Melting Clock

6

At a table, one of four in Hijo’s, Doc gave me a handful of aspirin for my head. I downed them with a bottle of some unknown and unnamed yellow liquid with a faint taste of beer. We sat drinking while Sheriff Nelson brooded over life, his wife, and the brothers Rangley. The radio behind the bar played a Treasury War Bond show. Jane Froman and Lanny Ross sang a duet-“This Love of Mine”-followed by a sketch with Betty Grable and Preston Foster as a married couple trying to get ready for a dinner while their maid, played by Joan Davis, gave them a hard time.

I got on the road as soon as I could and headed north. The Crosley wasn’t in a hurry and my head had a lump the size and shape of a yucca leaf. I pulled in at South Carlsbad Beach just before Oceanside, had a hot dog at a shack called Hernie’s, looked at the ocean and a white wooden naval lookout tower on stilts. I sat on a piece of driftwood and helped the tower look for the Japanese armada for about an hour. When I got up, my head throbbed and my back twinged, but it could have been worse.

I passed San Juan Capistrano as the sun was going down. The written history of California began at the Mission San Juan Capistrano. History was the one subject I had enjoyed in high school. In my one year and a little more at the University of Southern California, the only class I could pay attention to was history. I remembered one afternoon when Father Zephpyrin Engelhardt, the historian of the California Missions, had come to class complete with dark robes tied with a white rope and a little black skullcap on his head. He had a long white beard and carried an ancient book. I’d looked up Father Z in 1936 on my way through San Juan Capistrano, but he had died two years earlier.

It was Father Z who told us how California got its name. Father Z said, I’ve still got the notes somewhere, that a novel called Las Sergas de Esplanadian-The Adventures of the Esplanadian-by Garcia de Montalvo had been published in Spain in 1510. In the novel, which Father Z had read, there’s a fantastic island of wealthy Amazons. For reasons which no one knows, Montalvo called the island California, a word he never defined. A word, in short, which has no meaning.

No one knows for sure how the western coast of North America picked up the name. It might have come with Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century. I like to think it came with Hernando Cortez, who conquered Mexico and spent some time slaughtering Aztecs in the Baja. It might have come with Juan Cabrillo, who in 1542 landed near what became San Diego.

It wasn’t till more than two hundred years later, in August 1769, that some Spanish missionaries and soldiers made an expedition north and found a valley. They made camp by a river. Friendly Gabrielino Indians brought them gifts of shell beads and the next day the Spaniards moved on. They were the first non-Indians to spend a night in what is now downtown Los Angeles.

I stopped following the path of the missionaries into Los Angeles and headed for my brother’s house in North Hollywood. Nothing was open but I stopped at a park I knew and picked some flowers.

When I got to the house, I knocked and Ruth answered.

“It’s still Sunday,” I said.

She smiled and I handed her the flowers.

“Thanks, Toby,” she said, kissing my cheek as we stepped in.

The radio was on. A voice I recognized said something about U.S. bombers battering the Japanese on Wake Island.

Ruth was wearing a short-sleeved white-and-purple dress with fluffy shoulders. Her yellow hair was pulled back and tied with a purple ribbon. Strands were creeping out all over the place. She didn’t look sick, but it wasn’t easy to tell with Ruth, who was swizzle-stick thin and pale at the best of times.

“Kids up?”

“I told them this morning you’d be coming,” she said, leading me through the small living room. An ancient photograph of my mother and father sat on top of the radio, which was now telling us to smoke Old Gold because it was lowest in irritating tars and resins and lowest in nicotine.

“From coast to coast,” the voice said happily, “the swing’s to new Old Gold.”

We moved into the small kitchen, where Phil was sitting at the table over a bowl of cereal. A box of Wheaties sat next to his bowl. Cereal was the one passion we shared. Phil was still wearing his rumpled suit. His tie was loosened. He didn’t say anything.

“Look what Toby brought me.” Ruth said.

Phil paused in his crunching, looked at the flowers, and said, “Pretty.”

“You’d better see the kids before they’re asleep,” Ruth said. “Phil will get you a bowl.”

As we left the kitchen, Phil made a grunting noise and pushed his chair back. We went to Lucy’s room first. Lucy was somewhere between waking and sleep. She blinked at me and clutched her stuffed rabbit. We moved to the boys’ room. Both Nat and Dave were in bed but awake.

“Uncle Toby,” said Dave, sitting up. “You were supposed to be here to take us to see Abbott and Costello.”

“Couldn’t help it,” I said with shrug. “I was in jail.”

“He’s kidding,” said Nat.

“No,” I said. “I found a dead guy and the sheriff arrested me. Then a state trooper named Rangley hit me in the back of the head. Here, have a look.”

Nat looked. Dave reached over to touch my lump.

“I wish I could have seen,” Dave said. “Uncle Toby, all the good stuff happens to you.”

“I’ve got to go talk to your dad,” I said. “Let’s shoot for Abbott and Costello next Saturday.”

“If you’re not in jail,” Nat said cynically.

“Or dead,” added Dave cheerfully.

“Good-night, men.” I followed Ruth back into the hall and she closed their door.

“Phil just got home,” Ruth said. “Can you keep it friendly tonight, for me?”

“Friendly,” I said. “For you.”

“Go sit down. I’ll get something for your head.”

Phil was probably on his fourth or fifth bowl of Wheaties when I joined him. He was looking down at the L.A. Times. He had prepared a bowl for me. I poured milk and took a spoonful.

“A guy got killed in Mirador,” I said, looking at Phil.

He didn’t look up, but said, “Claude Street, antique dealer. Another painting. Odd bullet like the one in Adam Place. State troopers want us to keep an eye on you. They don’t think it’s a coincidence that you found two bodies in two days under very similar circumstances.”

Ruth came back in with a washcloth. She looked at both of us to be sure that the only violence in the room was being done to flakes of wheat.

I kept eating while Ruth worked on my head. Around a mouthful of cereal I said, “Killer may be a guy named Gregory Novak.”

Phil pushed his bowl away, put down his paper, shook his head and looked at me.

“You got that from some poor half-wit named Sawyer. There isn’t any Gregory Novak in Mirador. Seidman checked phone books for most of California. We’ve even checked the Armed Forces lists. We found two Gregory Novaks. One is blind, eighty-two, and crazy. But he has one arrest. A year ago for smoking cow shit.”

“That’s stupid, but is it a crime?” I asked.

Phil didn’t bother to answer.

“He lives in Bakersfield. The other one is a petty officer on a destroyer somewhere in the Pacific.”

“How’s that feel?” Ruth queried.

My head felt wet and the bowl of water was pale red from my dried blood. It was my turn to push a bowl away. I got up and gave Ruth a quick kiss on the cheek.

“When-?” I began.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “The next day. As soon as they can get me in. I’ll let you know. I’ll be all right.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here. Hey, how about I pick up the kids, all three of them, after school on Wednesday?”

“You’re not taking Lucy anywhere,” Phil growled.

“I’ll watch her.”

My eyes met Phil’s and I could see the accusation. He sat there, creeping fast toward sixty, with three kids, a sick wife, and a mortgage. He looked at me with a history of half a century of my screwing up.

“Trust me,” I said.

“I do,” said Ruth, touching my arm. “You come and get them after school Wednesday.”

Phil opened his mouth to say something but changed his mind. I finished my Wheaties and got up.

“I’ll let myself out,” I said. “Thanks.”

Ruth sat where I had been. I touched her shoulder and headed for the living room. Two actors on the radio were talking tough about a woman named Hershvogel. Since the actors were whispering and my brother wasn’t, I heard Phil, in the kitchen, say, “… because he’s about as responsible as a brain-damaged oyster.”

I looked at my parents’ photograph on the radio. I had the feeling they agreed with Phil.

The price of gas, tire rationing, and the black-out kept the streets reasonably clear at night, but it still took me almost an hour to get to Beverly Hills and Barry Zeman’s house on Lomitas. It was almost ten and I needed a shave and some clean underwear. I tidied my wind-breaker, jauntily zipped it half way up and rang the bell.

The double Amazon woman I’d seen the last time I’d been there answered the door. She was about forty, a six-foot-tall left tackle with short yellow-white hair and very serious brown eyes. She wore a white uniform and a little white hat.

“Someone sick?” I asked.

“I’m not a nurse,” she answered. “You have business here?”

“I’d like to see Dali or his wife,” I said, knowing that I had no chance of bulling past her.

“They are not available,” she said, her arms folded over her more than ample breasts.

“Tell them Toby Peters is here with another murder to report,” I said with as pleasant a smile as I could put on my grizzly face.

“I don’t care if you’re President Franklin D. Gimp,” she said. “The Dalis are not available.”

“How about Zeman?”

“Not home, leave.”

“You have a way with words, Miss …?”

“Get the hell out of here,” she said, starting to close the door.

“Miss Get-the-hell-out-of-here,” I answered, putting my foot in the door. “I’ve had one shit of a day.”

She kicked at my shoe, which was what I wanted. Instead of resisting I pulled my foot back, braced myself, and pushed against the door, which shot back and hit Miss Get-the-hell-out-of-here flat in the chest. She staggered and I stepped in, kicking the door shut behind me.

I didn’t like the look on her face as she pulled herself together. My.38 was in my hand now.

“Let’s be friends,” I suggested.

She took a step toward me.

“I’m holding a gun,” I said, pointing to the gun.

This made no impression on her. She was about a foot from my face and towering over me. I could either kill her or have the crap kicked out of me by a woman of no mean proportions.

“Odelle,” came a voice from my right as the woman grabbed my wrist. It hurt like hell.

“I’m just going to kill him a little,” Odelle said, breathing a combination of garlic and Sen-Sen in my face.

“Odelle,” Dali repeated. “Death offends and frightens me. It is not inspiring. No one, with the possible exception of one’s father, should ever die. Do you agree, Mr. Toby?”

“Completely,” I said, trying to pry Odelle’s hand from my wrist. My hand was numb and the gun was about to fall out of fingers quickly losing their feeling.

Odelle released my hand. I fumbled the.38 back into my holster and turned to Dali, who was posed on the staircase in a crimson velvet cape with a leopard-skin collar.

“Odelle,” he said, pointing at the woman, “is a model.”

“Great,” I said.

“There,” said Dali, pointing toward the living room. I looked where he was pointing and saw a canvas on an easel in the middle of the room. Painted on the canvas was a melting clock. Behind the clock was a naked woman whose back was turned. The woman’s shoulder was made of stone and little pieces were cracking off and tumbling toward the ground like tears of flesh. The woman, even from behind, looked nothing like Odelle.

“She pose for the clock?” I asked.

“Odelle is all women,” he said, stepping into the living room to admire his work. I followed him, Odelle uncomfortably close behind. I’d seen a clock like the one in the painting, in Place’s place and Street’s antique shop, but this clock was as runny as a Wilbur Bud candy on an August afternoon.

“Beautiful,” I said with my best touch of sarcasm.

“I could not paint the clock until there were no clocks,” he said, turning toward me and opening his eyes wide. “If you bring the clocks back, I will be unable to paint them. I do not paint from life. Life has no meaning.”

“Then why do you have little Odelle pose for you?”

“Odelle, I told you, is not a single woman. She is an abstraction. All women. The clocks are singular.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said.

The wavy hands of the clock in the painting said it was three-thirty. Since the clock was melting, the bottom of the clock was visible and I could see something written in gold letters in a language that looked like …

“Russian,” said Odelle in my ear.

Her voice was filled with awe.

“You were looking at the words on the clock,” she went on. “They’re Russian.”

“My paintings?” Dali asked.

“Another man’s been murdered,” I said. “Man named Claude Street. You know the name? Until he decided to move to Mirador to die, he lived in Carmel. Antique dealer.”

Dali touched his nose. “No. I do not know …”

“How about Gregory Novak?” I tried.

“Gregory Novak? No,” he said, moving to a fashionable Louis the Somethingth chair in front of the painting.

“How about Mrs. Dali?”

“I know her,” Dali said, looking at me with a smile and a raise of his eyebrows.

“Sal,” I said, looking down at Dali, “I am not in the mood for jokes. People are dead and I’m tired. I need the money but I don’t think I like you. I’m quitting. I’ll send you a bill and a report tomorrow.”

Odelle was suddenly between me and the painter.

“You do not talk to Mr. Dali like that,” she said very, very softly.

“Yes I do, Odelle. And if you touch me again, this time I will shoot you.”

I grinned at her and Dali said, “Odelle, Odelle, Odelle. You are a porcelain vase. You are not a … a … maleante, a …”

“… thug,” Gala supplied from the steps.

She stepped into the room, a tiny wraith in a leopard-skin cape with a crimson velvet collar, and moved to her husband. She took his hand and patted it reassuringly.

“He talks of murder,” Dali said, dragging the word murder out into three syllables.

“Dali doesn’t like to hear of death,” Gala said, turning to me. Odelle moved out of the way. “Death is not surreal.”

“I’m going home,” I said.

“You must find Dali’s painting, my clocks,” Gala said, stepping in front of me as I moved toward the door.

“The Highway Patrol has one of your clocks. Culver City police have another, and I don’t know where the hell the third one is.”

Gala looked puzzled.

“Ah,” said Dali behind me. “Sardines. Yes.”

“Where did you eat sardines?” I asked, turning back him.

“I hate sardines,” he said with a shudder, hugging himself. “I painted a can of sardines once because they came to me unbidden in a dream. I do not eat sardines.”

“In Carmel,” Gala said. “At the party when we moved in. You ate one on a cracker. Odelle, you remember, you were-”

“No!” shouted Dali, shaking his head. His hair went wild and his long pointed mustaches quivered. “That never happened.”

“It never happened,” Gala agreed. “Mr. Toby Peters, find Dali’s painting.”

I looked at Odelle, whose eyes were moist with concern. Those eyes, which a minute earlier were dripping blood, were moist and begging me for mercy.

“You got a Pepsi here?” I asked. “Or a beer?”

“Odelle,” said Gala, and Odelle went clumping off down the hall.

“Why would anyone kill two guys, leave goofy clues, and ruin two of your paintings?”

“He is an artist,” Dali tried, pointing a finger toward the ceiling. “You must find the last painting. If it is not returned …”

“And the clocks,” Gala added.

“Cops in Culver City have one of the clocks. Cops in Mirador have another. The only way you’re going to get them back is to admit they’re yours, and then the cops start asking you questions. You want to go down to the Wilshire Station and answer questions?”

“But it was only a … a … chiste,” said Dali.

“A joke?” I said. “What are you …?”

“Tell him,” said Dali, smoothing down his hair.

Gala looked at her husband, then at the painting, and then at me as Odelle trotted back in the room, spilling beer from a cup shaped like an inverted skull. She held it out to me. I took it and drank deep while Gala Dali made up her mind.

“Dali,” she said to her husband, “this time you have gone too far.”

“It’s the only place I ever wanted to go,” Dali replied.

“A man,” Gala said, turning to me. “We paid him to take the two paintings. We were going to call the newspapers and tell them about it and give interviews, but he took three paintings and the clocks and now people are being murdered. That does not please Dali.”

I finished the beer and handed the empty glass to Odelle, who took it gratefully.

“I can understand that,” I said. “You think you can tell me something about this guy? Novak, right?”

“Novak?” Gala looked at me curiously. “No, his name was Taylor.”

“How did you find this Taylor?”

“He …” Gala began, but before she could finish a bullet shattered the window and blew a hole in the middle of the back of the naked woman in Dali’s painting. I jumped for Dali and pushed him out of the chair and to the floor.

“Get on the floor,” I called back to Gala and Odelle, who stood there in a trance. Odelle held the empty skull cup in front of her.

The second shot went into and through the chair in which Dali had been sitting a few seconds earlier.

“Turn off the goddamn lights, then,” I shouted.

Odelle moved to the light switch; Gala let out a scream and dropped down toward Dali and me on the floor. The third shot missed her, but not by much. The lights in the living room went out as Odelle galloped into the hall and hit the switch.

Darkness. No more bullets. Dali was mumbling something in Spanish. Gala answered him in French. They were both holding onto me.

I got free and crawled to the shattered window. In the darkness I could hear someone running away from the house.

“Stay down,” I warned, getting to my feet and going for the door. My leg was sending desperate signals that running was not one of my options. Whoever fired at Dali was on foot. Maybe I could get in my car and find him before he got to his car, assuming he was going for a car and wasn’t one of the neighbors who’d had enough of the Dalis.

A car pulled into the driveway. I opened the front door. Behind me, somewhere in the dark, I could hear Odelle hyperventilating like the Twentieth Century Limited. Barry Zeman, complete with tux and black tie, was getting out of a Stutz Bearcat.

“Peters?” he asked.

“Peters it is,” I said, moving for my car.

“What happened?” he asked, looking at the broken window and the darkened house.

“No time,” I said. “Dali will tell you.”

I crawled into the passenger side of my car and shuffled over to the driver’s seat.

“Where was Jim running?” he asked through my open window.

“Jim?” I echoed, turning on the ignition.

“Jim Taylor, J.T., my chauffeur,” he said, looking toward the street. “I just saw him running from the house.”

“Was he carrying anything?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Which way?” I asked, inching the car past him.

Zeman pointed to the left.

“What-?”

“Later,” I said, clanking into the night.

Downhill, wide open on a flat road with nothing coming, the Crosley could hit forty miles an hour. But I wasn’t in that kind of a hurry. I turned left on the street. I didn’t know what Taylor looked like; I’d only seen him from the back in the garage the day before, when I first met the Dalis. But there weren’t many people walking the streets of Beverly Hills at this hour, and the guy I wanted was carrying a rifle or something big enough to hold a rifle.

I coaxed the Crosley into doing its best. I didn’t want to panic Taylor. I wanted to spot him, slow down, follow him till I could nail him just before he got in his car.

I almost missed him. There aren’t any cars parked on Beverly Hills streets-you park in the driveway or the garage. Only intruders park on the street, and the cruising cops are on them before they can get an autograph or break into Fred Astaire’s pantry.

A few parties were going on, with cars parked in their respective driveways. I crept past the second party I came to in time to observe a Ford parked behind a white Rolls back into the street. The driveway lights caught the top of the driver and I could see he wasn’t dressed for a Sunday night party in Beverly Hills. I stopped in the middle of the street and turned off my lights.

The guy in the Ford screeched off toward Sunset. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like at least even money that Taylor was in the Ford. I started my car again and moved forward with the lights out. The Ford turned on Elm and I went after him, hitting the lights after I made the turn. If he kept running, I couldn’t catch him, but if he kept driving this fast, chances were good the Beverly Hills cops would be around a bush and on his tail. He was two blocks ahead of me, crossing Carmelita, when he decided to slow down. When he made the left onto Santa Monica I was about a block behind him, feeling sure that, barring the long-feared attack of the Japanese Kamikaze fleet, I should be able to stay with him till I came up with a plan.

First, an admission. Being in the traffic on Santa Monica, following a killer with a gun, felt good, solid. No riddles, puzzles, goofy paintings, just a good, clean killer with a rifle. I was comfortable.

This was my town. These were the moments I lived for. I didn’t even have to listen to the radio. I wished Gunther were there to share it, or Dash, or even Shelly. No, not Shelly.

Now all I needed was a plan.