Melting Clock

5

Most women would have been wary about answering a door to an apartment in a nearly empty downtown L.A. office building, but Alice Pallis did not hesitate. Alice feared neither man nor beast … nor robot Alice was a formidable creature of no mean proportions who, less than a year ago, when she was still in the porno business, had hoisted a two-hundred-pound printing press and carried it four flights down the fire escape when the cops came calling.

When I stepped in, Natasha was lying on a blanket on the floor of the huge open room, which only a few months earlier had been brown, leather, musty, and filled with books. Since Alice and Jeremy had married, the room had brightened considerably. Alice had replaced all of the furniture with flowered sofas and a huge pink and purple rug covered the floor.

Natasha lay gurgling and playing with the pages of a thick blue-covered book.

“How’s she doing?” I asked.

Alice smiled beautifully at her infant daughter. Natasha nibbled gently at the corner of the book.

“She absorbs,” said Alice.

“What’s she reading?” I asked.

“Fairy tales. Andersen. Jeremy believes that she should be surrounded by the proper books; that the words, the stories, come alive in the hands of one who is prepared to learn.”

“You believe that?” I asked.

“I’m learning,” she said.

“I need Jeremy.”

“It’s his meditation time,” said Alice. “He’s at Pershing Square. When he comes back he’s going to read a fairy tale to Natasha.”

Natasha stopped gnawing and looked up at me. She smiled. I left feeling a little better than when I had walked in.

Finding Jeremy was no great problem. I walked over to Pershing Square, which wasn’t quite deserted, but it wasn’t as crowded as it usually was, possibly because it looked like rain. A little guy who was shivering in spite of the eighty-degree temperature was standing on a box, a Chiquita Banana box, pounding his left fist into his right palm and shouting.

Jeremy and about five other men stood listening. Jeremy towered over the others and seemed to pay the most attention to the little guy. I started to say something to Jeremy; he put a finger to his lips to quiet me. I noticed a magazine under his arm. We turned to listen to the little man who was saying:

“… and the first step will be a temporary prohibition of alcoholic beverages based on wartime need. That’s the way the Eighteenth Amendment came last time, after the war, and they’re talking about it again. Temporary will become permanent and the bootleggers, gangsters, and politicians will lobby to keep it that way, and the country will agree to keep it that way because it will add to the underground economy, and who will suffer?”

He looked around for an answer. The six of us didn’t have an answer. Jeremy didn’t drink and I was good for a Rainier beer about once a month. So the little guy answered for us.

“I’ll suffer and people like you and me will suffer. The alcoholics, the winos. Drinking will go back to the middle classes. It’ll be a game. For us it’s a damn necessity and we’re the ones who’ll suffer. Now isn’t some straight citizen out there going to tell me I’ll be better off?”

He looked around for a straight citizen to do battle with him. Jeremy and I were the closest thing to it in the small group. No one wanted to mess with Jeremy.

“Not me,” I said.

“Then amen to you, brother,” said the little man, clutching himself as the first drops of rain came. One man in the small group shuffled off.

“It’s not the government’s job to save my life or tell me what’s good for me,” he said. “Why not ban smoking? Coffee? As long as I don’t hurt you, you’ve got no right to hurt me.”

Two more in the dwindling crowd went for shelter as the rain got a little more serious. The little man was shivering seriously now but he didn’t plan to give up, though there were only three of us left.

“The brewers, the distilleries, they’re going to fight it, but they lost before and they’ll lose again. I’m going to run for Congress and in Congress I’m going to fight, scream, and filibuster for the right of every man to have a drink when he wants or to goddammit commit suicide with dignity if he wants.”

The rain was serious now. The man next to Jeremy moved forward and helped the shivering little man from the box. He picked up the banana crate and led the little man toward the shelter of a store awning nearby. Jeremy and I moved the other way under the protection of a wind-blown tree.

“That man used to be a senator,” he said, rubbing the sheen of water from his smooth head. “Not a state senator, a United States senator. Without conviction and cause he would be dead in a few months. Every man needs a joy of life or a sense of meaning.”

“No quarrel with that,” I said, and then as the rain imprisoned us in darkness against the trunk of the tree, I told him what had happened since I had last seen him.

“The streets in Santa Monica are numbered,” I said. “But there is no Thirteenth there either. Thirteenth Euclid.”

“Spectator,” Jeremy said pensively.

“You’ve got an idea,” I said hopefully.

He took the magazine from under his arm and showed it to me. It was the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly. He flipped it open, found what he was looking for, and read to me:

“Houses have crumbled in my memory as soundlessly as they did in the silent films of yore.”

He closed the magazine and looked at me.

“That’s nice, Jeremy.” I felt a chill creeping through my soaked windbreaker.

“It’s in a short story by a young man named Vladimir Nabokov,” he explained. “You have forgotten a house, Toby Peters.”

“Can you help me remember, Jeremy?”

“It is never so meaningful as when one remembers oneself,” he admonished.

“Then I’ll regret my loss,” I said. “While you’re trying to improve my mind …”

“Your soul,” he corrected.

“My soul,” I accepted. “Another person could be murdered.”

“Why does the note say ‘Senor’?” asked Jeremy.

“The note’s to Dali. He’s Spanish,” I said.

Jeremy shook his head sadly, patiently.

“The first note had ‘Place’ in capital letters,” he said. “And this one has ‘Street.’”

“So,” I said, watching a woman dash across the street with a sheet of cardboard over her head. “Street is someone’s name. Where? There aren’t thirteen people named Street in the L.A. phone book.”

“Senor,” said Jeremy, “it is in the Town of the Spectator.”

“Hollywood,” I said.

“In Spanish, spectator is mirador,” Jeremy explained.

“Holy shit. Jeremy, remember when we were in Mirador about a year ago on the Hughes case, the sheriff was …”

“Mark Nelson,” said Jeremy.

A shot of thunder.

“I don’t like things like this,” I said. “I like it straight and simple. I don’t like puzzles, and I sure as hell don’t want to risk running into Nelson. What am I going to do?”

Jeremy looked down at me and said nothing.

“Right,” I said. “I’m going to Mirador.”

When the rain slowed enough to make it less than insane to do so, I headed back to the Farraday Building. When I got there, I put on a dry if not clean shirt I kept in my office and removed the.38 Smith amp; Wesson five-shot revolver I kept locked in the lower drawer. I almost never carried the gun. In the last five years, I had lost it three times, been shot by it once, and never used it to stop or even confront anyone threatening me. But now I was on the trail of a killer who was leaving clues like at a Crime Doctor movie, a killer who had made a third eye in the forehead of a taxidermist named Place and was ready to do something equally nasty to a citizen named Street.

I made it to the Crosley with a newspaper over my head, got in and headed for the Pacific Coast Highway. The skies grumbled, stayed gray but stopped raining as I did my best to keep from thinking. It didn’t work. Try it some time.

Was someone killing people just because their names left interesting clues? Did Place have anything to do with the Dali theft? If there was a Street in Mirador, was he or she a part of this or just a poor sap who happened to have the right name?

An hour later I turned off the highway at the Mirador exit and two minutes later was on Main Street. I didn’t know if Mark Nelson was still sheriff. I hoped I didn’t have to find out. We hadn’t gotten along like arms-around-the-neck buddies.

Downtown looked almost the same as it did the last time I had hit town. There were six store-front buildings on the main street. One of them was the sheriff’s office, another was a restaurant named Hijo’s. A place that used to sell “Live Bait” was now a hardware store, and three shops that used to be boarded up were now in business, though closed for the day. One of the shops, Old California, a few doors down from the sheriff’s office, sold antiques. The second specialized in “New and Used Clothes” and the third was Banyon’s Real Estate. The war boom had hit Mirador. There was no one on the street but a big guy in overalls looking into the window of the antique shop. Whatever was in there had his full attention. His face was flat against the window.

I kept driving till I came to a gas station I remembered. It was open. I got the kid on duty to fill the Crosley and went in to look at his phone book. The kid, tall and pimply with straight corn-colored hair and overalls, came in and said, “Eighty-three cents.”

“How many people live in Mirador?” I asked.

He shrugged as I handed him a dollar.

“Keep the change,” I said.

“Maybe a few thousand if you count the rich ones who only come in the winter,” the kid said, pocketing the whole buck and putting nothing in the till.

“There are thirty listings in the phone book for people named Street,” I said.

“Lot of Streets,” he replied seriously.

The inside of the station was small, crowded with stacks of oil cans and old Dime Detectives. It smelled of gasoline and musty pulp magazines.

“Why?”

“Streets founded the place,” he said. “My grandma on my ma’s side is a Street.”

“The thirteenth Street listed in the phone book is a Claude Street,” I said. “On Fuller Drive. How do I get there?”

“Claude’s probably in his shop,” said the kid, picking up a comic book and sitting in a wooden armchair behind a battered desk covered with old issues of Black Mask. “Spends most of his time there now that the tourists are back.”

“And where’s his shop?” I tried.

“Passed it on the way in. Old California Antiques on Main Street.”

I was going to say thanks and leave, but the kid put his comic book down and came up with a rifle from nowhere.

“Hands on your head,” he said, standing.

I put my hands on my head.

“Why are you asking all these questions about Mirador?”

“I’m looking for Claude Str-”

“You a Jap spy? No, maybe you’re a Nazi. Japs landed you in a submarine. I’ve been watching the beach a year. So have Andy and Dad.”

“I drove up in a car, remember?” I reminded him as he reached for the phone.

“Smart. I know you guys’re smart. I know you got big subs,” he said.

“Not big enough to hold a car,” I tried.

“Big enough to hold that little Jap car,” he said, nodding toward my Crosley.

“It’s an American car. And how would they get it out of the submarine? Through the little trapdoor?”

This gave him pause.

“Smart,” he said.

“I’m a private detective, undercover,” I said. “Call the sheriff. Call Mark Nelson. He knows me.”

Yeah, I thought, Nelson knows me. He told me never to come back to Mirador unless I wanted to go through life walking like a sloth on my knuckles.

“You know Sheriff Nelson?”

“Like a brother.”

He lowered the rifle and took his hand away from the phone. I slowly took my hands away from my head, without asking permission.

“Sorry,” the kid said. “Just that we’ve been expecting the Japs for two years. We’re ready for them, too. I practice every Friday.”

“Great,” I said. “They usually land at night. Keep a flashlight handy and get them one by one as they come out of the little door.”

The kid nodded, taking in this sage advice. I gave him another dime for a Whiz candy bar and a Pepsi from the refrigerator in the corner and got back in my Crosley.

Nothing was happening in the center of town and I felt less than comfortable parking near Sheriff Nelson’s office, but no one appeared on the street when I got out and headed for the door of the Old California Antique Shop. The guy in overalls who had been looking in the window was gone. I tried the door. Locked. I knocked. No answer. Through the window I could see shelves of curlicue lamps, clocks with gold-painted cupids, and fancy little boxes.

It looked like the kid was wrong and Claude Street wasn’t at work. I couldn’t blame him. Business on the street wasn’t even good enough to be called bad. It wasn’t raining but looked as if it might. The rich people were probably in their beach houses with their binoculars and hunting rifles, waiting for the invasion.

There was a narrow grassy space between the antique shop and the hardware store. It was worth a try. I walked between the buildings and found the back door of Old California. I didn’t knock this time. I tried the handle. The door opened. I went in and closed it behind me.

I was in a back room, very dim. There were no windows, but there was a curtain across the door leading into the shop. The curtain was thin. I went in. A man, who for want of better information I took to be Claude, was lying on the floor, his legs sprawled across an overturned chair and a hole, a little bigger than the one in Adam Place’s forehead, in his throat. On a table, ticking happily and watching over the scene, was Gala Dali’s second clock. The glass face of the clock was broken and covered with blood. Over the clock, hanging from the wall was Dali’s second painting, a grasshopper sitting on an egg. The egg was cracked and a small human head and arm were trying to get out. The grasshopper seemed to be looking down at the human and I had the feeling that when the little guy got out he’d be grasshopper food. There was something else in the painting-or had been until someone had splashed green over the lower right-hand third of the canvas. Written in yellow over the green was,

Time is running out. One clock. One painting.

Last chance. Look where he ate the sardine.

Claude was a slightly overweight man with a little yellow wig-I could tell it was a wig because it had fallen off when he fell-and round blue eyes locked on a not-very-interesting light fixture in the ceiling.

To be sure he was who I thought he was, I checked his pocket and found his wallet. He was Claude Street, all right. I took a closer look at the Dali painting and saw a bloody handprint like a signature in the lower left-hand corner. The blood was still wet. I looked at the floor, listened to the ticking of Gala Dali’s clock, and let my eyes follow the trail of dripped paint to the curtain. I got my.38 in my hand, then moved to the curtain. I pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the front of the store. Nobody, at least nobody inside. Outside the window, standing in front of my Crosley, was the man I wished least to see, Sheriff Mark Nelson of Mirador.

Nelson was a wiry little man, about forty, in a lightweight white suit and a straw hat. He squinted at me through the window as if unsure of what he was seeing. I stood still. He moved right up to the window, took off his straw hat, shielded his eyes with his right hand, and looked at me and the.38 in my hand.

I considered my options, put the.38 back in my pocket and moved to open the front door of the Old California Antique Shop so the now-smiling sheriff could enter.

“Mr. Toby Peters, you are a trial and a tribulation,” said Sheriff Nelson about five minutes later as he ushered me into his office two doors down from the Old California Antique Shop. “A trial and a tribulation. You were so on the occasion of our last meeting and you are once again.”

The sheriffs office was a remodeled store about the same size as the one run by the recently deceased Claude Street, but the layout was different. There was a low wooden railing with a gate. Visitors on one side. Cops and robbers on the other. Nelson held the gate open for me and I went in, past a desk and chair with a bulletin board behind them full of notes, clippings, and “Wanted” posters. To the left was a cubbyhole of an office with “Sheriff” marked on the door. To the right were two cells, both with open doors, neither occupied.

Nelson had my.38. He had taken it as soon as I had opened the door of the Old California Antique Shop. He had then walked through the curtain and seen Claude Street’s body. It was when he came back through the curtain the gun in his hand aimed at my chest, that he first declared me “a trial and tribulation.”

Nelson pointed to the first cell. I stepped in. He closed it behind me.

“There have been four murders in the history of this municipality,” he said, shaking his head and looking constipated.

“The Indians probably killed each other from time to time before we came here,” I suggested. “And the Spanish-”

“One of these murders, in 1930-” he went on.

“Woman on the beach brained her husband with rock,” I recalled.

Nelson smiled, a very pained smile.

“You have a memory worthy of remark,” he said. “You are correct. The next murder we had was a little over one year ago and you were very much a thorn in my side during that episode. The third murder should not really count. A Mex farmer south of town shot a man who, he says, was engaged in an unappreciated folly with the Mex farmer’s wife. And now this. Mr. Toby Peters, you have been involved in one-half of the murders which have taken place in Mirador since I became sheriff.”

There was a cot in the cell. I remembered it had a lurking spring. I sat down on the cot and looked up at Nelson, who was wiping the inside band of his straw hat.

“I’m going to tell you something, sheriff,” I said. “I know you won’t do anything about it, but I’ll feel better having said it. The person who killed Claude Street can’t be far away. The paint on the picture and on the floor was still wet. He didn’t have a car parked, at least not nearby. Mine was the only one out there till you pulled up.”

Nelson moved to the chair at the desk and sat. He looked at the phone and then swiveled the chair with a screech like teeth against a blackboard and glared at me.

“I do not care for you, Mr. Peters,” he said. “That you may have surmised from my demeanor. The Municipality of Mirador has grown in population and industry since you were last here. Murder most violent is not conducive to tourism.”

“I noticed the boomtown excitement,” I said.

“See, there you are. Sarcasm. Big city sarcasm.” He plopped his straw hat on the desk and looked at the phone. “That’s what people move down here to get away from.”

“Nelson,” I said. “Pick up the phone and call the Highway Patrol. This is out of your league.”

“You are a truly vexing person,” he said. “I will indeed call the Highway Patrol in a few moments-to inform them that I have apprehended the murderer of a member of one of Mirador’s oldest families.”

“Oldest,” I repeated. “Not most prominent, most beloved?”

“Oldest will suffice,” said Nelson, looking away from me through the front window of the office. Two kids, one boy, one girl, both about ten, were walking down the middle of the street unthreatened by Mirador’s growth of population and industry. “And respected.”

“Respected?”

“Any family which is capable of contributing one hundred and six votes in a town of a little more than two thousand permanent residents is a respected family,” Nelson explained, letting his fingers touch the phone.

“One hundred and five,” I corrected.

“One hundred and six is what I said and what I meant,” Nelson said with irritation. “Mr. Claude Street was a newcomer to this community and had not yet registered to vote.”

“Newcomer?”

“One who has recently come,” Nelson said with a shake of his head, as if talking to a semi-retarded nephew, “from Carmel.” He said “Carmel” as if it were a particularly sticky and unpleasant word.

“It was not easy to rent that store,” he said.

“You own the store?”

“If it is of any concern to you, I own all of downtown,” Nelson said, without enthusiasm. “And as you can see, it has made my fortune.”

“Nelson, I didn’t kill Claude Street,” I said. “You know that.”

His back was to me now and he was staring at the phone.

“I know no such thing,” he said in total exasperation. “The evidence would suggest quite the contrary. I found you with a gun in your hand.”

“It won’t match the bullet in Street’s neck.”

Nelson’s sigh was enormous.

“You could have shot him with another weapon that you disposed of or have hidden,” he said.

“You’ve wasted a good five minutes.”

“Do you know what I truly wanted to do with my existence?” he asked, picking up the phone and lifting the receiver off the hook. He turned to me quickly, and I shook my head to indicate that he had not previously shared this confidence with me-nor had I figured it from the many clues he had dropped.

Into the phone he said, “Miss Rita Davis Abernathy, will you please connect me with the office of the Highway Patrol … No, Miss Rita, you may not inquire … It is police business … I am confident that if you display even a modicum of patience and listen in on the line after you connect me-which I am as sure you will do as I am sure my mother’s favorite child is sitting in this chair … Thank you, Miss Rita.”

While he waited for Miss Rita to put him through, Nelson turned to me and remarked, “I wanted to be a man of the cloth, as my father was before me, and his father before him.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“I did not have the calling,” he said.

“Amen,” I said as into the phone he said, with great animation, “Lieutenant Freese? It is I, Sheriff Mark Nelson of the Municipality of Mirador. A homicide has taken place.”

He looked at me again and continued, “It is likely that I have apprehended the person who committed the crime, but it is also possible that he had assistance or that … I will be happy to get to the point if you will; my father always said that a man should be allowed to finish what he … About ten minutes ago … I have no deputy on duty. As you may recall, I have only one deputy, Deputy Mendoza, who is using his day off to-Thank you.”

He hung up the phone and turned to me again.

“What has happened to civility in this world?”

He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“A lost art,” I sympathized.

“There is but one church in this town and the minister, alas, is without style or substance.” Nelson stood up.

I knew-and Nelson knew-that he should go a few doors down and at least give the impression he knew what he was doing, but he didn’t have the heart for it. In the long run, he was doing the right thing, staying out of the way till the Highway Patrol showed up.

“How few of us are fortunate enough to achieve our life ambitions,” he said.

“It’s better to have ambitions and not achieve them than to have none at all,” I responded.

Nelson looked at me seriously for the first time since our eyes had met through the window of Claude Street’s Old California Shop.

“First Corinthians?” he asked.

“Charlie Chan in Rio,” I answered.

Neither of us spoke again until the Highway Patrol car pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office about twenty minutes later. I lay on the cot looking at the ceiling and Nelson sat looking out the window at the car from which two Highway Patrol officers in full uniform and as big as redwoods stepped out and looked around. There wasn’t much to see.

Nelson was up, hat in hand, as phony a smile as I’ve seen anywhere but on the face of a receptionist at Columbia Pictures.

“It is not my day,” Nelson said between his closed smiling teeth. “The Rangley brothers.”

The two state troopers came in and moved past Nelson in my direction. One had a face like Alley Oop with a shave and the other one looked like his brother.

“Trooper Rangley,” Nelson began. “This-”

“Where’s the dead man?” interrupted the bigger Rangley.

“Two doors down,” said Nelson. “In the Old California Antique Shop. His name is …”

But the Rangley’s, after looking at me as if to say I was one sorry specimen, turned and went back out on the street. They moved out of sight to the right of the window. Nelson turned to me. “I cannot but believe, though it runs counter to reason,” he said, “that you have killed Mr. Claude Street for the sole purpose of bringing tribulation into my life.”

“I didn’t kill him, Nelson,” I said.

Nelson’s smile was gone.

“My lady is waiting for me,” he said. “My fondest wish at this moment is to absent myself and allow the Rangley brothers-who, to the best of my knowledge, have no first names nor any need of them-to persuade you to confess to every crime committed within the state of California from moments after your birth to the instant I confined you to that cell.”

“Here they come,” I said.

Nelson put his smile back on and pivoted in his swivel chair to face the Rangleys as they came back into the sheriff’s office.

“Man’s dead in there,” said the bigger Rangley.

“That was my conclusion upon witnessing the corpse,” said Nelson.

There were two possible ways to interpret Sheriff Nelson’s statement: He was either humoring these walking specimens of recently quarried stone, or he was making a joke he was confident would elude them. I would have voted for the former, but Rangley Number Two was taking no chances.

He was about a foot taller than Nelson. He stopped in front of him and smiled. Though I didn’t think it possible, Nelson’s smile got even broader.

Big Rangley was moving toward me in the cell. I kept sitting on the cot. His face was red and Alley Oop wasn’t smiling at me.

“Sardines. ‘Look where he ate the sardine’? I don’t like crazy shit,” he muttered softly.

Since I agreed with him, there wasn’t much for me to say. I nodded. “The other officer over there behind me,” he went on, “he’s my brother. He likes crazy shit even less than I do.”

The other brother was losing the grinning battle with Nelson, though I knew the sheriff was doomed to lose the war.

The big Rangley said, “Keys.”

Sheriff Nelson pulled his keys out and handed them to the patrolman, who threw them to his brother, who, without removing his brown eyes from me, held up his hand to catch them. The keys flew past him and landed inside the cell at my feet.

“All the good receivers were drafted,” I said, reaching down for the key ring.

It was the wrong thing to say.

“Just pick up the keys and open the cell,” he said. “Officer Rangley and the sheriff are going a few doors down to wait for the evidence truck and the county coroner while you and I palaver.”

I swear he said “palaver,” but the way he said it convinced even me that I’d be better off playing second banana in this Kermit Maynard western.

“The prisoner is-” Nelson began.

“-about to be interrogated,” said the big Rangley as his brother ushered Nelson to and through the front door.

I got up and opened the door. Rangley came around the corner and entered. He put out his hand and I gave him the key.

“Been locked up before?” he asked.

“A few times. Once before in this cell.”

“Tell me about sardines,” he said.

“Not much to tell,” I answered. “When I was a kid I liked to make sardine salad-mash up a can with onions and mayo. Still like it once in a while. Or a sandwich on white with butter and a thick slice of onion.”

Rangley nodded, muttered something like “hmmpff” and closed the cell door. The keys went into his pocket.

“This came at a bad time …”

“Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters. I’m a private investigator. I was-”

“… about to sit,” said Rangley.

I sat on the cot.

“You know there’re springs in that cot?” he said, standing over me.

“Yes,” I said.

He looked around the cell and shook his head.

“Even a half-assed short-timer could pull a spring at night and cut the eyes off Nelson or his homo Mex deputy,” he went on.

“That’s an idea,” I said.

He laughed and the heel of his right hand came forward and slammed against what was left of my nose. That wasn’t too bad, but I flew back on the cot and hit my head on the wall. That was bad. I rebounded and thought I heard a musical saw.

“How’s the head?” he asked gently, handing me his pocket handkerchief.

“Fine,” I said, accepting the handkerchief and putting it to my nose.

“Don’t worry about the blood,” he said with a smile, sitting next to me. “Can I give you a little advice?”

“You have my undivided attention.”

He put his hand on my knee and whispered, “Don’t answer me smart again.”

“That’s good advice,” I said, checking the handkerchief. It was wet and dark red.

“Keep it,” he said gently.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You kill the guy?”

“The one with the yellow wig?”

“Is there more than one?”

“I just saw the one,” I said.

“How’s your head?” he asked again, touching my arm. I got the point.

“I didn’t kill him. I was trying to find him. Someone stole three Salvador Dali paintings and three clocks from my client.”

“Three clocks, three paintings,” he repeated with a knowing nod of the head. “Big clock in there one of the clocks?”

“Yeah.”

“And that painting? That grasshopper on the egg crap in there. That one of the paintings?”

“Right,” I said.

“This Dali’s a crazy asshole,” he said.

“That could be,” I said, putting the handkerchief back to my nose.

Big Rangley chuckled. I didn’t know what was funny but, as Wild Bill Elliot says, I’m a sociable man. I made a sound that might well be taken for a chuckle.

“Remember what I said when I came in this place, Peters?”

“You don’t like crazy shit.”

“Don’t like it at all,” he agreed, clapping me on the back. He reached into his vest pocket and came out with a little notebook, which he flipped open to the first page and read:

“Time is running out. One clock. One painting. Last chance. ‘Look where he ate the sardine.’”

He closed the notebook, returned it to his vest pocket and buttoned it.

“Now,” he said. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Beyond the window a Mirador crowd was gathering. A crowd in Mirador was somewhere between two and six people. This crowd included two girls around ten, the kid from the gas station where I had used the phone book, and a vacant-looking fat man in overalls whose palms and nose were pressed to the window the way they had been pressed against the antique shop window when I had driven down Main Street about an hour ago. Another car pulled up at the curb. The crowd turned and a man about seventy got out of a black Ford coupe. He came to the door of the sheriffs office, opened it and saw Rangley.

“Two doors over, Doc,” said Rangley, pointing past me. “Melvin’s in there.”

Doc was wearing a wrinkled long-sleeved blue shirt and suspenders, no tie. He was carrying one of those black doctor bags. Doc looked at me.

“Don’t hit him again, Beau,” the doctor said and left the office, closing the door behind him.

“Doc’s a humanitarian,” Rangley confided. “But Doc doesn’t have to talk to many living people during business hours. Easy to be a humanitarian when you don’t have to meet humanity.”

“Trooper,” I said. “You’re a philosopher.”

“And you’re one hell of a fool if you think what the doc said and those village half-wits out there watching are going to stop me from ripping what’s left of your nose off if you smart off.”

The punch was low, short, and hard. It caught me about where my kidney must be.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said, trying to keep the pain from my voice.

I knew the next question and my next answer. I considered throwing an elbow into Trooper Beau Rangley’s throat. It might work, but what then? A run for L.A. in my Crosley? I tightened my muscles, those that would still pay attention, and waited.

“Who you working for, Peters?”

I looked at the retarded man with his face against the window. He grinned at me. It was a nice friendly grin. He pulled his left hand from the window. It left a bloody handprint.

“I can’t tell you that without the client’s permission,” I said, forcing myself to look at Rangley and not at the window.

The outer door to the sheriff’s office came open before Rangley could throw the punch, and his brother came in with Sheriff Nelson.

“Doc wants to see you, Beau,” Mel Rangley said.

Beau smiled and stood up. He straightened the creases in his brown uniform and gently slapped my cheek. He got blood on his palm.

“We’ll talk again in a few minutes,” he said, moving to the cell door and opening it.

I kept my mouth shut until Beau and Mel were out the door. The crowd, except for the retarded man, followed them in the direction of the Old California Antique Shop.

“You see,” said Nelson, pointing his hat at me.

I wasn’t sure what it was I was supposed to see, but I doubted Nelson planned to explain and I knew I didn’t care. He sat in his chair and swiveled so that his back was to me again. He looked up at the retarded man and shouted, “Martin Sawyer, you are, as you have been for the past thirty-five years, looking through the wrong window.”

Nelson pointed to his right; the retarded man watched with curiosity and no understanding.

“Nelson,” I said. “I didn’t do it.”

Nelson swung around and looked at me.

“Well,” he said with a deep sigh. “I am relieved. Why did you not make that clear to me when I first found you, gun in hand? I think I’ll just let you out and apologize.”

“I want a lawyer,” I said.

“You will have to take that up with the troopers Rangley,” he said.

“I’m your prisoner,” I reminded him.

“I have washed my hands of the whole-Martin Sawyer, get the hell away from that window.”

We were at this crucial point in the conversation when the Rangleys and the doctor came back in, leaving their audience outside.

“Peters,” said the senior Rangley, “when did you get to Mirador?”

“About an hour ago, maybe an hour and a half,” I said.

“And,” he went on, “you went right to the antique shop?”

“No, I got gas from that kid, the one standing out there on the sidewalk. The pimply one with the overalls.”

“He told us,” said Rangley.

“I’m going back to the body,” said the old doctor wearily.

“Hold your horses,” said Rangley, holding up his hand. Then to me, “Where were you last night, between-”

“Midnight to five or so,” said the doctor. “That’s safe enough.”

“Culver City lockup,” I said, standing up. “From about eleven to nine in the morning.”

“Go check it, Mel,” Rangley said. His brother nodded and went out the door. I watched him muscle through the watching kids and head for the car.

“I’m going back,” said the doc. He turned and went back to the street, leaving me, Nelson, and the trooper who hated puzzles.

No one spoke for a while. Nelson sat. Rangley stood and I held onto the bars with one hand and used my other one to dab my bloody nose with Rangley’s handkerchief. My head hurt but I decided to put on a happy face.

Mel Rangley came running back in about two minutes.

“He was in the Culver City lockup,” Mel said.

I grinned broadly and threw the bloody handkerchief to Beau Rangley, who wasn’t ready for it. The balled piece of cloth hit his neatly pressed shirt, leaving a dark, deep spot, and fell to the floor.

“Sorry,” I said pleasantly.

“I think you’d better come with us,” he said. “We’ve got a few more questions to ask you. Somewhere quiet. Let him out, Nelson.”

Nelson put his straw hat on his head and swiveled toward Rangley.

“I think not,” he said.

Rangley shook his head as if the world were a series of unexpected little heartbreaks that had to be endured.

“Open it,” he repeated.

“No,” said Nelson, standing.

Rangley was not looking at the sheriff, but I was. I could see the tremor in his knees, the twitch of his jaw, and the determination in his eyes.

“Nelson, one half-hearted piss and you’d flush down the toilet.”

“Given the information provided by the good doctor, the confirmation of presence by the Culver City police and your obvious hostility toward the prisoner,” said Nelson, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the laws of the State of California and the Municipality of Mirador to release the prisoner to you. And that I do not intend to do.”

Rangley turned to the sheriff and took three steps till they were nose to forehead. Nelson quaked and almost lost his straw hat, but he didn’t back down.

“You’re one simple shit, Nelson,” Rangley hissed.

“That is as it may be,” Nelson agreed, “but Peters remains in my charge.”

With that Trooper Rangley stormed out the door and went to join his brother in their car. The small crowd turned to watch them drive off.

“Thanks,” I said as Nelson’s knees began a serious wobble. He made it back to his chair and grasped the arms as he sat heavily.

“There comes a moment when one least expects it that dignity takes precedence over survival,” he said. “That is a moment to be watched for and avoided or one runs the risk of losing a secure job with a pension.”

“What now?” I asked.

The crowd on the street was still there but it had dwindled to three, including the retarded man who had now fixed his gaze on me. I waved to him. He waved back and Doc appeared behind him, started toward his car, changed his mind, and entered Nelson’s office, closing the door behind him.

“Street was killed by a gunshot,” he said. “I’ve recovered the bullet Death took place last night or early this morning. I called Hal Overmeyer. He’ll bring the corpus to San Plentia Hospital and I’ll play with it till I know more.”

Doc looked at me and shifted his black bag to his other hand.

“Want me to look at your nose?” he asked.

“I’ll be peachy,” I said.

“Any other wounds need tending?” he asked. “I usually have to do a little patching in the wake of the Rangleys.”

My head was throbbing and the ache in my side sucked deep and sharp.

“I feel great,” I said. “Trooper Rangley knows how to treat a fella.”

Doc looked at me and shook his head.

“Never that simple, mister,” he said. “Beau and Mel are the last of the Rangley brothers. Rick died on Guam. Sam got killed in Morocco on a tank. And Harry, well, they never found enough of him to make it official. The oldest brother, Carl, he took a broken beer bottle in the gut half a year before the war broke out. Beau and Mel are draft-free and they promised their mother they wouldn’t join. So, every time they’re introduced to a new friend like you, they make ’em welcome. Rangleys are none too brilliant. You know what sublimate means?”

“No,” I said. “Let me guess. They feel better when they kick someone’s teeth out.”

“Something like that,” Doc agreed. “But to give you your due, the Rangleys weren’t a friendly bunch even when there was an even half dozen of them. Sheriff Nelson, what say you let the innocent man out and all of us go over to Hijo’s and have a few beers before my date with the deceased?”

Nelson’s legs were back, at least back enough for him to nod and get up.

“Why not?” he said wearily. “I’ve got to give my wife a call first.”

Doc took the keys from Nelson and moved toward me as Nelson picked up the phone.

“One more painting?” Doc asked as he opened the cell door.

“One more clock,” I added, stepping into the office where Nelson was whispering into the receiver.

“Running out of time,” said Doc, looking at the keys.

I looked out the window at the retarded man, who was still watching me with a happy grin. This was probably the most exciting day of his life.

“There was fresh blood on the floor of the antique shop,” I said low enough so Nelson couldn’t hear me from across the room.

“Not the victim’s,” said Doc. “Probably not the killer’s either. I’d imagine whoever did it was long gone and far away before dawn.”

I pointed to the window. Doc looked where I was pointing and saw the handprint.

We moved past Nelson’s desk. The sheriff gave us a shrug, turned his back to us and continued whispering into the phone.

“Martin Sawyer,” I said, looking at the retarded man.

Doc looked up as we reached the door.

“Like many of the inhabitants of Mirador, I delivered him.”

“Harmless?”

“Harmless,” said Doc, stepping out onto the sidewalk and holding the door open for me.

Nelson, still on the phone, waved us ahead.

We were standing in front of Martin Sawyer now, and Sawyer turned from the sheriff’s office window and smiled gently at us as Doc sighed.

“Let me look at your hand, Martin.”

Martin took his right hand out of his pocket and held it out. It was pink with flecks of fast-drying blood.

“Peters,” said Doc, looking at the hand. “Martin Sawyer is incapable of committing violence.”

“But not of witnessing it.”

Through the window we could see Sheriff Nelson hang up the phone.

“I’d prefer that Martin not go through the pain of arrest and questioning,” said Doc, guiding Martin’s hand back to the overall pocket.

“I know who killed him,” said Martin Sawyer happily. His voice was soft and high.

Nelson was moving toward the door through which Doc and I had just come.

“Who” asked Doc.

“Last night, Mr. Claude told me a name. Then I came back before and Mr. Claude was, was, was …”

“Dead,” I said.

Martin Sawyer looked frightened. His eyes moved to Sheriff Nelson, who was coming out of the door.

“What was the name Mr. Claude told you, Martin?”

“Gregory Novak,” said Martin. “Mr. Claude said, ‘Gregory Novak wants to kill me, but I’ll fool him.’”

“What?” asked Nelson. “Martin Sawyer, go home to your sister. There is nothing here for you.”

Sawyer rubbed his head and looked at Nelson.

“Gregory Novak,” he said.

Nelson shook his head and pushed past Sawyer, heading toward Hijo’s bar.

“Martin just told us that Claude believed someone named Gregory Novak was planning to kill him,” said Doc.

“Hold it,” I put in. “Juanita said someone would be killed by a guy called Guy or Greg, a guy with a beard.”

“Juanita?” asked Doc.

“Fortune teller in L.A.,” I explained.

Sheriff Nelson stopped, his back to us, paused for a beat and turned to look at the three of us.

“Gentlemen,” said Nelson, “I anticipate both an eventful confrontation with my spouse and a future of less than cordial social interaction with the brothers Rangley. The respite of a bottle or two of Drewery’s will be most welcome. It is my opinion that Gregory Norvell-”

“Novak,” Martin Sawyer corrected helpfully.

“Novak,” Nelson said with a weary sigh. “I stand corrected. It is my opinion that Gregory Novak is the name of a character on Mr. Keen or some other radio show which Martin Sawyer is unable to separate from reality. Now, I am going into the Mex bar and have a beer. Your companionship would be welcome, but it would not be the first time I have had a beer by myself.”

Doc touched Martin Sawyer’s arm and told him softly to get in Doc’s car and wait for him. Then we joined Nelson in the bar.