Stuart Kaminsky - Melting Clock

“How did you find this Taylor?”

“He …” Gala began, but before she could finish a bullet shattered the window and blew a hole in the middle of the back of the naked woman in Dali’s painting. I jumped for Dali and pushed him out of the chair and to the floor.

“Get on the floor,” I called back to Gala and Odelle, who stood there in a trance. Odelle held the empty skull cup in front of her.

The second shot went into and through the chair in which Dali had been sitting a few seconds earlier.

“Turn off the goddamn lights, then,” I shouted.

Odelle moved to the light switch; Gala let out a scream and dropped down toward Dali and me on the floor. The third shot missed her, but not by much. The lights in the living room went out as Odelle galloped into the hall and hit the switch.

Darkness. No more bullets. Dali was mumbling something in Spanish. Gala answered him in French. They were both holding onto me.

I got free and crawled to the shattered window. In the darkness I could hear someone running away from the house.

“Stay down,” I warned, getting to my feet and going for the door. My leg was sending desperate signals that running was not one of my options. Whoever fired at Dali was on foot. Maybe I could get in my car and find him before he got to his car, assuming he was going for a car and wasn’t one of the neighbors who’d had enough of the Dalis.

A car pulled into the driveway. I opened the front door. Behind me, somewhere in the dark, I could hear Odelle hyperventilating like the Twentieth Century Limited. Barry Zeman, complete with tux and black tie, was getting out of a Stutz Bearcat.

“Peters?” he asked.

“Peters it is,” I said, moving for my car.

“What happened?” he asked, looking at the broken window and the darkened house.

“No time,” I said. “Dali will tell you.”

I crawled into the passenger side of my car and shuffled over to the driver’s seat.

“Where was Jim running?” he asked through my open window.

“Jim?” I echoed, turning on the ignition.

“Jim Taylor, J.T., my chauffeur,” he said, looking toward the street. “I just saw him running from the house.”

“Was he carrying anything?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Which way?” I asked, inching the car past him.

Zeman pointed to the left.

“What-?”

“Later,” I said, clanking into the night.

Downhill, wide open on a flat road with nothing coming, the Crosley could hit forty miles an hour. But I wasn’t in that kind of a hurry. I turned left on the street. I didn’t know what Taylor looked like; I’d only seen him from the back in the garage the day before, when I first met the Dalis. But there weren’t many people walking the streets of Beverly Hills at this hour, and the guy I wanted was carrying a rifle or something big enough to hold a rifle.

I coaxed the Crosley into doing its best. I didn’t want to panic Taylor. I wanted to spot him, slow down, follow him till I could nail him just before he got in his car.

I almost missed him. There aren’t any cars parked on Beverly Hills streets-you park in the driveway or the garage. Only intruders park on the street, and the cruising cops are on them before they can get an autograph or break into Fred Astaire’s pantry.

A few parties were going on, with cars parked in their respective driveways. I crept past the second party I came to in time to observe a Ford parked behind a white Rolls back into the street. The driveway lights caught the top of the driver and I could see he wasn’t dressed for a Sunday night party in Beverly Hills. I stopped in the middle of the street and turned off my lights.

The guy in the Ford screeched off toward Sunset. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like at least even money that Taylor was in the Ford. I started my car again and moved forward with the lights out. The Ford turned on Elm and I went after him, hitting the lights after I made the turn. If he kept running, I couldn’t catch him, but if he kept driving this fast, chances were good the Beverly Hills cops would be around a bush and on his tail. He was two blocks ahead of me, crossing Carmelita, when he decided to slow down. When he made the left onto Santa Monica I was about a block behind him, feeling sure that, barring the long-feared attack of the Japanese Kamikaze fleet, I should be able to stay with him till I came up with a plan.

First, an admission. Being in the traffic on Santa Monica, following a killer with a gun, felt good, solid. No riddles, puzzles, goofy paintings, just a good, clean killer with a rifle. I was comfortable.

This was my town. These were the moments I lived for. I didn’t even have to listen to the radio. I wished Gunther were there to share it, or Dash, or even Shelly. No, not Shelly.

Now all I needed was a plan.

Twenty minutes later, the Ford pulled into a parking spot on Nicholas Street next to Lindberg Park, no more than twenty or thirty feet from where I had parked last night. I knew I had the right man and I knew where we were going-the house of Adam Place, the dead taxidermist. What I didn’t know was why.

I kept driving and watched him through my rear-view mirror as he got out of the Ford, looked around, and crossed the street. I was in no big hurry now. I parked a block away and told myself to get to a phone and call the Culver City constables. I told myself, but I didn’t listen. What did Alice in Wonderland say? “I always give myself such very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.”

I got out, checked my.38, put it back in my holster and walked toward Place’s place. There were no lights on in the house of stuffed animals, at least none I could see. No cop guarded the scene of the recent murder. Cops were too busy with wild sailors on leave and riots among the Mexicans. There was a red-on-white sign on the door: DO NOT ENTER. CRIME SCENE. BY ORDER OF THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT AND THE CIRCUIT COURT OF LOS ANGELES.

I stayed away from the side of the house where Place’s neighbor lived, the one who had called the cops the night before, but that cut down the possible entries. A good-sized fence blocked the view of the neighbor to the right of the house. I used the fence to cover me while I walked to what I was sure was Place’s bedroom window.

There were no street lights in the neighborhood. Even if there had been, they would have been out by now. There was also no moon, because of a heavy cloud cover, which you’d never know by reading the papers-no weather reports were published or given on the radio for fear of aiding the Japanese in an attack. That never made much sense to me. The Japanese had to have better weathermen than we did in California.

I tried the window, but tried it so gently that I wasn’t sure I was putting enough pressure on it even if it were opened and greased with oleomargarine. Someone, probably Jim Taylor, was inside the house with a rifle, and Jim Taylor had already taken a shot at Dali tonight, not to mention that he had probably shot both Claude Street in Mirador and Adam Place in the same bedroom I was trying to enter.

I pushed a little harder. The window was unlocked. It shot up with a rattle and there I stood, waiting for the bullet to go through my chest the way it had gone through the back of Dali’s painting of Odelle. Nothing. I climbed in the window and tried to remember what the room looked like.

Then the light came on.

The man was about thirty or thirty-five, with a serious look on his face. His hair was movie star curly, and he looked a little like Gilbert Roland, except for the pock marks on his face. He wore a blue sweater, dark slacks, and a rifle aimed at my chest.

“Take out your gun with two fingers,” he said.

“I can’t take it out with two fingers.”