A hand reached for the door, hesitated, and turned the knob. I reached for my gun on the desk, but it wasn’t where I had just put it. The dog had probably kicked it to the floor, where it lay somewhere in darkness.
The door began to open, and I had no time to come up with a plan that didn’t include a gun in my hand. I sat back as the door pushed cautiously forward and did my best to look like a dangerous man who has aces full. I said, “We’ve been waiting for you. Sorry I can’t offer you a chair but the only one I’ve got is occupied by a corpse.”
The killer, whose gun I was trying not to look at, stepped in and with a smile said, “Then both chairs will soon be occupied by corpses.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, grinning and reaching slowly to pat the damned dog that might be responsible for getting me permanently punctured. “I’ve got a few things to tell you.”
“Have you?” said the killer with some amusement, closing the door and stepping in. The gun was now leveled at my belly, about where the shotgun would have pointed a decade earlier if Thompson hadn’t put a not-too-neat hole in that robber in Gleadale. But Thompson couldn’t help me now. He had retired to a hardware store in Fresno.
“I have,” I said, hoping to catch a glimpse of that damned gun from the corner of my eye.
“Then tell them. I’ve always liked The Arabian Nights, Mr. Peters,” said the killer with smart-ass amusement, leaning back against the wall. “You like Scheherazade, will live as long as your tales amuse me and are relevant to our present situation.”
“What I have to say you’ll find interesting,” I said with a lopsided grin.
“Begin,” said the killer, and since I had no idea what I was going to say, I cursed the moment one week earlier on a May day when I had entered the Farraday Building feeling sorry for myself but expecting more than a week of time left on earth.
2
Normally, I parked my ’38 Ford coupe behind the Farraday. But “normally” didn’t exist any longer. There was a war on and car parts were hard to get, especially tires. The best source for fenders, running boards, bumpers, and tires was your friendly neighborhood garage mechanic, who might have a deal with some enterprising youngsters or oldsters who could strip a defenseless car in three minutes. If the war went on more than a few years, I suggested to No-Neck Arnie, the mechanic who had sold me the car, we’d get to the point where there would be only a few cars left, each one a monster combination of Fords, DeSotos, Caddies, and whatever.
“You’re a philosopher,” Arnie had said, shifting his body around to look at me, since he had no neck. “Like that guy on the radio, what’s his name, Fred Allen.”
I had a deal with Arnie. I parked my car in his garage, where he stopped his people from taking it apart. He also kept it running. In exchange for this, he charged me more than the usual war budget, which, considering the times, was quite fair. I looked back at the Ford, whose bumper sagged and whose right headlight looked bloodshot.
“A beauty, Arn,” I said before going out through the open garage door. I was in no hurry. I had nothing waiting for me in the office besides a list of phone calls to make to see if I could pick up some fill-in for hotel detectives who might be going on vacation. I also had a lead on some guard work at Grumman’s. A guy I had once worked with at Warner Brothers told me they were beefing up their night staff now that they had government contracts, and maybe I could get on part-time.
That was going to be the last call on my list. The Grumman lead was desperation, a confession that I was up against it. I had told myself five years earlier that I was not going to put on a uniform again, not no time, not never. I’d made my vow after wearing the Glendale cop uniform and the uniform of the security staff at Warners. There was no way I was going to put on a uniform again unless there was nothing else to do. Not never comes sooner than you think when you have to come up with the rent and enough cereal and eggs to stay alive.
I took in the late morning sun heading down Main Street toward the Farraday, which is on Hoover and Ninth. I went past the row of Mexican tiendas at the Plaza end of Main. Some guys were arguing in Spanish in a barber shop. One of the guys was the barber, who held a scissors in his hand. In any other part of town, you could be sure the barber would win the argument, but there’s no one more stubborn than a Mexican who knows he’s right, even if the other guy is holding a sharp scissors and has him pinned in a chair. Some tinny music blared out of a phonograph shop as I crossed over and passed the new city hall that looked like one of those Egyptian obelisks with windows.
Now I was in my neighborhood, crowds passing dark working men’s clothing stores, storefront burlesque houses, and nickel movie theaters. Before the war the crowds moved slowly, people from other neighborhoods looking for bargains, and people from this neighborhood just looking at the ground and shuffling along. The war had, changed that. Now people were hurrying and the faces were those of kids in soldier and sailor uniforms with little bird chests, looking scared or trying with little success to look tough. The street smelled of the stuff they cleaned the uniforms with.
The crowd thinned out when I hit Hoover. The smell of the lobby of the Farraday was one of the things I could count on. Not many people love the smell of Lysol. I love it. The Farraday Building perspired Lysol, which Jeremy Butler used generously to try to fight off mildew and decay. Lysol was the dominant smell, but there were others beyond it in the dark echoing hall as I paused in front of the lobby directory to be sure my name was still there. Seeping through the Lysol was the smell of drunks who kept finding places to sleep in the nooks and crevices of the Farraday until they were routed gently but firmly by the giant landlord, Jeremy, who lived in a comfortable apartment there, the only apartment in the building, maintained only so he could be near the trenches for his constant battle with dirt, grime, and humanity. Jeremy never complained. He simply swept, polished, cleaned, and carried on with the knowledge that the process never ended. The other smells of the Farraday vied for my attention when I got past the lobby and headed for the wide stairs, listening to the echo of my own footsteps. I smelled sweat, bacon, oil, glue, paper from the four floors of cubbyhole offices that housed bookies, doctors who might not be doctors, companies that did not do business that anyone could identify, and photographers whose sample photos in the hall dated back to the days of silent movie stars.
I whistled as I went up, ignoring the tug inside my body that reminded me that a sore back was never more than a trauma away. By the fourth floor I wasn’t feeling quite so loving about the Farraday, and when I paused in front of the door to Shelly Minck’s office, my good mood had disappeared. I was getting close to that uniform, and the sound of Shelly’s drill didn’t help.
Shelly was constantly changing the sign on the glass outside our office. He had a deal with one of the tenants in the Farraday, Kevin Potnow the photographer, who also did a bit of signpainting. Shelly took care of Kevin’s teeth and Kevin did photographs of Shelly and his wife Mildred and changed the lettering on our door when a new idea struck Shelly for drawing in clientele who happened to be passing by the darkened door on the fourth floor of the building on their way to oblivion.
The current lettering, in gold, read:
S. DAVID MINCK, D.D.S., L.L.D., O.S., B.B., PH.B.
DENTIST AND ORAL SURGEON
In small, black letters below this was written:
TOBY PETERS, INVESTIGATIONS
The t in Peters was almost gone. I went in, ignored the filthy anteroom, and went through the next door into Shelly’s suite. The dishes were still piled high in the sink in the corner, with various dental tools peeking up out of pots in which at some unremembered point in time chili had been burned. The coffee was bubbling black in the pot on the hot plate and Shelly, short, bald, and glaring myopically through his thick, slipping glasses, was chewing on his cigar butt and drilling away at the mouth of someone who looked familiar.