Melting Clock Read online

  I didn’t want a beer, but I drank it. I owed it to Nat.

  With Mrs. Plaut’s chapter at my side, I lay on the mattress and was asleep on the floor in my underwear before the Beech-Nut Gum clock clicked to one.

  When I woke up in the morning, the cat was sleeping on the bed next to me.

  The cat’s name is Dash. Notice I didn’t say “My cat’s name is Dash.” He’s not mine. He abides with me when he wants to come in through the window, get some attention, and eat. He’s big and orange and saved my life once.

  I made the dangerous barefooted journey to the front porch in my blue beach robe that had Downtown Y.M.C.A. written on the back in black letters. I almost never beat Mrs. Plaut to the L.A. Times, but she must have slept in after a party that rivaled those thrown by John Barrymore and Fatty Arbuckle.

  Back in my room, I fixed myself a bowl of Wheaties and a glass of Borden’s Hemo, did the same for Dash, and read the paper while I ate. I considered a second round for both me and the cat, but milk was up to fifteen cents a quart and clients were down almost one hundred percent.

  My back was okay and I wasn’t feeling as sorry for myself as I had the night before, partly because the sun was bright, partly because it was a new year and the news wasn’t bad.

  The Soviets were routing the Nazis, claiming that more than 312,000 Germans had been killed. Even Hitler was telling the Germans that it was going to be a tough year. And here at home, oleomargarine was hard to get.

  In the movie section I found two choices, either Who Done It? with Abbott and Costello or Time to Kill with Lloyd Nolan as Mike Shayne. Tough choice. I decided on both of them, providing the Rose Bowl game was over early enough. I had a busy day planned.

  I lay in bed grappling with Mrs. Plaut’s prose until the game came on. The Times had reported that Georgia coach Wally Butts had said Frank Sinkwich wouldn’t start. His star running back had a bad ankle. Sophomore Charlie Trippi would replace him. Trippi was supposed to be okay, but no offensive match for U.C.L.A. quarterback Bob Waterfield’s arm.

  I slept on and off through most of the game and woke up when the crowd, reported at 93,000, roared and I heard a voice say that Sinkwich had gone in for the touchdown. Dash didn’t seem to be around.

  “Telephone,” came Mrs. Plaut’s voice from outside my door.

  I mumbled some dry-mouthed something that I hoped would satisfy her and let her know I was trying to rejoin the land of the living, but Mrs. Plaut was not an easy woman to reach. She came through the door and looked down at me. She was wearing what at first looked like a cloak and dagger but turned out to be a U.C.L.A. shawl and trowel.

  “Telephone,” she repeated.

  “Mrs. Plaut, though I know this will do me no good, to hold onto the illusion that you and I are capable of communication, I’ll ask you again, please don’t come in here without the following scenario: You knock and I answer. I answer one of several ways: Come in. Just a minute. Or, I can’t open the door now. There are variations on this.”

  “Phone is waiting,” she said, looking first at me and then at the crumpled L.A. Times, “and I’ve got apples to peel.”

  “I’m almost naked,” I said, sitting up.

  “You are just noticing that?” she asked. “I knew it as soon as I came through the door. Kindly put the newspaper back together, especially the funny papers and the cooking, and bring it down to me.”

  “Who …?” I began, but she was gone.

  I put on my blue robe and went out to the phone on the landing. “Hello,” I said.

  “Dali is distraught,” came a high-pitched woman’s voice with a distinct accent that might have been Russian.

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “When Dali is distraught, he cannot work,” she went on. “He can think only brown. Brown is not a good color for Dali to think in.”

  “I see,” I said. Downstairs, Mrs. Plaut carried a bowl of apples out onto the front porch.

  “Only Dali truly sees,” she said.

  “What are we talking about?” I asked.

  “You did not answer Dali’s letter.”

  Then it hit me. A few weeks ago when I was lying on the mattress in broken-legged pain, Mrs. Plaut had handed me a pink envelope with an eye painted on it. She told me that the letter had been delivered by a woman in a funny hat.

  “You’re the woman in the funny hat,” I said.

  “I am Gala, the wife of Dali, formerly Gala Eluard, born Elena Deluvina Diakonoff.”

  I considered asking her what the next race she was running in was, now that I knew her lineage, but I sometimes remember what side my bread is margarined on.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked amiably, smelling insanity or a client or both. I have taken money from both the guilty and the insane. With the price of milk going up and margarine as hard to get as gas coupons, a man in my business took what he could get. Shoplifter patrol at the neighborhood Ralph’s Grocery was the only work I’d done for the past two weeks.

  “You read Dali’s letter?”

  I had read it. I still had it in the second drawer of my dresser. It said:

  I cannot understand why man should be capable of so little fantasy. I do not understand why, when I ask for a grilled lobster in a restaurant, I am never served a cooked telephone; I do not understand why champagne is always chilled, and why on the other hand telephones, which are habitually so frightfully warm and so disagreeably sticky to the touch, are not also put in silver buckets with crushed ice around them. Please try to locate a telephone which does not offend you and call me at the number below. I am in need of your services.

  “I called the number in the letter,” I said. “It was a Greek bakery.”

  “Impossible,” she said. “Dali does not like Greek pastry. The dough is like gritty paper covered in honey.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said, “but it was a Greek bakery.”

  “There are no Greek bakeries in Carmel,” Gala Dali said triumphantly.

  “Well, you got me there. Yes, ma’am. But I called a Los Angeles number.”

  “We are in Carmel,” she said.

  “The letter didn’t say that.”

  “Everyone knows Dali is in Carmel,” she admonished.

  Although I was living proof that this was not so, I had no desire to prolong the discussion or provoke a possible client. I said nothing and after about five seconds she seemed to accept that as an apology.

  “Are you available?” she said. “We must—”

  Someone interrupted her in a foreign language and she answered. They went back and forth for a few seconds while I waited, wondering if I could still catch the Abbott and Costello movie or give up and listen to the Philco special, “Our Secret Weapon.” Rex Stout was going to expose Axis lies. Dash and I could curl up with some bran flakes and give our moral support to the Allies.

  Gala came back on the line.

  “Dali wants to know if you have blue eyes.”

  “Brown,” I said.

  More discussion in a foreign language.

  “That is acceptable. Are you a Surrealist?”

  “I’m a private detective,” I said patiently.

  Then a man’s voice came on the phone, excited, so accented that I could barely understand what was being said.

  “I do not deal with Breton and his Surrealists. Do you know why?”

  “They don’t shower regularly.”

  “No, I do not know if they shower regularly. The difference between me and the Surrealists is that I am a surrealist.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  The woman was back on the line now.

  “Dali is upset.”

  “I could tell. I’m a detective.”

  “We must see you. We have lost weeks.”

  “Why me?”

  “Poldi,” she said.

  “Poldi?”

  “Stokowski, Leopold Stokowski,” she explained impatiently. “You worked for him. He told us you could help. Some
one has stolen three of Dali’s paintings and three clocks, clocks my mother gave to me, the only things I have from Russia, from Dr. Lazovert in St. Petersburg when we—”

  “I’m sure you considered this, but how about the police?”

  “No, no, no, no, no, no,” she said and Dali took the phone from her to add, “No, no, no, no, no.”

  And then she was back.

  “There are things … there is something in one of the paintings that must never be seen by the public. The paintings were taken from our house. They were not meant to be seen. The shock would … it would be …”

  She couldn’t imagine what it would be and neither could I. I didn’t know much about Dali. I knew he was Spanish, read that he was a bit nuts or putting on a show that he was nuts to sell his paintings. This was the Salvador Dali who painted men with shit on their pants, painted old men with erections that looked like melting pianos, and designed hats with figures of dead babies on them. This was the guy who said his plan was to shock the world every twenty-four hours. What the hell could he have painted that he thought the world couldn’t handle?

  “… shocking,” I said.

  “Shocking, yes. We have had a message from the thief,” she said. “I must read it to you.”

  “Let’s talk business first,” I said.

  “They have not indicated what they want,” she replied.

  “No, let’s talk about my business. Twenty dollars a day, plus expenses, plus one original painting by Dali if I get any of the paintings back.”

  “The money is nothing,” she said, “but you are asking for a Dali painting, a piece of his soul.”

  “A small piece will be okay. And he turns them out fast,” I said.

  She passed the terms on to Dali and came back on the line to say, “Yes.”

  “One hundred dollars in advance when I get to Carmel,” I prompted.

  “We are not in Carmel now,” she said. “The thief said he was in Los Angeles. We came in a limousine. We are in the Beverly Hills, the home of a friend. You must come now.”

  She gave me an address on Lomitas; I told her I’d change and be there in about an hour.

  “One hundred dollars when I get there,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, yes,” she agreed and hung up.

  I went back to my room, wrote the address in my battered spiral notebook, and got dressed, pleased with myself that I’d added the painting into my fee. I’d never seen one of Dali’s paintings. Didn’t think I’d like them from the descriptions I’d read, but it would be something Jeremy Butler might want. Jeremy was the landlord at the Farraday Building, where I had an office inside the office of Sheldon Minck, D.D.S. Jeremy, large, bald, somewhere in his sixties, had made a few dollars as a pro wrestler and invested the dollars in a downtown office building on Hoover, as well as various other properties around town. His specialty was taking buildings on the way down and using his muscle and will power to embarrass them and make them respectable and profitable. I had the feeling he hadn’t been particularly successful. But Jeremy was a poet, a poet who had recently married and fathered a remarkably beautiful round baby named Natasha. The Dali would be a gift for Natasha, if I got the paintings back.

  I put on the best of what I had left in the closet. I didn’t have a clean suit or a sports jacket. I didn’t really have dirty ones either. A suitable addition to my wardrobe was high on the list of purchases planned for Dali’s advance money. I did have a windbreaker: showerproof, gabardine, brown, and lined with rayon. Zipper pocket over the left breast and reasonably clean. I’d picked it up new for eight bucks at Hy’s for Him. My underwear was passable, my socks dark, my trousers only slightly wrinkled and blue enough to hide any stains I didn’t want to investigate. It was the best I could do.

  I dragged the mattress back on the bed, sort of straightened the covers and watched Dash crawl out from under the sofa and stretch. I gave him a few seconds to figure out where he was and then picked him up and tucked him under one arm. Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript was under the other.

  I didn’t expect to avoid Mrs. Plaut. I didn’t even try. She sat peeling apples on the white-painted front porch swing, watching the neighbors when they appeared. I dropped Dash on the porch and he went down the stairs and out of sight into the bushes.

  “That was some party,” I said, putting the manuscript box next to Mrs. Plaut on the swing.

  “What do you think about kindergarten, Mr. Peelers?” she asked as I brushed orange cat hairs from my wind-breaker.

  “I don’t remember it well, Mrs. Plaut,” I said. “I do remember Evelyn Yollin, the shortest girl in class, who—”

  “No,” she interrupted when I had almost retrieved the image of little Evelyn, who might be a grandmother now. “Uncle Robert’s idea about kindergarten.”

  I hadn’t read most of Mrs. Plaut’s chapter but I’d scanned it and didn’t remember an Uncle Robert. She looked up into my bewildered face.

  “Not my Uncle Robert from Port Arthur, the radio Uncle Robert in New York who says we should get rid of the word kindergarten because it’s a German word.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I haven’t really—”

  “Nonsense,” she said, looking over the roofs across the street toward the eastern sky. “Plaut is a German name. What would they call kindergarten? What would they call Plaut?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Radio people, painters, and the emperor of Japan are crazy people,” she said, returning to her apples. “I’m going to make Apples Eisenhower. Eisenhower is a German name, too. If you do not come back before three hours it will be ready and you may have some. I cannot prevent you from giving some to the orange cat, but I would prefer that you not give him much. He’s beginning to look sassy though he no longer looks with hunger at my bird.”

  “I’ll ration his Apples Eisenhower,” I promised.

  “Speaking of rations,” she said. “Stamp number twenty-four in War Ration Book One is good for one pound of coffee until January twenty-one. Sugar stamp number ten in War Ration Book One is good for three pounds of sugar until January fifteen. Gasoline A coupon number four is good until January twenty-one. Stamp number seventeen in War Ration Book One is good for one pair of shoes until June fifteen.”

  I didn’t ask how she remembered all of this. I just said, “You can have them all, Mrs. Plaut”

  She nodded and went on, “Blue A, B, and C stamps in War Ration Book Two will be issued in February. They are worth forty-eight points worth of canned and other processed foods for the month of March.”

  “You may have them all, Mrs. Plaut”

  “War is hell, Mr. Peelers.”

  “I’ve got to go, Mrs. Plaut. Dali’s expecting me.”

  “The one from Tibet,” she said knowingly.

  I’d been through this with her before so I said, “Yes, Mrs. Plaut.”

  “Book or pests?” she asked.

  It took me a beat to understand. “No, he hasn’t written a book and he doesn’t need an exterminator.”

  “Ah,” she said with a very knowing smile. “They’re wrong about the kindergarten thing, you know.”

  “They’re wrong,” I agreed. “I’ll see you later.”

  My khaki-colored Crosley was, as all Crosleys are, almost small enough to pick up and carry under one arm. I’d bought mine used from No-Neck Arnie the mechanic for two hundred dollars. He’d got it from a guy who’d picked it up at a hardware store in 1940. It wasn’t a bad car. Maybe the reason it didn’t catch on was the brilliant marketing idea of selling them in hardware and appliance stores like ladders and coping saws.

  I was feeling pretty good when I turned the corner at Heliotrope and drove over to Arlington to head north. Crossing the street when I got to Arlington were a man and a woman. The woman looked like Anne. I drove past and looked back. It wasn’t Anne.

  I had paid No-Neck Arnie fifteen bucks to install a radio in the Crosley. Crosleys came without frills—just a speedometer, a fuel gauge, and a water g
auge, but I needed company when I drove. One of the Eberle brothers was singing “This Love of Mine.” I turned the radio off and paid attention to the road.

  3

  The address wasn’t hard to find. It was set in white stones on a black marble slab. The house itself, a big brick English-looking thing with slanted red roofs set back about a hundred yards from the street on a paved driveway, couldn’t be seen through the small forest of trees in front of it. Since there weren’t any guards, walls, or gates, whoever owned it probably wasn’t in the movies or the rackets.

  There were two cars in the driveway, though I could see a garage at the side of the house with its doors up and enough room for the Beverly Hills fire department. Inside the garage a man with his back to the driveway was washing a car the size of Hoover Dam and the color of a robin’s egg. I parked behind a white 1941 Lincoln convertible with its top down. Parked in front of the Lincoln was something I’d never seen before.

  I walked over to look at it and still didn’t know what I was looking at. It looked a little like a Cord but …

  “It’s a Hupmobile,” came a voice behind me.

  The guy was about forty, tall, thin, a lopsided Henry Fonda type, only older with graying temples. He was wearing grease-smeared overalls. His hair flowed forward, almost covering his eyes. A spot of oil in the shape of a lima bean smudged his cheek. He was wiping his hands with a once-white rag.

  “Only three hundred nineteen of them made,” he said. “Got it for less than eleven hundred. Keep it in shape, it should be worth forty or fifty thousand in twenty years. Should have bought a dozen of them but where would I put them?”

  He looked around and it seemed to me he had enough room for at least twenty-five or thirty of the Hups.

  He held out his hand and I took it. The grip was firm and the smile sincere.

  “Barry T. Zeman,” he said.

  “Toby Peters,” I said.

  “That automobile J.T. is working on,” he said, nodding toward the blue Hoover Dammobile. “A 1940 Cadillac Fleetwood Series town car.”