Stuart Kaminsky - Melting Clock

“You have a way with words, Miss …?”

“Get the hell out of here,” she said, starting to close the door.

“Miss Get-the-hell-out-of-here,” I answered, putting my foot in the door. “I’ve had one shit of a day.”

She kicked at my shoe, which was what I wanted. Instead of resisting I pulled my foot back, braced myself, and pushed against the door, which shot back and hit Miss Get-the-hell-out-of-here flat in the chest. She staggered and I stepped in, kicking the door shut behind me.

I didn’t like the look on her face as she pulled herself together. My.38 was in my hand now.

“Let’s be friends,” I suggested.

She took a step toward me.

“I’m holding a gun,” I said, pointing to the gun.

This made no impression on her. She was about a foot from my face and towering over me. I could either kill her or have the crap kicked out of me by a woman of no mean proportions.

“Odelle,” came a voice from my right as the woman grabbed my wrist. It hurt like hell.

“I’m just going to kill him a little,” Odelle said, breathing a combination of garlic and Sen-Sen in my face.

“Odelle,” Dali repeated. “Death offends and frightens me. It is not inspiring. No one, with the possible exception of one’s father, should ever die. Do you agree, Mr. Toby?”

“Completely,” I said, trying to pry Odelle’s hand from my wrist. My hand was numb and the gun was about to fall out of fingers quickly losing their feeling.

Odelle released my hand. I fumbled the.38 back into my holster and turned to Dali, who was posed on the staircase in a crimson velvet cape with a leopard-skin collar.

“Odelle,” he said, pointing at the woman, “is a model.”

“Great,” I said.

“There,” said Dali, pointing toward the living room. I looked where he was pointing and saw a canvas on an easel in the middle of the room. Painted on the canvas was a melting clock. Behind the clock was a naked woman whose back was turned. The woman’s shoulder was made of stone and little pieces were cracking off and tumbling toward the ground like tears of flesh. The woman, even from behind, looked nothing like Odelle.

“She pose for the clock?” I asked.

“Odelle is all women,” he said, stepping into the living room to admire his work. I followed him, Odelle uncomfortably close behind. I’d seen a clock like the one in the painting, in Place’s place and Street’s antique shop, but this clock was as runny as a Wilbur Bud candy on an August afternoon.

“Beautiful,” I said with my best touch of sarcasm.

“I could not paint the clock until there were no clocks,” he said, turning toward me and opening his eyes wide. “If you bring the clocks back, I will be unable to paint them. I do not paint from life. Life has no meaning.”

“Then why do you have little Odelle pose for you?”

“Odelle, I told you, is not a single woman. She is an abstraction. All women. The clocks are singular.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said.

The wavy hands of the clock in the painting said it was three-thirty. Since the clock was melting, the bottom of the clock was visible and I could see something written in gold letters in a language that looked like …

“Russian,” said Odelle in my ear.

Her voice was filled with awe.

“You were looking at the words on the clock,” she went on. “They’re Russian.”

“My paintings?” Dali asked.

“Another man’s been murdered,” I said. “Man named Claude Street. You know the name? Until he decided to move to Mirador to die, he lived in Carmel. Antique dealer.”

Dali touched his nose. “No. I do not know …”

“How about Gregory Novak?” I tried.

“Gregory Novak? No,” he said, moving to a fashionable Louis the Somethingth chair in front of the painting.

“How about Mrs. Dali?”

“I know her,” Dali said, looking at me with a smile and a raise of his eyebrows.

“Sal,” I said, looking down at Dali, “I am not in the mood for jokes. People are dead and I’m tired. I need the money but I don’t think I like you. I’m quitting. I’ll send you a bill and a report tomorrow.”

Odelle was suddenly between me and the painter.

“You do not talk to Mr. Dali like that,” she said very, very softly.

“Yes I do, Odelle. And if you touch me again, this time I will shoot you.”

I grinned at her and Dali said, “Odelle, Odelle, Odelle. You are a porcelain vase. You are not a … a … maleante, a …”

“… thug,” Gala supplied from the steps.

She stepped into the room, a tiny wraith in a leopard-skin cape with a crimson velvet collar, and moved to her husband. She took his hand and patted it reassuringly.

“He talks of murder,” Dali said, dragging the word murder out into three syllables.

“Dali doesn’t like to hear of death,” Gala said, turning to me. Odelle moved out of the way. “Death is not surreal.”

“I’m going home,” I said.

“You must find Dali’s painting, my clocks,” Gala said, stepping in front of me as I moved toward the door.

“The Highway Patrol has one of your clocks. Culver City police have another, and I don’t know where the hell the third one is.”

Gala looked puzzled.

“Ah,” said Dali behind me. “Sardines. Yes.”

“Where did you eat sardines?” I asked, turning back him.

“I hate sardines,” he said with a shudder, hugging himself. “I painted a can of sardines once because they came to me unbidden in a dream. I do not eat sardines.”

“In Carmel,” Gala said. “At the party when we moved in. You ate one on a cracker. Odelle, you remember, you were-”

“No!” shouted Dali, shaking his head. His hair went wild and his long pointed mustaches quivered. “That never happened.”

“It never happened,” Gala agreed. “Mr. Toby Peters, find Dali’s painting.”

I looked at Odelle, whose eyes were moist with concern. Those eyes, which a minute earlier were dripping blood, were moist and begging me for mercy.

“You got a Pepsi here?” I asked. “Or a beer?”

“Odelle,” said Gala, and Odelle went clumping off down the hall.

“Why would anyone kill two guys, leave goofy clues, and ruin two of your paintings?”

“He is an artist,” Dali tried, pointing a finger toward the ceiling. “You must find the last painting. If it is not returned …”

“And the clocks,” Gala added.

“Cops in Culver City have one of the clocks. Cops in Mirador have another. The only way you’re going to get them back is to admit they’re yours, and then the cops start asking you questions. You want to go down to the Wilshire Station and answer questions?”

“But it was only a … a … chiste, ” said Dali.

“A joke?” I said. “What are you …?”

“Tell him,” said Dali, smoothing down his hair.

Gala looked at her husband, then at the painting, and then at me as Odelle trotted back in the room, spilling beer from a cup shaped like an inverted skull. She held it out to me. I took it and drank deep while Gala Dali made up her mind.

“Dali,” she said to her husband, “this time you have gone too far.”

“It’s the only place I ever wanted to go,” Dali replied.

“A man,” Gala said, turning to me. “We paid him to take the two paintings. We were going to call the newspapers and tell them about it and give interviews, but he took three paintings and the clocks and now people are being murdered. That does not please Dali.”

I finished the beer and handed the empty glass to Odelle, who took it gratefully.

“I can understand that,” I said. “You think you can tell me something about this guy? Novak, right?”

“Novak?” Gala looked at me curiously. “No, his name was Taylor.”