Melting Clock (21 page)

The crowd went silent except for the orange, who had turned into a giant screwdriver—the vodka kind—and was babbling about hairy teeth.

“Off with his head,” Dali ordered the executioner, pointing at the offending fruit.

The executioner weaved through the crowd and headed for the orange, who saw him coming, screamed, and went running up the beach in the general direction of Monterey. With relative calm restored, Dali began to recite in a language that sounded a little like Spanish, but just a little.

The bottle of mustard whispered, “I think it’s Portuguese.”

“No,” said a small voice behind me. “It is Catalan.”

“Gunther,” I said, turning around to look down at the Coroner of the Munchkins.

“It was all I could find at short notice,” he said.

Gala glared down at us with a look to whither knaves, and Dali went on gesturing eloquently as he continued reciting and pointing at the sea.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered to Gunther.

“The phone here is disconnected and I had to tell you—” he began, but Dali stopped him.

“You have come from a dream to destroy my poetry,” Dali shouted.

“On the contrary,” said Gunther, who was not known to possess a sense of humor. “We have come from Los Angeles in time to save your life.”

“We?” I asked.

“I drove here with Alice Pallis and the baby Natasha,” Gunther explained.

The crowd on the beach applauded. They seemed to think the Munchkin and the archer were part of the performance.

“Minute impostor,” Dali cried. “You destroyed my poem. You try to frighten Dali.”

“You were reciting ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ in Catalan,” said Gunther.

Dali looked astounded. Tears welled in his eyes. His mustaches wilted.

“Off with his head,” cried Gala.

The executioner made his way back from the shore and advanced on Gunther. The crowd loved it. A zebra-striped onion on my right began to weep with laughter.

“It is the Three Bears,” Gunther repeated with dignity.

The executioner shouldered his ax, reached down, and picked Gunther up under one arm.

“Priceless,” cackled the snail.

I put my arm on the executioner’s shoulder. “Put him down.”

The executioner shook me off and started up the hill with Gunther struggling to get free. I went after them and tripped on my bow.

“Brilliant,” shouted a man behind me.

“Bravo,” called another.

I didn’t look back but I had the feeling Dali was either taking a bow and credit or curling into a ball and crying. I looked to the top of the hill for Jeremy, but he wasn’t there so I scrambled forward.

The executioner with his Munchkin bundle had disappeared around a corner of the house by the time I made it to the top and managed to stand. I moved none-too-quickly after them and knew when I turned the corner that I was going to lose the race.

My hope was that the executioner was one of Dali’s hirelings or pals. My fear was that he was Gregory Novak. There were cars in front of the house on the driveway and on the unpaved street, but no executioner with a Munchkin. I considered putting an arrow in my bow and stalking through the forest of cars, but I didn’t have much faith in my bow or my aim.

I wondered where Jeremy was, but I didn’t take time to look for him. Instead I went back to the house and opened the door. Something clattered. The lights were all on, which didn’t make me feel any better. I expected the big guy with the hood to come out from behind everything with ax raised high. But Gunther was in trouble, so I moved forward, considering possible weapons. The best I could do was a stone figure of a naked woman on a shelf. The woman figure looked like a garden rake with big round eyes.

I followed the clatter to the room Jeremy and I had slept in. From the hallway I couldn’t see anyone in the bedroom. I didn’t want to take any chances, at least any more than I could avoid. I was about to step into the room when something soft and fuzzy touched my hand.

I think I yelped. I turned and started to swing at a startled Sherlock Rabbit whose mustaches went wild.

“Assassino,
” cried Dali.

I didn’t have time or the chance to reply because the blade of an ax came whistling past my ear and tore through the wall next to my face. I pushed Dali into the room ahead of me and took a swing over my shoulder with the big-eyed rake woman. I hit the hooded guy on the shoulder. I turned to face him and try again, but he had already pulled the ax out of the wall and was ready for another go at me.

I ran. Dali was ahead of me. I shoved him through a door and kicked it closed behind me.

“Run,” I said. “Get help.”

There was a latch on the door. I threw it just as the executioner turned the handle. Dali watched, mouth open. He didn’t run.

The ax head came crashing through the door, straight through and missed my nose, which is fortunately so flat that it’s almost no nose, by the width of a War stamp.

I pushed Dali into the next room. I slammed the door shut behind us. It didn’t have a lock. I picked up a chair and shoved it under the door handle.

This, as you may recall, is about where I started the story. So let’s leap forward about a minute.

There I sit behind the driver’s seat in my little green hat with a red feather, Dali next to me, a cowering bunny with a rapidly wilting mustache.

In front of me, through the windshield, I could see a hole in the little tin hood of my Crosley. Behind, in the mirror, I could see trees. Beside me, just outside the window, the executioner pulled the ax back. There was no room to move. There is no forward or backward in a Crosley and Dali filled what little there was on my right.

“Open the goddamn door and run, Sal.” I ordered.

I closed my eyes, expected the crash of glass, shards across my face, even the blade digging into my skull. I heard the door open and Dali gasp. Something was happening just outside the window. I opened my eyes and beheld on the hood of the Crosley, gurgling at me, a beautiful smiling baby. I turned to look at the executioner and saw him stagger back, a hand grabbing the wrist of his ax-arm, another hand pulling back the executioner’s hood.

I shoved Dali through the far door and scrambled after him. We turned to watch the battle. But it wasn’t much of a battle. The executioner was big and strong, but Alice Pallis was stronger. Jeremy appeared from the side of the house and ran forward to scoop his daughter from the hood of the Crosley just as Alice lifted the executioner and threw him over the top of the car. The ax sailed out of his hand and through a window at the back of the house.

“Thanks, Alice,” I said. Jeremy handed his wife the baby.

Dali looked down at the executioner.

“Odelle!”

Odelle, a cut the size of the Russian River on her forehead, looked up at Dali with hatred.

Jeremy lifted Odelle up and sat her on the hood of my Crosley. The hood sagged. From the beach we could hear what sounded like the chant of monks.

“Where’s Gunther?” I demanded, grabbing her shoulder.

“Gunther?” asked a dazed Odelle.

“The little guy.”

“In the house,” she mumbled. “I locked him in a closet.”

“Why did you want to kill Dali?” Dali asked, completely bewildered.

“Betrayer,” came Odelle’s reply.

“You are mad,” he said.

“I have the painting,” she said between tightly clenched teeth as blood rivered down her face. “You had my faith, my loyalty, and you were laughing at me.”

“Never,” said Dali, looking to me, Jeremy, Alice, and baby Natasha for support. Since we didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, we stood watching.

“Why’d you kill them?” I asked her.

“Them?” Odelle asked, looking at me.

“Street, Place, Taylor,” I said.

“The only one I killed was Taylor, in his kitchen. He wanted to sell the painting back. He was going to give it to Dali for money. I wanted to destroy Dali and then his reputation. I won’t cry.”

Alice shifted the baby and came up with a handkerchief.

“Wipe your face,” Alice said gently and Odelle wiped her face.

“Taylor killed Street and Place?” I tried.

“No,” she said. “They were dead before he got to them.”

“Then who the hell killed Street and Place?”

No one answered; then I remembered.

“Gunther.”

“Gunther killed them?” asked Alice.

“No,” I said. “Gunther said he knew who killed them.”

I pushed past Dali and ran into the house through broken doors, around overturned furniture. It wasn’t hard to find Gunther. He was kicking at the door of the closet of the room where Jeremy and I had slept. I opened the door and the Munchkin coroner came tumbling out. I helped him up and led him to the nearest bed.

“You all right, Gunther?”

“I am all right,” he said, looking around to see if anyone but me was present to view his loss of dignity.

“Alice caught the executioner who threw you in the closet,” I said.

“It was a woman.”

“Right,” I said. “She says she didn’t kill Street or Place. You said …”

“Grigory Yefimovich Novykh,” said Gunther.

“Grig … Gregory Novak?”

“No,” corrected Gunther, removing his hat and placing it on the bed. “Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, the son of Yefim Novykh born in Pokroyvskoye, Russia, where as a boy he was given the name by which he would be known throughout his life—the Debaucher, or, in Russian, Rasputin. Your Misters Place and Street were murdered by Rasputin.”

R
asputin died twenty-six years ago in St. Petersburg,” Jeremy said, entering the room with baby Natasha in his arms.

“He died in Florida?” I asked.

“St. Petersburg, Russia. Leningrad,” Jeremy explained.

“A dead man killed Place and Street?” I asked, reasonably.

“Alice has taken the lady to see a doctor,” Jeremy went on. “She’ll then take her to the police. Dali went back to his party.”

“The painting, the one you told me to keep, the one with the hole shot in it,” said Gunther, removing his fake beard. “The clock.”

“A painting of one of the clocks,” I confirmed.

“There was writing on the clock in the painting. Is there writing in Russian on the bottom of the clocks?”

“Yes,” I said, “but what’s …?”

“The writing says, ‘I place a curse on these clocks, which I leave for Yusupov, Purishkevich, Pavlovich, and Lazovert. I remind them that time will end and they will join me where time has no beginning.’ And it is signed, ‘Rasputin.’”

“A curse killed Place and Street, a curse on some clocks by a dead … whatever he was,” I said, walking to the window.

“He was a mystic, a Siberian peasant, who apparently improved the condition of Alexis Nikolayevich, the hemophiliac heir to the Russian throne,” said Jeremy.

I wasn’t about to argue with a giant in a toga. Natasha started to make a humming sound. Jeremy bounced her gently in his arms and kept talking.

“He became an adviser to the Empress Alexandra and preached that sin was a necessary prerequisite to salvation. The Empress was convinced that this sexually obsessed holy man could not only save her son but also the Romanov dynasty, and the Russian autocracy. When World War I began, rumors of his having an affair with the Empress were accepted as truth, and just before the war a group of men—a prince, a physician, a member of the Duma, the legislature, and the Grand Duke—decided to kill Rasputin. There is reason to believe that Rasputin was aware of their plan but felt they would not dare to kill him. On the night of December 30—actually December 17 on the old Russian calendar—the doctor poisoned Rasputin. He did not die so the Prince shot him, but Rasputin ran and the member of the Duma shot him again. They then tied him up and threw him in the Neva River. An examination of the body showed that Rasputin drowned.”

“You want me to guess the names of the four guys who killed Rasputin?” I asked.

“Feliks Yusupov, Vladimir Mitrofamonov Purishkevich, Dmitry Pavlovich, and Dr. Lazovert,” Jeremy supplied.

“Dr. Lazovert,” I said. “I heard … He was a friend of Gala’s family. She mentioned him or someone with a name like that when she …”

“Time?” asked Jeremy.

I looked at my father’s watch. It said six-twenty, which may have been true in Paris, but not in Carmel.

“Midnight,” said Gunther, examining the pocket watch he pulled out from under his black tunic.

Jeremy handed me the baby and ran for the door with Gunther a few steps behind him. I followed them, cursing my healing leg, and got to the hill overlooking the beach in time to see first Jeremy and then Gunther hit the bottom and race across the sand toward Gala and Dali, who stood in front of the clock surrounded by the odd crowd.

Jeremy was shouting, but no one was listening. His toga dragged behind him. Crazy shadows from the bonfires danced on the side of the hill and along the sand. At midnight, Dali had said, his wife would wind the clock.

I tried yelling, but it was no use. Jeremy hit the crowd as Gala held up the key to the clock and said something I couldn’t make out, something in Russian. I had the feeling she was reciting the words written on the bottom of the clock. Her hand came down and the key approached the hole in the clock face. Dali stood triumphant on his throne, his hand on his wife’s shoulder. Jeremy was almost there. He was approaching from behind the Dalis. I suppose his idea was to stop Gala, but I could see there was no time.