"Ohhhhh Jameseeeez," he moaned, looking at the huge tooth that lay soaking the white paper with blood. "No wonder that sucker hurt!"
"Yes," I said, "and unfortunately, when the local wears off you're going to get some more pain. Notice, Ron, I'm not calling it discomfort, as so many of my colleagues do. I'm calling it pain because that's what it will be. Do you drink?"
"Sure."
So I gave him a blue card with instructions. For minors, or people who don't drink, I give a white card with a different set of instructions and a prescription for Tylox. But never do I mix instructions, or cards, because booze on top of a pain-killing drug can make some people drop where they stand after one snort. It's very dangerous.
"Hey Doc. This just says to go home and get bombed."
"Uh-huh. There's a good drink recipe on the back. Stay home tomorrow and watch the tube. You'll be in some pain for the next twenty hours because I had to remove a wee bit of infected jawbone. That's going to smart. Next day return to work and a take aspirin. Keep the packing in your mouth until dinnertime and don't rinse. Good-bye."
"What about payment?"
"One pain at a time. Susan will bill you."
He regarded the devastatingly gorgeous Susan Petri, the one who could turn men into stone. Susan Petri should be a controlled substance. He addressed me sotto voce.
"Wow, Doc. If you'll pardon a personal observation, you've got some really nice scenery around here. Must make coming to work uh, less of an ordeal."
"If you're referring to Ms. Petri's physical attributes"- I sniffed- "then let me assure you they had next to nothing to do with my hiring her. And, speaking as one twentieth-century man to another, I regret your judging her solely on her physical appearance. It is sexist and archaic. Isn't she dynamite?"
"Yeah, I-OOOO I think I just got the first twinge!"
"You ain't felt nothin' yet, Ron. There's more where that came from. Go home and guzzle; I'll see you Friday."
I saw him out the door just as the phone rang. It was Joe, returning my call to Ten-Ten Comm. Ave.
"Where the hell have you been? I called you before work."
"Oh. You mean it was important?"
"Joe, listen: I've got a taped phone message from Johnny. He called me late Friday afternoon and left a message on my machine."
"Well what's it say?"
"I'll play it over the phone. Hold on."
I pressed the playback button on my phone answering machine and held the receiver right over the tiny speaker: Hello, Doc? This is Johnny. Johnny Robinson, Dependable. Listen, I got your work from the dental lab but I'll be a little bit late with it. Can you hold on until just before suppertime? Sorry, but I'm totin' somethin' hot for my buddy Andy and I've got a- uh [squeak, flap, squeak] complication, dontcha know… [bark, bark]. Sorry for the delay… I'll stay in touch. [bark, click]
There was a pause on the other end after it was over. Then, Joe asked me to play it again. I did. Then he asked me to play it a third time.
"Okay, I'll be out in an hour. I might bring O'Hearn with me. You hear that squeaking in the background? Phone-booth door… the old type. And the barking? Johnny's dogs. Somebody was tailing him."
"Who's Andy?"
"That's what we're gonna find out. Stay put."
Joe and I listened to the tape three more times. We played the end of it over and over again to try and determine what the background noises meant. The problem was that the answering device was a crude recorder, and the speaker was a tiny arrangement barely an inch and a half across. Hardly concert-hall realism. Frustrated, Joe said he needed a big tape deck with three heads so he could make more copies. I had such a deck, but the one at the Concord police station was closer and Joe said he'd like Chief Brian Hannon's opinion of the message.
"You would? Really and truly?"
"Well why not?" asked Joe.
"Well why?"
We nestled ourselves in front of the police department's big Akai tape deck after we'd made four copies of the message, which ran 25.4 seconds, and listened again to the original tape. Brian Hannon sat between us, running his fat fingers through his thinning sand-colored hair as he cocked his ear at the-voice. The details in the background were clearer with the better equipment. The squeak of a door hinge, the faint sounds of traffic and pedestrians and a bell.
The three of us hunkered down there like sparrows on a wire, listening. I was at one end, a bit lean and graying at the temples. Brian, short, stocky, and almost bald, was in the middle. Bringing up the far side was good old Joe, with his paunch and his hound-dog eyes. Then I knew who it was we must've looked like: Larry, Curley, and Moe. The Three Stooges.
"Phone booth," growled Brian at the squeak, flap, squeak. "He's opening and closing the door of a phone booth, probably to get a good look at somebody who's tailing him."
"We agree," said Joe. "And the barking we're hearing is Tommy and Susie, who are on their leads right outside the booth. They usually didn't bark. It took a lot to make them squawk. All these things add up to the message: I'll be late, I got a complication…"
"Uh-huh," I agreed. "Like somebody tailing me, trying to get what l'm carrying."
"What?" asked Brian.
"We're narrowing it down. But what about the chiming bells in the background? Which church is it?"
"Three bongs. Pretty deep bongs. Must be Park Street Church," mused Joe, "but somehow it doesn't sound like it. Three bongs means three o'clock. Let's consult Johnny's log and see where he was at three."
Joe flipped out his pocket notebook and checked the page that he'd copied the log information on. He ran his finger down the list.
"Let's see. At three in the afternoon Johnny was making a cash delivery to National Distilling in Cambridge. That's right over near the Museum of Science. Hell, there's no church there. None at a1ll.".
"It's gotta be Park Street Church," said Brian. "Do you know any other church that strikes the hours?"
Joe shook his head. "Doesn't sound like Park Street. The bongs aren't deep enough. God knows I hear that church often enough. They play a little song and then chime the hours. The bongs are slow and deep. These bongs are more like chimes; they're fast and higher-pitched."
"Is it Trinity Church in Copley Square?" I asked. "I hear tons of people in the background- a lot of street traffic and pedestrians."
"I don't think Trinity strikes the hours," said Joe, rubbing his chin with his thumb. It made a raspy sound. He rewound the tape again, for the hundredth time. We were going to wear it out. There it was again: the barking, the squeak of the phonebooth door, and three bells, far off. Close by were lots of people walking and talking. Shouting and laughing.
"A mob scene," said Brian. "Sounds to me like lunch hour. Doesn't sound like three o'clock. Only on a weekend would it be so noisy at three. But it's gotta be either Park Street or Copley Square."
"Wait a minute!" said Joe. "I just heard the word fiari. That's Italian for flowers. Hell, Johnny's in the North End here. That must be Old North Church."
We thought we'd solved the thing then. But several problems emerged. One was the fact that his log sheet showed him at the distillery at 2:45, over in Cambridge, not in the North End. Second, as Brian had observed, the mob scene outside the phone booth was too manic for three in the afternoon, even on a Friday.