Back on the fourth floor, I could hear Shelly humming over the sound of Emmett Quigley in the office next to ours. Emmett had been in the Farraday for two weeks. He was either giving voice lessons to the deaf, writing modern versions of Gregorian chants, or engaged in some elaborate self-torture. Why he needed an office was a question that merited about five minutes of discussion each morning between infrequent patients for Shelly and even less frequent clients for me.
“Any calls?” I asked as I stepped into the office to a startling sight.
“No calls, nothing,” said Shelly, who was on his knees cleaning the floor. His glasses had slipped to the end of his nose and he was twitching madly to keep them up. His hands were covered with soapy suds. The dishes and instruments in the sink had been cleaned and the sink itself scoured. The coffee pot was gone and something about the wall was somewhat strange. Then I realized that the coffee stain near my door had been scrubbed away.
“What’s going on Shel, Mildred moving in?”
He puffed to his knees, wiped his hands on his filthy white coat, and found his soapy cigar.
“Inspection,” he explained. “County Dental Association inspections. They got complaints. Can you imagine? Complaints about me.”
“I can’t imagine that Shel,” I said with sympathy.
“Of course you can’t,” he agreed. “It’s unimaginable. There’s nothing wrong with this office. I use the most modern techniques, equipment.”
“Then why are you cleaning up?”
Shelly got up, removed the soapy cigar butt from his mouth, gave it an evil look, and threw it in the bucket of water near his feet. “So they won’t have anything, not a thing to point to, to say Sheldon Minck is not sanitary, not ethical. I am both sanitary and ethical.”
“While you’re at it,” I added, “you should lead a safari into the waiting room. I think some of the bugs out there have tusks worth showing to a dental inspector.”
“I’m doing the waiting room next,” Shelly sighed, pushing his glasses back on his nose and leaving a sudsy white mass over the left lens. “And you should clean up your office. In fact, you should clean it up and move out till the inspection is over. I don’t know what the ethics are about having sub-tenants.”
“Speaking of that, don’t you think you’d better scratch out some of those degress you have listed on the outer door?”
“Right,” he said, trying to snap his wet fingers. “I’ll get right to that. You wouldn’t want to give me a hand here?”
I didn’t answer.
“I didn’t think so,” he hissed. “Gratitude stops at the dental chair. I learned that in dental school. How can they do this to me? Why me? You know who taught me techniques of basic oral surgery? I never told you this. It was Maling, Maling, damn it. You think Dr. Arthur Maling has to be inspected? He’d turn over in his grave if he knew I was being inspected, me his star pupil.”
“Hold it, Shel,” I said. “I can’t tell from what you just went through if Maling is alive or dead.”
Shelly’s eyes went to the ceiling at my stupidity. Suds trickled down his left lens and dropped like a snowy tear.
“Does it make a difference?” he asked. “Does it really make a difference?”
“Happy cleaning,” I said, and went into my office where I discovered where Shelly had put the hot plate, coffee pot, and some of the more uncleanable and rust-infected instruments that had turned to antiques at the bottom of his sink.
“Shel,” I screamed, stepping back into his office.
“Hold your fillings,” he said, backing away “I’ll clean it out by tonight.”
“I’m coming back in the morning,” I said. “If it isn’t all out of my office, I’m going to dump it on your nice clean floor.”
“You are a tenant,” he reminded me, stepping forward again and almost slipping on a moist spot.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” I whispered, looking at him and then stepping into the waiting room and out into the hall. Emmet Quigley was still gargling as I stomped past and went down the stairs. I was shaking my head on Hoover when a bum came up to me.
“You work in there?” he asked.
“Right.”
“You ain’t no cop?”
“I ain’t no cop,” I agreed.
“They’re giving out sugar ration books come Monday,” he said, breathing muscatel into my ear. “I got one coming. I’ll sell it for a price. I can get plenty more from guys, you know?”
“Not interested,” I said, walking down the street. He followed me.
“You know a guy who might?” he said. He was wearing a long coat under which I guessed there might be nothing.
“Dentist back in the Farraday,” I said. “His name is Minck. You and your friends might go see him.”
I moved faster and left the bum behind muttering his thanks.
My life is and was a series of lows, lows, lows, and highs. There weren’t many highs, but those that came were right up there with going a full round with Henry Armstong. The trouble was the lows. I legged it to Arnie’s and ignored his warnings about the scratches on the side of my car.
“The whole damn chassis is going to rust out in maybe a month, two,” he said, pronouncing chassis as chas-siss. “You better let me fix it up.”
“We’ll talk about it Arnie,” I said, moving past him. “I turn most of the little I earn over to you as it is and what do I have to show for it?”
“Transportation,” he said emotionlessly.
“A zombie line of wrecks without fenders, paint, working gas gauges,” I went on.
“Having a bad day, huh?” he said, spitting into a corner.
“You could call it that,” I agreed.
I had three boxes of cereal stashed back at Mrs. Plaut’s but I wasn’t about to go there. Instead, I stopped at a restaurant off of Melrose called Herrera’s, ordered two tacos, a bowl of shredded wheat, and a Pepsi. Herrera didn’t blink his lazy eyes. He brought the order and I downed it. Back when I was first married, Anne had spent two years coaxing, threatening, challenging, and tricking in the hope of getting me to change my diet. For the last two years of the marriage, she hadn’t cared much, though she had occasionally brought it up in her quite reasonable catalogue of my faults.
“You eat like a nine year old whose parents don’t give a damn,” she had once said. Since she was probably right, I hadn’t answered. I get along fine with nine year olds.
My stomach filled, I paid the buck I owed, including a dime tip, waved to Herrera and the belching guy who had taken up the stool next to mine, and set off to do what my brother had warned me not to do. My answers, if there were any, were back at Olson’s clinic or house.
7
One slow drive down the cul-de-sac alongside Olson’s animal clinic convinced me that no one was watching the place. There were no cars on the street and as far as I could see there were no cars down the narrow lane that ran back to Olson’s house. However, as far as I could see was not very far. There were many ways to handle this. Most of them involved exercising some caution. Caution was a word that, in spite of many attempts to engrave it on my skull and spine, had never made its way into my brain.
I found a driveway across from Olson’s, drove in far enough to be sure the car wouldn’t be seen from the street, and found a space between a pair of trees. I took out my little notebook and pencil and left a message under my windshield wiper for whoever lived there that my car had broken down, that I had come to deliver something to them, and that I’d be right back. That should hold off a call to the police, at least long enough for me to do whatever I was going to do.
It must have been around four. My watch was no help. The sun was bright and I was in a hurry. I walked straight across the street and up to the front door of the clinic. The door was locked and there was a sign on it saying the clinic was temporarily closed due to Dr. Olson’s death. It was spelled correctly and in an even hand.