“This person’s name might not be Stella?”
“It might well be.”
“That explains it,” he said. “I’m at your service, Mr. . ”
“Peters, Toby Peters. When can we start?”
“Anytime tomorrow,” he said. “From nine in the morning till nine at night.”
“How about today?”
“Today,” he said. “Let me look.”
He shuffled some papers and I waited. I had a feeling his answer would be-
“You’re in luck. We have a cancellation this afternoon at two.”
“Can we make it one?” I asked.
“Ah. . that will be difficult, but I can make a few shifts and changes to accommodate a new student.”
“Thank you.”
“You know how to get here?”
The address was on Western, not far from Melrose.
“I’ll be there at one.”
We hung up. It was eleven-thirty in the morning. If I hurried, I could get to the On Your Toes Dance Studio and College and catch Willie when he wasn’t on his toes.
I called my office. Violet answered, “Sheldon Minck, Creative Dentistry without Pain.”
“And Toby Peters, Private Investigator,” I said.
“Dr. Minck said I shouldn’t give your name,” Violet said.
“Put Dr. Minck on the phone.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you, Mr. Peters,” she whispered. “I wish you’d come here quick. He just sits in his dental chair looking at his fingers.”
“I’ll get there as soon as I can, Violet. Anything else?”
“You got a call from. . a Miss Anita Maloney. She left a number. You want it?”
Maybe Anita wanted to go to another prom or she remembered I had borrowed two bucks from her on prom night. Violet gave me her number. I wrote it in my notebook even though I had it scrawled on a napkin somewhere in my pocket.
“And a Mr. Forbes called saying you should give him a call as soon as you checked in.”
I heard a distinct background groan from Shelly Minck. I took Forbes’s number.
“That it?” I asked.
“You owe me two dollars,” she said.
“The fight,” I remembered.
“Ortiz in a TKO over Salica in the eleventh. Double or nothing on the Bivins-Mauriello fight tomorrow?”
“Odds today?”
“Bivins is still five-to-six.”
“You get Bivins. I get Mauriello. My ten to your two. You lose and we’re even.”
“Okay,” she said brightly. “If Dr.-”
She was cut off by the phone being wrenched from her hand. The frantic voice of Sheldon Minck came crackling.
“My fingers are my life,” he said, nearly weeping. “I’m like a. . like a harpist, or an exterminator.”
“What is so special about an exterminator’s fingers?”
“You try using a Flit can with paws,” Shelly said.
“No one is going to cut off your fingers,” I said. “I talked to Forbes. All that was for show. He tried to hire me to find out who killed Luna.”
“I didn’t do it,” Shelly cried.
“Until you said that I didn’t suspect you.”
“Said what?” Shelly screamed.
“I’m kidding, Shel,” I said. “Your fingers are safe and I don’t suspect you.”
“You’re lying to make me feel better.”
“I’m not lying, Shel, but your fingers might be in trouble if you don’t tell Violet to say my name when she answers the phone. We have an agreement.”
“I’ll tell her,” he said reluctantly. “You sure I’m-”
“I’m sure, Shel.”
“Then I can have Violet go down to Manny’s and pick up some tacos.”
“What has one thing got to. . right, Shel. You can have Violet pick up some tacos. Good-bye.”
I hung up and retrieved my Crosley from Cotton Wright, the parking attendant at the Monticello, and gave him a buck tip, which I marked in my expense book along with the cost of parking.
“You a veteran?” Cotton asked as I eased gently onto the pillow I had taken from my room at Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse.
“No, Cotton. You asked me that a few days ago.”
“What did you answer?”
“No. I wasn’t a veteran then and I’m still not.”
“You know I’ve got a piece of metal in my head from the war?”
“I know, Cotton,” I said, turning on the ignition.
“Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it hums. Sometimes I don’t even notice.”
“What are the best times?” I asked.
“When it hums,” he said.
I pulled out of the lot with a wave at Cotton and headed down Sunset, bound for Western. I turned on the radio and through the static learned that the Japanese had captured Hinajong in Northern Hunan in their drive southward over the Yangtze. On the other hand, the Chinese were making gains in Burma. I also learned that more meat rationing was coming April 1. Mrs. Plaut would be on me for that. I wondered whether Anita Maloney could come up with ground beef as easily as she came up with potatoes.
There was a small parking space only a car the size of a Crosley could love right near the corner of Western and Melrose. I backed into it, trying not to turn my body too painfully to look over my shoulder. When I was parked, I opened the door and eased out, my rear end a massive, low-level electric shock. But, all in all, it felt better than it had the day before.
The On Your Toes Dance Studio and College was not a storefront. It was in a small office building. I found it listed in the directory in a dark, white-tiled lobby the size of a small rest room. The white tile was seriously cracked, and the black-on-white list of offices and renters was badly in need of some letters. Next to the building directory was a yellowing poster that read, “Save Cooking Fats and Grease.”
I found the studio between Nona’s Hair and Fingernails and Quick Letter Copy Service. On Your Toes was on the ground floor. I groped my way past the narrow staircase and along an even narrower short corridor, at the end of which was a pebble-glass door with “On Your To s Danc Studio” printed in gold letters. A simple line drawing of a dancing couple had been drawn on the glass. The man wore a tuxedo. The woman wore a billowy white dress. They were both smiling. I knocked at the door. No answer. I waited. Knocked again. Still no answer. I tried the door. It was open. I walked into a room almost as dark as the hallway. The lights were out and the venetian blinds on the windows across the floor were closed. The only light that came into the room was through the spaces left by broken, bent, and missing slats on the blinds.
I was in a wooden-floored room about the size of a handball court. The wall of mirrors to my right made it look a little bigger, but the cracks in the mirrors worked against any possible suggestion of class. On my left was a glassed-in dark cubicle that must have been the office. I walked over to it and opened the door.
There was a crash from the end of the cubicle from somewhere just beyond the outline of a desk. I froze.
“Don’t move,” came a man’s voice.
I could see enough of the man who rose behind the desk to see that he carried what looked like a gun in his right hand.
“I’m not moving,” I said.
“Put your hands behind your head,” he said.
