Stuart Kaminsky - Melting Clock

“So you’re afraid they might kill you so they can sell them and kick the price up?”

The reaction made it clear that Dali had never considered that possibility. He stopped pacing and looked at me. He blinked like an owl, his mouth opened. He froze.

“You think they …?”

“No,” I said. “Not a chance. These are art thieves, not people willing to risk a murder charge for a few thousand dollars.”

“Many thousand dollars,” Dali corrected.

“Many thousand dollars,” I agreed.

“Your wife says you got a note. Can I see it?”

Dali plunged his hand into the clown pocket and came up with a crumpled envelope. He handed it to me and stood back to watch my reaction. I pulled a sheet of paper out of the envelope. The words were typed and there weren’t many of them:

Look for the second PLACE in Los Angeles to find the first painting. You have till midnight on New Year’s Day.

I looked up at Dali.

“You may keep it,” he said.

I nodded sagely.

“You know what it means, these words?” he asked.

“Do you?” I asked right back with a knowing smile as I stood and pocketed the envelope and letter.

“No,” he said. “But there is only one reason this ladron would send such a note. He wishes to toy with Dali, to drive Dali mad, but Dali is beyond madness. Madness is a word without meaning.”

I asked some more questions but didn’t get very much that would help. He had no idea who would steal his paintings. It wasn’t that he didn’t suspect anyone. He started on a list of those he did not trust. I wrote the names but gave up after twenty when he began to include people from his childhood, some of whom were dead. The list included Pablo Picasso, Luis Bunuel, Andre Breton, Dali’s father, and Francisco Franco.

“Zeman,” I tried.

“Yes, I do not trust him,” Dali said emphatically. “I trust only Gala. I do not even trust Dali. He is totally unreliable.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said. “One hundred dollars in advance and I’ll call you every day.” I moved toward the door and Dali followed, his clown feet plopping on the hardwood floor.

“Gala gave me the money,” he said, pulling out a handful of bills and handing them to me. He put his hand back in his pocket and came out with more. I stopped at the door and counted while he played with his mustache and looked at a blank wall. He was two bucks short but what the hell.

“You’ll hear from me,” I said.

“You must find those paintings,” Dali whispered. “I’ve painted what I see within me, without censorship. The world knows that Dali fears no offense, but this painting … it will end the career of Salvador Dali. Find them all, but find that one and Dali owes you his art.”

He took my hand in both of his after pocketing the piece of wood he had been playing with.

“I’ll settle for twenty a day, expenses, and that painting,” I said, opening the door. “One more thing.”

“One more thing,” Dali repeated.

“When we started talking, you said you had three things to tell me. You only told me two of them.”

Dali smiled as I stepped outside.

“The third thing is that no one knows who I really am. On Tuesday there is a party in Carmel. On Tuesday, I will be both a rabbit and Sherlock Holmes.”

With that, he closed the door.

Zeman was working under the hood of the Hup. He stopped and moved over to my car as I crawled over the passenger side to the driver’s seat. There was no way to do it gracefully. I rolled down the window to hear what he had to say.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Not much to go on,” I said.

“How’d you like them?” He nodded toward his own front door as if they might come out for a curtain call. I shrugged.

“I can see where they might be a little tough to come home to every night.”

“Make it a thousand-dollar bonus if you find them in three days, Peters,” he said as I turned the key and prayed for the Crosley to start. It didn’t. I was left filled with incentive and no idea of what the hell to do to find the missing paintings.

“What about the clocks?” I asked.

“Good pieces,” he said. “Might be worth a few thousand each. More if they work.”

“They don’t work?”

“No one has ever wound them,” he said. “Gala says they were gifts to the Russian royal family, but the tsar never got to use them. Revolution came before they could be wound … or something. She and her family got them out and haven’t allowed anyone to wind them.”

“Why would anyone take clocks and paintings and then write crazy messages?” I asked.

“I’m an investor, not a detective,” Zeman said with a shrug as he moved away from the door. “Ask me about Dusenbergs or Brazilian bonds.”

I started the engine, heard it ping to life. I put it in gear as the front door to Zeman’s house opened and Gala Dali stepped out holding a glass of bubbling dark liquid. My Pepsi. I put the car into gear and headed for what passed for sanity in Los Angeles.

It was about seven when I hit Main Street looking for a place to buy a Pepsi and get a sandwich. Not much was open on New Year’s Day, not even Manny’s taco stand on Hoover. Usually I left the car at No-Neck Arnie’s, but everything was closed and there were plenty of parking spaces, including one right in front of the Farraday.

The streets weren’t deserted. They hadn’t been deserted in downtown Los Angeles since the war had started. Nightfall and the blackout did put a damper on the town but didn’t close it down-it just went undercover. The outer door to the Farraday was open but the one inside was locked. Jeremy Butler had started locking it when even he was forced to acknowledge that he was losing the battle against bums looking for a corner of cool tile. It wasn’t actually a battle; Jeremy never complained about the bums. He never complained about anything. He went about his business, Lysol in great hairy hand and a poem forming in the mind under the bullet-smooth cranium.

I listened to my footsteps echo across the inner lobby. There were a few lights on, enough to find your way to the stairs and elevator, but not enough to penetrate the far corners.

The Farraday was silent and I was in no hurry. I had about five hours till midnight and a puzzle to work on. I didn’t think I’d solve it. I took the elevator, an ornate wire cage from the days of Diamond Jim Brady. The elevator never quite came awake. It moved slowly upward in a swaying daze. Usually I walked.

On the way up I looked through the chipped gilt mesh at the offices on each floor where lies were sold. You want a lie to believe in? The Farraday was the place for it. Want to become a movie star? There were four agents in the Farraday. Want to sue everyone who ever told you the truth about yourself? You had a choice of lawyers, almost one to every floor. Did you want to think you were irresistible? Escort services for ladies and gents were on the second and fifth floor. Want to think you’re beautiful? Choice of two photographers, one of which was Maurice, Photographer to the Stars. The other was Josh Copeland, Glamour Portraits at a Reasonable Price. Bookies, pornographers, doctors of everything from throat to stomach, a single dentist-Sheldon Minck-who sold the promise of a winning smile and perpetual Sen-Sen breath. And then there was me on the sixth floor, where the elevator came to a jerky stop. I sold the lie that there was always one last chance when all reasonable attempts to solve your problems failed. Sometimes, usually because it was easy or I was lucky, I actually helped a client.

I pushed open the hinged metal doors and heard their clang echo down the halls and into the lobby below. I took a step toward the “suite” I shared with Sheldon Minck, D.D.S., S.D. (The S.D. was Shelly’s invention. It meant either “Special Dentist” or “Superb Dentures” or whatever he thought up that week.)