Stuart Kaminsky - Melting Clock

Seidman shifted and looked uneasy.

“Can’t match the bullet. No known make or caliber.”

“Look for the second Place in Los Angeles to find the first painting. You have till midnight on New Year’s Day,” said Phil, looking directly at me with that new grin. “We found the note in your wallet. You were too late, Tobias.”

“We’re playing with a wacko,” said Seidman. “Did this guy kill Place just because he had the second name in the phone book?”

“Which of you figured it out?” I asked, my eyes fixed on my brother’s face for the slightest twitch that would tell me he was ready to attack, and that neither Seidman nor the Fifth Army would stop him.

“It didn’t take much,” Phil said. “We had a clue you didn’t mention. Place’s dead body.”

“Look-” I started.

“No, you listen,” Phil said. “You’ll find the next on Thirteenth Street at midnight tomorrow.”

“In the town of the spectator,” I added.

“What?” asked Phil, sensing a needle.

“The writing on the painting. It ended with ‘the Town of the Spectator,’” Seidman explained.

“Who gives a shit?” said Phil. “There is no Thirteenth Street in Los Angeles. There are only seven listings for Street in the phone book and there’s no Thirteenth Street. Pico is Thirteenth Street. There’s a Thirteenth Avenue.”

“He says Street, he means Street,” I said.

“How many paintings are there, Toby?” asked Seidman. “Are they all by Dali? Who’s the guy who owns the paintings, the guy you’re working for?”

I sat up a little and pulled at my underwear. I was fragrant from the night in the lockup, fragrant and hungry.

“Come on, Steve,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound like a whine. “If I give you the name of my client, I’m out of business. My reputation will be shot. It’s what I’ve got to sell.”

“You can sell apples on the street in front of Union Station,” said Phil. “I’ll buy a dozen.”

“Phil, you’re my brother, and I really love you, but you’ve got no sense of humor.”

This time the fist came down on the desk. Everything on the blotter and beyond, the in-box, a few pencils, the photograph of somebody’s wife, danced around. Phil went cold blank, a very bad sign. Seidman saw it and stepped away from the wall again, motioning for me to get up. I figured he planned to block his partner, not enough to do much good but enough to give me a start out the door. I wasn’t sure where I’d go when and if I did make it beyond the Coke machine.

“Phil,” Seidman warned.

I started to get up.

“Let him go,” said Phil, folding his hands in front of him on the desk, his knuckles going white.

“What?” asked Seidman.

“Let him go,” Phil repeated. “Go downstairs with him and tell Liebowitz to let him go. Tell him I said so.”

“Mike Liebowitz isn’t going to-” Seidman began.

“Mike Liebowitz owes me his job,” said brother Phil. “If he gives you a hard time, tell him to remember the Pacific Electric case in ’36.”

“Steve,” I said. “It’s a trick to get you out of the room.”

“No trick,” said Phil with a laugh. “I’m not in the mood for tricks.”

He turned the squeaky swivel chair so he was facing the wall, and Seidman and I exchanged what’s-going-on looks. Seidman shrugged first. Then he went out the door. Silence. The room needed a window.

“Phil,” I said.

“Ruth’s got a growth in her left breast,” he said. “The doctor says it doesn’t look good.”

“Shit, Phil, I’m-”

“Just shut up, Toby,” he cut in, holding his hammy right hand up.

I shut up. More silence.

“She needs surgery,” he said. “Day after tomorrow. The boys don’t know. Surgeons are fucking butchers. You know that?”

“Some of them-”

“They’re butchers,” he repeated.

“I play handball with a surgeon,” I said. “Good one named Hodgdon. He’s kind of old, specializes in bones, but he’d know a-”

Phil shook his head.

“Found out Wednesday,” he said. “Hell of a New Year’s present. We haven’t told anybody, not even Ruth’s mother.”

“I’m sorry, Phil,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Give her a call. Don’t let her know you know.”

“I will,” I said. “Can I have Doc Hodgdon give you call?”

Phil shrugged. “Ruth’s got great teeth,” he said. “The kids all have her teeth.”

“Wouldn’t be so bad if they had our teeth,” I said.

“You know how old mom was when she died?” he asked.

“Forty-three,” I said. I wasn’t likely to forget. She died giving birth to me, which, I was sure, was one of the reasons Phil had decided before he even saw me that he would make my life miserable.

“Ruth is forty-three,” he said.

“Come on, Phil. It’s …”

The opening door stopped me.

Seidman. He looked at me and then at Phil’s back and then back at me. I shrugged.

“You can walk,” he said to me, and then to Phil, “Liebowitz says he’s doing the papers and wants you to sign off. He says you answer to the D.A.”

Phil laughed. It didn’t seem very important to him. I got up and moved to the door.

“I’ll call Ruth,” I said.

“Thirteenth Street, Town of the Spectator,” Phil answered. “You got till midnight.”

There should have been more, but there wasn’t. Phil didn’t want more and I didn’t know how to give it.

I moved past Seidman, went down the hall past the Coke machine and down the stairs to the desk to pick up my things. I signed for everything and got it all back except for the note to Dali. I didn’t complain.

I took a cab back to Lindberg Park, paid with Dali’s advance and made a note of the payment and tip as an expense item in my notebook. Across the street a cop was standing at the door to Place’s place. He looked at me suspiciously. My khaki Crosley had been sitting there all night and was hard to miss. I got in the passenger side of the Crosley, which I had not locked the night before, and slid into the driver’s seat. I was halfway down the block before the cop got into the street. In the rear-view mirror, I could see him writing my license number. I hope he got a merit badge.

It was Saturday. Kids were out playing. Lawns were being watered and I had till midnight to find a painting on Thirteenth Street.

Manny’s was open for breakfast. Since it was a weekday and a little after eight in the morning, I had no trouble finding a parking space right on Hoover. Two days in a row. How lucky could I get?

Manny’s Saturday breakfast crowd was there, including Juanita the fortune teller, who had an office in the Farraday. I liked Juanita, a shapeless sack of a woman who dressed as if she were trying out for a road company production of Carmen. Out of Juanita’s overly painted lips sometimes came a zinger that made me think she might be the real thing.

She spotted me over her cup of coffee and said, “Give me one at Santa Anita, Peters.”

“You’re the fortune teller,” I said, sitting next to her on a red leatherette stool.

“I can’t use it for myself,” she said. “I told you that. If I could use it for myself, you think I’d be half a month back on my rent?”

“No,” I said.

She looked at me.

“You look like a wreck.”

Manny had started a breakfast taco when he saw me walk through the door. Manny was a culinary master of impeccable taste. He always took the cigarette out of his mouth when he served a customer, and he changed his apron at least twice a month. He was about forty, dark, with a bad leg he claimed to have earned riding with Pancho Villa as a kid.

“She’s right,” said Manny, putting the breakfast taco, black coffee, and a Pepsi in front of me.