into workbenches for Automatics. Several dozen scrap parts lay on the floor and on shelves, with even more loose bits and bolts dotting the floor around the workspaces. In the corner next to the door was a terminal with a rewiring kit next to it, and near the back door there was a chain and sling for Automatic torso removal, as well as various other machines I’d only ever seen in the bowels of the GE building.
“What made you start to suspect?” I asked the tin man as it returned to where I was standing with my new prisoner.
“The retail prices in the store were half of the market price for those items. His business would have been unsustainable … unless he had a more profitable operation as well. My other observations filled in the blanks.”
I was impressed, to say the least. Most Automatics just looked at things and said what they saw. Blue-eyes didn’t think too hard. And Green-eyes thought even less.
“Check if there are any Neural-Interfaces here. Be thorough,” I added. The machine nodded and walked away, and I turned to the German. “Now, Jaeger, would you like to explain yourself?”
“Please, you must understand, I have nothing else but this.”
“You won’t even have this pretty soon, Karl.” Both he and my temporary partner — God, was I actually going along with this? — shot a glance at me. “Robot, this is Karl Jaeger. He worked for the Mafia for years, bootlegging parts for the Red-eyes that they used for contract killings, smuggling, and everything in between.”
“That was over a decade ago!” Jaeger protested. “I did my time, Detective. I’m trying to run an honest business.”
“Honest? Only half of it is legit, and it’s not even the half I’m standing in. So, let’s cut to the chase: Why was your robot at the site of a murder?”
“I don’t know! I sent him to get supplies for us but he never returned. I’ve done work on hundreds of Automatics, but I never tampered with Rudi. I never could, for this exact reason. If he was ever found, they’d track it back to me, and I’d be locked away again.”
The metal man started turning its head to sweep the place for any sign of a Neural-Interface. I had a gut feeling it wouldn’t find anything.
“What time was Rudi taken?” I asked Jaeger.
“Rudi left for the pickup at ten forty-five. One half hour to requisition, pay, and return. He should have been back by quarter past eleven at the latest. When did the shooting happen?”
“Around eleven. So it had fifteen minutes to turn Red-eye … doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.”
“It takes an average of one hour and twenty minutes to assess an Automatic and rewire it to take hostile action,” the robot butted in, silencing me and Jaeger. In truth, this was a subject I knew very little about. “The crime was committed at approximately seven minutes after eleven. There wasn’t enough time for a rewire to have been performed. I believe the precincts would allow this substantial evidence to be used in Jaeger’s defence.”
“That remains to be seen, metal man. Jaeger here was the most talented bootlegger and Tinkerman in New York back in the early ’20s. He was put away eleven years ago, and yet here he is, out and about with a new
