Melting Clock (5 page)

“I can see where they might be a little tough to come home to every night.”

“Make it a thousand-dollar bonus if you find them in three days, Peters,” he said as I turned the key and prayed for the Crosley to start. It didn’t. I was left filled with incentive and no idea of what the hell to do to find the missing paintings.

“What about the clocks?” I asked.

“Good pieces,” he said. “Might be worth a few thousand each. More if they work.”

“They don’t work?”

“No one has ever wound them,” he said. “Gala says they were gifts to the Russian royal family, but the tsar never got to use them. Revolution came before they could be wound … or something. She and her family got them out and haven’t allowed anyone to wind them.”

“Why would anyone take clocks and paintings and then write crazy messages?” I asked.

“I’m an investor, not a detective,” Zeman said with a shrug as he moved away from the door. “Ask me about Dusenbergs or Brazilian bonds.”

I started the engine, heard it ping to life. I put it in gear as the front door to Zeman’s house opened and Gala Dali stepped out holding a glass of bubbling dark liquid. My Pepsi. I put the car into gear and headed for what passed for sanity in Los Angeles.

It was about seven when I hit Main Street looking for a place to buy a Pepsi and get a sandwich. Not much was open on New Year’s Day, not even Manny’s taco stand on Hoover. Usually I left the car at No-Neck Arnie’s, but everything was closed and there were plenty of parking spaces, including one right in front of the Farraday.

The streets weren’t deserted. They hadn’t been deserted in downtown Los Angeles since the war had started. Nightfall and the blackout did put a damper on the town but didn’t close it down—it just went undercover. The outer door to the Farraday was open but the one inside was locked. Jeremy Butler had started locking it when even he was forced to acknowledge that he was losing the battle against bums looking for a corner of cool tile. It wasn’t actually a battle; Jeremy never complained about the bums. He never complained about anything. He went about his business, Lysol in great hairy hand and a poem forming in the mind under the bullet-smooth cranium.

I listened to my footsteps echo across the inner lobby. There were a few lights on, enough to find your way to the stairs and elevator, but not enough to penetrate the far corners.

The Farraday was silent and I was in no hurry. I had about five hours till midnight and a puzzle to work on. I didn’t think I’d solve it. I took the elevator, an ornate wire cage from the days of Diamond Jim Brady. The elevator never quite came awake. It moved slowly upward in a swaying daze. Usually I walked.

On the way up I looked through the chipped gilt mesh at the offices on each floor where lies were sold. You want a lie to believe in? The Farraday was the place for it. Want to become a movie star? There were four agents in the Farraday. Want to sue everyone who ever told you the truth about yourself? You had a choice of lawyers, almost one to every floor. Did you want to think you were irresistible? Escort services for ladies and gents were on the second and fifth floor. Want to think you’re beautiful? Choice of two photographers, one of which was Maurice, Photographer to the Stars. The other was Josh Copeland, Glamour Portraits at a Reasonable Price. Bookies, pornographers, doctors of everything from throat to stomach, a single dentist—Sheldon Minck—who sold the promise of a winning smile and perpetual Sen-Sen breath. And then there was me on the sixth floor, where the elevator came to a jerky stop. I sold the lie that there was always one last chance when all reasonable attempts to solve your problems failed. Sometimes, usually because it was easy or I was lucky, I actually helped a client.

I pushed open the hinged metal doors and heard their clang echo down the halls and into the lobby below. I took a step toward the “suite” I shared with Sheldon Minck, D.D.S., S.D. (The S.D. was Shelly’s invention. It meant either “Special Dentist” or “Superb Dentures” or whatever he thought up that week.)

Someone laughed behind a door on the floor above. I recognized the laughter—it had come from Alice Pallis, wife of Jeremy Butler, mother of Natasha Butler. When Alice laughed it did more than echo. When Alice cried, it did more than moan. Alice was massive, almost as big as Jeremy. She had once had an office in the Farraday in which she published pornography. Jeremy had made her see the light and together they produced a baby and little books of poetry. They lived in the Farraday. They were the only ones who did, or wanted to.

I took out my key and went into the reception room of the office. I hit the light switch and didn’t bother to look around. The reception room was about the size of the inside of a Frigidaire. It smelled like an ashtray and was strewn with magazines, on the floor, the little table, and both of the mismatched waiting chairs. I picked up a three-month-old
Life
magazine and opened the inner door.

Shelly’s office offered a richer panorama of smells: a combination of wintergreen, cloves, cigars, stale food, and days-old coffee. It smelled like that for a good reason. I found the light switch on the wall, hit it, and discovered Dr. Sheldon Minck himself, asleep in his dental chair and fully dressed in gray trousers, a plaid jacket, a white shirt, and a tie that looked like the tongue of a giraffe I liked to feed in the Griffith Park Zoo. Shelly’s pudgy hands were clasped in front of him on his stomach, rising and falling with each overweight exhalation of air. A little pointed cardboard party hat was perched on his bald head. The rubber band intended to keep it there had crept up to his nose in an attempt to meet the thick glasses, which were creeping downward. Clamped in the right corner of his mouth was an unlit and particularly rancid-looking cigar.

I found myself wishing Dali were there to see the sight. I considered turning and getting the hell out of there before I had to deal with whatever had brought Shelly here on New Year’s Day. Instead of leaving, I tiptoed to the broom closet I used for an office, opened the door—taking about a month to do it so it wouldn’t wake Shelly—and went in. It was almost dark outside now but I didn’t turn on the light. I went behind my desk, opened the window behind it that looked down on an alley, and sat down, placing the
Life
magazine and the letter to Dali in front of me in an area of the desk relatively free of bills and old newspapers.

I looked around the room in the orange twilight and saw what I always see, two chairs squeezed in on the other side of the desk, and a wall with my Private Investigator’s license and a photograph—a photograph of me, my brother Phil, my father, and our dog, Kaiser Wilhelm. I was ten in that picture. Phil was fifteen. My mother was dead. My father soon would be. No one knows what happened to Kaiser Wilhelm. He just had enough one day and wandered off, some say in the direction of Alaska.

I wasn’t sure of the time. My old man’s watch didn’t help. It promised me it was two-thirty and that for sure was a lie, but I forgave it. I could have turned on the little white Arvin on my desk, a birthday gift a month ago from Gunther Wherthman. It was almost time for the Rex Stout show, but I didn’t want to wake Shelly beyond the door. I should have been thinking about Dali’s stolen paintings. I tried, but I found myself wondering what Gwen and Gunther looked like in mad embrace. I got no picture so I picked up the
Life
and squinted at it, holding it up so the last of the sun would hit the pages. I learned a lot about Admiral Leahy, a little about aerial navigation, and too much about why the Yankees won the American League championship. Then the sun was gone and I had to turn the light on.

I got up, moved slowly to the switch near the door, and watched the overhead 100-watt Mazda in a round white-glass globe go into action. I’d lost about an hour. I scratched the fingers of my left hand with the fingers of my right and went back to the desk.

Look for the second PLACE in Los Angeles to find the first painting. You have till midnight on New Year’s Day.

I pulled out my spiral pocket notebook and opened it to the page where I’d written the names of Dali’s suspects. Maybe I should start with Picasso? I needed Dash. He could distract me. Maybe I should sail paper airplanes out the window?

I was considering these options when the door to my office opened and Shelly walked in, a rolled-up dental journal in his hand. I could tell it was a dental journal by the smiling incisor on the curved cover.

“I thought you were a burglar,” he said, lowering the weapon.

“And you were going to beat the hell out of him with the
Dental Times?
”

“
Dental Hygiene,
” he corrected.

He still wore the little hat but the rubber band was back under one of his chins where it belonged. The cigar was in his hand and his glasses were pushed back on his nose. He plopped heavily into one of the chairs in front of the desk.

“Phones keep going out,” he said. “Tried to call Mildred a few minutes ago.”

“That’s nice, Shel,” I said.

“To be expected,” said Shel. “Got a patient—Leon, you know? Big guy with lots of ear hair.”

“I’m working, Shel,” I said.

“Leon says more than forty-three thousand Bell employees are in the armed services. He says there are copper shortages. Lucky to have phones at all, Leon says. You want to hear what happened to me?”

“No,” I said.

“Someone made a pass at Mildred again. You know who?”

“Sydney Greenstreet.”

“No, no. Murray Taibo’s brother, Simon, the accountant,” Shelly said, shaking his head in exasperation. “You know Mildred is irresistible.”

I said nothing. Mildred is a rake with a prune attached where a head should be. Mildred had, about a year ago, kicked Shelly out and run off with a Peter Lorre imitator. When the guy had been killed, Mildred went back to Shelly.

“I know,” I said.

“We had words, you know?”

“I can guess.”

“I was a little drunk,” said Shelly, looking at the palm of his left hand as if it had the answer to a question he was about to ask. “I said things. I was crazed, Toby, crazed. There is just so much a man can take, even if he is a board-certified dentist.”

What is there to say in the face of such wisdom?

“Anyway,” he said, “I think I told Mildred I was not coming home. So, here I am.”

“Here you are,” I agreed.

We sat in silence for about a minute and then he remarked, “It was a nice party.”

“I’m sure. Who would expect less from Murray Taibo?”

“Right.”

“I’ve got work to do, Shel,” I said, looking down at the thief’s note. “And time’s running out.”

“You want something to eat? I brought stuff from the party.”

“Let’s take a look.”

He went out, leaving the door open, and returned in a few seconds with a grease-stained brown paper bag which he placed on the desk in front of me. I opened it and fished out a quartet of hors d’oeuvres on little slices of stale white bread shaped like hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades. The stuff on them was creamy, orange, and sad. There was also a slice of chocolate cake. I ate a busted flush and the cake while Shelly, having paid for the time with leftovers, went on about the beauty of Mildred and the pangs of jealousy.

“You want to help?” I interrupted. “Take your mind off your troubles?”

“Why not?” He shrugged.

“Take off the hat,” I said.

He took off the hat and put it on the corner of my desk. I gave him a shorthand version of the little I knew about the Dali theft.

“Now look at this,” I said, handing him the note.

He held his glasses to keep them from falling and squinted at the note. The writing was large and clear. He handed the sheet back to me.

“Well?” I said.

“You’ve only got three hours,” Shelly answered, looking at his watch. “I’ve been gone almost two nights. I think I’ll go home.” He got up and headed for the door.

“Thanks, Shel,” I said, dropping crumbs into the now empty brown bag.

“Dali’s the painter who does the crazy stuff, right?” asked Shelly, turning toward me with an idea.

I nodded.

“You think you could talk him into painting a big tooth for me? You know, a tooth with a smile?”

“No, Shelly.”

“How do you know? You haven’t asked him.”

“I know.”

Shelly, unconvinced, retrieved his hat and went out, leaving the door open behind him. I looked at the note a few thousand times more and wondered what
the second place
in Los Angeles was. I wasn’t even sure what the first place was—the Brown Derby, Paramount, M.G.M.? I knew it wasn’t Columbia or Warners. Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard? The Beverly Hills Hotel? A little after ten and hungry again, I stuffed the note in my pocket, closed the window, turned out the light, and left the suites of Minck and Peters.

I was on the way down the stairs when I heard something move in the sixth-floor shadows. I stopped and waited a beat. Jeremy Butler stepped out.

“This is not a day of work,” he said. He was wearing dark trousers and a black turtleneck shirt. He had put on a few pounds in the ten years since he had stopped wrestling, but the arms and shoulders were still solid as a telephone pole.

“I’ve got a deadline,” I said.

“If we do not accept the events that mark the mythical passage of the year, if we do not honor the rituals and landmarks of time, great and small, seasonal and personal, we demean existence and its meaning. We demean ourselves.”

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but shook my head and smiled as if I did.

“What are you working on?”

I told him quickly and he listened quietly.

“Salvador Dali is a tormented man,” he said when I finished. “When one lives the lie of madness long enough, one inevitably becomes mad and it is no longer a lie. One is trapped within the illusion that he can remove the mask, but he dare not try for fear that he will be unable to do it. The tragedy of Salvador Dali is that he thinks he is a clown claiming to be a genius when in fact he is a genius who truly believes himself to be only a clown.”

“How did you figure all this out, Jeremy?”