I got down to Mrs. Plaut’s kitchen, just off of her sitting room. Gunther, Mrs. Plaut, and Dali looked up at me from the table. Mrs. Plaut was reading from her memoirs, which were stacked in front of her. Dali was dressed in a purple velvet suit and a black bow tie. Gunther looked happy to see me. In the sitting room, Mrs. Plaut’s bird chirped insanely.
“Apples Eisenhower,” said Mrs. Plaut, pointing to the dish of brown something in the middle of the table. “Since they were made with ingredients purchased with the aid of some of your ration coupons, I decided to overlook the fact that you did not return yesterday as you declared that you would.”
“I was busy finding corpses,” I said.
“It is delicious,” said Dali seriously, wiping his mustaches.
I sat in the fourth chair and helped myself to a bowl of Apples Eisenhower and a cup of coffee. The Apples Eisenhower weren’t bad, especially with cream supplied by Mrs. Plaut in a little blue porcelain pitcher.
Mrs. Plaut read from her memoirs, looking up from time to time for reaction from her honored guest. Dali listened intently and, when she caught his eyes, responded with an appreciative nod or an appropriate sound of approval.
Gunther and I ate and drank.
“Surrounded,” read Mrs. Plaut. “No moon. No swords. No guns other than Uncle Wiley’s Remington and the hand pistol Cousin Artemis had confiscated from the rebel soldier with the noticeable squint at Shiloh.”
“Surrounded,” Dali echoed. “Surrounded.”
He liked the word.
“Surrounded,” Mrs. Plaut agreed. “War cries and strange language came from the darkness. Aunt Althea began to pray and so did the woman named Mary Joan, who had joined them unbidden in St. Louis and who went on years later to marry a Sioux Indian named Victor or some such.”
“Victor,” said Dali, “an Indian named Victor?”
“Some such,” said Mrs. Plaut, looking back at her manuscript.
I ate another bowl of Apples Eisenhower.
“Well,” Mrs. Plaut went on. “It chanced that they were surrounded not by hostile Indians, but by some drunken members of the Pony Express who had wandered several hundred yards from their way station and were engaged in a jest. There was not much to do in way stations but drink, lie, and pester trekkers and Indians. The riders of the Pony Express were not the highest order of humanity, according to Uncle Wiley. One of them, not on the night of which I write, but on another much earlier, mistook or claimed to mistake Cousin Arthur Gamble for a buxom female and attempted to take liberties.”
“Delightful,” said Dali, beaming.
“Cousin Arthur Gamble on that occasion shot the Pony Express rider and was recruited to take his place on the morning run, which Cousin Arthur Gamble undertook.”
“And this took place in …?” asked Dali.
“Black Hills,” said Mrs. Plaut, closing her manuscript.
“Senora Plaut, you are a true Surrealist,” Dali declared, clasping his hands together as if in prayer.
“I am a Methodist,” she answered, placing the manuscript to the side and reaching for the Apples Eisenhower.
“Amen,” I said. “Sal, I think you should dress in something a little less gaudy. We’re trying to keep a killer from finding you.”
“The gaudier the crook, the cheaper the patter,” said Mrs. Plaut, a spoonful of cream and apple near her mouth. “The Maltese Falcon.”
“This,” said Dali, “is the most sedate costume that I possess.”
“And the mustache,” I went on. “It has to go.”
“Nunca, never. I would rather die than lose my big-otes.”
“Well,” I said cheerfully, “that may be one of your options.”
“It’s like family,” said Mrs. Plaut, beaming. “My neighbor’s brother back in Sioux Falls had a brother Beemer who had a mustache like Mr. Fala here. Beemer fancied himself a Mexican bandit, which was foolish since he looked not dissimilar from Grover Cleveland. Would anyone like some coffee?”
“Fala,” said Gunther earnestly, “is the dog of the President of the United States.”
I got up while I was still sane. “Sal, we’ve got to go.”
Dali rose, took Mrs. Plaut’s hand, and kissed it grandly. “You shall appear in my next painting.”
Gunther got down from his chair, turned to me, and asked, “What do you wish me to do?”
“Nothing now, Gunther. I’ll give you a call when I need you. Thanks.”
As Dali moved toward the kitchen door and I followed him with the briefcase, Mrs. Plaut whispered loud enough to be heard across the Nevada state line, “If Mr. Fala is an exterminator, too, when does he have time to paint pictures?”
We didn’t hear Gunther’s answer. I got in front of Dali and went to the front door. I checked the street through the window and then through the screen door. I didn’t see any loony auto mechanics with rifles, but there were a lot of places to hide.
“Stay inside. I’m parked a few blocks away. When I pull up, come out and get into the car.”
“I did not see all the grass when we arrived in the dark,” he said as I opened the door.
“Well-trimmed,” I said.
“Things lurk in the grass,” he said softly.
“Stay on the sidewalk,” I suggested, and went out on the porch and down the stairs.
When I got the Crosley turned around and back in front of Mrs. Plaut’s, Dali made a velvet dash down the center of the sidewalk and into the street, where I had left the passenger-side door open. He jumped in, closed the door, and panted, holding his chest.
“It is bad. But not as bad at the Metro in Paris,” he remarked.
I didn’t follow up on that one.
We were downtown in ten minutes. On a good day when I was full of energy and had the time, I could walk from Mrs. Plaut’s to my office. Since there had never been a good day that coincided with my being full of energy, I’d never walked to the Farraday Building. Normally, I parked at No-Neck Arnie’s and filled the tank, if I had gas ration stamps, but it was a two-block walk from Arnie’s and Dali stood out like a sore Surrealist. So I pulled into the alley behind the Farraday and parked in the Graveyard, a dirt plot where the bodies of three dead and rusted wrecks sheltered wandering winos.
I pulled in next to a frame that might once have been a DeSoto. Dali opened the door and stepped out I slid over to the passenger seat with the briefcase and got out next to him.
“You live in a nightmare world,” Dali said, looking around as a bum, who reminded me of a rotting pumpkin complete with an orange shirt, got out of the possible DeSoto and tried to focus on us. The bright sun didn’t help much. Dali watched the man lurch toward us, pulling a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and perching them on his bulbous nose.
“What?” gargled the pumpkin.
“Two bits to watch my car,” I said. “See nothing happens to it. No one touches it.”
“Two bits?” the pumpkin asked Dali.
“No,” said Dali, reaching into his pocket and coming out with crumpled bills. “Three dollars.”
He held out the three bucks to the orange bum, who lifted his sunglasses and took the money.
“Anyone touches the car, he dies,” the bum graveled. His gravel was even worse than his gargle.
“Come on, Sal,” I said, moving to the rear door of the Farraday.
Dali followed, looking around the festering alley as if it were Oz. “It can get no better,” he said.
“It can get a lot worse,” I said. “My car could be gone by the time we come out. Our pal with the sunglasses isn’t hanging around to watch my Crosley. As soon as we get inside the door, he’ll take off for Erik’s Bar. He’s got enough money to keep him in Petrie wine for three weeks.”