Stuart Kaminsky - The Howard Hughes Affair

The tears were overflowing, and she was standing over me in the chair. I half expected her to pick up one of Shelly’s contaminated instruments and go to work on me. Instead she leaned over and put her open mouth on mine. Her mouth was large and engulfed me to the point where I had trouble breathing.

She let me up for air and I caught some, but she wasn’t breathing hard.

“I haven’t even touched a man in years,” she whispered.

I felt sorry for her, but she didn’t give me much time to feel anything. She took my face in her hands and placed her mouth back on mine. I was in an awkward position for getting up, but I had the impression that even if we were on equal footing, Trudi Gurstwald was a match for me. Besides, I didn’t dislike what she was doing. I was just puzzled by it. I had learned to distrust the few women who had found me irresistible. There always seemed to be a price to pay for it. On the other hand, I never really had the will power to turn down the attention. It came too infrequently. So I didn’t try to stop Trudi Gurstwald and did my best to enjoy her kisses, while being curious about where they would lead to and wondering whether she was crazy and how long she’d let the cab wait.

Her hands moved down my chest to my legs and then between them, and I stopped being curious. She may have been desperate and distraught, but she was doing the work. I gave her some help, and she moaned loud enough to wake any of the bums who might have been sleeping in the halls.

We wrestled cooperatively around the dental chair getting my pants down and her dress up. At one point her breasts battered my head against the head rest and almost knocked me out. I had a fantasy of Trudi Gurstwald going up against Chief Little Wolf at the Eastside Arena and taking him in two falls.

Making love in a dental chair-if that was what we did-is definitely not recommended for someone with a bad back. It has its rewards, but it also has it consequences. I was exhausted when Trudi Gurstwald gave me a final smile through her tears, kissed my sore mouth and stood up.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely.

“My pleasure,” I said, trying to stand up and finding myself pushed back in the dental chair by the pain in my kidney. I pulled my pants on in a sitting position and tucked in my shirt. Trudi looked at me soulfully and I thought she was going to have another attack of emotion. I wasn’t sure I could survive it.

“Trudi,” I said, pushing myself from the chair and taking her hand before she could take mine or some other part of me. “What did you see at Hughes’ house that night?”

She looked at me in surprise and straightened her hair and then remembered one of the points of her visit.

“It was that Army major,” she said.

“Barton.”

“Yes, Barton. I went upstairs that night to the-how do you say it politely?”

“Toilet.”

“Yes, toilet. Someone was using the downstairs toilet and I saw this Major Barton coming out of a room. The door opened enough so I could see it was an office with papers and drawings. Major Barton was nervous and looked around both ways to see if anyone saw him coming from the room. I was in the …”

“Toilet.”

“Yes, I must remember that word. It is awkward to say Powder Room when one doesn’t mean Powder Room.”

“Major Barton,” I prodded.

“He looked both ways, closed the door and went down the steps. He had sweat on his head, and he wiped it with his sleeve, though the night was cool.”

She squeezed my hand and looked soulful again.

“Anton was afraid I should tell you and he would get involved,” she said. “I had told him. He said it would be the questionable word of two Germans against that of an American officer. But I had to tell you. If someone finds out we knew and said nothing, and it turned out to be important, we would be in even bigger trouble.”

“Right,” I said. Her eyes were growing moist again and I added, “You’ve been here about half an hour. You’ve got Anton and a cab waiting.”

“Again soon?” she asked.

This time I kissed her first.

“Again soon,” I said and guided her to the alcove, where she tripped against the once-leather-covered chair.

When she stepped into the hall, I locked the door behind her to keep her from a sudden change of mind. I wasn’t worried about her being attacked by any of the neighborhood bums. She could take care of herself.

I figured it was about nine and was about to turn on the radio to find out, when the phone rang.

“Peters,” I said.

“I say this once,” the voice said in sharp Germanic English. It was a man’s voice and it was not a patient voice. “You cease your current investigation. You cease or soon there will be no Toby Peters.”

“Shelly,” I said. “Is this your idea of a joke? Your Hitler is as bad as your Clark Gable.”

“This is no joke,” hissed the voice. “And you would be wise to heed my warning.”

“I don’t know who’s doing your dialogue, pal,” I said, “but it could use a rewrite.”

He hung up before I could. I knew it could have been a gag. But I also knew there was a chance that it wasn’t, so I calmly got my things together, put on my jacket, turned out the lights and decided to go home and sleep on it.

I got as far as the alcove door when I saw the shadow in the pebble glass behind the reversed lettering of Shelly’s and my name. It looked like the shadow’s owner had something in his hand. I stepped back and whoever it was tried the door I had locked behind Trudi Gurstwald.

“We know you are in there, Peters,” came a voice suspiciously like the one on the phone. “We called from across the street. Now open the door and we will have a nice talk without disturbing people.”

His use of the editorial “we” failed to convince me that someone was with him. On the other hand, he seemed to have a gun and mine was in my car’s glove compartment.

“Look,” I said, backing away in the hope of making it to the phone, but the “look” was as far as I got. The figure in the hall put two shots through the window, shattering Shelly’s name and mine. The bullets hit somewhere in the general vicinity of the whitish square where the gum disease chart once rested. I remember thinking we’d have to put the chart back to cover the bullet holes, and then I realized the bullets had come within a hair of hitting my face. The guy with the gun had been waiting for my voice so he could fire toward it. I backed against the wall, reaching for one of the alcove chairs. There was an open square where the window had been and it showed the hall. I saw no one there. But I heard no footsteps. Stupid anger took hold, and I went for the door like a Neanderthal, with chair in hand. Chair against gun. Idiot against achiever.

I opened the door, pushing glass out of the way, and stepped into the hall. Whatever he hit me with, and I think it was the gun, was right on target, low on the skull. I went down, knowing he had suckered me into the hall while he pressed himself against the wall.

I didn’t go out right away. My hand must have automatically dropped the chair and went to the back of my head to keep in the blood or stop another blow. I rolled over on my back and dimly saw a guy above me with a gun. I had never seen him before. He reminded me of a fuzzy version of Ward Bond, and then I was out.

Koko the Clown took my hand and led me into the inkwell where we found ourselves in Cincinnati. He drove me up the side of the hill across the river and out to the suburb in the hills where I lived. Then Koko disappeared. I ran to my two-level house to greet my family, but they weren’t there. I ran outside and they weren’t there. I ran past rows of shacks and no one was there. I was alone in Cincinnati and scared. I was scared because no one else was alive in Cincinnati and because I’ve never been in Cincinnati in my life and I wondered even while I dreamt what the hell I was doing there. I think I also wondered if I was dead. Someone groaned, and Koko reappeared to take my hand. He led me to my car, with the bumper still missing because Arnie hadn’t gotten to it, and drove me back down the hill and out of the inkwell.