had her face plunged into Life magazine. There was a heavy brace on her leg. The other patient was a fifteen- year-old boy with a burr of wild, uncombed brown hair on his head and his left arm in a heavy cast.
“You really have to have an appointment, sir,” the nurse repeated stubbornly.
“Would tears move you? Just tell the doctor it’s Toby Peters, foretopman, and it’s an emergency,” I said.
She got up reluctantly with both hands on the desk. Her plan may have been to demonstrate some massive hidden reserve of power gleaned from the Rosicrucians and whip the desk out from under me. She seemed to be considering this for a few seconds, then headed toward a door across the amber room. The fifteen-year-old looked at me with hostility.
“I got hit in the knee,” I explained.
He nodded.
“It really hurts,” I said.
He showed no sympathy.
“My shoulder’s broke. Three places,” he upped me. “Pop truck hit me.”
“My brother hit me,” I said.
“My brother hit me,” the kid said, “I’d crush his face and walk on it.”
“We have different brothers.”
“My brother hit me,” the kid went on, enjoying the taste of fantasy, “I’d rip both his ears off and shove them.”
Doc Hodgdon came through the door in time to save me from further inventions of the youthful would-be Vlad the Impaler. Hodgdon was over sixty and had a head of white hair and a tan face to go with his lean body. I had only seen him in a YMCA sweat shirt and shorts before. At the Y, where he beat me regularly at handball, he looked athletic. Here he looked distinguished, like the guy in the Bayer aspirin ads. He strode over to me and took my shoulder firmly, helping me to his office while the twig nurse stood back as if my sore leg were contagious or I were taboo.
“What happened?” Hodgdon said quietly and with professional concern.
“His brother hit him,” the kid said with contempt, probably considering a new retaliation on his own brother for some future affront.
Hodgdon closed the door to his office behind us and helped me to the examining table. The office-examining room had once been a dining room: Now it held a desk, a table, a cabinet, and framed certificates on the wall. The curtained windows looked out on a well-mown lawn with a pair of lemon trees. “Kid was right,” I said, squirming to get comfortable on the table.
Hodgdon rolled up my pants leg, probed, and fiddled with my knee. I gritted my teeth.
“Well,” he sighed, standing erect, “you’ll never play the cello again.”
I held my tongue.
“It’s not so bad,” he said. “It’s sore and slightly out of joint. You slept on that sore knee when it was in a semilocked position.” He demonstrated semilocked with his fingers intertwined. It looked like firmly locked to me.
“Should have X rays,” he said, “and rest.”
“I haven’t got the time,” I said. “Isn’t there something you can do to keep me going for a few days? It’s an emergency situation. Life and death.”
Hodgdon turned and looked at me levelly.
“I can try to straighten it while it’s sore,” he said, “but it would be painful and require a bit of guesswork on my part without X rays. If it worked, I could give you a shot to kill the pain and a knee brace. I suggest…”
“Do it,” I said.
“Okay,” he said and came to the table. Over his shoulder on the wall was a photograph of Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York. I met Dewey’s little eyes and tried not to watch Hodgdon, who touched my knee again and took a grip over and under it. I knew his hands and arms were strong. They had sent little black handballs zipping past my head for three years. “Here we go.”
I yelled in surprise. Tom Dewey took it better. Pain I had expected, but not torture. My eyes filled with tears. When they cleared, I could see Doc Hodgdon bending my knee.
“I think you’re in luck,” he said. He went to his cabinet, opened it, pulled out a huge hypodermic, and filled it with a clear liquid.
“Maybe I should give the knee a rest,” I said as he advanced, checking the liquid with a little spray into the air.
“It’s all over,” he said, grabbing my thigh firmly. I met Dewey’s eyes again. Hodgdon’s fingers probed my kneecap, found a space and plunged the needle in. This time I bit my teeth.
“You should be feeling no pain and be able to walk in two or three minutes,” he said, placing the spent hypo gently in the sink. He opened the lower section of his cabinet and came out with an elastic hinged brace. It took him about ten seconds to get it on my knee. “Come back and see me in a few days. As soon as you can, give that leg some rest. That’s all it needs now. And you can forget about handball for a month or so. I’ll send you a bill.”
In three minutes I was walking through the office, past the chunky lady with the Life, the twig nurse, and the kid with the cast. I didn’t look at them, but I was sure they were all shaking their heads in disapproval. I went out the door, down the steps, and to my car, amazed at how little my leg bothered me. I didn’t think about it long. I was back on my way to Culver City and the secret rendezvous of Camile Shatzkin. That sounded like a good soap opera title, but I had no one to suggest it to.
The place I was looking for was just off Jefferson Boulevard, and the apartment I wanted was clearly marked by the lack of name. There was some mail in the box, but I couldn’t see whom it was addressed to, probably “Occupant.” I rang the bell and got no answer. Then I tried the bell marked “Leo Rouse, Superintendent.” A nearby ring told me Leo Rouse’s apartment was on the ground floor, and an opening door confirmed my brilliant observation. Rouse was around sixty, with an enormous belly and an equal number of teeth and strands of hair, about six. He wore overalls and a flannel shirt and was gumming something ferociously.
“Mr. Rouse?” I asked through the closed inner glass door.
“Yeah?” he said.
“I’d like to speak to you.” I opened my wallet and showed him a card. He opened the door but didn’t stand back to let me in.
“Mr. Rouse, my name is Booth, Lorne Booth, California National Bank.”
“Your card said you was Jennings from Blast-a-Bug Exterminators,” he said suspiciously.
I laughed.
“Got that card this morning from Jennings. They’re doing an estimate on an apartment complex I have an interest in out in Van Nuys.”
Rouse cocked his head and kept chewing. I estimated six to twelve hours before he could get down, let alone digest, whatever carnivorous thing he was worrying into masticated submission.
“What I’m doing,” I said quickly, “is checking the credit rating of two depositors who are taking out, or at least asking for, a small business loan. Both coincidentally reside right in this building.”
“Who?” he said.
“Long on the first floor and whoever is in apartment 2G. My notes have the address and apartment, but Mrs. Ontiveros failed to type in the name. She’s had a lot on her mind with her brother Sid going into the Army and…”
“What you want?” said Rouse.
“How long has Long lived in this building?”
“Three, four years. They got no money to invest. Can’t even keep up with the rent.”
“Good to know,” I said. “Just the kind of information I need. Now about 2G. That’s…?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Offen,” he supplied. “Don’t know anything about them.”
“How long they live here?” I asked with benign solemnity.
“Three months, but they don’t live here. They rent the place. Hardly ever sleep here. Hardly ever show up.”
“Doesn’t sound like the Offens who applied for the loan,” I said, puzzled. “Could you describe them?”
“She’s little younger than you. Some might say pretty. I’d say hoity-toity. Never saw him. She pays the rent.
