Stuart Kaminsky - Poor Butterfly

I started to reach for my father’s watch and remembered that it wouldn’t tell me the time. I picked it up anyway. The sun was up so I called the desk to ask for the time. Mrs. Allen didn’t answer. The guy said she had left for the day.

“Was she wearing a little beret?” I asked.

“I … yes,” he said. “I think so.”

“What time is it?”

“Five minutes after eight.”

I was shaved, dressed, and out of the hotel ten minutes later, wearing a slightly wrinkled white shirt and the same pants I had worn the day before. Time was wasting. I had an opera to save.

Irecognized the car as soon as I turned the corner and saw the Opera building. It was Gunther Wherthman’s black Daimler. Gunther had never fully explained to me how the car had come into his possession. It was simply there one morning, a specially modified model with raised pedals and seat to accommodate his size. The car, he said, was a gift he had been unable to refuse. And that was all he had ever been willing to say.

I parked behind the Daimler, got out and locked the door. Shelly Minck was engaged in conversation with the pickets from the Church of the Enlightened Patriots. There were five of them this morning. All of them were old. Sloane and Cynthia were among them. Bertha was missing. I’d half-expected Ortiz.

Some of the workers had paused on their way into the building to watch the show. Part of the show was the heavy-set bald man with the muscular neck who stood silently, almost in a trance, on the second step, watching Shelly argue with the pickets. But Jeremy Butler would have been of only minor interest if the man standing next to him had been more than three feet tall. Jeremy was wearing a white shirt and a tan windbreaker. Gunther, as always, wore a three-piece suit and a perfectly pressed tie.

Gunther was the first to see me. He touched Jeremy’s sleeve and Jeremy awoke from his reverie. I joined them on the steps, shook their hands. Their grips were about the same in intensity. Jeremy, the former wrestler, was careful to control his shake, to keep it firm but gentle. Gunther wanted to demonstrate that there was a man inside the little body.

“I don’t want to appear ungrateful,” I said, “but what is Shelly doing here?”

“Ellis couldn’t get away,” said Jeremy. “Albers and Gray were not in their office. Stowell and Warren don’t like San Francisco. Dr. Minck heard me calling them and volunteered. I found it impossible to dissuade him.”

“We’ll live with it. Politics or religion?” I asked, nodding at Shelly, who was arguing with all the pickets at once.

“Teeth,” said Jeremy.

“Thanks for coming,” I said. “How was the drive?”

“Without notable incident,” said Gunther. “If possible, however, on the return I would prefer if Dr. Minck would travel with you.”

“What’d you do with Dash?”

“Your cat,” said Gunther, “is under the protection of Mrs. Plaut, who pledged to respect his needs and dignity.”

I was tempted to say that Dash might well be in mortal danger if he had a sudden taste for canary. Instead, I thanked Gunther and turned to Jeremy.

“Alice?” I asked.

“Alice is doing well. She may have twins.”

“Twins?”

I tried to imagine two little Jeremys or two Alices … or one of each.

“I’ll get Shelly,” I said, moving toward the little crowd.

“… look ridiculous,” Shelly was saying. He was wearing a wrinkled and food-stained plaid sport jacket over a purple short-sleeved pullover shirt. His pants were pulled up to his stomach.

“Toby,” he said, seeing me. “I’m glad you came. I’m trying to explain something to these people here. You, open your mouth.”

He was talking to Sloane, who seemed completely confused by this cigar-chomping man who kept pushing his thick glasses back on his nose. Sloane started to protest.

“Will you just do it?” Shelly said irritably. “I’m trying to make a point here. God, Toby, these people … Okay. Okay. That’s fine. Look at those dentures. They look real to you?”

A few of the picketers looked at Sloane’s teeth. One woman shook her head somberly.

“See. See there,” said Shelly triumphantly. “What’d I tell you? You old people need false teeth that look like teeth, not like false teeth. And you need false teeth that don’t smell. Any of you have dogs? You know what a dog’s breath smells like?”

“Shelly,” I said. “We’ve got to go.”

“A second, Toby,” he whispered, touching my arm and adjusting his cigar and glasses. “I’m doing missionary work here. You can close your mouth now,” he said to Sloane, who closed his mouth. “I’m going to give each of you a card.” Shelly pulled a stack of crunched business cards from his jacket pocket and began to hand them out. “You write to me and order, first, my Minck Mouth-So-Sweet Powders. You mix them with water, cola, Green River, Squirt, whatever, then gargle with it and drink it. Made especially for old guys with dentures. And if you want a set of dentures that look like real teeth instead of discolored fence posts, make an appointment with my secretary and plan a trip to Los Angeles.”

“God doesn’t care about such things,” said a bent-over old man holding a picket sign that read: JAPANESE SOLDIERS KILL BABIES. IS THAT SOMETHING TO SING ABOUT?

“God likes bad breath?” Shelly asked, removing his cigar and pointing it at the man. “God likes silly-looking false teeth? God sent you here to carry those signs and act like jerks, and he sent me to see to it that you look like human beings and don’t smell like cocker spaniels. Think about it.”

Shelly moved to the man who had complained and pulled the calling card out of his hand.

“Let’s go, Shel,” I said, taking his arm.

“All right, all right.”

“Mouth-So-Sweet Powder?” I asked.

“Buy some bottles, slap a few labels on, mix some stuff up,” he said.

“Make an appointment with your secretary?” I went on.

“I use a high voice when I answer the phone,” he explained.

We moved up the steps toward Jeremy and Gunther.

“You’re trying to sell those people the same stuff you’re working on for dog breath, aren’t you?” I whispered.

“Works just as well on people,” he said, putting on a false smile and waving back at the picketers. “I’ll be careful with it. I haven’t really got it fully developed yet.”

The show was over. The workers were heading into the building or setting up on the steps. We entered the lobby. It looked further along today, but that might have been either my imagination or better lighting.

We ducked under some scaffolding and headed for the marble stairway.

“Nice place,” Shelly said. “What time’s the next decapitation?”

“Samuel Varney Keel,” said Gunther. “This is distinctly his work. He could never decide in which century he wished to place his faith. His buildings have the rococo design of the sixteenth century, poorly blended with museum memories of Greek and Roman statuary. There, up there, even an bit of ersatz ancient Egypt. And his edifices are pocked with hidden chambers and passages drawn from English Gothic tales.”

“Interesting,” I said as we hit the top of the stairs where we had found Lorna Bartholomew crying the day before.

“Keel died quite mad,” said Gunther. “I translated a brochure on San Francisco architects. This is how I know such things.”

“Looks okay to me,” Shelly said. “Little dark. Some nice paintings of girls in the woods, or movie posters, could brighten it up.”

“What do you think, Jeremy?” I asked as we paused in front of Lundeen’s office.

“There is an aura of death,” said Jeremy. “I felt it outside. I feel it more strongly in here. It reminds me of the House of Usher.”