shorter than her mother, and dark like her father. They both smiled and waved.
“I hope to see you again, Mr. Peters,” Lynn said politely.
“You will,” I said, with a wink and a return wave. Brenda was still smiling politely. The world continued to smile at me, and I didn’t know what the hell it was all about.
As I walked toward the street, I heard the distant growl of the two friendly dogs. I hurried along and went out of the metal gate, closing it behind me just as Jamie and Ralph appeared. I didn’t know if Brenda Stallings would have called them off this time, and I didn’t want to find out. I’d had enough excitement for one afternoon.
5
My office was in the Farraday Building on Hoover near Ninth, not far from my apartment. I don’t know who Farraday was, but the building bearing his name deserved to be condemned in 1930 or restored as an historical relic.
The Farraday Building was a four-story refuge for second-rate dentists, alcoholic doctors and insolvent baby photographers. My rent was paid not to the management but to Sheldon Minck, one of the dentists. I sublet a side office from Sheldon, who had been one of my first clients when I became a private investigator. I tracked down deadbeats who didn’t pay their bills. I threatened to forceably remove their bridgework if they didn’t spit up what they owed. I did pretty well until one fat woman in North Hollywood hit me in the face with a bottle of Fleischman’s Gin. Sheldon fixed my teeth, and we had become something like friends.
There was an echo and smell of Lysol when I walked through the lobby toward the fake marble stairs. I could hear the faint snoring of a bum somewhere in the darkness. I ignored it and started walking up the three flights.
Very few potential clients came to my office. If a client called, I met him at his home or business or a cafe or coffee joint.
Fading black, block letters greeted me on the pebble glass door:
SHELDON MINCK, D.D.S., S.D.
Dentist
TOBY PETERS
Private Investigator
The S.D. after Sheldon’s name didn’t mean anything. He thought it might give him an edge with off-the-street patients. It was probably the only office in California where you could get your teeth filled and your runaway grandmother found in one visit.
I stepped into the reception room, which had just enough space for three wooden chairs, a small table with an overflowing ash tray and a heap of ancient copies of Collier’s. I went into Sheldon’s office where I heard the drill growling.
Sheldon was in his early 50’s, short, fat, bald and myopic. His thick glasses were always slipping from his sweating nose. When he wasn’t actively working on a patient, a wet cigar stuck out of his face. He had only one working coat which must have once been white.
Sheldon was working on a boy of about 10 who looked like Alfalfa in Our Gang. Sheldon squinted in my direction.
“Toby? Are you working or something? You’ve got calls all over the place.”
He handed the frightened kid the drill, wiped his hands on his coat, shoved his cigar in his face and waddled over to a porcelain table covered with newspapers and x-rays of teeth. After shuffling through the pile, he came up with a torn edge of newspaper. There were some names and numbers on it:
Lt. Pevsner, call’d twice.
Adelman, three times.
“And,” said Sheldon, rummaging through some drawers of teeth, “some wise ass called once and said he was Errol Flynn.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I was Artie Shaw, and I’d trade him two blondes for a redhead.”
“Did he leave a number?”
“No,” said Sheldon, fishing out a huge pliers. The kid in the chair gulped.
“Sheldon,” I said, heading for my office, “that was Errol Flynn.”
“No kidding?” He looked at me. “You know I once did an emergency filling for Cary Grant. He had great teeth. Paid cash on the spot.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Sheldon returned to the kid and took the drill from his trembling hand.
“And,” he added, putting his cigar on the end of the small work table, “there are two guys waiting for you in your office. They got here about five minutes ago.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Dunno,” said Sheldon, pushing his glasses near his eyes and plunging the pliers into the kid’s mouth. “I think I’ve seen them around.”
I mixed a Bromo Seltzer in one of Sheldon’s paper cups, listened to the kid moan for a few seconds and walked into my own office.
It is not much of an office. Designed as a dental room, it had a couple of chairs and my desk. The wall held a framed copy of my private investigator’s certificate and a photograph of my father, my brother and me with our beagle dog Kaiser Wilhelm. I was ten when the photograph was taken, about the age of the kid who was screaming in the other room.
The two chairs in my office were occupied. I recognized both faces at once. One was the man who had saved Fay Wray from King Kong and the other looked like he could take on the giant ape.
They both stood up without smiling.
“You Peters?” said the burlier, curly haired and slightly shorter of the two, grimly.
“I’m Peters,” I said pretending to go through the junk mail on my desk.
“My name’s Guinn Williams, ‘Big Boy’ Williams. My friend is Bruce Cabot. You know us?”
“I’ve seen you,” I said. After the pool house and Brenda Stallings, I wasn’t about to be impressed by them.
“We understand that you know where a friend of ours is,” said Cabot. They approached me from either side of the desk, and I sat opening a letter from a Christmas card company. The letter said there was big money in Christmas card sales.
I looked up. Williams, who spent half of his screen time backing up heroes and the other half throwing fists at them, looked angry and ready to explode. Cabot seemed calm, but determined.
“Enough of this shit,” hissed Williams through his teeth. He jutted out his square jaw and reached for me. Cabot watched. I had Williams’ green tie in my mouth, and I could breathe his anger.
He lifted me up with one hand, and my face was inches from his.
“Son,” he said, “you have thirty seconds to tell us where Princey is, or they’re going to be cleaning you from the floor with toilet paper.”
I considered kneeing him in the groin, but I wasn’t sure it would bring him down, and I sure as hell didn’t want to get him angrier.
“You’d better tell him,” Cabot said evenly and reasonably.
“I don’t know,” I said. Williams was cutting off my wind, and the words came out in a gurgle.
“Wrong answer son,” said Williams. Cabot shook his head sadly.
I had decided to put the knee to Williams and try to get to the door and Sheldon’s office. Maybe I could find a forceps or a chisel for a weapon. Williams lifted me up and walked me to the window. I could hear Cabot calling a number on the phone.
