Melting Clock

4

Jeremy went back to his family and I went for the phone book in my office, hoping the right pages hadn’t been torn out by Dash during one of his visits. The page was there. The first Place listed was Aaron. He was followed by Adam Place, who lived on Nicholas in Culver City. It was a little after eleven. I considered calling but what would I say? “Have you got a stolen Dali painting?”

About twenty minutes later I was pulling into a parking spot on Nicholas across from Lindberg Park. There was no one on the street when I crawled out of the passenger seat of my Crosley and looked around for the address. It wasn’t hard to find, a rectangular one-story pink adobe house across the street in the middle of a block. There was a white sign in front of the house announcing ADAM PLACE, TAXIDERMY.

From what I could see, Adam was asleep or out. No hint of light seeped through or around the closed vertical blinds covering every window. I went up the little walkway, stopped, and listened. I couldn’t hear anything. There was a white button next to the door. I pushed it, but didn’t hear any gong, buzz, bell, or clang. I tried again. Nothing. I knocked. The knock echoed down the block and into the rustling trees across the street in Lindberg Park. I knocked again.

Then I tried the door. Locked. It must have been near twelve and I had to make up my mind. Knocking was getting me nowhere. I could get back in my Crosley, watch the place and wait for a light or a human or the morning. That would definitely put me past the midnight deadline the thief had given. I stepped off the path and moved around to the side of the house. No point in trying a front window and risk being seen. The houses on either side of the adobe were barricaded by bushes. I went to the left and looked for a window and shadows to hide in. I found both. The first window was locked but the second one was open. I shoved it, pushed the blinds out of the way, and climbed in. When I got inside, I turned and closed the window behind me.

Darkness and the overwhelming smell of something dry and old. I followed the wall to the right, hand over hand, feeling for a light switch or a lamp. Adam Place, if he had a gun and was somewhere in here, had a perfect right to blow my head off. I thought about that as I moved along, figuring I’d eventually hit the front door and find some kind of light. It didn’t take that long. I bumped into furniture, tripped over a table, felt something brush my face and fall behind me, and then I felt it. Definitely a lamp. I turned it on and found myself looking into the angry face and sharp teeth of an animal about the size of my Crosley. I stepped backward, fell over a table full of stuffed birds, and landed on the floor in a flurry of dead wings. The animal with the angry face and sharp teeth was a puma. I’d seen one in the Griffith Park Zoo. This one was stuffed and dead.

If Adam Place was here, I was a noisy dead man, but no one came running or calling. I sat up, brushed away owls, gulls, doves, and a small eagle, and looked around the room. The lamp cast a washed-out yellowish circle of light over a room cluttered with stuffed animals looking directly at me. There were dozens of them, covering almost every spot of table, mantle, shelf, and even floor. And on the walls were paintings of animals. The wall was covered with paintings of elephants, bears, lions, the big ones looking just as stuffed as the ones below them. I got up and looked around, being careful where I stepped.

Through doves, squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, and even a pair of armadillos, I tiptoed my way across the room to the next room. There was a light switch in there, just inside the doorway. I hit it and looked around what must once have been a dining room. Now it was just an extension off the living room. More paintings on the wall. Stuffed animals, some as small as mice, covered the chairs and filled a huge china cabinet whose doors were open. The big wooden table with claw feet was crowded with animals in various states of stuffing. A possum, its belly open and half filled with sawdust, lay on its back surrounded by sharp metal instruments.

I wanted to whistle “Violets for Your Furs” and go for the door, but I backed out of the room and went on. The house was small. There couldn’t have been much left. Somewhere in the darkness I could hear the serious ticking of a clock. I went through a kitchen, which had not yet been completely overtaken by dead animals but was well on the way, and found a bathroom. I hit the light and saw a sink, tub, wicker clothes hamper, and one stuffed animal, a small alligator, perched on the toilet bowl.

I moved back into the hall and found the first bedroom, or what should have been the bedroom but was the reptile room. Tables of snakes, lizards, and things I didn’t want to look at too closely. One wall was free of paintings. It was filled by a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. All the books were, I was sure, about animals and how to do them in or do them up.

I figured it for a two-bedroom house and I was right. I found the switch in the second one and saw a stuffed grizzly bear in the middle of the room, guarding a big bed on which a man lay in roughly the same position as the possum in the dining room. There was a black, bloody hole in his forehead and a surprised look on his face. At the foot of the bed on a little table sat a big clock, Gala Dali’s clock, ticking, its face toward the dead man, now beyond time. The bed, neatly made, was covered in blood.

Over the bed on the wall was a painting. Dali was right. It was unmistakably his. It wasn’t very big and nothing like the other paintings in the house, except that the biggest figure was clearly an animal, a big white bird with a long neck and the head of a man wearing a derby hat. The bird was full of holes you could see through to a ridge of rocks behind it in sand. The Swiss cheese bird didn’t seem to be uncomfortable.

The bird wasn’t easy to make out because someone had used white paint to splash across the picture the words:

Senor, 13th Street at midnight tomorrow in the Town of the Spectator.

I checked the time on Gala’s clock. It was ten after midnight. Tomorrow had already started. I moved to the bed and pushed the dead guy over just enough to reach into his pocket and pull out his wallet with the not-too-clean handkerchief I had in my pocket. I didn’t get much blood on the handkerchief.

The dead guy was Adam Place, or someone carrying Place’s wallet. There were two tens and a single in the wallet, plus some pictures of the dead guy in an army uniform-World War I, not the current one. I dropped the wallet and moved to the phone near the clock. I got a cop on duty at the Wilshire Station and with my best Polish-Hungarian-Czech accent said, “Is man dead here.”

“How should I know?” asked the cop.

“No,” I said. “Is here, here a man dead in his bed. Very blood. Very dead. You come.”

“Where?” asked the cop, without enthusiasm.

I gave him the address.

“Wait there,” he said.

I hung up and looked up at the painting. It wouldn’t do Dali much good and it was evidence, an oversized piece of evidence. But he was my client and the only thing I had to sell was loyalty.

“What the hell,” I said to the grizzly bear, and leaned over the bed to get the painting down. I considered taking the clock, too, but I couldn’t carry the painting, the handkerchief I needed to wipe away my prints, and the clock, which looked as if it weighed about as much as Shelly Minck’s dental chair. If I hurried, I could get the painting in the car and come back for the clock.

With the painting under my arm I made my way out of the bedroom, turning off the light behind me. I hit the other lights and went to the front door. I had at least ten minutes to get out of the area, maybe more. The cop on duty hadn’t believed me but he’d follow through and a patrol would amble over and check it out about the time I was pulling up in front of Mrs. Plaut’s too late to get Apples Eisenhower.

I was wrong. I turned the latch with my handkerchiefed hand, opened the door carefully, and found myself looking at two uniformed policemen. The bigger one had his hand up ready to knock.

What was there to say? I pocketed the bloody handkerchief and said, “Yes, officers?”

“Got a problem here, sir?”

“Problem?” I said.

“Neighbor said there were noises, lights, saw someone crawling through a window,” said the smaller cop, who looked a little like Jimmy Cagney.

Both of them had their hands on their holsters. I kept mine in front of me.

“Noises?” I asked.

“Noises,” said Jimmy Cagney.

“And a man crawling in a window,” said the bigger guy.

“Where were you going with that painting, sir?” asked Cagney.

“Going?” I said, brilliantly.

“And what did you put in your pocket?” said the big guy, holding out his hand.

“I …”

“Just take it out slowly,” said Cagney, pulling his pistol and aiming it at my chest.

I pulled out the bloody handkerchief and offered it to the big cop. There wasn’t much light, but it was enough for them to see the blood.

“I think we’re coming in,” said Cagney.

“I think you are,” I agreed, stepping back.

It moved fast from that point. I was in handcuffs and on my way to the station in five minutes. I knew what the charge would be. Neither of the cops had bothered to ask me questions. Why should they? They had called in for the medical examiner and a homicide crew and we were on the way down the street with the painting in the trunk when a second patrol car pulled around the corner. We didn’t stop. I figured the second car was coming in answer to my call. They’d go in and find the body, too. It would probably take the L.A.P.D. a week to figure out what had happened.

No one talked to me that night. I asked to see my brother but no one paid attention. I wasn’t sure whether they believed Phil was my brother or they just didn’t care. I was in the Culver City lockup, and he was sleeping in North Hollywood. They took my ninety-eight dollars. I got a receipt.

The cop who took my prints was about seventy. He said they’d picked up a guy the week before because of his prints.

“Robbed a guy and beat him near bloody death,” the old cop said. “But the victim bit one of the assailant’s fingers off. Took a print from the bit-off finger and tracked him in a week.”

“Life’s little ironies,” I said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” said the old cop.

I had a cell to myself. They do that with people suspected of being homicidal maniacs. It saves the embarrassment of explaining the violent overnight deaths of other prisoners.

All in all it had been one lousy day. I was sure I’d be up looking for dawn through the barred window and listening to other prisoners snore. I lay on the cot, put my head on my rolled-up windbreaker, and was asleep before I could remember what had been written on the Dali painting.

I dreamed of birds flying over a desert. The birds had vacant looks and their feet were stuck to little pedestals. They were searching for something, blocking out the sun, and Dali was there, in front of a giant nude woman sitting with her back to me. The woman was looking at one of Gala’s clocks, the one I had seen in Place’s bedroom. The clock was melting. Dali was wearing his big red suit and slap-shoes. Behind him was Koko the Clown, who flapped his arms and flew up in the sky with the birds. Dali danced over to me, a paintbrush in his hand, and dabbed a smear of white on my nose. I couldn’t move my arms.

He leaned over and whispered to me as Koko swooped down and stuck out his tongue.

“Listen to me. There is no longer a second place, and there is no Thirteenth Street in the present tense. Time is death.”

I wanted to shoo him away but my hands wouldn’t move. I didn’t want any more puzzles or riddles. My head throbbed from the sound of dead birds, and I longed for a simple missing senile grandmother, a play-around husband, or a murder for ten bucks by a dim-witted armed robber. My wishes were simple even in my dreams.

Dali danced off and Koko landed in front of me. The birds filled the sky, blotting out the sun, and Koko opened his mouth to tell me the answer to the puzzle.

“Get up,” he said.

That wasn’t the answer and it wasn’t Koko’s voice. I opened my eyes and looked into the face of a uniformed cop with a freckled bald head. The sun was coming in through the bars, and I could smell something that might be food.

“Up, Peters,” the cop said.

I sat up.

“No clowns,” I said.

“Just you, bub,” the cop said wearily. “They want you upstairs. Got your legs?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go,” said the cop and we went.

Up two flights of stairs and two minutes later with the cop behind me I saw my face in the mirror of a candy machine. The stubble was almost a beard and it was gray.

“That door,” he said. “Left.”

I went through the door and found myself in an interrogation room: one table, four chairs, one lieutenant I knew named Seidman, and my brother, Phil. Lieutenant Steve Seidman, tall, thin, and white-faced, not because he was a mime but because he hated the sun, leaned back against the wall, holding his hat in his hand. He didn’t have much hair left, but that didn’t stop him from patting it down and giving me a shake of the head that said, Toby, Toby, this time you’ve really done it.

My brother, Captain Phil Pevsner, was not shaking his head. He sat in a chair behind the desk, hands palm down on a green ink-stained blotter, eyes looking through me.

Phil was a little taller than me, broader, older, with close-cut steely hair and a hard cop’s gut. His tie always dangled loosely around his neck, as it did now, and his face often turned red with contained rage, especially when I was in the same room … or even on the same planet. Today’s tie was a dark, solid blue; standard Phil.

For some reason, “How are Ruth and the kids?” were the magic words that usually brought Phil out of a chair, a corner, or a daydream and into my face and lungs. He had decided years ago that I asked him about his family just to provoke him. He had been wrong the first three times.

“Happy New Year,” I said cheerfully.

Phil came around the desk like a bear with a mission. I knew I had found three new words to drive him mad. Seidman moved quickly from the wall and got between me and my brother. Seidman was a pro with more than seven years experience of saving me from Phil Pevsner brutality.

“Phil,” Seidman said, making it sound like my brother should remember something about his own name.

“Move, Steve,” Phil said, looking past his partner and into my smiling face.

“Phil,” Seidman repeated, holding his hands up but not touching my brother. Even he was not ready for that.

“He’s laughing at me,” Phil said. “Does he know what kind of shit he’s in this time?”

“He’s got a lot on his mind,” said Seidman.

“He’s right,” I said sincerely.

“Shit,” said my brother, holding up his hands to show his palms to Seidman and to me. He backed up, went around the desk, and sat heavily. The chair made a rusty squeal as he turned away and found a fascinating squashed beetle to look at on the wall. I had the rush of an idea that Phil and Dali might have a lot in common. I hoped they would never have the chance for a discussion of contemporary art. It would either end with Dali dead or Phil in a straight-jacket.

“Sit down, Toby,” Seidman said, moving back to the wall and patting down his wisps of hair.

I sat down in the chair across from Phil.

The war had been Phil’s big break. He had been promoted right up the ladder from Homicide Sergeant to Detective Captain of the whole Wilshire District. Seidman had moved up with him. The rise hadn’t been because of Phil’s skills, but in spite of them. Phil was a basher. Phil hated criminals, sincerely hated them. Phil wanted to end all crime but knew it would never happen. The resulting frustration meant that every time he came face-to-face with a felon he became enraged. Other cops loved Phil. He was the one you frightened suspects with. No one in homicide had to play bad cop. They just called Phil or, if the criminal had been around a while, they just evoked his name. But the armed forces had taken the younger, ambitious police talent and Phil had been promoted to a job he hated, sitting behind a desk dealing with complaints from vendors about cops taking avocados, filling out forms, talking to visiting Chambers of Commerce from Quincy, Illinois. He had lasted about a year as boss of the Wilshire and then had been booted back to homicide after too many complaints. Seidman had asked to go back to homicide with him. Phil had been happy with the demotion. His wife, Ruth, with three kids in the house, had resumed worrying about her husband’s high blood pressure.

“I appreciate your coming,” I said.

Seidman shook his head; Phil said nothing and kept staring at the bug.

“Did you kill him?” asked Seidman.

“No, Steve. Am I a killer?”

“Toby, don’t answer my questions with questions. Phil and I leave and two guys who don’t know you are going to come through that door and put you on the top of page two of the Times.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said.

“Ask him about the handkerchief,” said Phil, very softly.

“You had a bloody handkerchief,” said Seidman, who was back to playing with his hat.

What could I say? It was bloody because I used it to fish Adam Place’s wallet out of his pocket and put it back and then wipe my fingerprints off the doorknobs?

“I didn’t do it, Phil,” I said to my brother’s back.

“Ask him about breaking in,” said Phil.

“Did you-” Seidman began, but I jumped in.

“Can we eliminate the middleman here? Maybe we can save a little time and you can find the killer.”

“If I talk to him, I kill him,” said Phil. “He’s made my life a toilet.” Phil leaned forward and punched the wall about two inches above the bug, leaving a depression in the general shape and size of a fist.

“I can deal with a middleman,” I said. “I went into Place’s house because I was on a job. I had reason to believe a valuable piece of property had been taken by Place and would be destroyed by midnight. I knocked at the door. He didn’t answer. I went in through the window, found him, and called the police immediately.”

“You pick up a Hunky accent during the night?” said Phil, forgetting immediately that we had agreed on a middleman.

“I didn’t want to get involved.”

“What about the painting?” asked Seidman.

“My client’s. It was stolen.”

“It was a mess,” said Seidman.

“I was going to give it back anyway,” I said. “You got me for picking up stolen property and trying to return it. By the way, the clock in Place’s bedroom-that was my client’s, too.”

“We got you for breaking and entering, burglary, homicide, and attempting to leave the scene of a felony,” said Seidman, ignoring my addition of the clock to the problem.

“I wasn’t leaving. I was going outside to wait for the police.”

“Were you going to talk to them in Bohemian?” asked Phil.

I didn’t like it when I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t know if he was boiling up or cooling down.

“I made a mistake,” I said.

“Maybe your client got there first, and when he saw what Place had done to the painting he went nuts and killed him,” Seidman suggested.

“No, not this client,” I said.

“Who is he?” Phil said, so softly I almost missed it.

Now I was scared. Just before Phil completely lost control he made one last effort, always a failure, to be so calm and quiet that the unwary might think he had dozed off. But I had almost half a century of experience.

“Come on,” I said. “You know I can’t tell you.”

Phil spun around and looked at me. He was grinning. I had never seen that before.

“He’s a suspect,” Phil said. “And we’re going to get him or you’re going to go up on charges of interfering with a homicide investigation.”

“What about murder?”

“Medical examiner says Place was shot before eight,” said Seidman. “Both your landlord at the Farraday, Butler, and Minck say you were in the Farraday till eleven.”

“The bullet, Steve,” I said. “Is it from a thirty-eight? My gun’s a thirty-eight and I haven’t fired it. You can take it to ballistics.”

Seidman shifted and looked uneasy.

“Can’t match the bullet. No known make or caliber.”

“Look for the second Place in Los Angeles to find the first painting. You have till midnight on New Year’s Day,” said Phil, looking directly at me with that new grin. “We found the note in your wallet. You were too late, Tobias.”

“We’re playing with a wacko,” said Seidman. “Did this guy kill Place just because he had the second name in the phone book?”

“Which of you figured it out?” I asked, my eyes fixed on my brother’s face for the slightest twitch that would tell me he was ready to attack, and that neither Seidman nor the Fifth Army would stop him.

“It didn’t take much,” Phil said. “We had a clue you didn’t mention. Place’s dead body.”

“Look-” I started.

“No, you listen,” Phil said. “You’ll find the next on Thirteenth Street at midnight tomorrow.”

“In the town of the spectator,” I added.

“What?” asked Phil, sensing a needle.

“The writing on the painting. It ended with ‘the Town of the Spectator,’” Seidman explained.

“Who gives a shit?” said Phil. “There is no Thirteenth Street in Los Angeles. There are only seven listings for Street in the phone book and there’s no Thirteenth Street. Pico is Thirteenth Street. There’s a Thirteenth Avenue.”

“He says Street, he means Street,” I said.

“How many paintings are there, Toby?” asked Seidman. “Are they all by Dali? Who’s the guy who owns the paintings, the guy you’re working for?”

I sat up a little and pulled at my underwear. I was fragrant from the night in the lockup, fragrant and hungry.

“Come on, Steve,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound like a whine. “If I give you the name of my client, I’m out of business. My reputation will be shot. It’s what I’ve got to sell.”

“You can sell apples on the street in front of Union Station,” said Phil. “I’ll buy a dozen.”

“Phil, you’re my brother, and I really love you, but you’ve got no sense of humor.”

This time the fist came down on the desk. Everything on the blotter and beyond, the in-box, a few pencils, the photograph of somebody’s wife, danced around. Phil went cold blank, a very bad sign. Seidman saw it and stepped away from the wall again, motioning for me to get up. I figured he planned to block his partner, not enough to do much good but enough to give me a start out the door. I wasn’t sure where I’d go when and if I did make it beyond the Coke machine.

“Phil,” Seidman warned.

I started to get up.

“Let him go,” said Phil, folding his hands in front of him on the desk, his knuckles going white.

“What?” asked Seidman.

“Let him go,” Phil repeated. “Go downstairs with him and tell Liebowitz to let him go. Tell him I said so.”

“Mike Liebowitz isn’t going to-” Seidman began.

“Mike Liebowitz owes me his job,” said brother Phil. “If he gives you a hard time, tell him to remember the Pacific Electric case in ’36.”

“Steve,” I said. “It’s a trick to get you out of the room.”

“No trick,” said Phil with a laugh. “I’m not in the mood for tricks.”

He turned the squeaky swivel chair so he was facing the wall, and Seidman and I exchanged what’s-going-on looks. Seidman shrugged first. Then he went out the door. Silence. The room needed a window.

“Phil,” I said.

“Ruth’s got a growth in her left breast,” he said. “The doctor says it doesn’t look good.”

“Shit, Phil, I’m-”

“Just shut up, Toby,” he cut in, holding his hammy right hand up.

I shut up. More silence.

“She needs surgery,” he said. “Day after tomorrow. The boys don’t know. Surgeons are fucking butchers. You know that?”

“Some of them-”

“They’re butchers,” he repeated.

“I play handball with a surgeon,” I said. “Good one named Hodgdon. He’s kind of old, specializes in bones, but he’d know a-”

Phil shook his head.

“Found out Wednesday,” he said. “Hell of a New Year’s present. We haven’t told anybody, not even Ruth’s mother.”

“I’m sorry, Phil,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Give her a call. Don’t let her know you know.”

“I will,” I said. “Can I have Doc Hodgdon give you call?”

Phil shrugged. “Ruth’s got great teeth,” he said. “The kids all have her teeth.”

“Wouldn’t be so bad if they had our teeth,” I said.

“You know how old mom was when she died?” he asked.

“Forty-three,” I said. I wasn’t likely to forget. She died giving birth to me, which, I was sure, was one of the reasons Phil had decided before he even saw me that he would make my life miserable.

“Ruth is forty-three,” he said.

“Come on, Phil. It’s …”

The opening door stopped me.

Seidman. He looked at me and then at Phil’s back and then back at me. I shrugged.

“You can walk,” he said to me, and then to Phil, “Liebowitz says he’s doing the papers and wants you to sign off. He says you answer to the D.A.”

Phil laughed. It didn’t seem very important to him. I got up and moved to the door.

“I’ll call Ruth,” I said.

“Thirteenth Street, Town of the Spectator,” Phil answered. “You got till midnight.”

There should have been more, but there wasn’t. Phil didn’t want more and I didn’t know how to give it.

I moved past Seidman, went down the hall past the Coke machine and down the stairs to the desk to pick up my things. I signed for everything and got it all back except for the note to Dali. I didn’t complain.

I took a cab back to Lindberg Park, paid with Dali’s advance and made a note of the payment and tip as an expense item in my notebook. Across the street a cop was standing at the door to Place’s place. He looked at me suspiciously. My khaki Crosley had been sitting there all night and was hard to miss. I got in the passenger side of the Crosley, which I had not locked the night before, and slid into the driver’s seat. I was halfway down the block before the cop got into the street. In the rear-view mirror, I could see him writing my license number. I hope he got a merit badge.

It was Saturday. Kids were out playing. Lawns were being watered and I had till midnight to find a painting on Thirteenth Street.

Manny’s was open for breakfast. Since it was a weekday and a little after eight in the morning, I had no trouble finding a parking space right on Hoover. Two days in a row. How lucky could I get?

Manny’s Saturday breakfast crowd was there, including Juanita the fortune teller, who had an office in the Farraday. I liked Juanita, a shapeless sack of a woman who dressed as if she were trying out for a road company production of Carmen. Out of Juanita’s overly painted lips sometimes came a zinger that made me think she might be the real thing.

She spotted me over her cup of coffee and said, “Give me one at Santa Anita, Peters.”

“You’re the fortune teller,” I said, sitting next to her on a red leatherette stool.

“I can’t use it for myself,” she said. “I told you that. If I could use it for myself, you think I’d be half a month back on my rent?”

“No,” I said.

She looked at me.

“You look like a wreck.”

Manny had started a breakfast taco when he saw me walk through the door. Manny was a culinary master of impeccable taste. He always took the cigarette out of his mouth when he served a customer, and he changed his apron at least twice a month. He was about forty, dark, with a bad leg he claimed to have earned riding with Pancho Villa as a kid.

“She’s right,” said Manny, putting the breakfast taco, black coffee, and a Pepsi in front of me.

“Spent a night in the Culver City lockup,” I explained, picking up the taco and trying not to lose too much hot sauce, avocado, and egg. “Guy got murdered.”

Manny handed me the morning paper and strolled back to the grill, a man of little curiosity. Nothing could match his adventures, real or invented, with Villa.

“A dead man will do it,” Juanita said.

“What?”

“Someone’s going to be killed by a guy name Guy,” she said, looking into her coffee. I leaned over to see what was in the cup. Nothing but darkness and the same day-old java I was drinking.

“You talking to me?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Someone’s going to be killed by a guy named Guy or Greg in Mark’s town. I just saw it in the coffee.”

“Who killed the guy last night?” I asked, taking another bite of breakfast taco and nodding to Manny to get another. He was way ahead of me.

“How should I know?” Juanita said. “This stuff just comes.”

I told her about the dead guy and the messages.

“Beats crap out of me,” she said, getting off her stool while I took the last bite of taco and reached for the Pepsi. “I’ve got to get to work. Got three mothers coming. Kids, the soldiers, sailors, they don’t come. They don’t want to know what’s going to happen to them. It’s the mothers who want to know.”

“What do you tell them?” I asked.

“Lies, usually,” Juanita said. “Remember, Greg or Guy’s going to do it in Mark’s town. Oh yeah, this Greg or whatever has a beard.”

She left and I read the paper and finished my coffee. The news was good. U.S. bombers were battering the Japs on Wake Island, and the Russians were still pushing back the Nazis. Basil “The Owl” Banghart and Roger “The Terrible” Touhy were going to Alcatraz after escaping from Stateville in Illinois, where they were doing a long haul on kidnapping. There was a picture of Banghart in the paper. He did look a little like an owl.

I finished my breakfast, dropped a buck on the counter, and waved at Manny, who leaned back with his arms crossed and nodded, smoke curling up into his face as he dreamed of that last cavalry charge against Black Jack Pershing.

I could tell Jeremy had been up and at work as soon as I opened the outer door of the Farraday. The smell of Lysol was unmistakable. It’s a smell I like. I like the smell of gasoline, too.

I went into the suite of Minck and Peters. Shelly wasn’t there. His party hat sat on the dental chair as if he had melted and left only it and the odor of his last cigar. I went into my office, opened the window, sat down, and called my sister-in-law Ruth.

“How you doing, Ruth?” I asked cheerfully.

“Fine, Toby,” she said.

“Happy New Year,” I said.

“You know, don’t you, Toby.”

“Know? Know what?”

“You’re brothers,” she said lightly. “I could tell the way you said ‘Happy New Year.’ He told you? You saw him?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I know people always say this but if there’s anything I can do …”

“You can do a lot, Toby,” she said. “You can come over here tomorrow for dinner. You can take the kids out to the park so I can spend some time with Phil. He’s taking it hard.”

“I know,” I said. “Are you?”

“Taking it harder.”

“It’ll be all right,” I assured her. “I told Phil I know surgeon who’ll know the right guy.”

“Thanks, Toby,” she said.

“They can take care of those things now,” I said. “Army’s developed all kinds of … hell, I don’t know what I’m talking about, Ruth.”

“Odds I’ve heard are about three-to-one in my favor,” she said. “Before the war they were three-to-one against. I guess war is good for something. Gives doctors a lot of practice and a chance to experiment on dying men.”

“Ruth-”

“I’ve been lucky, Toby. My husband was too old to be drafted and my sons are too young.”

“I’ll come by tomorrow at noon,” I said. “That okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “Toby, do you realize this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had?”

“Yeah, we finally had something to talk about.”

She laughed on the other end and said, “Lucy wants to talk to you.”

Lucy was Phil and Ruth’s youngest, somewhere between two and three. When she was one she used to clobber me with her favorite toy, a Yale padlock.

“Uncle Toby?” came a small voice.

“Yes,” I said.

“Moon is ca-ca,” she said seriously.

“Sometimes I think you’re right, kid,” I said, and either Lucy or Ruth hung up.

Next call was to Doc Hodgdon, who was retired but still saw a few patients in his home. He wanted to know when we could get together for handball. I told him it would have to wait till I finished the case I was on. I told him about Ruth and he said he knew a few people. I gave him Phil and Ruth’s number and promised to call him next week.

Then I made the call I dreaded. Barry T. Zeman answered the phone.

“It’s me, Toby Peters,” I said.

“Did you find them?” he said.

“I found one of the paintings and one of the clocks. Is Dali there?”

“They never leave the house,” he said. “He doesn’t like the outdoors. She goes running out when he needs something or she asks me to send my driver, J.T. The houseboy quit the second day they were here. The cook asked for a week off. Actually, he said he would be gone until the Dalis left. The housekeeper, who has worked for my family for thirty-eight years, has suddenly discovered an ailing relative in Lac Le Biche in Alberta, Canada.”

“Life is hard,” I admitted. “Can I talk to Dali? He’s the client. He can fill you in.”

He put the phone down and I waited. Gala came on.

“Yes?” she said eagerly.

“The Place in the note was a man named Adam Place. He’s dead, murdered. The police have one of the paintings and one of the clocks. The killer, or maybe Place, ruined the painting and left a message.”

I told her about Thirteenth Street and Dali came on the phone.

“Which painting?” he asked.

I described the painting.

“You must find the other ones.”

I told him about Thirteenth Street.

“Ah,” he said. “A mystical number. I once had a dream of a crystal with exactly thirteen sides floating in a hole in the head of a giant beast who sat on an enormous egg. I painted that image in a fit of rage in a single day and had to rest for a week.”

“That’s very helpful,” I said.

“It is,” he said with great seriousness, “alchemical. Find the other paintings. Find Gala’s clocks. Find them. My dreams are filled with fathers and the naked breasts of faceless women.”

It could be worse, I thought, but I said, “A man’s been murdered. Shot between the eyes. It might be a good idea to let the police know what’s going on.”

“No,” said Dali.

That’s not really accurate. He didn’t say “no,” he screamed. A nearly hysterical “nooooooooooooooo.”

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I have anything,” I said when the wail had played itself out.

“I am plagued,” he wailed anew. “Who is this Wollowa Beckstine on the radio who they keep telling the time?”

“What?”

“It’s five o’clock Wollowa Beckstine,” he said solemnly.

“Bulova Watch Time,” I explained.

“Bulova Watch Time,” Dali repeated. And then, “Dali can’t work.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Dali’s work is an obligation, a burden.” It was almost a sob. “Do you know how difficult it is to shock the world every twenty-four hours?”

“It’s the curse of painters and politicians,” I said.

“You are making a joke? You are joking at Dali?”

Gala took over the phone, her voice shaking. “Dali does not like to be the ass of jokes.”

“The butt of jokes,” I corrected.

“No, he says ‘ass’ of jokes. In the world of Salvador Dali, all jokes are made by Salvador Dali.”

She hung up.

There is nothing like an appreciative client.

I went in search of Jeremy Butler. He’d solved the riddle of the first message for me. Maybe he could solve the second one in time for me to save a painting and maybe a life. Besides, I needed to hear a reasonably sane voice.