“I’ll pay you tomorrow. Why does everything have to end on details? Can’t a man have the satisfaction of doing his job and just sitting back for a few days in peace and physical agony?”
“I know how you feel,” Shelly sympathized. “When I pull a couple of impacted ones, I want to have a drink and take a few days to recover.”
“You fill me with confidence, Shelly,” I said. “I admire the new door.”
“Thanks. Hey, there’s a message for you. I left it near the autoclave or in it. I can’t remember. Maybe on your door. It wasn’t important.”
“Then it can wait till tomorrow,” I said. “Have a good Sunday, Shel.”
“Just a nut who said he was Boris Karloff,” Shelly chuckled. “Did a lousy imitation. Left a number. I answered him with my Peter Loire.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said he had a problem. Something about a vampire or something. It was a dumb joke and a dumb imitation, believe me. ‘Tell Mr. Peters it is urgent,’” Shelly said, imitating Boris Karloff. “‘Vampires, he said.’”
“I’ll call him Monday, Shel. Goodbye.”
I hung up. Boris Karloff and vampires. I went through the catalogue of characters who might pull a dumb joke like that and was on the sixth name when I gave up and wondered why a joker would actually leave a number to call. There was an outside chance that Boris Karloff had actually called me. I’d worry about it the next day. This was my day for resting bones and mending in the sun on the front porch while I listened to little girls jump rope to violent chants and racial slurs. It was a day to contemplate calling Carmen the waitress at Levy’s and suggesting an outing in the park. It was a day to be a human being and not a private investigator.
I went back to Gunther’s room to help with the dishes, but they were finished.
The music was playing and I fumbled in my pants pocket for a nickel to call Carmen. Maybe she could put together a picnic from Levy’s for her and me and Gunther.
But such was not to be. The music on the radio stopped with a hum of static followed by the voice of an announcer.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “We interrupt this program to bring you the following special announcement. The Japanese have just launched a massive air attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Although no official statement has come from the White House, this sneak attack is clearly an open act of war, and it is expected that President Roosevelt will, indeed, declare war on Japan immediately. We repeat. The Japanese have just…”
I turned off the radio. The pain in my head was back, and I changed my mind about what I was going to do with this Sunday. I was going to find a store open somewhere and buy presents for my brother’s kids, Nate, David and the baby, Lucy, and I was going to spend the afternoon with them listening to Orson Welles and
