The Fala Factor

10

When I turned off the water after taking the second pill Doc Hodgdon had given me, I heard the metal sound. It was, I was sure, a key in a door. After some fumbling, the door, probably the front door of the clinic, opened. I was tempted to walk to the window to look at my watch to see what time it was, but my watch wouldn’t really be of much help. There was a clock on Olson’s desk. I turned it to the window to catch the faint night light of a clouded moon.

Footsteps were coming down the hall, heavy and slow. I gave the clock a pull to bring it closer to the window and it popped out of the wall socket. The cord scurried across the floor like an electric snake. It was ten o’clock. The dognapper had decided to come an hour early, which was probably why he or she was not particularly concerned about making noise. I, on the other hand, was definitely concerned. I stood holding the stopped clock, and the footsteps stopped too.

The animals had begun rumbling when the dognapper opened the door, and that was probably enough to cover the sound of the dangling cord. Maybe he or she had stopped for something else. Then the footsteps began again and went past the door of the room I was standing in.

The early arrival created a problem. I could wait till the right time and walk in. The surprise might then be on me. The logical thing for him to do, if I had the money, would like to blow my head off, blow the dog’s head off, take the money and walk. Logic, as I have learned through painful experience, does not always govern our actions. I’ve known people the size of gorillas who took a slap in the face and let it pass because the slapper looked like their second-grade arithmetic teacher. I did, however, have two things that might overcome logic. First, I had the possibility of surprise if I moved soon. Second, I had a.38 automatic.

I gave the visitor about three or four minutes to get settled in the animal room and for the disturbed menagerie to get their emotions down to a rolling, frightened, and angry purr. Then I moved to the door. The tension in my chest was making it hard to breathe. It was about one-third fear, one-third excitement, and one-third pain from Hodgdon’s tape. The door didn’t creak much when I opened it very, very slowly.

There was no light in the hall except for that of the dim moon through the partially opened door through which I stepped. I closed the door so that I wouldn’t make a tempting target and then began to inch my way along the wall toward the rear of the clinic. I tried not to, but couldn’t help imagining my outstretched fingers touching flesh. That didn’t stop me from moving. If anything, the fear of contact made me move more quickly.

When I reached the end of the hallway, I put out a hand, seeking the door. It was closed. Since I wanted some shot at surprise, I took my time finding the knob and then took as long to position myself in front of the door for a quick turn of the knob, flick of the switch, and confrontation with the surprised dognapper. The light switch, if I remembered correctly, was just to the left of the door. I dried my hands on my jacket, took out my.38, grabbed the knob, took a breath, and turned.

There was good news and bad news. The good news was that I got the door open in a single turn and push, and that my hand hit the switch, filling the room with light. My gun was out, level, and pointed into the room. The bad news was that the dognapper wasn’t standing in the middle of the room or in a far corner. He was to my right and by the time I saw him, the animals were going nuts and I had cracked my hand against the nearest cage. My gun fell to the floor and I yelled something. My yell, the lights, and the clatter of the gun were enough to throw him off. He let out a return yell and almost dropped the dog in his arm.

It was a dead heat. He came out with his gun at the same moment I recovered mine from the floor. The trouble was, I was sitting there looking up with the one-eared shepherd doing his damndest to get at me through the bars of his cage. From the corner of my eye I could see that someone had neatly bandaged the dog’s ear stump.

“Don’t shoot,” I shouted, leveling my gun at Bass.

“Don’t you shoot,” he said, trying to get a firmer grip on the black furry bundle under his left arm. Somewhere in the corner a dog began to howl like a coyote in a Republic Western.

“I’m not shooting,” I assured him, getting to my knees.

“I’m not shooting,” Bass said, taking a step forward.

“And you’re not coming any closer, either,” I said.

“I’m not coming any closer,” he said. “You got the money?”

“How do I know that’s the right dog?” I said, avoiding the question.

“It’s the right dog,” Bass said, glancing down at the dog in case someone had switched dogs on him in the last few seconds. “You can believe me.”

“Thanks,” I said, getting up without touching any of the nearby cages, which might have given me stability but resulted in the loss of a finger or three.

“The money,” he repeated.

“The dog first,” I said.

The howling dog in the corner paused. The shepherd showed his teeth and an orange cat in a cage behind Bass circled and circled and circled. The little black dog under Bass’s arm looked at me with his mouth open.

“He said I had to see the money first,” Bass said, holding the gun up about level with my neck.

“He?” I said.

“The money,” he shouted. “I’m getting mad here.”

“Bass,” I said. “Someone has set you up. You’re the one who can be identified, the one who has the dog. He’s likely to deflate your head and walk away free with the bundle.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Bass said, tossing his head to clear the blond strands of hair dangling across his eyes. “Look, I don’t want to hold this dog any more. I’m afraid he’ll want to poopie or something.”

“Poopie?” I said. “Figures. You’d be holding the dog and the crap.”

“The money,” he said again, shifting the dog higher under his arm.

“I didn’t bring it,” I said, holding my.38 level and hoping he didn’t start shooting. I should have leveled the gun at his head and fired. It was a risk. I was about ten feet from him and might have hit the dog or the wall or just about anything. The pistol is not my best weapon. I’m not sure what my best weapon is, probably the ability to tire out an arm-weary opponent. “I’ve got it out in my car and I don’t tell you where my car is until I have the dog. You might just take the money and shoot me.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Bass said, a tiny trickle of sweat dribbling down his smooth forehead. “I want to get you in my hands. You know the Australian clutch? I tore Butch Feifer s right arm almost off with it in ’37. That’s what I want to do to you. You made me look dumb with that guy in the warehouse.”

“That was Buster Keaton, and he made you look like a cross-eyed nun. We can’t stand here all night. One of us will get cramps and start shooting and you can’t keep holding that dog.”

“I could hold the dog all night,” he said with pride. “I could hold the dog and the gun and never blink my eyes, not once. I could stand here till you get tired and blink, and then I could get you.”

“Well, pal,” I said. “I’d like to keep this conversation going for a while. I really would. It’s not often I get a chance to talk to someone like you or Clifton Fadiman, but that’s not going to get things taken care of. Can I make a suggestion?”

“No,” he said. I thought I could sense or see his finger tightening on the trigger.

“You win,” I said. “I’ll tell you where the car is. We can go together, down the street, guns on each other, dog under your arm, and make some excuse to the crowds who gather on Sherman Way to watch us.”

“I’m not good at excuses,” Bass said reasonably “I’m not good at anything but hurting”

“And that’s something to be proud of,” I said, watching more beads of sweat come down his brow. “And stop inching forward or I’ll shoot a hole through your shoes.”

He stopped but I could see that his attention span was not long, and rather than struggle to keep up the conversation, he would probably start shooting even if it meant the death of both of us.

“You got a family, Elmo?” I said, shifting the.38 to my left hand.

The question puzzled him. “Family?” he asked, glancing down at the dog in his arm as if it could answer this tough one.

“You know, father, mother, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, things like that?” As I asked the question I pretended to take a deep breath and moved my right leg a step toward the door.

“Everybody has a mother,” he said suspiciously. “You don’t get born without a mother. You making fun of my mother too?”

“I’m not making fun,” I said, calculating my chances of getting back to the hall. The howling dog behind me was going wild. “I’m trying to get to know you. Your mother ever see you wrestle?”

“My mother’s a Methodist,” he said threateningly.

“Fine with me,” I said. The gun had dropped a fraction and was aimed at the right side of my chest and not the middle. “And your father?”

“My father’s …” he began, but I never found out what his father was because I went out the door.

Bass was fine on his feet but he left a hell of a lot to be desired with a pistol. By the time he got off a shot I was in the dark hall. The animals behind me were going mad, and as I turned to aim at the door in case he followed me, I lost my.38 again. I had been fascinated by the sweat on Bass’s brow as he looked down at my pistol. But I hadn’t noticed my own body fluids. The gun had flown out of my sweating hand as I went through the door.

Light from the animal room cut far down the hall. I scrambled for Olson’s office. I’d go for the window, hide in the dark, and fight another day. I could hear Bass coming for me when I found the right door and pushed through. A bullet crackled into the hall behind me, and I stumbled forward for the window. My hand hit something on the desk, and I tripped forward to the sound of classical music filling the room. I almost made it to the window, would have, too, if I hadn’t hit my leg on the corner of the one chair in the room. Pain from my sore rib shot through me as the light came on.

“No,” Bass shouted.

I stopped and turned around slowly.

“I’ll get the money,” I said over the sound of a happy flute and violin.

“I don’t believe it,” Bass said, advancing on me, the confused black Scottie still under his arm. “I don’t believe someone who laughs at a person’s mother.”

“I never …” I began, my back against the window, but he wasn’t listening. He put the black dog down. Then he put his gun away and took a step toward me.

“You do something to me, and you’ll never get the money,” I warned, one hand out to stop him.

“I never wanted the money, he said. The violins went mad behind us and the little black dog decided to leap into my arms instead of running for cover. I caught him and considered throwing him at the advancing Bass, whose gray eyes danced with joy at the prospect of hurting.”

“I’m going to do you,” he said.

The dog licked my face. I dropped him gently to the ground, turned slowly to Bass and said, “You’re giving …”

The idea was reasonably good. I’d used it before, in fact a few seconds earlier in the animal room. It worked this time too. Bass never knew the punch was coming. It was perfect; a hard, short right to the solar plexus followed by a left to the side of his head. I can’t say the punches had no effect on Bass-after all he was almost human-but the effect registered very low on his Richter scale. My left hand hurt like hell.

“Okay,” I said, breathing heavily as his hand found my neck. “Now you know I mean business.”

“I’m going to turn your head around,” he said happily. “I can do it. I did it once.”

“I believe you,” I said, preparing my last move, a knee to the groin, which I was afraid would either have no effect or be stopped by the former pro. I never had the chance to find out.

“Bass,” came a gentle voice over his shoulder.

Bass turned to the door and found Jeremy Butler looking comfortingly massive in black pants and a black long-sleeved turtle-neck sweater. Before I left for the clinic, I had called Jeremy for backup. He was right on time.

No one can move as fast as Bass then did, certainly no one his size and bulk, but Jeremy had told me he was fast. I had seen Keaton play with him, but this was. a small room and there was no place to hide. Jeremy was ready for him, but the rush sent the two of them thundering out of the room into the hallway. The building shook and I jumped forward, going for the gun Bass had dropped. I couldn’t find it, but I was on my hands and knees accompanied by the violin and flute as I looked and heard the two men in the hall bang off the walls.

I found the gun under the desk along with the dog. I gave the dog a pat on the head, took the gun, and scrambled, breathing hard, into the hall. They weren’t there, but I could see where they had taken their battle. I picked up my own.38 in the hall and, a gun in each hand, went into the room full of cages.

By the time I got there, they had crushed two cages, releasing one cat that came flying past me, and they had done serious damage to the front of the cage with the one-eared shepherd.

Jeremy and Bass were grunting, hands clasped and held high like two grotesque ballet dancers.

“Stop right there,” I said, holding out my guns like Bill Hart in Hell’s Hinges. When Bill Hart did it, the whole town full of bad guys put up their hands and backed away. Bass and Jeremy paid no attention.

“I’ve got the guns,” I said as they disappeared behind a row of cages. “Are you two listening to me? I’ve got the guns and they shoot bullets that make holes in people and things.”

To prove my point I fired Bass’s pistol, a.45, into the ceiling. It recoiled in my hand. I didn’t want to get my.38 dirty. I hated to clean the damn thing. My shooting had no effect on the two lumbering figures, who came crashing around the cages and would have rolled over me if I hadn’t jumped out of the way. The one-eared dog went crazy and threw himself against the door. The door cracked open and the dog, surprised, came out awkwardly. He was full of anger, but the dog never thought he’d have his bluff called. Now he had to decide who to bite. He looked at me and I aimed the.38 his way.

“I don’t know if you know what this is, Vincent,” I said, “but one of them blew your ear off. One more step and you’re going to have to learn sign language.”

Sure, I knew he couldn’t understand the words, but I hoped the heartfelt sympathy would make an impression. It didn’t. He snarled once and, white-bandaged ear flashing, leaped out of the door and into the hall.

I went for the hall and saw him attached to Bass’s arm. From where I stood, Jeremy needed the help. Bass had managed to get behind him and was trying to do something to Jeremy’s right arm, probably the Australian double clutch. Jeremy was straining to keep his arm from bending.

The dog’s teeth went deep into Bass’s arm, but Bass didn’t seem to notice. Bass didn’t let go of Jeremy or let out a yell. His teeth were clenched as he brought his head down hard so his skull cracked into that of the dog. The dog let go, fell on his behind, and began to yelp in pain. He scooted past me, back to his cage, and huddled in the corner.

The attack had given Jeremy enough help to break away from Bass. He turned, reached down between his legs, and pulled Bass’s right leg forward. Bass hit the floor hard enough to send shock waves to Tarzana.

Bass’s arm was bleeding, but the look on his face indicated a frantic joy as he scrambled up. He was panting like the animals behind me as he got a fresh grip on Jeremy’s head and tried to bring his skull against Jeremy’s as he had done with the dog, but Jeremy pulled away, hit the wall with his shoulder, and threw his full weight into the bleeding Bass, who fell backward.

Something broke-I heard it snap like a loud Rice Krispy. The snap came just as the flute recording ended. Jeremy got to his knees. Both of the massive figures were breathing hard, but no harder than I was.

“My arm is broken,” Bass observed without surprise or apparent pain.

“You kill women,” Jeremy said, getting up. “You kill people, animals.” He helped Bass up and went past me into the examining room.

“Who set this up” I said, waving my guns around to no effect. “Where is Jane Poslik?”

Bass looked at me blankly as Jeremy tried to stop the bleeding from the dog bite.

“I don’t talk,” Bass said, looking at me calmly.

“I can get you to a hospital or I can reset it,” Jeremy said to Bass.

“Reset it,” he said.

Jeremy did and Bass looked at me without expression through what must have been a hell of a lot of pain.

As he fixed the splint, Jeremy repeated my question.

“Where is Jane Poslik?”

Bass’s eyes were closed. I assumed he was being stubborn, but Jeremy stood up and announced that he had passed out from the pain.

“You can hide it, mask it, but stopping the pain is something few can do. It creeps in, won’t go away. There are Yoga techniques, but Bass never had the intellect or the spirit for such things. He is a monster, Toby, but he is a monster with pride. You will not get your answer from him.”

I took Jeremy’s word for it and suggested that he take Bass to his place and keep him secure until I figured out what to do with him. I couldn’t turn him over to Phil, not without some evidence, not without a confession, which it didn’t look as if I would get. Jeremy lifted the unconscious Bass onto his shoulders, refused the gun I offered him, and went to the door.

“That music playing when I came in,” he said. “Mozart’s Sonata Eleven in A. Please check the record for me.”

As he stood in the door under Bass’s weight, I went to the turntable and checked the record. He was right.

“In music Olson had some taste I guess, but not in friends,” I said. “Some of us do better than others that way.”

“You are a sentimentalist, Toby,” he said and went down the hall with his burden.

Finding the missing Fala was a slight problem. I put my.38 in my cracked leather holster, removed the bullet clip from Bass’s.45, and went to the room of cages. The animals wanted no part of me. They had had enough. The dog I was looking for wasn’t there.

I went through the hall and into rooms one at a time, coaxing and calling. I found the big cat on a shelf, his green eyes glowing at me. He hissed and I stayed away It took me about five more minutes to find the dog squeezed under a cabinet. I pulled him out whimpering, held him, petted him, and told him everything was going to be just great, that huge cans of Strongheart were waiting for him, that he’d soon be back standing up and breathing dog breath on the president. It helped a little.

I started down the hall for the front door, the dog cradled in my arms, and almost ran into the beam of a flashlight through the window. I pulled back against the wall and heard voices outside.

“I don’t hear anything,” said a man.

“Maybe they’re just hearing things, a dog or something going screwy,” came a second male voice, younger.

“Dogs don’t sound like guns,” came the first voice impatiently. “The guy over there said it was a gun.”

“So,” said the other guy, “do we go in or what?”

“We go in,” sighed the first cop. I eased back down the corridor, trying not to trip over the debris of the battle. I wished I had turned the lights out in the animal room, but I didn’t have time to do it now. Balancing the dog, I turned off the light in Olson’s office and went for the window. Behind me I could hear the door to the clinic open. I eased the window open with one hand.

“You hear that?” I heard the young voice coming down the hall.

“I heard,” came the other voice as I put one leg through the window. The tape pulled against my chest as I bent over and got out, trying to keep the dog from getting hurt.

A breeze caught me, and a wet chill ran down my back. I was sweating again. The light went on in the room a few feet behind me, and I ran like hell.

I was about thirty feet away and slowed down by two guns and a dog, when the voice called, “Hold it, police.”

Maybe I could have stopped and explained. Maybe I would have wound up back in Phil’s office with the dog but no murderer and some very bad headlines for the Roosevelts. So I kept running. The cop fired, but I could tell from the sound that he wasn’t shooting at me. Given another few hundred thousand miles of push, he might have hit the moon. My chest was burning like dry ice had been pressed against it. I don’t know if they followed me. Maybe they did. I was back on the street and ducked into the nearest clump of bushes. I gave it a full twenty seconds, was sure no one was behind me, and in spite of the pain and the dog licking my face, I ran for the corner, rounded it, and got to my car. It would have been nice if the night were over, but I knew it was just starting.

Getting the front door open when I got to Mrs. Plaut’s rooming house was a minor but distinct problem. I was afraid to put the dog down, afraid that he’d make a run for it. So I used my key and kept saying “Good boy,” as I let myself in. The house was dark. The time was after eleven. By the glow of the forty-watt night light at the top of the stairs, the dog and I moved without a fall, bark, or comment from a resident.

I was almost at the top step when the dog began to whine. It started low and then rose.

“Cut it out,” I whispered, but he didn’t cut it out. I had two choices. I could either run for my room and try to keep him quiet or I could recognize what he wanted and go back outside. I went back down the stairs and let us out quietly. The dog whined all the way.

When I got him down the porch steps, I held onto him tightly while I got my belt off and looped it around his neck. With one hand on my pants and another on my belt serving as a leash, I let him lead me to the curb. I was on the way back to the porch when the front door opened and I started working on a lie, but it wasn’t needed.

“Toby,” whispered Gunther. He was in total disarray, at least for Gunther he was. He wore pants, shirt, tie, vest, but no jacket. “I heard you coming up and then going down.”

“I had to walk the dog,” I explained, whispering back.

He looked at the dog and the dog looked at him curiously. On his hind legs, the dog would have been about Gunther’s size. We could have saddled the animal for him.

“This, then, is the dog of the president of the United States?” he whispered.

“Looks that way,” I said.

“Why are you bringing him here instead of to the police or the president?” he asked reasonably.

I came up on the porch and sat on the bottom step. Gunther moved closer. We were about eye level.

“I think the people who took the dog have a woman named Jane Poslik,” I explained. “I might have to make a trade or something. I’ll just have to wait till they contact me and try to stay out of the way of the police, who I promised to give the killer to.”

I sat on the porch talking and the animal kept his eyes riveted on Gunther. Gunther stood erect the entire time while I went over the events of the past two days. Gunther touched a spot just under his lip, a sure sign that he had an idea.

“In my mind,” he said, “I have gone over the listing of suspects, events. Perhaps it is a problem in logical or even literary formalism.”

“Maybe,” I said with no great hope as I reached over to pet the dog. “I’ve got a plan.”

“What might that be?” asked Gunther seriously. A slight night breeze ruffled his neat hair and a tiny hand went up immediately to put it back in place.

“I’ll find Lyle and threaten to kick his face in if he doesn’t confess and tell me where Jane Poslik is,” I explained. “It’s direct, simple, and inexpensive.”

“And not likely to yield results,” he said pensively. “May I suggest an alternative procedure?”

“If it’s not one that requires a lot of thought on my part,” I said wearily. “I’ve had a long hard day. Hell, a long hard lifetime.”

Thunder rumbled somewhere far over the hills near Santa Monica as Gunther went through his chain of logic. It made sense to me but it would take time to set up. It also involved the possibility that I had made a big mistake.

When he was done talking and I agreed, as much out of pain and tiredness as out of conviction. I picked up the dog. did an awkward dance as I put my belt back on, and followed Gunther into the house and up the stairs.

When we got in front of my room, I whispered to Gunther, “I’ll set it up for tomorrow night, in my office.”

“That,” said Gunther, “will be sufficient.”

When I got into my room, I considered removing the itching tape on my chest, but that would have proven foolish. Instead, I took off my clothes, put on fresh underwear, took one of the pills Doc Hodgdon had given me, and shared the last of a bottle of milk with the dog.

“You want Wheaties?” I asked. He looked like the answer was yes. so I gave him a bowl of Wheaties, which he ate dry.

Sleeping was a little problem. I’m not used to a warm body near mine through the night. Even if it’s a dog, it brings back memories, but I finally fell asleep on my mattress on the floor. Once during the night I started to turn over The pain woke me, and the dog, in the moonlight, wept for me. I gave him a pat and went back to a careful sleep.

“Mr. Peelers,” came the distinct, thin, and insistent morning voice of Mrs. Plaut.

“Huh?” I answered alertly, glancing around the room for something I couldn’t remember but knew would be familiar when it came before my eyes. The dog was sitting on the sofa looking at me, his pink tongue out. I rolled over, felt the pain in my chest, and let myself fall back on the mattress on the floor as Mrs. Plaut stepped in.

“Come in,” I said with what I thought was good-natured sarcasm.

“I’m already in,” she replied, hands on her hips She didn’t seem to notice a dog panting and looking at her from the depths of the sofa.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Plaut?” I asked, forcing myself up on one elbow.

“Pensecola cookies,” she replied.

My first thought was that this was one of the colorful near-curses of her family. I immediately learned the truth.

“I would like to make my recipe for Pensecola cookies,” she explained. “But I can’t.”

I looked at her and she looked back at me.

“Go on,” she finally said.

“Where am I going?” I asked, coming to a sitting position and rubbing the stubble on my chin.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I can’t make Pensecola cookies?” she said with exasperation.

“Why can’t you make Pensecola cookies?” I asked, feeling something like George Burns.

“No sugar-or not enough sugar-calls for a lot of sugar,” she said, looking around the room to see if there was some doily or knick-knack she could straighten. “The recipe was developed in the old country by my Uncle Fabian’s wife.”

“The old country?” I asked, knowing from Mrs. Plaut’s massive family biography that the Plaut’s, Cornell’s, Lamphrets, and all the other ilk of my landlady had been in on the first invasions of the American shores. Some of them had predated the Indians.

“Ohio,” Mrs. Plaut explained. “We can pick up sugar rationing books at the elementary school. As a resident of this home, I think you should allow me some of your sugar ration in exchange for which I will give you a generous dose of Pensecola cookies.”

I wrapped the blanket around my waist and stood up.

“I’ll pick my sugar stamps up this afternoon,” I promised, reaching for my pants, which were on the sofa and covered with a fine layer of dark dog hair.

“This morning will be essential,” she said. “I’m working on the cookies this morning.”

“I’ve got a killer to catch,” I appealed to her.

“Your train can wait,” she replied firmly. “Do you know what Uncle Fabian’s wife went through to perfect this recipe?”

I neither knew nor cared, but I could think of only one way to stop from being told.

“I’ll do it,” I said awkwardly, scrambling into my pants under the blanket. Mrs. Plaut looked satisfied.

“We will drive in your automobile,” she said. “I don’t think you can walk the three streets over with that injury.” She pointed to my chest, which I was trying to cover with a semi-soiled white shirt from the closet. “Have you killed someone again?”

She looked around the room suspiciously for a possible body and then turned to me. I hadn’t bothered to answer her question. Satisfied that I had stashed no corpses in the quite visible corners, Mrs. Plaut instructed me to meet her downstairs in five minutes, and parted with: “Shave your scratchy face, Mr. Peelers, and bring the president’s dog with you.”

I left the dog in my room wagging his tail and scratching at the door while I hurried down the hall to shave as quickly as my chest tape would allow. I was dropping a nickel into the hall phone when Mrs. Plaut called up for me to hurry.

There were four or five calls I had to make, but at the moment I only had time for one, to the number Eleanor Roosevelt had given me. She was in and came to the phone.

“I’ve got the dog,” I said.

“Mr. Peters, you have my gratitude. I’ll pick him up personally,” she answered.

“I’d like to hold on to him today,” I said, and then I explained why. She listened quietly, politely, and asked me a few questions.

“And you believe this scheme will work?” she said finally. “You believe it is worth risking both your life and that of Fala?”

There was something about Fala that I didn’t want to tell her, but I held back and assured her that I thought it was worth it. We didn’t have a long discussion of my assessment of the value of my own life. Many was the night I spent lying on the floor on my mattress when Time and I had discussions in which I tried to argue that my life was of cosmic import; but Time just wouldn’t buy it and kept proving from the history of my own behavior that I didn’t buy it either.

“It’s a shot,” I finally said.

“Mr. Peters, please be careful. It is important that Franklin have the comfort of his dog. The war news has not been good today. Corregidor has fallen. But I think a human life is worth more than the risk involved.”

“Mr. Peelers,” Mrs. Plaut shouted from the bottom of the stairs.

“I’ve got to go now,” I said. “I’ve got to pick up some sugar for Pensecola cookies.”

“My aunt’s maid baked them when I was a child in New York,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.

“I’ll save some for you.”

Before she hung up she told me that she could stay till the night with some stalling, but she would have to travel all night on the plane to get back to Washington for the reception.

I went back to my room, removed the hunk of rope I was using to hold together one of my four wooden kitchen chairs, and tied it around the dog for a leash. Downstairs Mrs. Plaut was waiting impatiently, a little black hat on her little white-haired head, with a black coat and black purse.

“And remember,” she said as the dog pulled me through the front door, “let no one push you around in the line. It’s-”

“I remember,” I said as the dog pulled me down the wooden steps and made for the curb. “It’s a doggie dog world out there.”

As it turned out, Mrs. Plaut was right. The elementary school was filled with people making deals, pushing, pleading, lying about the size of their family to get more sugar than they were allotted.

A small man wearing a wool cap down to his ears, his teeth clenched, hit me in the sore ribs with an elbow, claiming I was trying to get in front of him A crony of Mrs. Plaut named Evelyn Barkmer informed us that there was a man of unsavory demeanor in a De Soto behind the school who was buying and selling ration books. A harrassed man who sounded like Raymond on the “Inner Sanctum,” and possibly was, stood up from behind the desk where he was helping to issue ration books to shout, “Ladies and gentlemen, you do not have to pick up a ration book if you don’t want or need one. If you don’t want or need one, you can simply go home. Go home.”

“You mean,” came a woman’s shout, “if I don’t want no sugar stamps, I don’t have to stay here?”

“That’s what I said,” shouted the man.

“Why didn’t someone say so?” The woman sighed and turned for the door. She didn’t get far, however. She was surrounded almost instantly in an Apache-style attack by a party of people who had offers for her unwanted ration.

One woman who reminded me of my mother’s sister Bess told me that my dog looked like Fala but that she, herself, preferred a dog with size and meat on its bones.

I kept enough stamps for my coffee and cereal and turned the rest over to the waiting Mrs. Plaut, who did a recount to be sure that the guy who sounded like Raymond and I hadn’t short-changed her. Satisfied, she stuffed the coupon book into her black purse, snapped it closed, and looked around to see if anyone was going to challenge her for them.

“Like One Million B.C.,” I said. “Cave men protecting their food from each other.”

“How would you know what it was like way back then?” she said, leading the way through the crowd with me and the dog following.

“I meant the movie, I explained. “You know Victor Mature, Carole Landis.”

“Next time we come earlier,” Mrs. Plaut said and went directly to my car. Having already gone through an explanation of the broken car door to her on the way to the school, I said nothing and watched her slide in the driver’s side and over, and then slowly followed her, putting the dog in the small back seat.

Dropping Mrs. Plaut off, I headed for the Farraday. Mrs. Roosevelt would, I was sure, pay her bill fast and probably in cash to keep any records from turning up in the future. So I drove to No-Neck Arnie’s and told him to fix the car door.

“Nice dog,” Arnie said. He had a black dot of grease on his nose like a clown and was wearing his gray overalls.

“Right,” I agreed.

“Make a deal,” Arnie said, putting an arm on my shoulder and breathing a dreaded combination into my face. “You give me the dog. I fix the door for ten bucks.”

“Not my dog,” I said.

Arnie shrugged, touched his nose to make the spot worse, fished in the pocket of his overalls for a used cigar, and said, “That’s a genuine Scottie! Like FDR’s.”

“That a fact?” I said, leading the dog to the door.

“A fact,” said Arnie, following my progress by turning his entire body.

The dog’s legs moved double-time to keep up with me. In spite of the tightness in my chest, I had things to wrap up. My stomach rumbled when I hit Ninth and I considered stopping in one of the restaurants for a quick bite, but I didn’t think any of them would welcome the dog, any except one and that one was Manny’s Tacos.

Since it was before eleven, there weren’t many people in Manny’s. I got up on one of the red leather swivel stools at the counter and helped the dog up onto the one next to me. A man made out of old leather a few stools down took the cigarette out of his mouth and turned to look at us, but we weren’t all that interesting to him.

“What’ll it be, the usual?” asked Manny. Manny was Emanuel Perez, dark, tired, thirty, and hard-working.

“The usual,” I said. “Same for the dog. Bring a bowl for the dog.”

Manny didn’t blink an eye, just nodded and said, “Check,” and went off to bring us each a taco and a Pepsi.

“Chili be better for a dog,” said the leather man at the end of the counter in a raspy voice.

“If he survives the taco,” I said amiably, “he can order the chili.”

“I know dogs,” the leather man said with a shrug.

The dog liked the tacos though I can’t say he was the neatest eater I had dined with, but then again I had been told that my own eating habits left a little to be desired. After he noisily lapped the Pepsi up, I refilled his bowl. He still looked hungry but not chili hungry.

“Manny,” I said, “you got some crackers I can give him?”

“Check,” called Manny and brought some little oyster crackers which I added to the bowl of Pepsi.

“Crackers is for pollies, not dogs,” said the leather man.

“He likes them,” I countered.

“He ain’t no gor-met,” said the leather man, wisely returning to his own bowl of Carumba super hot chili.

Fed and fat, I led the dog to the Farraday and made my way slowly up the stairs to Jeremy’s office. Jeremy was sitting opposite Bass and reading a book. Bass gave me and the dog, in that order, dirty looks, but there wasn’t much he could do beyond that. He was firmly tied where he sat.

“Toby,” said Jeremy, rising from his chair, inserting a blue felt bookmark in his book of Frost poems and putting it neatly on the small table nearby. “I have been endeavoring to convince our guest that he should tell us the location of Miss Poslik and the identity of his accomplice or accomplices, but he remains mute. His arm seems, at this point, to be uninfected, but his soul, his very essence, is so corrupted that I doubt if much can be done.”

Bass looked up at Jeremy with a hatred that outdid the blast he had fired at me and the dog.

“When I get out,” Bass said, “I’ll do you.”

“Bass, you are not getting out,” I explained while the dog sniffed at his right foot and just managed to escape the kick Bass threw. “You killed Mrs. Olson, kidnapped the dog and Jane Poslik, and, in general I’m sure, have been less than charming. You are going to trial and jail, maybe to the chair. Can you follow all that?”

Bass shook his head and looked bored. “He won’t let that happen,” he said. “He’s got connections, big connections. When things change in this country, I’m gonna be running the jails.”

“That’s a comforting vision of the future,” I said. “I’ll pass it on to my friends. Should give them added reason for surviving the war.”

“You can laugh,” Bass said. “People laugh at me sometimes when I can’t touch them, but they can’t stay away forever.”

“I can’t laugh,” I said. “You bruised a few of my ribs, but we’ll let bygones be bygones. Maybe I’ll even vote Whig in the next election in Oz if you-”

“No,” Bass said.

I looked at Jeremy, who closed his eyes and opened them slowly to show that communication with Bass was hopeless.

“I got loyalty,” Bass said, his fingers turning white as he gripped the wooden arms of the chair to which he was strapped. “I know I’ve got loyalty. Even when I was wrestling and all those people were out there eating those hot dogs and booing me. I knew people who were my friends could count on me. My word means something.”

He was sounding too much like me, and I didn’t like that at all, so I told Jeremy to keep him tied till tonight. Jeremy followed me to the door and I whispered the plan to him while Bass pretended to be looking at a row of books but strained without success to hear.

“Toby,” Jeremy said alter I had explained things to him, “please do not be offended by this, but your plans in such situations tend to be precarious and fraught with danger for you.”

“I’ve noticed that,” I agreed.

“Ulysses,” said Jeremy

“I cannot rest from travel; I will drink

Life to the lees all times I have enjoyed

Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those

That loved ‘me, and alone, on shores, and when

Through scudding drifts the rainy Haydes

Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and know.”

“If you say so, Jeremy,” I whispered, touched his solid arm, and went into the hall with the dog waddling behind me.

The late-morning sounds of the Farraday accompanied me back to and up the stairs. Arguments coming through closed office doors, a machine whirring, a shout of laughter, some male voice echoing from below, “Then you just come back tomorrow at the same time, and we’ll see what can be done about it.”

I had some time to kill, and possibly to be killed, and some phone calls to make. The game was set for eight that night. It had to be to get it all wrapped up so Eleanor Roosevelt could head back to Washington with her mystery solved and, hopefully, a bill for services, and I could pick Carmen up and get to the Armstrong fight.

My wardrobe was down to rock-bottom pitiful. The windbreaker I was wearing didn’t even have a zipper. Fortune may have been laughing at me but I had a joke or two ready myself.

As it turned out, my phone calls were delayed. When I opened the door of the outer office of Minck and Peters, specialists in finding lost grandfathers and filling teeth, I heard voices-three voices, one female, two male-in Shelly’s office. I considered turning around and heading the dog back to the street. We could find a park and take in the threatening rainstorm.

Instead I made the move, opened the inner door, and stepped into Shelly’s office.