Playa Dorada meant “golden beach” in Spanish, but the sand did not glitter in the warm sunlight. It was another kind of valuable commodity that dominated the local landscape. Like so many of the beachfront communities scattered around Los Angeles, the small town existed in the shadows of a maze of towering oil derricks. The giant machines looked like a vast herd of prehistoric beasts. They loomed as far as the eye could see and marched right down to the water’s edge.
“I’m very glad we don’t have a lot of oil derricks ruining the scenery in Burning Cove,” Amalie said.
Matthias turned a corner into a narrow street. “You don’t have them yet. But there’s oil very near the surface in Burning Cove. Luther said the stuff seeps right out of the ground on some of the beaches. The town may not be able to keep the oil companies out indefinitely.”
“We’ve got some powerful people in Burning Cove. Something tells me that Luther Pell and Oliver Ward could handle an oil company.”
Matthias smiled. “You might be right.” He brought the Packard to a halt in front of an abandoned warehouse. “We’ll leave the car here and walk the rest of the way. No sense drawing attention to ourselves by parking right in front of Pickwell’s workshop.”
Amalie got out of the car and looked around. They were at the end of a dead-end street surrounded by boarded-up buildings. Faded signs advertising everything from cheap auto repairs to sandwiches and rooms by the week dangled above closed doors. Empty bottles and cans were scattered across the ground, mute evidence of the transients who had sought shelter in the ruins. Just one more neighborhood that had yet to crawl out of the long shadow cast by the crash.
“Pickwell’s place is about a block away,” Matthias said. “We can cut through some of the old yards. There’s no one left who will care.”
Amalie fell into step beside him. Their destination proved to be a weathered single-story structure badly in need of paint. It was one of the few buildings that still had glass in the windows.
“I know it’s a little late to be asking this, but how do you plan to get inside Pickwell’s workshop?” Amalie asked.
“The same way I got in the first time,” Matthias said.
“You broke in, didn’t you?”
“I told you I’m good with locks.”
“You know, people get arrested for doing things like that.”
Matthias looked at her. “Pickwell is dead, remember? I doubt if there’s anyone else who might object to a small break-in at his old workshop.”
“How do you define small?”
“It’s not like we’re planning to steal anything big.” Matthias went up the concrete steps at the back door of the building. “This is the way I got in the first time. I had to pick the lock. Pickwell never returned from Burning Cove, so the door should still be unlocked.”
The knob turned easily in Matthias’s hand. The door swung open on rusty hinges, revealing a heavily shadowed space crammed with an array of mechanical equipment, tools, and what appeared to be spare parts from various types of machinery.
Amalie stopped in dismay. “You’re right, the place looks like a junkyard. There’s stuff everywhere. How in the world are we going to conduct a search when we don’t even know what we’re looking for?”
“We’re not interested in the hardware or the mechanical and electrical equipment.” Matthias went down an aisle formed by workbenches. “We’re looking for notebooks, journals, ledgers, phone numbers—anything that might give us a lead.”
Amalie trailed after him. “Where are you going?”
“Pickwell’s office. I told you that the first time I was here I didn’t have time to conduct a thorough search. In addition, I didn’t have all the information I’ve got now. With luck we’ll find something that I didn’t notice the first time, something that will make sense given what we now know.”
A huge metal figure loomed in the shadows. Amalie stopped to examine it.
“This thing must have been an early version of Futuro,” she said. “It doesn’t look anything like the one that Pickwell demonstrated at the Palace.”
The mechanical man was an awkward assemblage of parts that had evidently been salvaged from a variety of other machines. The face bore a striking resemblance to a toaster.
Matthias glanced at the figure. “An early version, all right.” He paused and took a second look. “A very early version.”
He opened the door of a small room and pulled a cord that dangled from an overhead fixture. A weak bulb came on, illuminating an office that was nearly buried under years of clutter. Papers, notebooks, manuals, and catalogs advertising engineering and scientific supplies were stacked on the floor and piled on top of an old metal desk. The bookshelves that stood against one wall were crammed with heavy manuals and thick tomes.
“Are you responsible for this mess?” Amalie asked.
“No, it was like this when I got here the first time,” Matthias said. “I don’t think anyone, except me, searched the place. There’s a thick layer of dust on the stacks of books and the drawings. Norman Pickwell was not a man of neat and orderly habits.”
Amalie turned on her heel. “Where do we start?”
“I’ll take the desk. You can start with the papers and drawings piled on the floor.”
“What about the filing cabinet? Isn’t that where most people put important papers?”
“We’ll save the cabinet for last. Judging by the condition of the workshop, it’s a good bet that Pickwell was the kind of inventor who would have kept anything related to a current project conveniently at hand.”
“Good point. You’ve had some experience with this sort of thing, haven’t you?”
Matthias opened a desk drawer. “Some.”
“What am I looking for?” she asked.
“We’re interested in any papers or notes that look new or recent. Ignore anything that has turned yellow with age or has a coat of dust on it.”
“That means we can ignore ninety percent of the stuff in this office.”
“Yes, I think so,” Matthias said.
Amalie hefted a copy of Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook and picked up the drawings that it had anchored on the floor. The title of the first one was “Ball and Roller Bearings.” The next one was “Spring Relief Valve.”
“This is going to take a while,” she said.
“We’ve got time.”
Twenty minutes later Matthias closed the last drawer in the desk. He had a large envelope in one hand.
“This looks new,” he said.
He dumped the contents of the envelope onto the desk. A familiar stillness came over him.
“Now this is interesting,” he said softly.
Amalie moved closer to the desk and watched Matthias flip through some drawings.
“That’s Futuro,” she said, “the robot that shot Pickwell. Those drawings don’t look anything like the robot out there in the workshop.”
“No, they don’t. I wonder what inspired Pickwell to change the final look so drastically.”
“Maybe he was a fan of some of the science fiction magazines, like Astounding Stories,” Amalie suggested. “They feature robots and alien monsters on the covers all the time.”
Matthias looked around. “There’s no evidence that Pickwell read fiction of any kind.”
“Well, he could have gotten his inspiration from a cover of Popular Mechanics, I suppose. Regardless, this version of Futuro is a lot better-looking than the original.”
“There is nothing in this workshop that indicates that Pickwell cared about design,” Matthias said. “He was not particularly creative in any way, as far as I’ve been able to determine. So what could have made him devote so much energy to a fancy new look for Futuro?”
Glass shattered somewhere in the workshop. Amalie yelped in surprise. She looked through the open doorway and saw a small, rounded object rolling across the floor.
Matthias wrapped a hand around her upper arm and hauled her out of the doorway.
“Under the desk,” he ordered. “Move.”
He shoved her into the open area under the metal desk and squeezed in beside her.
“Someone threw a rock through the window?” she asked.
“Not a rock,” Matthias said. “Fingers in ears. Do it.”
She obeyed.
The explosion boomed in the adjoining room, so loud and disorienting that Amalie knew she would have been deafened if she had not obeyed Matthias’s orders to block her ears.
The shock of the blast reverberated through the walls and floors. The entire building shuddered. More glass shattered. Some of the flying shards came from the pane set into the office door. She and Matthias would have been lacerated, quite possibly blinded, or even killed had they not been wedged into the space under the desk.
An eternity passed before an eerie silence fell. Matthias took his fingers out of his ears and reached inside his jacket for his gun.
Amalie lowered her hands and discovered that even though she had managed to partially block her ears, they still rang. Cold chills sent shiver after shiver through her.
“What just happened?” she managed.
“Grenade.”