With the few bucks I had left, I took a cab to my office and left a light tip. By the time I made it through the downstairs door into the lobby darkness of cool tile, the smell of Lysol, and the bums, I was down to my last twenty cents.
I almost never used the building elevator, but I made an exception in this case. My side was stiff and sore and in need of a change of venue. I clanked upward, working out supplementary expenses in my mind in case Mayer asked for a detailed breakdown.
The office door was just as dingy and the pebble glass just as dirty as I had left them less than two weeks earlier. There was one difference. Just below “Sheldon Minck, D.D.S.,” there was a thin crack that curved down through my own name. Someone had used four pieces of adhesive tape to keep it from getting worse. I opened the door gently and tiptoed through our minute waiting room piled high with old magazines, uncleaned ash trays, and forgotten junk mail.
Through the second door, I found Shelly Minck-short, myopic, cigar in mouth, and sitting in his worn dental chair reading a professional supply catalog.
He looked at me over the magazine.
“Where you been?” he asked casually. “You’ve been gone a couple of days. I was beginning to worry about you.”
“I’ve been gone almost two weeks, Shelly,” I said, searching for a semiclean cup so I could pour myself some of the rancid mud Shelly kept going as a service to favored patients.
“What happened to the door?” I said.
“That’s a tale,” he said, shaking his head and covering his upper lip with his lower. “Remember Mr. Stange?”
“Old guy with one tooth left you were trying to save?”
“That’s the one,” he said. “As soon as I finished the work and started to fit the bridge, he tried to hold me up. Used one of my own instruments-sharp little thing I’ve never known what to do with.”
“O.K.,” I said, finding a cup and rinsing it in the jet of water near his dental chair. “What happened?”
“I gave him six bucks,” Shelly said, warming to the tale and removing his cigar so he could gesture. “Just as he went for the door, Jeremy Butler came in.”
Butler was our landlord, a former pro wrestler who now managed his property and wrote poetry.
“Well,” continued Shelly, “I told Butler what was happening and he grabbed Stange. Stange stabbed him in the arm, but Butler paid no attention. Just lifted him up by the neck and took the weapon and the money from him. The window broke when he threw the old guy at the door. That’s why I’m reading this book.”
“O.K.,” I said. “Why are you reading the catalog?”
“To find out what that goddamn instrument was for. So how was your trip?”
“Not as exciting as your week here,” I said. “Just four bodies. And I got shot.”
“Too bad,” he said, without really hearing. His head was back in the catalog.
I went into my office. It was stale. I opened the window and sat in my chair, looking out over the low buildings. I felt better. I examined the cracks on the wall as I drank the coffee and looked at the picture of my brother, my dad, me, and our dog Kaiser Wilhelm. Then I looked at the pile of mail in front of me. There were seven or eight letters and a few messages scrawled by Shelly.
The most important piece of mail seemed to be the one at the top-an envelope from MGM complete with a little lion in the corner. There was no stamp, which meant it had been delivered by a messenger. I tore it open and found the check. I thought I could breathe easier with almost a thousand bucks. I tried. The pain in my side told me to be careful breathing.
There was a message to call my brother. I called him.
“Lieutenant Pevsner,” I said in my best smartass tone, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You owe the pleasure to a hearing on your license,” he snapped.
“What the hell for?” I cried, causing myself further pain and dropping tar-thick coffee on my hand.
“For all that crap in Chicago,” he said. “The Chicago police called for your records and listed you as wanted in connection with three murders.”
“Four,” I said. “That’s all been cleared up. The Chicago cops cleared me.”
“Maybe they’re more forgiving than the license review board.”
“Oh come on, Phil,” I tried. “There is no license review board. Just an Irish lawyer in the mayor’s office who does what you guys tell him.”
“Maybe,” he said in something approaching glee — a state he seldom achieved unless he had his hands on me. “You write up a report on the whole thing,” he said. “I’ll ask Donovan to review it if I’m convinced.”
“You have a great heart, Phil.”
“You’ve got a big mouth, Toby. I heard you got shot. How are you?”
“A little itchy, but all right.”
“Too bad,” he said. “Goodbye.”
“Hey,” I said, catching him before he hung up. “How are Ruth and the kids?”
He called me a name and hung up. Asking him about his wife and kids always drove him halfway up the wall. I wasn’t sure why. I always figured it was because I spent so little time with them, and I was his only brother. It got him raging mad, but it had also become a little ritual with us-something we both expected and couldn’t stop. I considered calling him back and saying something. He was my only brother, and I had seen a lot of other people’s brothers in the last week or so. I considered it, but I didn’t really. There was nothing I could say to Phil. It was too late for us to do anything but for me to shoot wisecracks at him while he shot punches at me.
I finished the coffee and kept going through the mail which included:
— An invitation that looked as if it were printed on soiled paper. It was for a seance with a Swami at a dime store in Burbank. For two bits he would tell the future of everybody who got there on Thursday between three and five.
— A letter from a lady who wanted to know if I was any relation to a writer named Peters who did her favorite children’s story when she was a kid. She had seen my name in the phone book while looking for a detective. I hoped she found one.
— An old hospital bill. From the date, I couldn’t remember what I had been in for. I guessed it was for my back or concussion. My calendar didn’t help me.
— An ad from a bank telling me they’d give me a pocket watch just like the old time railroad men wore if I deposited $500 or more in a savings account with them and promised not to take it out for a year. The ad had a picture of the railroad watch and a little chubby engineer holding it proudly.
— A message to call someone named Abe. I thought I could make out the number and guessed that it was Abe Gittleson, the guy I had done some work for who owned a pawn shop. I decided to call him soon and make a deal for the coat I’d bought in Chicago.
— A letter I was afraid to open.
I had purposely put the letter on the side. The handwriting on it looked familiar. I stalled for another minute or so, wiping my hands, throwing envelopes in the trash basket that no one had cleaned while I was gone. Then I opened it. It was from my ex-wife Anne-Anne Peters, nee Mitzenmacher.
The letter:
Dear Toby,
The last time I saw you you staggered into my place like a sick dog looking for whatever you could get. I told you to stay away. Now I’m asking you to give me some help.
Don’t get your hopes up. This is not a plea for you to come back. It’s a combination of two things. A request for help from and to an old friend, and the offer of a job I think you can handle.
The job is confidential and very important. The pay will be very good.
I tried to reach you by phone several times, but that dentist you share space with had no idea where you were.
I can tell you that it involves a man named Howard Hughes and some things that are vital to the nation’s security.
Please call.
Anne.
