Stuart Kaminsky - Melting Clock

“Stop that man! He’s a spy!”

I didn’t look down again. I climbed as fast as I could and almost bumped into Taylor, who had stopped about twenty feet from the ground, where a crowd of spy haters had congregated.

“He’s lying,” Taylor said. “I work here. My name’s Taylor. Pipefitter. Section Twelve.”

“Spy,” I said. “I’m F.B.I.”

Taylor looked up at me and I whispered to him, “We can still walk with that money. You want to deal?”

He gritted his teeth as he looked up at me, but he nodded.

“We’re coming down,” I said. “Give us room. He just surrendered.”

Sounds of applause below as first Taylor and then I hit the ground.

“You want help with him?” a guy with a chow-chow face said.

“We’ll be fine,” I said, pushing Taylor ahead of me. “I’ve got some men waiting for us at the gate.”

“Here’s your gun,” said a woman with a snood and incredible breasts. “I think it’s broke.”

“Thanks,” I said, putting the.38 in my pocket.

It was more than broken. It was dead, but I didn’t want to leave it here.

“Back to your lunches,” I shouted. “He won’t give me any trouble.”

It took us about a minute to clear the crowd. A couple of people patted me on the back and one or two took a swing at Taylor.

“Where’s your car?” I asked.

He didn’t talk, but he did move to his left toward a line of cars across from Slip 3. I followed him to a black Ford. He got in; I put the briefcase in the back seat and rummaged around in the glove compartment. There was a greasy cloth behind some candy wrappers. I took it out, removed my windbreaker, threw it on the floor in the back, slumped over and covered my face with the cloth.

“Go to the gate. Tell them I poked my eye out on some machine and you’re taking me to the hospital,” I ordered. “Drive fast and make a sudden stop. Look scared, panicked.”

“You’re gonna lose more than an eye today,” he said.

“I’m glad we’re friends again,” I said. “Drive and remember the full briefcase in the back.”

He drove and it went just fine. Under the cloth I moaned, groaned, and screamed. I could tell from the voice of the guy who stopped us that it was the old guard who had driven me to Payroll.

“Go on, go on,” he said. “I’ll call and tell them you’re coming.”

Taylor pulled into the street, and I turned my head and watched us shoot past my Crosley.

All in all, I was having a good day.

Taylor drove up Western. We didn’t talk. I didn’t have a plan and I was sure he was working on one. Once I was wherever we were going, there wasn’t much to keep him and his brother from taking the money and keeping the clock and the painting. Or, for that matter, from keeping everything and sending me back in the briefcase.

I didn’t get much time to think about it. Taylor turned right when we hit Rosecrans and then a few blocks later he turned left. We were on a street of little once-white one-bedroom houses that probably looked tired the day they were finished. There wasn’t much room between the houses but the community made up for it by letting the weeds grow tall and the jungle make a comeback.

A pair of old guys were sitting on a porch next to the house we pulled up in front of. One old guy was sloppy fat, wearing a blue shirt with the pocket torn not-quite-off. The guy he was talking to was thin, dressed in a suit and tie and sitting straight up with his hands in his lap and his eyes watching us get out of the car.

“Taylor,” called the fat man.

Taylor jumped out of the Ford and waited for me to get out with the briefcase. He didn’t bother to look at the fat old man.

“Guy here’s been waiting for you,” said the fat man, looking at the well-dressed thin one.

“I’ve got no time,” Taylor said, moving toward the house we were parked next to.

We started through the veldt and the thin man came alive, jumping out of his chair and cutting through the underbrush to head us off. He just beat us to the door.

Up close he didn’t look as old as he had from the street, but neither did he look as well-dressed. His jacket was rumpled. His pants were worse, and the collar of his white shirt was frayed. I didn’t like his tie either.

“Mr. Taylor?” he said, looking at both of us and barring our way to the door.

“Him,” I said, pointing at my buddy.

“James Taylor?” the thin man asked.

“John Taylor,” Taylor corrected sullenly. “I’ve got no time. Out of the way.”

The man didn’t move.

“My name, Mr. Taylor, is Frank Buxton. I came in response to James Taylor’s call. He said I should be at this address one hour ago, that he had a clock of unknown vintage he wished me to evaluate. I knocked at the door but there was no answer.”

“Forget it,” said Taylor, muscling past Buxton. “We changed our mind.”

“Then,” said the thin man, “you will still have to pay my fee for home and office estimates. Twenty dollars for the time I have wasted. Eighty cents for gasoline.”

“Send me a bill,” growled Taylor, putting his key in the door.

“Payment now would be preferable,” said Buxton. “In fact it is essential.”

Taylor had stepped into the darkness of the house but had left the door open for me. Buxton turned to follow him but I put a hand on his arm and said, “Hold it.”

He stopped, turned, and waited while I reached into the briefcase and came out with a bill. It was a fifty. I handed it to Buxton. Taylor was back in the doorway.

“Get in here, Peters.”

“I have no change,” said Buxton, standing there with the bill in his hand.

“Keep it,” I said. “What time did Taylor call you?”

“Get in the house, Peters,” Taylor said threateningly.

“At nine this morning. Said it was urgent.”

“Thanks,” I said and followed Taylor inside.

He closed the door and I stood there waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light trickling in through the closed shades and half-drawn curtains of the living room.

“John,” I said. “I think you and Jim were planning to be greedy. I think you and your brother were planning to take Dali’s money and keep the clock.”

“Only if the clock was worth a lot of money,” he said, walking across the room and pulling back the drapes.

The room wasn’t exactly washed in light now, but I could see a little better. A green sofa with wooden arms sat against one wall of the room. There were spots on the green, turning white from too many bodies and too much sweat. The once-dark wooden arms were scratched with dirty yellow lines. There were two other chairs in the room. One was red, a washed-out red that had given up trying to look like silk the night Taft took his first bath in the White House. The remaining chair was blue with embroidered tree leaves only slightly darker than the background. There were two lamps, one on an end table between the chairs and one floor lamp trying to be modern but missing it by two decades. Newspapers were open and everywhere.

“Charming place you have here,” I ventured.

“Jim and I haven’t touched it since Mom died,” he said, moving across the room to an open door. “Jim,” he called.

I followed him. We looked through the bedroom door at two beds, twin beds that looked a bit small for the Taylor kids.

“Nice beds,” I said, following him back into the living room.

“Mom and Dad bought them for us when we were seven. Where the hell is Jim? He was supposed to be here.”

There was only one room left, the kitchen, where we found Jim seated at a square table with chrome legs and a white Formica top. Jim was face-down on the newspaper spread out on the table. I knew he was dead because something with a wooden handle was buried in the back of his neck. It was buried so deep that I couldn’t see any of the blade. On the table, facing the handle, was a clock, the triplet of the two I had seen sitting in front of two other corpses over the past two days. This one wasn’t ticking. The key was in the hole under the minute hand.