walking to the sink, turning on the water, and ignoring the pile of grimy coffee cups and dental-surgery instruments. I washed my face, my back to Sheldon Minck, and shook myself almost dry.
'I did not,' Shelly said.
I turned to face him. He was watching my eyes to see where all this was going and how much he could get out of it.
'You did. Mr. Ramone has met an untimely death,' I explained.
'Tell me a timely one,' Shelly fought back.
'I'd rather not. I need a favor, Shel,' I continued. 'Someone asks you, you hired me to get your payment. Al Ramone. Okay?'
'Can't be done,' Shelly said, removing the cigar from his face and looking down at it as if it were some vile wet thing, which it was.
'I think your dental magazine is a great idea,' I tried.
'No, you don't, Toby,' he said.
'I think it's one of your best ideas,' I said.
He looked at me again. 'Can't be done,' he repeated.
'What, the dental magazine or the favor?'
'Favor,' he said. 'Guy named Price already called. Asked if you were working for me, asked if I was interested in becoming a Glendale policeman.'
'And you told him?…'
'You weren't doing any work for me. I'm a dentist and not interested in a career change.'
I started toward my office.
'You're in trouble?'
I shrugged. He followed me.
'You shouldn't tell lies,' he said behind me.
'Shelly, you tell more lies than Tojo.'
'Well, yes, maybe, but that doesn't make it right.'
I went into my office, a cubbyhole with a door, a box big enough for a small desk with a chair behind it, two small chairs in front of it. Behind the desk chair was a window, six floors above the alley. On the wall across from the desk, next to the door, was a framed photograph of my father, me, my brother Phil, and our dog Kaiser Wilhelm. I was about ten when the picture was taken. Phil was fourteen or fifteen. Our father was wearing his grocer's apron and the look of a man smiling through pain. Kaiser Wilhelm was expressionless. On the wall to our right as we came in was a painting that covered the entire available space, the painting of a woman cradling two identical children on her lap. The painting had been done by Salvador Dali.
'You should have called,' Shelly said, closing the door behind him as I moved behind the desk and sat.
'I did,' I said, looking at the top envelope of my morning mail. 'You weren't here.'
'How was I to know?'
'You weren't,' I said. 'Now, if you'll leave me alone, I've got a suicide note to write.'
Shelly leaned over the desk at me.
'I'm for chrissake sorry, Toby,' he said.
'You're for chrissake forgiven, Sheldon,' I said.
'Does this mean you think my magazine idea stinks?'
'No,' I said. 'It's better than your Bernie the Bicuspid children's book.'
'Tony the Tooth. Tony the Tooth,' he corrected, shaking his head. 'That was a good idea, Toby. A great idea whose time hasn't come. That's why I want to ease it into the new magazine. The grinder and incisor.'
The outer door to the dental office opened and closed behind Shelly. He turned as someone walked in.
'New patient,' he whispered, turning back. 'Ten o'clock. Almost forgot.'
He walked out, closing the door behind him.
I worked on a new lie while I opened my mail.
The first letter was from the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel in New York City. I'd stayed there on a case. The Barbizon told me it was famous for its continental breakfast, which came with rooms as low as three bucks a day. All rooms with private baths and radios.
I could tell Price that Shelly was lying. That he was afraid of bad publicity.
The second letter was from the San Diego Book Club, promising me a choice of / Saw the Fall of the Philippines, by Carlos P. Romulo, or Congo Song, by Stuart Cloete, for a nickel.
I could deny I had told Price anything. I'd never be able to return to Glendale, but there are worse exiles.
The last of my mail was a postcard with a map on the front that told me how to get to the Old Hickory Barbecue off of Echo Park Avenue. Two free parking lots. Open all night. Two minutes from downtown. There wasn't much room for the message on the front because the preprinted P.S. filled the bottom half with a message that the Old Hickory was the most unusual eating place in America.
'The first dead soldier is now really dead,' the note said. 'And the cage-e one is next. I began lame but I'll end able. Who am I? Just ask what I am d.o.i.n.g.' It wasn't signed.
There was no stamp on the postcard. It hadn't come through the mail. I took the poem and the bloody note from my pocket, cleared a space on the table, and laid them crumpled and flat in front of me. They made no more sense than they had last night.
I got up, went to the door, opened it, and watched Shelly flashing a silver pocket flashlight into the mouth of a young man covered with a gray-white sheet. Sheldon Minck was singing 'Straighten Up and Fly Right.'
'Shel,' I said. 'When did you get the mail?'
'Usual time,' Sheldon said, pausing in his song but not his work. 'About eight.'
'Downstairs?' I said, looking at the young man in the chair.
'Hold still, Mr. Spelling,' Shelly said to his patient. 'The best is yet to be. Downstairs.'
'Thank you.'
'Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top,' Shelly sang, poking Mr. Spelling's teeth with something that looked like a chopstick with a needle at its tip.
Mr. Spelling grunted in what might have been pain or an urgent desire to plead for mercy.
'Won't take long. Won't take long,' Shelly said, probing. 'You want 'em clean, I've got to dig. Law of the dental jungle. Safari into the darkest cavities.'
Mr. Spelling grunted and I returned to my desk and the poems as Shelly began to question his patient about his potential interest in a magazine devoted to teeth.
They die until you understand They die by weapons in my hand. My father wept to be so cut From fortune, fame deserved, but I'll avenge the wrongs and slight To be there e'er the Ides and right Those wrongs and claim his prize And give to you a great surprise. First there was Charles Larkin And next Al Ramone. Do harken For on it goes and blood be thine Unless you learn to read my s.i.g.n.
It made no more sense this time than it had the night before. I looked at the note that had been pinned to Al Ramone:
'Welcome to the game. No time for a proper poem, but cage-e is next. There is more than one way to spell t.h.a.t. And then Lionel Varney.'
I turned the notes and the postcard over, held them up to the window, wondered if I was hungry enough to take a break after a full five minutes of work. I didn't have to decide. My office door opened and Jeremy Butler entered when I called 'Come in.'
Six-three and three hundred pounds of Jeremy filled my office door. He was wearing dark slacks and a blue pullover sweater with long sleeves and a turtleneck collar. He looked more like the wrestler he had been than the sixty-three-year-old landlord who writes poetry.
'Just the man I want to see,' I said, getting up.
'Two policemen were here early this morning looking for you,' Jeremy said. 'They asked me to tell you to see your brother as soon as you got in.'
'They said my brother?'
'They said Captain Pevsner and left no address. I assumed they knew he was your brother.'
'Why?'
