Melting Clock

9

Taylor drove up Western. We didn’t talk. I didn’t have a plan and I was sure he was working on one. Once I was wherever we were going, there wasn’t much to keep him and his brother from taking the money and keeping the clock and the painting. Or, for that matter, from keeping everything and sending me back in the briefcase.

I didn’t get much time to think about it. Taylor turned right when we hit Rosecrans and then a few blocks later he turned left. We were on a street of little once-white one-bedroom houses that probably looked tired the day they were finished. There wasn’t much room between the houses but the community made up for it by letting the weeds grow tall and the jungle make a comeback.

A pair of old guys were sitting on a porch next to the house we pulled up in front of. One old guy was sloppy fat, wearing a blue shirt with the pocket torn not-quite-off. The guy he was talking to was thin, dressed in a suit and tie and sitting straight up with his hands in his lap and his eyes watching us get out of the car.

“Taylor,” called the fat man.

Taylor jumped out of the Ford and waited for me to get out with the briefcase. He didn’t bother to look at the fat old man.

“Guy here’s been waiting for you,” said the fat man, looking at the well-dressed thin one.

“I’ve got no time,” Taylor said, moving toward the house we were parked next to.

We started through the veldt and the thin man came alive, jumping out of his chair and cutting through the underbrush to head us off. He just beat us to the door.

Up close he didn’t look as old as he had from the street, but neither did he look as well-dressed. His jacket was rumpled. His pants were worse, and the collar of his white shirt was frayed. I didn’t like his tie either.

“Mr. Taylor?” he said, looking at both of us and barring our way to the door.

“Him,” I said, pointing at my buddy.

“James Taylor?” the thin man asked.

“John Taylor,” Taylor corrected sullenly. “I’ve got no time. Out of the way.”

The man didn’t move.

“My name, Mr. Taylor, is Frank Buxton. I came in response to James Taylor’s call. He said I should be at this address one hour ago, that he had a clock of unknown vintage he wished me to evaluate. I knocked at the door but there was no answer.”

“Forget it,” said Taylor, muscling past Buxton. “We changed our mind.”

“Then,” said the thin man, “you will still have to pay my fee for home and office estimates. Twenty dollars for the time I have wasted. Eighty cents for gasoline.”

“Send me a bill,” growled Taylor, putting his key in the door.

“Payment now would be preferable,” said Buxton. “In fact it is essential.”

Taylor had stepped into the darkness of the house but had left the door open for me. Buxton turned to follow him but I put a hand on his arm and said, “Hold it.”

He stopped, turned, and waited while I reached into the briefcase and came out with a bill. It was a fifty. I handed it to Buxton. Taylor was back in the doorway.

“Get in here, Peters.”

“I have no change,” said Buxton, standing there with the bill in his hand.

“Keep it,” I said. “What time did Taylor call you?”

“Get in the house, Peters,” Taylor said threateningly.

“At nine this morning. Said it was urgent.”

“Thanks,” I said and followed Taylor inside.

He closed the door and I stood there waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light trickling in through the closed shades and half-drawn curtains of the living room.

“John,” I said. “I think you and Jim were planning to be greedy. I think you and your brother were planning to take Dali’s money and keep the clock.”

“Only if the clock was worth a lot of money,” he said, walking across the room and pulling back the drapes.

The room wasn’t exactly washed in light now, but I could see a little better. A green sofa with wooden arms sat against one wall of the room. There were spots on the green, turning white from too many bodies and too much sweat. The once-dark wooden arms were scratched with dirty yellow lines. There were two other chairs in the room. One was red, a washed-out red that had given up trying to look like silk the night Taft took his first bath in the White House. The remaining chair was blue with embroidered tree leaves only slightly darker than the background. There were two lamps, one on an end table between the chairs and one floor lamp trying to be modern but missing it by two decades. Newspapers were open and everywhere.

“Charming place you have here,” I ventured.

“Jim and I haven’t touched it since Mom died,” he said, moving across the room to an open door. “Jim,” he called.

I followed him. We looked through the bedroom door at two beds, twin beds that looked a bit small for the Taylor kids.

“Nice beds,” I said, following him back into the living room.

“Mom and Dad bought them for us when we were seven. Where the hell is Jim? He was supposed to be here.”

There was only one room left, the kitchen, where we found Jim seated at a square table with chrome legs and a white Formica top. Jim was face-down on the newspaper spread out on the table. I knew he was dead because something with a wooden handle was buried in the back of his neck. It was buried so deep that I couldn’t see any of the blade. On the table, facing the handle, was a clock, the triplet of the two I had seen sitting in front of two other corpses over the past two days. This one wasn’t ticking. The key was in the hole under the minute hand.

There was no painting. We’d taken the nickel tour of the place and I hadn’t seen it. John Taylor stood, feet slightly apart, hands at his side, looking at his dead mirror image on the table.

“Go in the other room and sit down,” I said.

Taylor didn’t seem to hear.

“Go sit.”

He was shaking now, like a little balsa wood model of a Spitfire. Like the one my nephew Nat had hanging over his bed.

“You’re too big for me to carry, Taylor. Go sit down.”

“You don’t understand,” he said, his face white.

“I’ve got a brother,” I said.

“You don’t understand. I hated him,” said Taylor. “We were never him and me. We were us. No one thought about us as … as …”

“Individuals.”

“Individuals,” he repeated, his eyes fixed on his brother. “I hated him. I don’t think I can live without him. I don’t know how.”

I wanted to tell him to save it for a headshrinker or his neighborhood priest, but he wasn’t really talking to me. I moved to the table and touched the corpse. Still warm. I heard a sound and looked up at the window in the back door. Frank Buxton, the clock appraiser, was standing there watching. He blinked once and backed away.

“I think you can expect the police in about five minutes,” I said, turning back to Taylor, who hadn’t moved and didn’t seem to hear.

“The police,” he repeated dumbly.

“You know where the painting is?”

He shook his head no.

“You see the painting?”

He shook his head yes and said, “You want a liverwurst sandwich? That’s all we …” His voice trailed off.

There was a large glass fruit bowl on the counter near the sink next to an open box of Kellogg’s Pep. There was one rotting banana in the bowl. I took it out and put it in the sink. Then I opened the briefcase and shoveled about half the money into the bowl.

“That’s for the clock,” I said.

Taylor pulled his eyes from his brother and looked at the bowl of money.

“For the clock,” I repeated.

“You’re a straight shooter, Peters,” he said.

“Like Tennessee Jed,” I agreed.

“Sorry I tried to kill you.”

I picked up the clock. It was damned heavy. It would have been bad enough if I weren’t carrying the briefcase.

“Open the door,” I said, “and get to a phone. Call the cops. You might beat Buxton to it. At least you’ll be on record as having called.”

He shuffled to the back door and opened it.

“And hide the money.”

But John Taylor wasn’t listening to me. He had turned his back to the door and stood facing his dead brother. I kicked the door closed and tried to keep from breaking my neck as I made my way down a narrow cement pathway to a dirt alley behind the house. The alley led to a dead end. I crossed a tiny yard with a lawn that had been mowed within the decade and found myself on a small street that looked just like the one the Taylor brothers lived on. I was sweating now and the clock was getting heavier. I lurched on like Lon Chaney in his mummy suit until I came to a street that showed some sign of life and led back to Rosecrans. I was about four blocks from the Taylor house now. Traffic was light in the early afternoon, but I spotted a Black and White cab and waved him down, balancing the clock and the briefcase in one hand.

“Nice clock,” said the cabbie through his window.

“Thanks,” I said and told him to head back to the shipyard.

I got my Crosley with no problem. The clock sat on the seat next to me and looked straight ahead all the way back downtown and into No-Neck Arnie’s garage. I didn’t even bother to look for a space on Hoover or Main and I wasn’t going up against the pumpkin man again. I slid over, taking the clock in my arms, and got out. I reached back inside and retrieved the briefcase. I wasn’t looking forward to carrying them both to the Farraday, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave them with No-Neck Arnie.

“Peters,” said Arnie, an overalled little man with a barrel chest and enough oil and grease on his body to fuel Huntington Beach for a week.

“Arnie,” I said. “Fix the door.”

“Busy,” he said. “Where’d you get the clock?”

“Other side of hell,” I said. “I’ll be in my office about an hour. What’ll it cost to fix the door?”

Arnie walked around to the driver’s side door, wiped his hands on his overalls and tried to open it.

“You did that last week,” I reminded him.

“Warp, heat, alignment differentials change in a week,” he answered, in the mysterious tongue of auto mechanics.

“How much?”

“Twenty bucks,” he said.

The clock was heavy, the briefcase handle sweaty.

“Twenty bucks,” I agreed.

Arnie looked at me suspiciously.

“Twenty bucks,” I repeated.

“I’ll throw in a paint job,” he said.

“You are a saint.”

“I just like my work,” he said. “Still can’t do it till Thursday. You need another door.”

“All right. Where’s Syd?” I asked. Syd was Arnie’s day assistant, a one-eyed guy with a bad stutter.

“Army,” said Arnie, standing back to survey my Crosley.

“They let Syd join the Army?”

“Drafted,” said Arnie, arms folded, deep in thought as he contemplated his task.

It took me a couple of months to get to the Farraday Building. People admired the clock along the way. Even had an offer to buy it. Twenty bucks. I trudged on and made it to the elevator around five o’clock. I almost fell asleep on the way up. A trickle of people came out of offices and made their way down the stairs, their footsteps echoing as they passed me, rising slowly in the groaning cage.

When I made it through the door to the office and into Shelly’s house of pain, I found Dali in the chair, mouth open and Shelly hovering over him.

“Hold it,” I said.

Shelly held it and turned to me.

“What?”

“Keep your fingers out of my client’s mouth.”

“My fingers aren’t in his mouth. He-”

“I told him to look down my throat into eternity,” sail Dali, getting out of the chair. “If he can see eternity down my throat, then each time a patient sits here before him, Dr. Shelodon Minik can understand infinity, can sense forever. He will not be fixing teeth. He will be drawn into the creative vortex.”

His wide eyes turned to me and my burden.

“Gala’s clock. My painting?”

“Taylor’s dead.”

“And my painting?”

“I didn’t see anything in your throat but tonsils,” said Shelly.

“It cost half of the money. I got the clock and the guy who threatened to kill you is dead.” I didn’t see any point in mentioning Taylor’s brother.

“I’ve looked down maybe a hundred thousand throats,” muttered Shelly. “Saw double tonsils once or twice and-”

“Shelly,” I said. “Take this.”

I handed him the clock.

“It has never been wound,” said Dali. “Legend says that it should only be wound at midnight or noon. The Russians have no imagination, only gross feelings.”

“Your wife is Russian,” I reminded him.

“Gala is the eternal. The eternal is Gala,” said Dali, advancing on me, his voice dropping with each step and the name “Gala” coming out like a quiet “Amen.”

“Anybody call?” I asked.

Shelly cradled the clock and started fiddling with the key.

“Leave it alone, Shel,” I said. “Anybody call?”

“Jeremy. He says they’re in Carmel. I lost him while he was talking. I think the phones are really out now.”

“Anybody else?”

“The cop, Seidman,” said Shelly, tilting the clock over and looking at the words in Russian printed on the bottom. “He said to tell you when you show up to come in and see him fast. About a dead guy named Taylor.”

“Sal, we’d better get going. Shel, you haven’t seen me.”

Briefcase in hand I opened the door to the waiting room. Dali looked back and said to Shelly, “Perhaps it is better that you do not gaze too deeply into the darkness of man. Eternity is too frightening for some and too blissful for others.”

“Remember my smiling tooth,” said Shelly.

“I shall paint you a smiling tooth,” said Dali gallantly.

“Make it look like that guy who paints for the Saturday Evening Post. Norman Rockwell. Now, he’s a great painter.”

Dali closed his eyes, breathed deeply. “I will consider it. Now we must get to Carmel. Tomorrow is the party.”

I had Shelly carry the clock down to the front of the Farraday and wait while I went back to Arnie’s and got the car. About ten minutes later, the clock between Dali’s legs and the briefcase under his feet, we were on the way to Carmel. We didn’t say anything for fifty miles and then Dali exploded.

“If you do not recover my painting, I shall swallow cups of paint till I die. I will become paint. I will pour it in my eyes, my ears, so I don’t see or hear the taunting.”

“You want to listen to the radio?” I asked.

“Yes, please,” he said softly and with great calm. “I believe we can still hear Snooks.”

Dali smiled through the show and nodded his head. Twice he looked at me when Baby Snooks said something that didn’t strike me as particularly important. Dali’s raised eyebrow suggested some profound depth to the statements: “But Daddy, Robespierre always eats bread and butter,” and “Robespierre, don’t sit on Mr. Goodwin’s hat.”

When the show was over, Dali looked out the window, asked, “What is the worst trip you ever took? In your life?”

I’ve been on some bad trips in my life. I told him about the time my father took me and my brother Phil to Lincoln, Nebraska, to visit his sister. I was five or six. We went on a train and had to sleep sitting up. I sat across from a woman in a black dress who took up two seats and kept eating little things she pulled out of her knitting bag. She smiled and offered me one. I was sure it was alive. I dozed off a few times but kept opening my eyes. Each time I did I found her looking at me, smiling and munching.

“Trains,” said Dali. “Ferrocarril. I know. You must come hours early, tie each bag to your body with a strong string when you get on so no one will steal them.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said.

“And sit as near the engine as you can so you will arrive earlier.”

“Makes sense to me.”

Dali told me about his worst trip in an automobile, ten years earlier, when he and his wife fled Spain. He was visiting his father in some place called Catalonia when the district declared its independence from Spain. Dali was convinced the civil war broke out because he had just spoken to his father after years and the gods were punishing him for his mistake. Gala had to find safe-conduct passes and a car to drive them to the French border through drunks and machine guns.

“I can still see the little village where we stopped for gasoline,” he said, looking out the window. “The men are carrying ridiculous but lethal weapons, while under a big tent people are dancing to the Blue Danube. Then I hear four men talking about our luggage. One of them looks me in the eye and says I should be shot. I fall back in my car seat.”

And with this Dali fell back, shaking the Crosley almost enough to drive us off the road.

“I gasp for breath,” Dali said, gasping for breath. “My little cock shrivels like a tiny earthworm about to enter the mouth of a great fish. Our driver shouts filth and orders the men to get out of our way.”

Dali went silent for a few miles, his eyes closed. I thought he had dozed off, but he suddenly said, “The driver got us to a small hotel in Cerbere, on the border. We found out later that as he was driving home, just outside of Barcelona, he was shattered by machine guns. It was the trap of that awful stupidity, civil war.”

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Androgynous,” he answered.

I didn’t ask him what he meant. I figured he was making up a word. I looked it up later.