Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

My feet kept begging me to get up and run out of there while I still had the chance. I couldn’t, though; Keenan was waiting on the corner. I wanted to keep his respect.

Carter was standing over me; he didn’t believe in the daily bath, either. “Well, young fellow?” he said sleekly. I pointed sorrowfully at my cheek, which had been more or less inflated for the past three days. The pain had gone out of it long ago, however. Pain and swelling rarely go together, contrary to general belief.

“So I see,” he said, but made no move to do anything about it. “What brings you here to me?” he asked craftily.

“Sure ’tis the ellygant gold tooth ye have out, boss,” I answered shakily. Did that sound Irish enough? I wondered. Evidently it did.

“Irishman, eh?” he told me not very cleverly. “What’s your name?”

“McConnaughy.” I’d purposely picked a tongue-twister, to get the point across I was trying to make.

He bit. “How do you spell it?”

“Sure, I don’t know now,” I smiled wanly. “I nivver in me life learned to spell.” That was the point I was trying to make.

“Can’t read or write, eh?” He seemed pleased rather than disappointed. “Didn’t you ever go to school when you were a kid?”

“I minded the pigs and such,” I croaked forlornly.

He suddenly whipped out a newspaper he’d been holding behind his back and shoved it under my nose. “What d’you think of that?” It was upside down. He was trying to catch me off my guard, hoping I’d give myself away and turn it right side up without thinking. I kept my hands off it. “What do it say?” I queried helplessly.

He tossed it aside. “I guess you can’t read, at that,” he gloated. But the presence of the newspaper meant that he already knew Steve was back in circulation; the item had been in all of them that morning.

He motioned me to the chair. I climbed into it. I was too curious to see what would happen next to be really frightened. Otherwise how could I have sat in it at all? He took a cursory glance into my mouth. Almost an absent-minded glance, as though his thoughts were really elsewhere. “Can you pay me?” he said next, still very absent-minded and not looking at me at all.

“I’ll do my best, sorr. I have no job.”

“Tell you what I’ll do for you,” he said suddenly, his eyes dilating. “I’ll give you temporary relief, and then I’ll send you to someone who’ll finish the job for you. He won’t charge you anything, either. You just tell him Dr. Smith sent you.”

My heart started to go like a trip-hammer. So I was on the right track after all, was I? He’d picked a different name this time to cover up his traces, that was all. And as for the gold tooth outside the door betraying him, he was counting on something stopping me before I got around to mentioning that. I knew what that something was, too.

He got to work. He pulled open a drawer and I saw a number of fragile clay caps or crowns, hollow inside and thin as tissue paper. They were about the size and shape of thimbles. I could hardly breathe any more. Steve’s voice came back to me, indignantly questioning Amato: “Looks like the Boulder Dam, some bricklayer put it in for you?”

He took one of these out and closed the drawer. Then he opened another drawer and took something else out. But this time I couldn’t see what it was, because he carefully stood over it with his back to me. He glanced over his shoulder at me to see if I was watching him. I beat him to it and lowered my eyes to my lap. He closed the second drawer. But I knew which one it was; the lower right in a cabinet of six.

He came over to me. “Open,” he commanded. My eyes rolled around in their sockets. I still had time to rear up out of the chair, push him back, and snatch the evidence out of his hand. But I wasn’t sure yet whether it was evidence or not.

Those caps may have been perfectly legitimate, for all I knew; I was no dentist. So I sat quiet, paralyzed with fear, unable to move.

And the whole thing was over with almost before it had begun. He sprayed a little something on the tooth, waxed it with hot grease, and stuck the cap on over it. No drilling, no dredging, no cleansing whatsoever. “That’s all,” he said with an evil grin. “But remember, it’s only temporary. By tomorrow at the latest you go to this other dentist and he’ll finish the job for you.”

I saw the point at once. He hadn’t cleaned the tooth in the least; in an hour or two it would start aching worse than ever under the fake cap and I’d have to go to the other dentist. The same thing must have happened to Amato. I was in for it now! “Don’t chew on that side,” he warned me, “until you see him.” He didn’t want it to happen to me at home or at some coffee counter, but in Steve’s office, in Steve’s chair!

Then he gave me the name and place I was to go to. “Standish, 28th and Lexington, second floor.” Over and over again. “Will you remember that?” That was all I needed, I had the evidence against him now. But I didn’t make a hostile move toward him, instead I stumbled out into the street and swayed toward the corner where Keenan was waiting for me. Let the cops go after him. I had myself to worry about now. I was carrying Death around in my mouth. Any minute, the slightest little jolt—

Keenan had been joined by a second detective. They both came toward me and held me up by the elbows. I managed to get my mouth open, and Keenan looked in. “Get the difference?” I gasped.

“It begins to look like you were right,” he muttered.

He phoned the chief at Headquarters and then got me into a taxi with him. The second man was left there to keep an eye on Carter and tail him if he left his office.

“What’re you holding your mouth open like that for?” he asked me in the cab.

“A sudden jolt of the taxi might knock my teeth together,” I articulated. I had seen how thin those caps were.

We raced down Lexington and got out at Steve’s office. Steve had been rushed up there from the detention pen in a police car along with the chief himself and two more detectives. He had to have facilities if he was going to save me from what had happened to Amato.

“He’s got the evidence,” Keenan informed them as he guided me past the jangling bell. I pointed to my mouth. “In there,” I gasped, and my knees buckled up under me.

Steve got me into the chair. Sweat broke out on his face after he’d taken one look at Carter’s work, but he tried to reassure me. “All right, all right now, boy,” he said soothingly, “You know I won’t go back on you, don’t you?”

He looked around at them. The chief had his usual rank cigar in his mouth, which had gone out in the excitement. One of the others held a pipe between his clenched teeth.

“Where’s your tobacco pouch?” ordered Steve hoarsely. “Let me have it, I’ll get you a new one.”

The lining was thin rubber. He tore that out, scattered tobacco all over the floor. Then he held it up toward the light and stretched it to see if there were any holes or cracks. Then, with a tiny pair of curved scissors, he cut a small wedge-shaped hole in it. “Now hold your mouth open,” he said to me, “and whatever you do, don’t move!” He lined the inside of my mouth with the rubber, carefully working the tooth Carter had just treated through the hole he had cut, so that it was inside the pouch. The ends of the rubber sack he left protruding through my lips. I felt a little as though I were choking. “Can you breathe?” he said. I batted my eyes to show him he could go ahead.

He thrust wedges into my cheeks, so that I couldn’t close my jaws whether I wanted to or not. Then he came out with a tiny mallet and a little chisel, about the size of a nail. “I may be able to get it out whole,” he explained to the chief. “It’s been in less than half an hour. Drilling is too risky.”