Melting Clock

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “I did not see all the grass when we arrived in the dark,” he said as I opened the door.

  “Well-trimmed,” I said.

  “Things lurk in the grass,” he said softly.

  “Stay on the sidewalk,” I suggested, and went out on the porch and down the stairs.

  When I got the Crosley turned around and back in front of Mrs. Plaut’s, Dali made a velvet dash down the center of the sidewalk and into the street, where I had left the passenger-side door open. He jumped in, closed the door, and panted, holding his chest.

  “It is bad. But not as bad at the Metro in Paris,” he remarked.

  I didn’t follow up on that one.

  We were downtown in ten minutes. On a good day when I was full of energy and had the time, I could walk from Mrs. Plaut’s to my office. Since there had never been a good day that coincided with my being full of energy, I’d never walked to the Farraday Building. Normally, I parked at No-Neck Arnie’s and filled the tank, if I had gas ration stamps, but it was a two-block walk from Arnie’s and Dali stood out like a sore Surrealist. So I pulled into the alley behind the Farraday and parked in the Graveyard, a dirt plot where the bodies of three dead and rusted wrecks sheltered wandering winos.

  I pulled in next to a frame that might once have been a DeSoto. Dali opened the door and stepped out I slid over to the passenger seat with the briefcase and got out next to him.

  “You live in a nightmare world,” Dali said, looking around as a bum, who reminded me of a rotting pumpkin complete with an orange shirt, got out of the possible DeSoto and tried to focus on us. The bright sun didn’t help much. Dali watched the man lurch toward us, pulling a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and perching them on his bulbous nose.

  “What?” gargled the pumpkin.

  “Two bits to watch my car,” I said. “See nothing happens to it. No one touches it.”

  “Two bits?” the pumpkin asked Dali.

  “No,” said Dali, reaching into his pocket and coming out with crumpled bills. “Three dollars.”

  He held out the three bucks to the orange bum, who lifted his sunglasses and took the money.

  “Anyone touches the car, he dies,” the bum graveled. His gravel was even worse than his gargle.

  “Come on, Sal,” I said, moving to the rear door of the Farraday.

  Dali followed, looking around the festering alley as if it were Oz. “It can get no better,” he said.

  “It can get a lot worse,” I said. “My car could be gone by the time we come out. Our pal with the sunglasses isn’t hanging around to watch my Crosley. As soon as we get inside the door, he’ll take off for Erik’s Bar. He’s got enough money to keep him in Petrie wine for three weeks.”

  “Wrong,” corrected Dali. “He will not depart when we go inside. He has already departed.”

  I looked back at Dali. He was triumphant.

  “One can always count on man to find the deepest darkness of his soul.”

  “Comforting thought,” I muttered, opening the back door of the Farraday with my key.

  Dali went in ahead of me. “That smell,” he said, his voice echoing in the demi-darkness. “Perfume of nightmares.”

  “Lysol,” I said, crossing the lobby.

  “I have much to tell Gala,” he said. “She will be in Carmel with your bald giant. I must call her.”

  “From my office,” I said.

  Dali admired the marble stairs and looked up the stairwell to the roof of the Farraday seven stories above. Voices came from behind doors. Off-key music. Some kind of machine. Something, maybe a baby, crying.

  “Dante,” he said.

  “Let’s go.”

  Dali got into the elevator and I turned on the third stair.

  “You walk,” he said. “Dali will ride upward into the Inferno.”

  “Sixth floor,” I said and started up the stairs as Dali closed the cage door of the elevator and hit the button. I beat him to the sixth floor by about a week, even though the elevator hadn’t stopped to pick anyone up or let them off.

  “Magnificent nightmare,” Dali said, joy in his voice.

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I said, standing in front of the door to the offices of Minck and Peters. “Abandon hope all who enter here.”

  We went through the little waiting room and into Shelly’s office. The great man himself was destroying the mouth of a man who lay still with his eyes closed. For his sake, I hoped he was dead. Shelly was probing with a corroded metal probe and singing “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin When the Yanks Go Marching In.”

  “Any calls, Shel?” I asked.

  Shelly turned, shifted the cigar to the right side of his mouth, and replaced his thick glasses on the top of his nose by pushing the center of the right lens.

  “No. Who’s this?”

  “Salvador Dali,” I said.

  “No shit?” Shelly turned to the dead man on the chair: “Mr. Shayne, this is Salvador Dali. He looks just like himself.”

  “Your studio is magnificent,” complimented Dali, looking around at the sink full of instruments and coffee cups, the pile of bloody towels overflowing the basket in the corner, the cabinets covered with piles of dental magazines of a decade ago.

  “I call it a surgery,” said Shelly.

  “You are an artist,” said Dali. “America is mad.”

  Shelly beamed and nudged the dead man, who did not respond.

  “I think you gave Mr. Shayne an overdose of gas,” I said.

  Shelly leaned over and put his head against the chest of the man in his tilted chair.

  “He’s alive. You trying to panic me, Toby?”

  He moved away from Shayne and pointed his metal probe at the briefcase in my hand.

  “What you got?”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars,” I said.

  “I don’t need grief, Toby. I don’t need jokes. I don’t need grief. I need Mildred. Remember the receptionist I was going to hire?”

  “I thought it was a dental assistant,” I said, inching toward my office door.

  “Whatever. Mildred objects. Jealous.”

  “I’m sorry, Shel.”

  “I’ll live,” he said, beaming at Dali. “Mr. Dali, you want a teeth cleaning? It’s on the house. I’ll get Shayne out of here for a half hour and—”

  “I am not a masoquista,” said Dali apologetically, “but I have friends in the motion picture business who would welcome your services. You have cards?”

  Shelly stuck the probe in the pocket of his once-white smock and fished out a card. He handed it to Dali, who showed me the faint bloody thumbprint in the comer.

  “Perfect,” he said and followed me into my office. I closed the door and went behind the desk.

  For some reason, I hoped he hated the closet.

  “A tomb,” he whispered, putting his right index finger to his lips and pointing with his left index finger at the photograph of my brother, my father, our dog Kaiser Wilhelm, and me when I was a kid.

  “The dead,” I said, sitting behind my desk and plopping the briefcase in front of me. “Guy in the middle’s my old man. I know he’s dead. So’s the dog. My brother, the big one, is alive and a cop. You want some coffee?”

  “I wish to call Gala,” he said, sitting down across from me.

  I pushed the phone toward him and pulled out my notebook to remind myself to bill him for the call.

  After the twenty-minute call, in frantic French with Dali bouncing up and down, we sat looking at each other for about ten minutes.

  “You play cards?” I asked.

  “You have Tarot cards?”

  “No.”

  “I do not play cards. You have paper, pencils?”

  That I had. I fished into my top desk drawer, around frayed photographs of Phil’s kids and pieces of things best forgotten, to find some crumpled sheets of typing paper. I also found a few pencils. I handed the package to Dali, who cleared away a space on the desk, looked at the wall, and said.
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  “Do not speak to Dali until he speaks to you.”

  “You got a deal. Mind if I use the phone?”

  “Call—but do not, I say, do not talk to Dali.”

  It was nearly ten. I didn’t want to tie up the phone too long in case Taylor wanted to make his move early, if he was going to make any move at all.

  I called Ruth, reminded her that I would pick up the kids after school on Wednesday, and asked how she was doing. She told me that surgery had been rescheduled for Wednesday morning.

  “I could get Mrs. Dudnick to stay with the kids,” she said. “And my sister would come from Chicago if I called her, but I’d rather wait till I was through the operation before I told my family. And Toby, the kids love you. They’ll … I hate to ask, but I’ll feel better if you’re here. And Mrs. Dudnick’s right next door.”

  “I’ll be there, Ruth,” I said. “First thing Wednesday morning, as long as it takes.”

  “Phil says you’d volunteer and then not show up. He says I should have Mrs. Dudnick ready.”

  “This time Phil’s wrong about me. I’ll be there.”

  “Thanks, Toby,” she said.

  “I’ll talk to you, Ruth.”

  And then I hung up.

  “Illness,” Dali said without looking up from his drawing. “I can smell it, feel it in my fingers.”

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk to you.”

  “You are not, but Dali can talk if he must.”

  He stopped suddenly, put the pencil down and looked at me. There sat a man I had not seen before—his face aged, his mustaches wilted just a drop, and his voice down an octave as he spoke slowly.

  “Mr. Peters, I am not jesting when I say the painting must be found, must be returned to me. Dali will be destroyed if the painting is seen by a critic, a gallery owner, a collector. Dali will be destroyed as surely as he will be destroyed if Taylor kills me as he has killed his accomplices.”

  “I’ll find the painting,” I said. “And no one’s going to shoot you.”

  Then, suddenly, the Salvador Dali mask—eyes wide, hands dancing—was back on. He leaned forward to draw and the phone rang.

  “Toby Peters, Confidential Inquiries.”

  “Peters?” asked Taylor.

  “I just said that.”

  “You have the money?”

  “I have the money.”

  Dali looked up when I mentioned the money. The tips of his mustaches tingled like the antennae of an ant trying to feel the wind.

  “Cash?”

  “No, war bonds. Taylor, name a place and a time.”

  “I’m nervous, Peters,” he said. “Can you understand that?”

  “You’re looking for sympathy from me?”

  “I just want you to under—”

  “I asked a question, Taylor. Last night when I asked you a question you tried to turn me into confetti. Let’s do business.”

  “It’s ten-thirty,” he said. “I’ll give you one hour to get to Slip Number Four at the San Pedro shipyard.”

  “Have the clock and the painting,” I instructed.

  “Come alone,” he said. “Or you don’t see me.”

  I hung up. Dali was looking at me.

  “Stay here,” I said, picking up the briefcase. “Shelly will get you something to eat. What do you like to eat?”

  “Sea urchins,” he said, turning the piece of paper he had been drawing on so I could see it. It was a rough sketch of me dressed in a lace collar. It might be worth something someday. I opened the briefcase and eased it in so the bills would cushion it.

  “Lovely,” I said. “I’ll be back in three hours. Stay in the office. If you need the toilet, Shelly will give you the key—it’s down the hall across from the elevator. There’s a radio in the bottom drawer of my desk. Don’t answer the phone. Shelly will take care of it.”

  “You will get my painting?”

  “I will get your painting,” I reassured him, and went back into Shelly’s office, closing the door to my cubbyhole behind me.

  The man in the chair, Shayne, still looked dead. Shelly stood next to him reading a magazine and chomping on what was left of a cigar. He looked up at me.

  “I’m waiting for the stuff to set,” he explained. “Getting an impression for a bridge.”

  “Stuff? Is that what it’s called?”

  Shelly shrugged, dropped the magazine on the corpse’s lap and said, “Tell me the truth, Toby. You think Dali needs dental work?”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t even ask him. Keep him in my office and get him something to eat later.”

  “Please,” he prompted, tilting his head back to keep his glasses from falling.

  “Please,” I said.

  “The briefcase,” Shelly said. “You don’t really have …?”

  I opened the briefcase and tilted it so Shelly could see the bills.

  “Twenty-five thousand,” he sighed.

  “Holy shit,” exclaimed Mr. Shayne, miraculously resurrected by the sound of money.

  Shelly turned to his patient. “That’ll cost you another five bucks. You ruined my mold.”

  “I’m not paying,” said Shayne, spitting out the chunk of pink gook.

  My office door opened and Dali, paper in one hand, pencil in the other, watched doctor and patient shout at each other, their faces inches apart, Shelly’s cigar dangerously close to Shayne’s nose. Dali smiled at me and I left.

  I could make San Pedro in forty minutes, Avalon to Anaheim, and then down Pacific. I could have made it in forty minutes. I could have, but I didn’t.

  The first problem was the pumpkin bum in the sunglasses. He was standing in front of my Crosley, arms folded, legs spread apart. Clutched in one of his fists was a rusted and slightly bent piece of metal that looked as if it had been ripped from one of the wrecks. His legs were a little wobbly, but he looked determined.

  “You did a good job,” I said, trying to reach past him to the passenger door.

  “Don’t touch the car,” he warned.

  “It’s my car. Remember me? I offered you two bits.”

  “Other guy gave me a finif.”

  “I was with the other guy. He gave you three bucks.”

  “Yeah? What’d he look like?”

  “A skinny little guy in a velvet suit with a pointed mustache a foot long.”

  “What else?” asked the rotting pumpkin.

  “Get out of my way,” I said.

  I hadn’t worked out in weeks and my leg wasn’t back to subnormal. I didn’t want to do battle with the demented of Los Angeles. It would be a life-long losing task, and time was ticking away. Besides, the guy was doing his job. There was honor in the alley—misplaced, confused, but honor. I didn’t want to hit him and I sure as hell didn’t want him to hit me with his corroded club.

  “Let him pass,” came a voice I recognized from above.

  The pumpkin man took off his sunglasses and looked up. So did I. There, on the sixth floor, in the window of my office, Dali leaned forward, arms folded across his chest. Then his right hand came out and pointed upward. “Dali has spoken.”

  “What’d he say?” asked the pumpkin.

  “He said, ‘Dali has spoken.’”

  The bum stepped out of the way. I opened the car door, threw the briefcase on the floor, and scooted across to the driver’s seat. The bum threw away the metal bar and leaned in the door.

  “Is he, you know, one of Jesus’s helpers? Like the elves and Santa Claus?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “I tried out for Santa Claus at Macy’s,” he said.

  I motioned him back and leaned over to close the passenger side door. Through the window I could hear the bum say, “Least I wanted to, but you know something? I couldn’t find Macy’s.”

  Since I didn’t have a working watch, the only way I could tell the time was turning on the radio or looking in store windows for clocks. When I’m late, I want to know the time, but I don’t want to be told. It makes me nervou
s. So I try to find music. I could sing or think. I didn’t feel like doing either.

  I did a fair job of girl, clock, and people watching all the way to San Pedro. I parked a block away from Slip 4, got out, looked around for yet another clock, and hurried toward the shipyard.

  There was a war on and there were ships being built. Beyond the gate about a hundred yards away giant cranes hovered over the hulls of massive Liberty ships, feeding them steel beams the way a bird feeds worms to its fat new babies. Flashes of fire and sparks from welder’s arcs crackled over the decks.

  Then there was the noise. A clattering of hundreds of air hammers, the growl of crane horns, the clang of flangers’ mauls on bulkheads.

  There were not only two guards in gray uniforms at the gates, but two armed Naval Shore Patrolmen with black holsters and serious personality problems. There was no other way in. When a guard looked my way, I walked right up to the gate.

  One of the guards, who looked about twenty years older than the forty he had looked like from across the street, stepped out to greet me.

  “Can I help you?” he shouted.

  “I’m late,” I shouted back. “Car broke down a block away. Kelly in payroll’s waiting for this.”

  I held up the briefcase.

  “Kelly?”

  “Kelly, Kennedy, some Irish name,” I yelled with irritation.

  “He means Connelly,” came the second guard, moving to join us. The second guard was even older than the first.

  “Connelly didn’t leave any message about … What’s your name?”

  “Bruno, Bruno Podbialniak, First Security Bank of Hollywood,” I said, reaching into my pocket for a business card. I really had one somewhere among the dozens of other cards I’d picked up over the years. When I had need of a bank or a banker, Bruno was it. I cost him more in cards than he and First Security made on investing my few bucks.

  I knew where Bruno’s cards were in the wallet, at the bottom of the pile in the bill compartment, right in front of one that read: “Kirk Woller, Mortician to the Stars.” I handed a card to both guards who looked at them and then at each other.

  “I’ll give Connelly a call,” said the second guard.

  I looked at my father’s watch impatiently. I was going with the punches. Don’t think, I told myself. Just run the combinations.