Stuart Kaminsky - Melting Clock

“Where’s Gunther?” I demanded, grabbing her shoulder.

“Gunther?” asked a dazed Odelle.

“The little guy.”

“In the house,” she mumbled. “I locked him in a closet.”

“Why did you want to kill Dali?” Dali asked, completely bewildered.

“Betrayer,” came Odelle’s reply.

“You are mad,” he said.

“I have the painting,” she said between tightly clenched teeth as blood rivered down her face. “You had my faith, my loyalty, and you were laughing at me.”

“Never,” said Dali, looking to me, Jeremy, Alice, and baby Natasha for support. Since we didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, we stood watching.

“Why’d you kill them?” I asked her.

“Them?” Odelle asked, looking at me.

“Street, Place, Taylor,” I said.

“The only one I killed was Taylor, in his kitchen. He wanted to sell the painting back. He was going to give it to Dali for money. I wanted to destroy Dali and then his reputation. I won’t cry.”

Alice shifted the baby and came up with a handkerchief.

“Wipe your face,” Alice said gently and Odelle wiped her face.

“Taylor killed Street and Place?” I tried.

“No,” she said. “They were dead before he got to them.”

“Then who the hell killed Street and Place?”

No one answered; then I remembered.

“Gunther.”

“Gunther killed them?” asked Alice.

“No,” I said. “Gunther said he knew who killed them.”

I pushed past Dali and ran into the house through broken doors, around overturned furniture. It wasn’t hard to find Gunther. He was kicking at the door of the closet of the room where Jeremy and I had slept. I opened the door and the Munchkin coroner came tumbling out. I helped him up and led him to the nearest bed.

“You all right, Gunther?”

“I am all right,” he said, looking around to see if anyone but me was present to view his loss of dignity.

“Alice caught the executioner who threw you in the closet,” I said.

“It was a woman.”

“Right,” I said. “She says she didn’t kill Street or Place. You said …”

“Grigory Yefimovich Novykh,” said Gunther.

“Grig … Gregory Novak?”

“No,” corrected Gunther, removing his hat and placing it on the bed. “Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, the son of Yefim Novykh born in Pokroyvskoye, Russia, where as a boy he was given the name by which he would be known throughout his life-the Debaucher, or, in Russian, Rasputin. Your Misters Place and Street were murdered by Rasputin.”

Rasputin died twenty-six years ago in St. Petersburg,” Jeremy said, entering the room with baby Natasha in his arms.

“He died in Florida?” I asked.

“St. Petersburg, Russia. Leningrad,” Jeremy explained.

“A dead man killed Place and Street?” I asked, reasonably.

“Alice has taken the lady to see a doctor,” Jeremy went on. “She’ll then take her to the police. Dali went back to his party.”

“The painting, the one you told me to keep, the one with the hole shot in it,” said Gunther, removing his fake beard. “The clock.”

“A painting of one of the clocks,” I confirmed.

“There was writing on the clock in the painting. Is there writing in Russian on the bottom of the clocks?”

“Yes,” I said, “but what’s …?”

“The writing says, ‘I place a curse on these clocks, which I leave for Yusupov, Purishkevich, Pavlovich, and Lazovert. I remind them that time will end and they will join me where time has no beginning.’ And it is signed, ‘Rasputin.’”

“A curse killed Place and Street, a curse on some clocks by a dead … whatever he was,” I said, walking to the window.

“He was a mystic, a Siberian peasant, who apparently improved the condition of Alexis Nikolayevich, the hemophiliac heir to the Russian throne,” said Jeremy.

I wasn’t about to argue with a giant in a toga. Natasha started to make a humming sound. Jeremy bounced her gently in his arms and kept talking.

“He became an adviser to the Empress Alexandra and preached that sin was a necessary prerequisite to salvation. The Empress was convinced that this sexually obsessed holy man could not only save her son but also the Romanov dynasty, and the Russian autocracy. When World War I began, rumors of his having an affair with the Empress were accepted as truth, and just before the war a group of men-a prince, a physician, a member of the Duma, the legislature, and the Grand Duke-decided to kill Rasputin. There is reason to believe that Rasputin was aware of their plan but felt they would not dare to kill him. On the night of December 30-actually December 17 on the old Russian calendar-the doctor poisoned Rasputin. He did not die so the Prince shot him, but Rasputin ran and the member of the Duma shot him again. They then tied him up and threw him in the Neva River. An examination of the body showed that Rasputin drowned.”

“You want me to guess the names of the four guys who killed Rasputin?” I asked.

“Feliks Yusupov, Vladimir Mitrofamonov Purishkevich, Dmitry Pavlovich, and Dr. Lazovert,” Jeremy supplied.

“Dr. Lazovert,” I said. “I heard … He was a friend of Gala’s family. She mentioned him or someone with a name like that when she …”

“Time?” asked Jeremy.

I looked at my father’s watch. It said six-twenty, which may have been true in Paris, but not in Carmel.

“Midnight,” said Gunther, examining the pocket watch he pulled out from under his black tunic.

Jeremy handed me the baby and ran for the door with Gunther a few steps behind him. I followed them, cursing my healing leg, and got to the hill overlooking the beach in time to see first Jeremy and then Gunther hit the bottom and race across the sand toward Gala and Dali, who stood in front of the clock surrounded by the odd crowd.

Jeremy was shouting, but no one was listening. His toga dragged behind him. Crazy shadows from the bonfires danced on the side of the hill and along the sand. At midnight, Dali had said, his wife would wind the clock.

I tried yelling, but it was no use. Jeremy hit the crowd as Gala held up the key to the clock and said something I couldn’t make out, something in Russian. I had the feeling she was reciting the words written on the bottom of the clock. Her hand came down and the key approached the hole in the clock face. Dali stood triumphant on his throne, his hand on his wife’s shoulder. Jeremy was almost there. He was approaching from behind the Dalis. I suppose his idea was to stop Gala, but I could see there was no time.

Natasha chewed on my nose as Gala turned the key and the guests screamed and cheered.

Jeremy was at her side now. He shoved her toward the ocean as a bullet blasted out of the clock. Jeremy’s hand shot back as if it had been punched by Joe Louis.

The crowd stepped back. Screams. Shouts. One or two vegetables and a woman-man laughed. Gunther leaped onto the throne next to Dali, who put his hands over his eyes. Gunther ripped a piece from his coroner’s cloak and grabbed Jeremy’s bleeding hand. From where Natasha and I stood watching her father, he showed no sign of the pain he must have been feeling.

Dali jumped from the throne, took a quick look at his wife to be sure she was all right, and draped Jeremy’s uninjured arm around his shoulder. Gala took the other and together they helped Jeremy up the hill to where Natasha and I stood waiting.

Natasha reached for her father and Jeremy removed his good hand from Dali’s shoulder to take her.

“We’ll get you to a doctor, Jeremy,” I assured him.

“We will get him to the finest surgeon in the world,” proclaimed Salvador Dali.

“An emergency room will be fine,” said Jeremy. “I received a much more severe laceration when Carl ‘the Monster’ Frisson bit me during our match in Montreal in 1926.”