Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

“You got it, Ish!” The voice that comes through the open window to the kitchen is a familiar tenor. If it sounds a little anticipatory, I doubt anyone notices.

The coffee begins warming me up, and I’m just about this side of relaxed when the stool next to me creaks. “Why’s he always yellin’ yer name?”

I look sidelong at Christopher Courtland’s gray, grizzled face. His uniform shirt stretches a little, pulls at the buttons, and his badge is pinned on ever so slightly crooked. “We’re friends,” I say. “Doesn’t he do that to everyone?”

“Doesn’t do it ta me.” Officer Courtland — once Sergeant, but that’s part of why I don’t work for the police anymore — reaches out and runs the fabric of my sleeve between his fingers. “Nice material,” he says. “How you gettin’ by on a private eye’s pay, anyway?”

“How are you getting by on a beat officer’s?”

Courtland’s face goes brick-red, and I honestly regret what I’ve said — not because Courtland didn’t deserve what happened to him, but because I’m not really in the mood to deal with him today. He opens his mouth, but closes it when a pale hand lands on his left shoulder, probably harder than it needed to. “I think we’re done here,” says Tom O’Leary. He gives me an apologetic look. “Come on, Christopher. Back to work.”

Courtland makes an ugly noise, but gets off the stool and goes to the coat rack. Tom shrugs. “Sorry, John. He’s not doing so well these days. Wife’s mad, kid’s down in California trying to get into pictures, you know how it is.”

“Yeah.” I lift one eyebrow. “Sorry you’re stuck with him.”

“’S only for a few months,” Tom says. His lips curl into a smile under his bright-red bristle-brush moustache. “I’m on track for Sergeant.”

“Congratulations,” I say, and mean it. I move to give Tom’s hand a shake, but something in his pale eyes warns me against it. “All right then. Have a good one.”

“You too.”

Ishmael puts my plate down as Tom heads for the front door. The bell jingles as the two officers leave, and as if a weight’s been lifted, the conversation in the restaurant seems to get louder. “You shouldn’t do that when they’re around,” I say.

“Hell with ’em.” Even when he’s trying to be quiet, I still feel like Ishmael’s voice could bash a hole in the side of a building. “I want my customers to know John Bach eats here.”

“Your mistake to make.” I say it with a smile, because Ishmael and I go way back, back to when I first left the police. We’re not friends, but each of us knows secrets about the other, things we wouldn’t want getting out. I snatch up an onion and eat it. “Great, as usual.”

“’Course it is.” Ishmael puts a glass of water on the counter. “Eat up, fill up!” He laughs, one of those wall-destroying booms. “Lord knows it’ll be a day and a half before you even think to eat a good meal again!”

My heart skips as I start in on my sandwich and Ishmael moves off to talk to his other customers. A day and a half — a code phrase. One that means Alan’s gotten my message.

The food suddenly tastes a whole lot better — not that it was bad in the first place, but the promise of Alan improves everything.

I linger until the lunch crowd thins out, hoping to at least share a word with Alan, but the closest I get is his crooked grin as he puts plates up on the platform between the kitchen and the restaurant. I pay the grandmotherly-looking woman at the front, tell her she’s looking lovely, and go next door, not bothering with my gloves.

The inside of Pyotr Leonovich’s shop is nothing at all like Ishmael’s restaurant. It’s dim and quiet, cool and empty, with only a small area in the front for customers. A glass display case holds a selection of watches, some fine and some utilitarian; I don’t wear one, not when there are clocks everywhere, but if I did, there are several I would very much like to own. Pyotr Leonovich comes out from the back room, wiping his hands on a smooth leather apron; he takes off his visor, detaches the binocles clipped to the brim, and sets both on top of the case. “Mr. Bach,” he says. “You have information so soon?” Here in the small shop, he moves not like a bull among china but like an athlete, with controlled power and efficiency of motion. “Your intelligence I know, but this — amazement!”

I shake my head. “It’s not that, Pyotr Leonovich.” I open my coat, and he sees my gun. He tenses, as if I’m threatening him; I’m not, but I do want him to know I’m serious. “You need to tell me what your brother was into, and how he got mixed up with Mr. Frieze.”

Pyotr Leonovich’s body relaxes and he looks down, dejected. “Apologies,” he says. “I had hoped it would be easy.”

“Nothing with Mr. Frieze is ever easy,” I say, not assuringly. I rest the heels of my hands on the metal edge of the display case. “Tell me about your brother, Pyotr Leonovich.”

Vasily worked for Nicholas II, Pyotr Leonovich said . I followed in my father’s footsteps, learning the clockwork trade, but Vasily, he was special. Very smart, able to dream up things I could never. He went to work repairing motorized carriages, and word got to the Tsar that Vasily Leonovich Novotny could make them run faster, and quieter, and able to carry heavier loads by introducing steam-powered engines. Father was so proud when Vasily came home, told us he was appointed to the Tsar’s scientific council. We knew it meant military, it meant prestige for our family and money besides, for in St. Petersburg, the jobs were in big devices, big machines, not the small gears of watches and clocks and gadgets.

Then came Rasputin. You have heard of him: Nicholas’s sorcerer, the Merlin of our time. When Vasily came home, which was less and less as months passed, he would tell us of the awesome powers he beheld in Rasputin’s presence. Rasputin, whose robes deflected bullets, who could walk outside in winter without coat or boots, who seemed to know everything Vasily was working on and how to improve it. Perhaps he was just better-schooled, perhaps he had others working in the scientific council. Perhaps he consorted with the Germans. The important thing was that Vasily was happy, and we were all well.

But all was not well at court, and Vasily came to our door in spring. This was 1917; I know that you, an educated man, know of the Uprising, of Rasputin’s takeover of the throne and his institution of the Five-Year Plans. He took Anastasia as his bride and ordered all his forces to find Nicholas and return with his head. I see you shaking your head; you are correct. Nicholas, to the best of my knowledge, still lives. But had Vasily stayed, he would not have. Vasily, though impressed by Rasputin, was loyal to Nicholas, and when Vasily arrived, he was bloody, his arm broken and clutched to his side. I took him through the house, out the back, at Father’s insistence — Father said to run, to escape, that Rasputin was coming — and I took Vasily to the only place I knew was safe: my old school friend Anatoly. His mother lived on the outskirts, and she let us in, helped me to bind Vasily’s arm.

I found out that night that Rasputin’s men killed Father and Mother, and burned our house and shop. They did the same to the men with whom Vasily used to work on the carriages. It was only a matter of time until they made the connection with Anatoly’s mother, and though we wanted to stay, to take revenge, two clockwork men could not stand against the might of Rasputin the Terrible. So we ran.

It took a hard, cold year to make our way across the vastness of Russia. We crossed the Strait and found ourselves behind Russian lines — Rasputin may have changed many things, but he continued Nicholas’s campaign to expand Russia’s holdings on this continent. We lied about our situation, about our names, said we had lost our way in the snowstorms — there was indeed a snowstorm at that time, though Father had well taught us to keep our bearings in such weather — and were taken in by the Eleventh Brigade. When they discovered our facility with clockwork, with machines, they sent us to the carriage depot, and for many months we had good work, and enough to eat, and the Russian Army claimed more and more of the Canada Territory until finally we came to the border with your United States.