Melting Clock (15 page)

“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 place 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.”

“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.