“Be with you in a min-oot,” bellowed Shelly, waving a bloody swab in my general direction.
“It’s me,” I said, stepping up to look at the kid, whose eyes were glistening with tears of pain he just barely controlled. He was, I guessed, about ten years old. Almost all soldiers, sailors, and marines looked as if they were ten years old, but with 1Bs being called up, maybe that would change. The armed forces would look like a convention of pops and sons, hand in hand, skipping up on the Nazis and Japs.
“Toby,” Shelly said, turning to me to squint through his ever-sagging thick glasses. He removed his cigar from his mouth, which let me think he had something serious to say, wiped the bloody swab on his once-white smock, and went on. “Been waiting for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, heading for the coffeepot. There was enough in it for one last cup. I poured it into an almost-clean brown cup and waited. Log Cabin syrup in the little metal cabin poured faster.
“Working on this boy for practically nothing,” Shelly said proudly, rubbing his sweaty bald head with his sleeve. “Mean breaks on the bicuspids.” Shelly reached for the kid’s mouth, and the kid shrank back, but there was no place to go. “Got in a fight. You know? Big night in the big city.”
“I thought the army had its own dentists,” I said, trying to remove my sugar spoon from the coffee.
“They do, they do,” Shelly agreed, putting a plump and not-too-clean hand on the boy’s shoulder, “But Private Bayer here didn’t want to get into any trouble.” Shelly shot us both a wink of dark conspiracy. “And I’m only too happy to help our boys in blue.”
“He’s a soldier, not a sailor,” I said, chewing on a mouthful of coffee. I put the cup down in the sink, which was already filled with used dental tools and a plate smeared with something red, probably Shelly’s strawberry breakfast roll.
The kid tried to swallow and smile back at Shelly, who looked down at him benevolently.
“If that’s his pleasure,” I said, looking at the kid.
“Sure it is,” grinned Shelly, searching for something in the stack of instruments on the little table. The kid’s eyes opened wide and carried the prayer that whatever Shelly came up with it wouldn’t be sharp and more than six inches long. Shelly didn’t find what he wanted, so he moved next to me and looked in the sink. Below a stainless-steel pan with egg stains on it he found what he was searching for. It was sharp, or had been once, and maybe less than six inches long. The kid groaned. Shelly washed the instrument under the cold water and leaned toward me, smelling of stale cigar and mint Life Savers.
“Client,” he whispered.
“You mean someone called?” I whispered back.
The kid in the chair leaned forward, straining to hear us. Maybe we were consulting on his case, life, and future.
“No,” whispered Shelly coming even closer. “In your office, now. Clean suit. Been waiting almost an hour. Guy was here when I opened up.”
I took off my hat, clenched my fist at the kid to encourage him, and took the three steps to my office as Shelly went to work with the weapon in hand.
Clients almost never came to my office. I discouraged it. When someone called, I usually went to him or her or arranged to meet at the drugstore at the corner or Manny’s taco stand on Flower Street, depending on how high-class the potential client was. This guy was a little hard to place. He looked up at me from the papers on his lap as I closed the door.
“Peters,” I said.
He put the papers into his briefcase, stood, and held out his hand. I took it. His shake was firm and his eyes on mine.
“Winning, Dr. Robert Winning,” he said. Winning was about five ten, average build, and well but conservatively dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and dark blue tie with thin angular stripes of a slightly lighter blue. The lighter blue matched his eyes. I guessed he was somewhere in his fifties. His hair was dark brown without a touch of gray, and his skin had that smooth clearness that comes with heredity or illness. He sat straight and watched as I moved behind my desk, unbuttoned my own blue jacket carefully to keep the button that was on its last thread from falling off, and looked at him.
“I’m looking for a man and I want you to help me find him,” Winning said. His voice was calm like a radio announcer’s. “His name is Jeffrey Ressner.”
There are coincidences in the world and there is magic. I believe in both, but only after all other explanations have been exhausted. My eyes must have showed something because Winning smiled.
“I know,” he said. “I’ve been trying to find Ressner for a week. I checked some of his old known contacts and talked this morning to Howard Lachtman, of the Engineer’s Thumbs. He told me that you had asked about Ressner, and he gave me your address. I decided that it would be best if I could discover why you are seeking Ressner and to enlist your aid in that effort.”
I glanced down at my mail. There were three items. One was a postcard from a clothing store in Van Nuys announcing spring wardrobe suggestions. The second was an official-looking letter with a government return address. It looked like one of the notices to register for ration cards. I threw it in the trash can under my desk. The other mail was a square envelope. I recognized the writing and wanted to open it, but I had business. Instead I picked it up and played with it as I talked.
“Why do you want Ressner?” I asked.
Winning pulled some papers from his briefcase, glanced at them, and looked at me.
“I’m a psychiatrist,” he said softly. “Head of the Winning Institute near Clovis, just beyond Fresno. Mr. Ressner, until April fifteenth of this year, was a patient in our institute and had been for more than four years. He escaped dressed rather ingeniously as a nurse.”
“What was he in for?” I asked trying not to look at the envelope, which had definitely been addressed by my ex-wife, Anne.
Winning blew out a little puff of air and shook his head. He could either make this long or short, and I had the feeling that he had given the long version before.
“Simply put,” he began, “Jeffrey Ressner is obsessed with famous people. He believes that fame was denied him as a young man when he had a promising acting career. In fact, he seems to have been a reasonably competent and perhaps even gifted actor, but as you know, talent is not always enough. He began to harass movie producers, actors, directors, and others for jobs, and the police were called in several times. It grew increasingly worse to the point where his wife and daughter left him. Subsequently, both the wife and daughter showed some understanding and agreed to have him taken in for treatment. Fortunately, Ressner’s wife had since remarried someone with considerable financial resources.”
“How bad was he?”
“Nothing terrible, really,” sighed Winning. “A few situations in which he had to be removed by the police from Cecil B. De Mille’s house. One confrontation with Joe Louis.”
“Joe Louis? What did he have-”
“That was never quite clear to us,” Winning said, showing a trace of puzzlement. “Ressner said something about Joe Louis as a performer of … but it wasn’t clear.”
“Mae West,” I said.
“What?” he gasped.
“Has Ressner ever had any contact with Mae West?” I said.
“You surprised me with that,” he said. “Miss West appeared at the institute last year. She is very interested in the problems of the mentally ill, among other things. Ressner met her and tried to talk to her. We had to pull him away. He grew more and more animated, insisting that she could help his career. How did you know …?”
“I think he contacted her,” I explained, starting to tear the corner off the envelope. “Bad scene at her place night before last, Dr. Winning. I think your Mr. Ressner is dangerous. I think you should call in the cops.”
Winning’s already pale face grew even more pale.
“No, no. Not if it can be helped. He’s never done anything really violent and the embarrassment to the institute, his family, our … I’d rather avoid it if at all possible.”