Stuart Kaminsky - Tomorrow Is Another day

"A rib, definitely a rib," Gouda agreed. Then he looked up at me. 'Tools made this. I told you. Some people don't appreciate the work we did in Detroit"

"… and Kansas City," said Tools. "You want I should get the bullet out, Karl? It's sticking out."

Gouda nodded, looking up at me.

Tools pulled his pliers from his holster and went for the bullet sticking out of Gouda's chest.

"He'll give you blood poisoning," I said.

"My tools are sterile," Tools said, turning on me angrily.

"Sorry," I said.

Tools moved quickly, clamped down on the protruding bullet, looked at Gouda who nodded, and then pulled. Gouda gasped and the bullet flew into the air, crashing into the green-glass lamp with the hanging tree. Gouda closed his eyes and Tools's mouth opened in horror.

I moved to the lamp.

"A little crack," I said.

"I'll find him," said Gouda softly. "I'll find the little shit and…"

"What did he look like?" I asked, moving to help Tools get his partner to his feet.

"Like a dead shit," Gouda said. "Why'd you say he was tryin' to kill me?"

"Something to do with Gone With the Wind," I said, helping Gouda to a chair near the wall.

Someone came through the door. I turned my head, ready for bullets.

"You have table lamps?" a well-dressed woman said, looking at us curiously.

"I have a bullet in my chest," said Gouda.

The woman looked at me and then at Tools. I don't think she liked what she saw. She turned and left.

"I'll get something to fix you up, Karl," said Tools, touching his partner's shoulder.

"Yeah," said Gouda.

Tools clanked back toward the O'Hara office and I asked again, "What did he look like?"

"A man with no goddamn sensitivity," he said through gritting teeth. "Maybe thirty, not heavy. Losing his hair in front. Dark eyes. Jacket, wearing a jacket with something written on the pocket. I won't forget him."

"Can you take a suggestion?" I asked.

He looked up at me without answering.

"Stay dead for a while. Go on vacation. I'll find the guy. You come back."

"We don't work mat way, Peters," he said. "Word gets out Karl Gouda runs and I might as well put a 'shoot me' ad in the LA. Times."

Tools was clanking back like a belled cat. He was carrying a cardboard box. I walked over to the door and closed it. Tools opened the box, pulled out bandages and bottles, removed shears from his belt, and started ministering to his fallen partner.

"I'm going," I said.

"Go," said Gouda, holding up his arms so Tools could wrap the bandage around him. "But we know your name. We can find you."

"We can find you," Tools agreed.

I was about to answer when the plate-glass window shattered a few feet from my head. Lamps and shades exploded as bullets tore through the shop. I hit the floor and cut my chin on broken green glass. Gouda groaned. I lifted my head and saw Tools trying to protect his partner with his own body, but it was too late. There was a hole in Gouda's face.

"He looks more like Swiss than Gouda," came a voice from the sidewalk.

I rolled over, and through the smashed window my eyes met those of the man on the sidewalk. I had seen him about an hour earlier, sitting hi Shelly Minck's dental chair. He aimed his pistol at me and was about to pull the trigger when an animal yowled across the street and Tools, clanking and crushing glass underfoot, charged past me.

I got to my feet, cutting my palms on broken glass, as the young man hi the jacket took off down the street and Tools Nathanson took off after him. The man with the gun was at least twenty years younger and wasn't carrying fifteen or twenty pounds of tools.

When I got to the sidewalk, people were starting to move cautiously toward the shop. Not many of them yet. I looked down the street and saw Tools collapsed on his knees about a block away. The killer was nowhere in sight.

I looked back at Gouda. This time he was definitely dead.

Traffic bustled on Wilshire beyond the open window of Captain Philip Pevsner's office. I sat in the chair opposite Phil's desk and watched him sharpen a pair of pencils, lay out a pad of paper, and rearrange the photographs of his wife, Ruth, my two nephews, Nate and Dave, and my niece, Lucy.

There are some who say my brother and I look alike. And there are others who have better vision or tell the truth. Phil is five years older than I am, a bear with short white hair, hair that had been white since Phil returned from the Great War twenty-five years earlier. We're the same height but bis eyes are pale gray and mine are dark brown. He looked like a filled-out version of our father, who had died a few years after Phil came back from France. I looked like the photographs of our mother, who had died when I was bom, a fact that Jeremy Butler thought accounted for the lifetime of love-hate, war-peace between us. Phil's tie was open. His eyes were blank and his lips pursed.

"Ruth is doing fine," he said, rolling one of his nice sharp pencils between his palms and looking at me.

I nodded. My sister-in-law, all ninety pounds of her, had come close to dying about a month earlier. The prospect of being alone with three kids all under the age of thirteen must have scared even Phil, and the prospect of being without Ruth, who seemed to understand him, was probably more than he could have handled.

Phil had lived the life of a cop on the verge of a breakdown for two decades. Phil hated criminals, personally. He had been promoted twice, demoted twice; each time, up or down, because he had lost his temper and a suspect had lost teeth or bones. I knew that temper. It was responsible for my flat nose and my looking like a retired and slightly overweight middleweight.

"Kids?" I asked.

"Boys are fine. Lucy's learning to swim."

"Great," I said. "Where's Steve?"

Steve was the thin ghost of a partner my brother haunted the streets of Los Angeles with.

"Vacation," Phil said.

"Where?"

"Seattle, with his sister and mother."

"Great," I said.

"What happened to you?" he asked.

"Happened?"

Phil pointed at my head and hands. There was a Band-aid on my forehead and another on my left palm. The one on my palm wouldn't stick,

"Cut myself on some broken window glass," I said.

Phil nodded, sat back, looked at the sharp point of the pencil in his hand, and took a deep breath.

"We through with crap and Shinola?" he asked.

I shrugged.

"I'm going to say this calmly, Tobias," he said. "I'm going to say this calmly for three reasons. You want to hear my three reasons?"

"Very much," I said, giving him my full attention.

"First, my blood pressure is up. Like dad's. Remember how he used to get so excited when he argued with Hal Graham? They could argue about whether cranberries were fruits or vegetables. Dad's veins used to pop out on his forehead. His cheeks went red. Sound like someone you know?"

It sounded like Phil Pevsner.

"It killed Dad," said Phil. "It would be a bad joke by the devil if I fell down dead when Ruth was recovering. You know how old Dad was when he died?"

"About…" I started, but Phil overlapped me.

"Just the age I am now."

I wasn't sure, but I nodded knowingly.

"Second, I lose perspective when I get excited. I get more interested hi smashing than listening. And, I'll admit, sometimes I miss important things."

I was attentive.

Third, I owe you. When Ruth was in the hospital and you got Bette Davis to see her, Ruth started to get better, to fight her way back. So, you've got my reasons. Now, answer some questions."

"Right," I said.

"Lane Price says you claimed Sheldon Minck hired you to collect an overdue bill from a guy who was murdered in Glendale last night. Lane, as we both know, is a lazy slob, a politician, but he's not deaf. He wants you."