Melting Clock

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “No,” he said wearily. “The Dalis don’t want the police involved. They think they’ll be arrested. Dali’s afraid of jails. He spent a few days in one in Spain when—”

  “They can’t stay with you,” I said.

  “They can’t?” He brightened considerably.

  “Your chauffeur may try to kill them,” I explained.

  “My … Taylor?”

  “Taylor,” I confirmed.

  “Why?”

  “Ask the Dalis. I’m sending someone to pick Gala up in the next hour, a big bald guy named Jeremy Butler. He’ll take her back to Carmel and keep an eye on her. I don’t think Taylor wants to hurt her, but let’s not take chances.”

  “I can’t believe J.T. would—”

  “He shot at Dali. He tried to kill me about ten minutes ago. A second man named Gunther Wherthman will pick up Dali. You can’t miss him. He’s a little over three feet tall.”

  “Peters, did Dali put you up to this? Is this one of—”

  “Barry, I’m getting them out of your house. You owe me a bonus.”

  “I said I’d pay if you got the … all right. Let’s compromise. Five hundred dollars.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “What if I can’t talk them into going with your men?”

  “Do your best. Tell them they’ll stand a good chance of being dead by dawn if they don’t. Tell them their only other choice is to go to the police. My men are already on the way.”

  “Where are you taking Dali?”

  No answer from me.

  “I see. You think I might be …”

  “It’s easier not to tell you and not to have to think about it, especially when you owe me five hundred bucks. One more thing.”

  The pink-faced night clerk came over to the open booth, bearing a white mug filled with steaming coffee. I nodded and took it gratefully. She looked pleased.

  “What?”

  “Taylor wants twenty-five thousand dollars by tomorrow to return the last clock and the last painting. Can you get it and give it to Gunther when he comes?”

  I took a sip while he thought about it. The coffee was bitter, strong, with grounds at the bottom. It was just what I needed.

  “Cash?”

  “Cash.”

  “I can’t believe Taylor … I’ve got that much in the house. I’ll give it to your dwarf when he comes. I’ll want a receipt.”

  “He’s a little person, not a dwarf.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Zeman. “I don’t know the protocol. I know …”

  “… cars,” I finished. This was deteriorating into the same conversation I’d had with Taylor. “Since you’ve got cash around, give the five hundred you owe me to Gunther in a separate envelope. Still think Salvador’s a good investment?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You want to know what you should do with that five hundred?”

  “What?”

  “American Bantam. Out of business. Making Army vehicles now. You can pick up any one of the 1941 line for about three hundred. They’ll be worth thousands in twenty years, maybe ten.”

  “Thanks.” I hung up.

  Then I called Jeremy. Alice answered.

  “I woke you,” I said, looking at my father’s watch, said it was nine, which was a lot closer than it usually got. I figured the time for two or three in the morning.

  “No,” she answered. “Jeremy was reading to me. He just finished a new poem. I’ll get him.”

  I was down to the thick grounds at the bottom of the cup. The pink-faced clerk seemed to sense it and appeared next to me, gesturing with the tilt of an imaginary cup to her lips. I nodded yes and handed her the cup.

  “Toby,” said Jeremy. “I just finished a poem I’d like you to hear.”

  I was about to ask the man to leave his work, his wife, and his baby to drive a lunatic painter’s wife to Carmel. The least I could do was listen to his poem. “Go ahead,” I said. And he did:

  The filigreed fingernail of God

  etched a fine bright line across the sky

  as I watched through the window and heard

  behind me the patter of an insurance salesman.

  Over my shoulder I saw my wife nod,

  for she had seen the wonder, as I,

  had seen the heavenly bird

  over the patter of the insurance man.

  “Did you see that?” she asked him

  in joy. Eyes beclouded, dim,

  he answered, “It’s nothing, let’s insure your car.

  It’s nothing, just a shooting star.”

  “I like it,” I said.

  “What did you feel?”

  “Sorry for the insurance man,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Jeremy. “Yes.”

  I told Jeremy what I needed. He listened, then asked if I really felt this was essential. I said it was and he agreed. I thanked him, hung up, and dialed Mrs. Plaut’s, wondering if I felt sorry for the insurance man for the same reason Jeremy did.

  Mr. Hill answered the phone and told me that he had to be up in two hours to get to the post office and sort his mail. I told him I was sorry, that it was an emergency.

  “Nice New Year’s party,” he said.

  “Nice party,” I agreed, and he went to get Gunther.

  “Toby?” asked Gunther in a voice coated with sleep.

  “Gunther, I need a favor.”

  I explained and he readily agreed to pick Dali up and take him to my room.

  “Gwen had to go back to San Francisco for a few days,” he explained.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Just a few days,” he reminded me in his Swiss accent, which to too many people sounded suspiciously Germanic.

  “I appreciate this, Gunther,” I said.

  “I have not always appreciated Señor Dali’s insensitivities,” he said, “but I am intrigued by his art. It should be most interesting.”

  “Thanks, Gunther,” I said and hung up.

  I had one more call to make, but I wanted to think about it for a few seconds. The counter woman came back with the second cup of coffee.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Glad to,” she said. “Slow at night. Most nights. I’d close it up but my son, it’s his store. My husband and I take turns nights till Miles gets back from the war.”

  “Army?”

  “Marines,” she said with a big smile. I could see both pride and fear in it.

  “It should be over soon,” I said.

  “Admiral Halsey, Bull Halsey, says we’ll have the war won by 1943.”

  “He should know,” I said.

  “Commander of the South Pacific Force of the Pacific Fleet,” she said. “He should know. Want something to eat?”

  “I don’t want you to …”

  “I like the company,” she said brightly.

  “Got cereal?”

  “Just Wheatena left.”

  “Sounds great.”

  As she bustled back to the lunch counter, I dropped my next nickel and called the Wilshire District Police Station. I didn’t have to look up the number.

  “Briggs?”

  “Sergeant Briggs, right,” came the Irish-accented voice.

  “This is Toby Peters. Someone just stole my gun.”

  “Stole your gun,” he said flatly. “You got a story to go with this? Some bullshit. Things are slow here and I could use a tale or two.”

  “Someone broke in my car, took it out of my glove compartment. I’m reporting it. I was parked on Santa Monica near La Cienega. Happened about four hours ago. I just noticed it when I went to lock it up at home.”

  “Maybe the Japs took it. Or those Fifth Col-youmnists.”

  “Could be. You want the serial number? I’ve got it right—”

  “I’ll get it off the records,” he said. “But you’ve got to come in and fill out the papers. You know.”

  “Can it wait till morning, late?”

  “Why not?” said Briggs. “I’ll have the blotter report on your brothe
r’s desk when he comes in. He likes a good read with his first cup.”

  “Thanks, Briggs,” I said and hung up.

  My guess was that the .38 I’d thrown on Adam Place’s bed was already on the desk of a cop in Culver City. I had the Wheatena and talked to the counter woman, whose name was Rose. I’d read her wrong. She wasn’t simple and she wasn’t waiting for Jesus. She was waiting for Miles Anthony McCullough, waiting for someone to show photographs of her grandchildren to. I ate my Wheatena and looked at the kids. They were all cute and they all looked like Rose McCullough.

  8

  The coffee kept me awake till I hit Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house. I had trouble parking on Heliotrope, even with a car the size of my Crosley, but I managed to squeak into a space about two blocks away. The night light was on. I made it up to my room, kicked off my shoes, unzipped my windbreaker and placed it on one of my two kitchen chairs. My pants went on the other. My shirt had been through a tough day so, reluctant as I was, I retired it till I could find the time to wash it. My retired shirts made a small pile in the closet.

  I checked the time on my Beech-Nut Gum wall clock and lay down on the mattress on the floor. I’d shave in the morning. I’d brush my teeth in the morning. I’d change my underwear in the morning. I’d become a better person in the morning. Right now I’d just lie there with the lights on and wait for Gunther to get back with Dali. That was my plan.

  What was it the insurance man had said in Jeremy’s poem? “It’s nothing, just a shooting star.” I closed my eyes and saw the shooting star. Was I an insurance salesman or a poet at the window? I was asleep before I could think of an answer.

  I dreamed of stone women crumbling in the sand, of mustaches without faces, of derby hats floating, eggs opening with something coming out that I didn’t want to see, of Gala’s clocks melting on Rose McCullough’s grill at the Victory Drugstore. Koko the Clown kept popping up from behind rocks and through holes in screaming birds. He grinned but refused to play a major role in the dreams.

  When I opened my eyes, Dash the cat was sitting on my chest and Gunther Wherthman, hair neatly trimmed, in three-piece suit complete with pocket watch and chain and black shoes polished to look like glass, was sitting on the sofa. He had a fat leather briefcase in his lap.

  “You were asleep when we came in,” he said.

  I scratched Dash’s head, eased him away, sat up and tried to rejoin the ranks of the living. It was no use. I lay back down and took a shot at focusing on Mrs. Plaut’s pillow on the sofa, the pillow that had “God Bless Us Every One,” neatly embroidered on it in red.

  “I have fed the cat,” Gunther said, handing me the briefcase and an envelope. I put the briefcase on the floor next to the bed, and tore off the end of the envelope. Five hundred-dollar bills drifted into my lap.

  This held little interest for Gunther.

  “Dali brought with him a rolled-up painting he says someone killed. It’s in my room. Toby, I spoke to him in both French and Spanish and find difficulty understanding him in either.”

  “Where is he, Dali?” I asked.

  “Downstairs, talking to Mrs. Plaut.”

  “Shit,” I said, forcing myself up. “Where did he sleep?”

  “He did not sleep. He says he takes little naps during the day. It gives him more dreams to work from.”

  “He can have some of mine,” I said, looking around for my pants and, after several false starts, remembering they were draped over one of my two kitchen chairs. I shoved the five hundreds into a front pocket and struggled into the pants, while Gunther told me that Mrs. Plaut had invited us all to breakfast.

  “That is why I had to wake you,” Gunther explained. “She insisted that you be down for breakfast quickly.”

  I grabbed one of my not-too-frayed shirts from the closet and blundered my way out of the room and toward the bathroom, listening for voices and hearing none outside one inside my head I didn’t want to hear.

  “I’ll be right down, Gunther,” I said. “And thanks for—”

  “No,” he said as I leaned against the bathroom door. “I owe you much more than I am able to give. I am pleased that you continue to feel that you can both call upon and rely upon me in moments of crisis.”

  And that I could. Gunther went down the stairs and I moved to the mirror. I had saved Gunther’s life once, a couple of years back. He’d been accused of murder and was close to going up for it. I had blundered into the real killer the way I’d just blundered into the bathroom, and Gunther and I had been friends and next door neighbors ever since. He had gotten me the room in Mrs. Plaut’s and for that I was forever perplexed.

  I shaved without committing suicide, brushed my teeth by borrowing some of Mr. Hill’s Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder, ran my fingers through my hair and put on my shirt. The face in the mirror looked presentable: nose flat, face baked by the sun, black-graying hair with gray sideburns a little long and in need of a cut. The movies didn’t want me to star, but people sometimes needed someone who looked like me, sold his loyalty at a reasonable price, was willing to take a fall or two, could keep secrets large and small, and didn’t give up on a client—although Dali had sorely tried me on that one. I went back to my room, grabbed the briefcase, checked the bills in my pocket, and hurried downstairs to find my client.

  I got down to Mrs. Plaut’s kitchen, just off of her sitting room. Gunther, Mrs. Plaut, and Dali looked up at me from the table. Mrs. Plaut was reading from her memoirs, which were stacked in front of her. Dali was dressed in a purple velvet suit and a black bow tie. Gunther looked happy to see me. In the sitting room, Mrs. Plaut’s bird chirped insanely.

  “Apples Eisenhower,” said Mrs. Plaut, pointing to the dish of brown something in the middle of the table. “Since they were made with ingredients purchased with the aid of some of your ration coupons, I decided to overlook the fact that you did not return yesterday as you declared that you would.”

  “I was busy finding corpses,” I said.

  “It is delicious,” said Dali seriously, wiping his mustaches.

  I sat in the fourth chair and helped myself to a bowl of Apples Eisenhower and a cup of coffee. The Apples Eisenhower weren’t bad, especially with cream supplied by Mrs. Plaut in a little blue porcelain pitcher.

  Mrs. Plaut read from her memoirs, looking up from time to time for reaction from her honored guest. Dali listened intently and, when she caught his eyes, responded with an appreciative nod or an appropriate sound of approval.

  Gunther and I ate and drank.

  “Surrounded,” read Mrs. Plaut. “No moon. No swords. No guns other than Uncle Wiley’s Remington and the hand pistol Cousin Artemis had confiscated from the rebel soldier with the noticeable squint at Shiloh.”

  “Surrounded,” Dali echoed. “Surrounded.”

  He liked the word.

  “Surrounded,” Mrs. Plaut agreed. “War cries and strange language came from the darkness. Aunt Althea began to pray and so did the woman named Mary Joan, who had joined them unbidden in St. Louis and who went on years later to marry a Sioux Indian named Victor or some such.”

  “Victor,” said Dali, “an Indian named Victor?”

  “Some such,” said Mrs. Plaut, looking back at her manuscript.

  I ate another bowl of Apples Eisenhower.

  “Well,” Mrs. Plaut went on. “It chanced that they were surrounded not by hostile Indians, but by some drunken members of the Pony Express who had wandered several hundred yards from their way station and were engaged in a jest. There was not much to do in way stations but drink, lie, and pester trekkers and Indians. The riders of the Pony Express were not the highest order of humanity, according to Uncle Wiley. One of them, not on the night of which I write, but on another much earlier, mistook or claimed to mistake Cousin Arthur Gamble for a buxom female and attempted to take liberties.”

  “Delightful,” said Dali, beaming.

  “Cousin Arthur Gamble on that occasion shot the Pony Express rider and was recruited to take his plac
e on the morning run, which Cousin Arthur Gamble undertook.”

  “And this took place in …?” asked Dali.

  “Black Hills,” said Mrs. Plaut, closing her manuscript.

  “Señora Plaut, you are a true Surrealist,” Dali declared, clasping his hands together as if in prayer.

  “I am a Methodist,” she answered, placing the manuscript to the side and reaching for the Apples Eisenhower.

  “Amen,” I said. “Sal, I think you should dress in something a little less gaudy. We’re trying to keep a killer from finding you.”

  “The gaudier the crook, the cheaper the patter,” said Mrs. Plaut, a spoonful of cream and apple near her mouth. “The Maltese Falcon.”

  “This,” said Dali, “is the most sedate costume that I possess.”

  “And the mustache,” I went on. “It has to go.”

  “Nunca, never. I would rather die than lose my big-otes.”

  “Well,” I said cheerfully, “that may be one of your options.”

  “It’s like family,” said Mrs. Plaut, beaming. “My neighbor’s brother back in Sioux Falls had a brother Beemer who had a mustache like Mr. Fala here. Beemer fancied himself a Mexican bandit, which was foolish since he looked not dissimilar from Grover Cleveland. Would anyone like some coffee?”

  “Fala,” said Gunther earnestly, “is the dog of the President of the United States.”

  I got up while I was still sane. “Sal, we’ve got to go.”

  Dali rose, took Mrs. Plaut’s hand, and kissed it grandly. “You shall appear in my next painting.”

  Gunther got down from his chair, turned to me, and asked, “What do you wish me to do?”

  “Nothing now, Gunther. I’ll give you a call when I need you. Thanks.”

  As Dali moved toward the kitchen door and I followed him with the briefcase, Mrs. Plaut whispered loud enough to be heard across the Nevada state line, “If Mr. Fala is an exterminator, too, when does he have time to paint pictures?”

  We didn’t hear Gunther’s answer. I got in front of Dali and went to the front door. I checked the street through the window and then through the screen door. I didn’t see any loony auto mechanics with rifles, but there were a lot of places to hide.

  “Stay inside. I’m parked a few blocks away. When I pull up, come out and get into the car.”