I turned to look at my mugger while gasping to pull in air. There wasn’t much I could see from the ground, but his shape was clear. Cooper had been right. He looked like a giant brick.
“You hear me,” he said in a high voice that seemed to come from someone else, definitely not from the cement truck that had me doubled over in the street. “Cooper does the picture or I’ll turn you into hamburger.”
In spite of the pain I managed a laugh, but it must have sounded like a mad gasp. The brick backed away. If Cooper didn’t do the picture, Lombardi would turn my hand into hot dogs and my mugger would turn the rest of me into hamburger. I wondered what my cost per pound was on the open market.
“You nuts bastard,” he spat, leaning over me, “you keep your nose out or you disappear, you got it?” He gave me a little kick in the kidney to be sure he had my attention. “You got it?”
“Got it,” I said, and he vanished.
I got to my feet and staggered back, almost falling into a passing car. My clothes were dirty and my shirt torn. I managed to find some smog-filled air and enough pride to stand reasonably straight. I made my way back to Mrs. Plaut’s porch and up the stairs, fighting back nausea.
Mrs. Plaut met me in the hall. “Exterminating again?” she said sweetly.
I nodded, unable to speak, as I grasped the railing and started upstairs. I wondered what Mrs. Plaut thought I was exterminating, giant rats in hand-to-hand combat? I was determined to make the date with Carmen, but my body said no, the idiocy you could pull off at twenty-five is off limits at forty-five. This time Mr. Hill wouldn’t let me in the toilet, so I sat in my room hyperventilating for five minutes before I called Carmen and told her I had to work. She said it was okay if I’d promise to take her to the fights Thursday at the Hollywood Legion Stadium. Red Green the “Waterfront Kid” and Mexican George Morelia were the main event. I said sure and hung up.
There are days like this in my business. They come maybe once a year, but they certainly make life interesting. I managed to pry open a 37-cent can of Spam and a dietetically nonfattening bottle of Acme Beer, the beer with the high I.Q. (It Quenches). And then I slept like a baby-a baby cutting new teeth.
CHAPTER THREE
The tenants of the Farraday Building included bookies, alcoholic doctors, baby photographers with astigmatism, con artists who were long on con and short on artistry and third-rate dentists. Actually there was only one dentist in the Farraday at the present time. He had moved down from second-rate to third-rate as a result of filthy fingernails, poor eyesight and an indifference to his victims that would have put the Inquisition to shame. I sublet my office from Sheldon Minck, D.D.S. We were on the fourth floor of the Farraday, which involved a scenic trip up the stairs in order to avoid the decrepit elevator which our landlord, Jeremy Butler, was constantly trying to repair. In fact, Jeremy’s principal goal in life was to keep mildew, bums, tenants and time from wearing down the Farraday. Jeremy, former pro wrestler and part-time poet, was barely holding his own.
It was a Tuesday morning, and I felt pretty good, I mean if you discount the sore stomach and kidney; and in my business you either discounted such things or you paid the full price. My three weeks at the Ocean Palms made me welcome the smell of Lysol when I walked up the fake marble stairs.
On the third floor I heard someone singing or moaning deep in the darkness of the corridor near the doorway of Artistic Books, Inc. Artistic Books was run by a gentlewoman named Alice Palice. It was an economical operation, consisting of one small printing press which weighed only 250 pounds. Alice, who looked something like a printing press herself, could easily hoist the press on her shoulder and move it to another office when the going got rough.
Clients almost never came to my office. I discouraged it. When someone called, I usually went to him or arranged a meeting at the drugstore on the corner or Manny’s taco stand, depending on how much class the potential client had.
During the three weeks I had been away. Shelly had changed the lettering on our outer door. He was under the delusion that something would catch the eye of passersby and pull them in. Since few drunks could stand the altitude and only bums came up seeking warmth, off-the-street traffic was minimal.
The new lettering read:
Sheldon P. Minck, D.D.S., S.D.
Dentist and Oral Surgeon
and in much smaller letters:
Toby Peters
Private Investigation
Shelly was not an oral surgeon, though he practiced it. I didn’t know what the penalty was for impersonating an oral surgeon. Perhaps the dental society took away your mirror on a stick. I knew the “S.D.” didn’t mean anything and the initial “P” had been a recent idea.
I went through our reception room which we had cleaned up after a few mishaps the year before, but Shelly and I had quickly reduced the small room to its prior state: three wooden chairs, small table with an overflowing ashtray and copies of magazines from previous decades. Past the reception room was Shelly’s dental office, and beyond that the closet that served as my office.
Shelly was working on someone in the chair when he heard me close the door. “Be with you in a minute. Have a seat.”
I walked over to him and he turned his myopic eyes in my direction, took the wet cigar out of his mouth, wiped his sweating bald head and smiled a sickly grin. “Toby, hey.”
“Yeah, Shelly, hey,” I said. Then I saw the patient in the chair, an old birdlike guy named Stange who had wrecked the office last year in a pathetic attempt at robbery.
“What’s he doing here?” I asked, leaning over Shelly’s shoulder.
Stange smiled through his stubbly face, showing his single tooth.
“The challenge was too great, too great,” sighed Shelly, seriously pausing to clean the sharp instrument in his hand on his dirty, once-white smock. “This mouth is a challenge I can’t refuse. I can build on that tooth, Toby. I know I can. I can construct a mouthful of teeth. I can experiment with new techniques, planting teeth, wires, stuff like that. Mr. Stange and I have an understanding. No more troubles. Right, Karl?”
Karl beamed, and Shelly patted him on the shoulder-a very grubby shoulder.
“I think you should start by putting a wire in his gums, right over there,” I said, pointing to a spot in Stange’s mouth but being careful not to touch him.
Shelly shrugged and shook his head to show I didn’t know what I was talking about. “No anchorage. None. I plan to drill a hole right there.” He touched Stange’s red-white gums with the sharp instrument, and the old bird jumped four inches.
“Sorry, Shel,” I said. “You’ll have to put the wire on top.”
Shelly turned to me, all five and a half feet filled with indignation.
“Say, who’s the dentist around here, you or me?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a smile. “Who’s the detective around here, you or me?”
Shelly turned from me and stuck his head in the Stange-bird beak. “I’m busy,” he said.
“Gary Cooper,” I said.
“No time for new patients.” He waved over his shoulder with his cigar. “I’ve got all I can handle now.” Shelly was nervously jabbing balls of cotton into Stange’s mouth. Some of it looked used.
“You’re going to choke him,” I said, craning my neck to watch Stange’s face turn purple. Shelly grunted.
“Shelly,” I insisted.
“I gotta work fast,” he said. “The First District of the Los Angeles Dental Society is meeting today from four- thirty to ten-thirty at the Hollywood Roosevelt on how dentists can cooperate with doctors in emergencies. Maybe I can pick up some first-aid ideas and expand the business.”
I waited for a few seconds while Shelly went after the world’s mouth-packing title. Glancing around the office, I saw it hadn’t changed. Piles of dental magazines and crossword-puzzle books. Uncleaned instruments in the sink, where the water dripped steadily. Coffee on the hot plate.
“My present plan is to break the coffee pot over your head,” I said.
“You’ve got a message,” Shelly responded urgently.
