the table nearby. “We don’t need William Powell for this one.” He chuckled. “A man is in a dental chair.” Shelly looked up grinning, the blunt instrument he had been seeking now in his hand. “A dentist,” he went on, pointing the instrument at his own chest, “is standing over him and a white cloth covers the man from the neck down.”
“A nearly white cloth,” I said.
“As you will,” Shelly said, grandly removing his cigar so that he could cough and adjust his glasses. “But one might conclude that the said Seidman is having his dental health looked after.”
“I’m not sure that would be a reasonable conclusion, Shelly,” I said.
“You can’t insult me, Toby,” Shelly said, turning again to his patient and indicating that he wanted Seidman to open his mouth.
“Oh, I can insult you, Shel. It just doesn’t have any effect,” I said, stepping closer and looking at Seidman.
“I dropped by to see you,” Seidman said, arresting Shelly’s hand in midflight, blunt instrument poised. “Minck said he saw something wrong with my front tooth. So …”
“Right, Shelly’s hypnotic,” I agreed. “He reeks of confidence.”
“Can’t insult me,” Shelly sing-songed, moving his head from side to side to get a better look at Seidman’s offending tooth.
“Phil wants to see you. This afternoon,” Seidman managed to say before Shelly inserted the drill and looked back at me through thick lenses to let me know who was in charge here. Sergeant Steve Seidman was my brother’s partner. My brother was Lieutenant Phil Pevsner, Los Angeles Police Department, Wilshire District. Maybe he just wanted to give me the semiannual name lecture. Phil was never quite sure whether he was pleased that I used the name Peters instead of Pevsner. On the one hand, it kept people from associating us with each other. On the other hand, he didn’t like the idea that I didn’t use the name I’d been born with. Hell, I didn’t even use the brains I had been born with. Some wild thing had been born with and in me, a banshee or a dybbuk. I was strange, wonderful, with new worlds to conquer every day, like the lobby of a fleabag hotel on Broadway or the dark night corridors of a defense plant while wearing a gray uniform two sizes too big.
“I’ll drop by,” I told Seidman, but I didn’t think he heard me over the drill. So I shouted to Shelly, “Any messages, Shel? Anything new?”
“Sugar rationing books are ready,” he shouted back around his cigar as Seidman’s tooth gave way.
“That’s not what I had in mind,” I shouted. “Have I had any calls?”
“No calls,” bleated Shelly.
“Thanks,” I said, reaching for the coffee and trying to catch sight of Seidman’s face. I had never seen any expression on Seidman’s pale face, but I was sure that if anything could bring some life to it, it would be Shelly at work. Seidman seemed to be as calm as usual. He was the perfect partner for my brother, whose emotions tingled on the surface of his face and in his fists like one of No-Neck Arnie’s overheated batteries.
The coffee was hot and awful, just the way Shelly liked it. I had my own cup, a ceramic job that had WELCOME TO JUAREZ hand painted on it along with a little picture of a sombrero. No one was supposed to touch the cup but me, though I suspected Shelly sometimes went for it when nothing clean was left.
Cup in hand, I reached for the knob to my office door.
“Almost forgot,” Shelly said, looking at me over his shoulder. “Lady came in about ten minutes ago, just before Sergeant Seidman. She’s in your office waiting for you. Between you and me and the OPA, she could use some dental work on that overbite. You might suggest she stop and see me.”
Since my office is not soundproof or Shellyproof, there was no doubt the woman inside had heard him, especially since at that point I had the door partly open.
In the hope of finding a new client who could save me from the darkness of hotel corridors or worse, I regretted that I hadn’t tightened my tie, set my face in a serious frown, and stepped into my office … where I found myself face to face with Eleanor Roosevelt.
“You’re Eleanor Roosevelt,” I said.
“I know,” she answered, looking over her glasses with an amused smile. “I’m afraid you will have to do a bit better than that if you are to convince me of your skills.”
I closed the door to cut out some of Shelly’s humming and drilling, and stood there looking at her. She had cocked her head back to examine me from the single chair in front of my desk. Her hair, cut short, was dark with gray creeping in. She looked her age, which was fifty-eight, but there was something there that I had never seen in photographs. Sure, she was homely, not much in the way of a chin, an overbite, though not nearly as much as people joked about, and a body without moments. She wore a black dress with little flowers on it and a thin dark coat. But it was her eyes that made the difference, that gave something a newspaper or newsreel picture couldn’t catch. They were dark and deep and always looking right at you. From that moment on, every time I talked to her, she gave me all of her attention. She sat now with her hands neatly folded in her lap like an obedient schoolgirl.
“Would you like some coffee?” I said, holding out my Juarez cup to show her what coffee was.
She examined the cup seriously and then said, “No thank you,” as she removed her glasses and put them in a dark case that she pulled out of the May Company shopping bag at her side.
“Is it all right if I sit down?” I said.
“It is your office,” she answered, the smile back, her voice slightly high-pitched, with a back-East accent that reminded me of tea parties and bad jokes about the rich, the kind they have in
I sat and looked at her to the somewhat muffled sound of the drill and of Shelly now singing “Ain’t We Got Fun.”
“Did you get my letter?” she asked, leaning forward slightly.
“Letter,” I repeated, cleverly wondering if I should open my top drawer and sweep into it the garbage on my desk, which included the remnants of two day-old tacos from Manny’s down the street, a handball, and an almost empty emergency box of Kellogg’s All-Bran.
“Right,” I said, trying to wake up. “I got a letter a few weeks back from the White House, a note from some woman named Francis something, said somebody would be in touch with me about a personal matter and … that was you?”
She nodded and opened her eyes wider. “What did you think it was?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “I thought it was something millions of people were getting. Maybe I wasn’t going to get a sugar or gas ration book. Maybe a new law was going into effect to draft fifty year olds.”
She reached into her shopping bag and came out with a small notebook, which she opened after putting on her glasses again. She glanced down at it and returned the notebook to the bag. I wondered what she had bought at the May Company and how they had reacted at the dinnerware counter when Eleanor Roosevelt asked for two hundred juice glasses on sale for the White House.
“You are,” she said, “forty-seven years old, not fifty, and even if the draft age were raised substantially, I doubt that with your back you would be considered an asset to our war effort.”
“I’m not sure what brought you here,” I said, sipping coffee and stopping myself from straightening my tie, “but you must have the wrong Toby Peters.”
Her mouth twitched slightly and her right cheek puffed out. A sound of air slipped between her lips as behind us Shelly launched into “Josephine Please Don’t Lean on the Bell,” complete with his famous Eddie Cantor imitation.
“You want me to try to shut him up?” I said, nodding toward the door.
“He sounds irrepressible to me,” she said.
“He is,” I agreed, guessing she meant that nothing short of mayhem would stop Shelly.
“You had a dog when you were a boy,” she said, looking into my eyes for an answer that suddenly seemed very important. For a moment I speculated that Eleanor Roosevelt had wandered away from her keepers, who were frantically searching the streets for her. I had, perhaps, stumbled onto a great White House mystery: The First Lady was nuts.
“I had a dog,” I agreed, putting down my Juarez cup and adjusting my tie.
“The one in the picture on the wall behind me?” she said without turning to the photograph.
“Right,” I agreed. “But that was a long time ago. He’s dead now.”
“Almost everyone is,” she agreed brightly. “Who are the others in the picture?”
