“Our names go on the door the same size,” I said.
“Never,” said Shelly.
“Dr. Minck,” Porter Hall said, looking at his watch impatiently.
“Same size,” Shelly whispered to me.
“And-” I began.
“No ands, no ands here, Toby, this is blackmail,” Shelly said, almost weeping.
“You think I don’t know blackmail when I’m engaged in it?” I said. “I’m a detective. And … you keep the sink clean.”
“Dr. Minck,” the man said again. “We really must …”
“Here we come,” said Shelly, taking my arm and hissing to me. “All right.”
I should have asked for more. I knew it when I sat in the chair and watched Shelly lead the dog to my office door, open it, close the dog inside, and turn to me with a grin like Karloff as Fu Manchu.
“Now just what kind of dental work does this man need?” said Marjorie Main, looking down at me as if I were a fraud.
Shelly was pinning a clean sheet around my neck. I felt as if I were in a barber shop with W. C. Fields about to drop a scalding towel on my face to keep his own hands from burning.
“A great deal,” said Shelly, touching his chin and selecting an instrument to begin with.
“Doctor,” I said ominously.
“But,” Shelly went on, “today we are simply going to begin. We’ve got to take the X rays first.”
Before I could protest, Shelly had rolled out his X ray machine and placed a black metal cone from it against my cheek, then turned out the lights and filled my mouth with film. I tried with little success to breathe while three of us watched Shelly put on his dark goggles and heavy lead coat and unreel the extra long electrical cord.
“We’ll go behind the barricade in the corner,” he told the other doctors and headed over, looking like a field colonel directing his adjutants to safety during an attack.
“Hold it.” I said, pulling the boards out of my mouth. Shelly flicked the lights back on.
“Mr. Peters,” he said, removing his goggles. “You’ve exposed the goddamn film.”
“Better the film than me, Minck,” I said threateningly.
“Dr. Minck,” Marjorie Main stepped in. “We haven’t time to wait while you get the X rays developed. Can’t you simply do a visual examination now and some preliminary work so we can observe your procedures?”
“Dr. Ferzetti is right,” said the man. “We have other stops to make.”
Reluctantly, Shelly took off the lead coat and hung it, along with the goggles, in the closet. Then he turned to me.
“Open wide. Mr Peters,” he said leaning over, a recently cleaned mirror in his hand. He was breathng heavily as he put his weight on my chest and explored my mouth with a series of “Ah-ha’s” and “Well, well, wells.”
When he stepped back, he had a satisfied look on his face. Shelly cleaned the mirror on his smock, put it down on the clean white towel on his work tray, and asked me, “Do you brush your teeth regularly, Mr. Peters?”
“Regularly,” I said. “With Teel, or Dr. Lyon’s.”
“You’ve got some cavities,” Shelly said, picking up something with a sharp point and tapping it against his palm. “Let’s take care of one or two of them now.”
“Let’s,” sighed Porter Hall with more than a touch of impatience.
As soon as he had my mouth propped open and little blocks put in, Shelly turned to the two inspectors and said, “Mr. Peters is a well-known radio personality, aren’t you, Mr. Peters?”
I gargled and almost choked.
“Yes?” said the woman with some incredulity.
“Mr. Peters is the voice of Captain Midnight,” Shelly said, leaning over on the drill, which began to spin evilly just beyond the range of my right eye, which was straining toward it.
Shelly worked quickly, dripping sweat on me and singing a medley of Cole Porter tunes. He paused during “Anything Goes” to smile grimly and shrug. “Stubborn little yentz, but we’ll get him.”
Pain and I are not strangers, but even so, Shelly redefined it for me. It wasn’t the intensity but the duration. Shelly had the touch of a blind hippo and a tastefully matching manner and odor. But he was on his best behavior, which resulted in his failing to maim or kill me in the chair.
“That should do it,” he said, packing the silver filling into the two holes he had excavated in my teeth. “Have a look, colleagues.”
Shelly stepped back, and the two unfamiliar faces leaned forward to examine my mouth.
“Captain Midnight,” the woman said, after pursing her lips with doubt. “Can I have your autograph for my grandson?”
Shelly stuck a piece of paper and a pencil in my hand. I felt my tingling teeth with my torpid tongue and signed Tobias Leo Pevsner, parent-given name, adding, “With good wishes from your pal, Captain Midnight.”
“Okay, so what do you think?” Shelly said, turning to the two inspectors, his hands wringing.
“Well,” said the man. “You seem minimally competent.”
“Your office is clean if not modern,” the woman added.
“Your technique is very old-fashioned,” the man went on, taking out a notebook to write something. Shelly craned his neck to try to see what the man was carefully noting, but had no success.
“Frankly, Dr. Minck,” the woman said, looking at me and back at Shelly, “our primary complaints seem at odds with what we have seen here, though I have the impression that you’ve cleaned this office up very recently.”
“Not so,” said Shelly, actually crossing his heart. “Ask Mr. Peters. Did the office look like this the last time you were here?”
I nodded my head in agreement, trying to get my stiff jaws working again.
In my office, the little dog was whining and scratching at the door. The woman wandered about the room touching, examining, and the man kept jotting notes.
“What are you writing there, what?” Shelly said, unable to restrain himself.
“Notes,” said Porter Hall.
“I know notes,” sighed Shelly, “but what kind of notes? Are you writing bad things or good things?”
“Just notes,” the man said cryptically.
“I think we have seen quite enough, Dr. Minck,” came the voice of the woman, who was returning to our line of vision. The flowers were in bloom on her dress, and her smile was without committment.
“So,” said Shelly too eagerly, “do I pass?”
“Dr. Minck,” the man said, following the woman to the door, “this is not a grade school mathematics test. This is a professional assessment.”
“You got the autograph,” Shelly reminded the woman, pushing his glasses back on his nose.
“That’s not really relevant to your competency,” she said.
“I know, I know,” said Shelly, “but it was a nice thing, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t answer, but the man put his notebook away and held out his hand to Shelly, who shook it.
“You’ll be hearing from our office soon,” the man said with a polite little grin. “Good-bye, doctor, and to you, Captain.”
“Good-bye,” I said, reaching back to remove the sheet pinned around my neck as the two inspectors went out into the reception room. We waited till they were in the hall, then Shelly turned to me.
“He shook my hand,” he said, walking over to me cradling his face in his hands. “He wouldn’t do that if they were planning to impale me, would he?”
“Probably not,” I said, pushing out of the chair and trying to get a decent breath, no easy task with sore ribs and in the aftermath of Shelly’s work.
Shelly got into the chair I had just vacated, fished a cigar out of his pants pocket, and lit it pensively.
“I did a good job on your teeth,” he puffed. “I’m only gonna charge you half price out of gratitude for helping me out.”
“You’re going to charge me nothing,” I said, stepping toward him with heartfelt malice.
“A joke,” he said. “A joke. I’m trying to relieve the tension here. I’ve been under a lot of tension here.”
The dog was scratching away, and we didn’t hear the hall door open. Our first sense of it was the voice of Marjorie Main saying, “You should be hearing from us by the end of the week. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.” And she was off.