behind family members, yell “Surprise,” and whollop them with whatever was at hand, a doll, an old lock, a toy gun. She had started the game as a baby and was having trouble breaking the habit at the age of almost three.
“President’s eating fresh fruit and cutting back on desserts with sugar,” Ruth said, apologizing for not having made my favorite chocolate pudding pie. I peeled a navel orange and ate it, watching for Lucy and keeping a hand ready to defend my not-completely-healed head.
Phil said nothing. Well, almost nothing. At one point he asked to have the stew passed to him.
After dinner the boys and I left. I thought Phil wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Ruth said they had to be home by eleven, and out we went.
I couldn’t find much to see, and I wanted to play it safe, so we saw
“I wish I could do that,” Nat said when we got out of the show.
“What?” asked his brother, shoveling in the last greasy drops of popcorn.
“Make my whole scalp go up and down like Victor Mature when he’s thinking. Can you do that, Uncle Toby?”
I tried and failed and then asked the boys casually how their father had been in the last week or so.
“Like always,” said Nat. “Busy. We were supposed to go to the park last week for a picnic, but he was chasing crazy killers again. He keeps catching them but there’s always more.”
Dave dropped the empty popcorn box in a wastebasket, and we all climbed in the front seat of the car.
“Are you going to be cops?” I asked.
“I think I’ll be a private cop so I can shoot rat-faced hoods like you do,” Nat said seriously.
“The problem is they usually shoot me first,” I said.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Dave will probably be a comedian in dives around the city and Lucy will be a has-been.”
“You’ve got it all worked out,” I said.
“It pays to plan ahead,” Nat said, punching his brother in the shoulder for no reason I could see.
On the morning the stitches came out, I got a check in the mail from my last client, Emmett Kelly the circus clown. He invited me to drop in on him if I came East. I read the letter over a taco at Manny’s and figured out that I now had enough money to pay my fifteen bucks rent to Mrs. Plaut and ten to Jeremy for the office. I gave Arnie twenty more bucks toward the now-repaired Ford and still had enough to eat for another week or two if I drove very little and made no further moves in my so-far-unsuccessful assault on Carmen the cashier at Levy’s Grill.
So, on the morning the stitches came out I went over to the Hope Street YMCA after setting up a handball game with Doc Hodgdon, the sixty-six-year-old orthopedic surgeon, who as usual barely worked up a sweat in disposing of me 21-4, 21-9. I slumped to the locker room with Hodgdon looking for someone else to take on before he went back to manipulating the spines of the wretched.
I went back to my boardinghouse and called the Winning Institute, where I was informed that the institute was undergoing a name change. Henceforth, the place would be called the Fresno Institute for Mental Research. Dr. Vadergreff was now in charge, though Dr. Winning was eventually expected to return.
In ninety-nine years to life, I thought, and asked for special permission to speak to Sklodovich.
“I’m sorry,” the woman on the other end said, “there is no one in the institute with that name.”
“Cortland,” I said.
“We do have such a patient,” the woman said, “but I’m afraid you cannot speak to him. There are strict orders-”
“Let me talk to Dr. Vadergreff,” I jumped in. “Tell him it’s Toby Peters. I don’t care where he is or what he is doing.”
The line clicked off. For a second or two I thought she had cut me off, but the line clicked back on, and I recognized Dr. Vadergreff’s voice through his first cough.
“Yes, Mr.Peters,” he said in his best doctor manner.
“I want to talk to Cortland,” I said. “If I don’t, I’ll initiate a lawsuit against your little castle for kidnapping me. It might not hold up, but with the publicity you’ve already had, you’ll have to pack up the place stone by stone and move it to Canada.”
“I see,” he said. “I’m not sure it would be good for Mr. Cortland.”
“I have great respect for your opinion,” I said, “but at the moment I think you should shove it in a tin can and get Cortland on the horn.”
The phone went down hard, and I looked down the stairs to watch Mrs. Plaut slowly rising toward me, her glasses firmly planted, her eyes narrow, a pile of papers under her arm. I turned toward the phone as she moved behind me and pretended not to see her. I kept saying “uh huh, huh uh” to a dead phone until Cortland came on.
“Haven’t talked on a phone for four or five years,” he said.
“How’s it feel?”
“Tense,” he said, “Already feel that there’s time and space to be filled, and if I stop talking we’ll be wasting telephone air or something.”
“I know how you feel. I’m sending you a dozen oranges this afternoon. Anything else you want? Sure you don’t want me to work on getting you out of there?”
“Hell no,” he said emphatically. “People are getting killed out there. They tried to keep it from us, but Dealer found out about Dr. Winning. They say Ressner is coming back here. Is he?”
“If he wants to,” I told him. “It looks like there may be plenty of money to pay his way when the Grayson estate is settled. Of course that might take a few centuries, but the court will probably agree to use Grayson’s money rather than the state’s.”
“Good,” said Cortland. “I like Ressner. Quite an actor.”
“Quite an actor,” I agreed. “You want me to get the stethoscope, the raincoat, and the white uniform back to you?”
“No need,” he said. “No need. There are plenty more here.”
“How about a visit when I get enough cash together for gas?”
Now there was a pause on the other end while Sklodovich/Cortland thought about it.
“I don’t think so. I think I’d feel a little awkward now that I know you’re really not one of us. No offense. Sorry.”
“Hey, don’t apologize for everything. Remember?”
“Right,” he agreed. “Thanks for the oranges.”
Then the line did go dead, and I turned to Mrs. Plaut, who dumped the pile of papers in my arms.
“Very rough,” she said. “Revision of the chapter on Uncle Will Parmarshall’s kidnapping.”
“Who kidnapped him?” I asked, taking a step toward my room, where I planned to drop the manuscript.
“No one,” she said, following me and poking me with a steely elbow to get the common sense moving in my battered body. “He kidnapped Olivet Marsh back in the rush at Summter’s Mill when Olivet and his gang of murderous thugs tried to take Uncle Parmarshall’s barber chair.”
“I’m looking forward to reading it,” I said.
“Take care of it this time, Mr. Peelers, and remember, no more bodies in your room.” She actually wagged her finger at me, and I nodded and pushed my door open.
Gunther was off somewhere seeing a publisher about a job, and I didn’t feel like reading about Uncle Parmarshall, especially in rough form. I had some Pepsi and a Wonder Bread sandwich of tuna salad remnants and a slice of Kraft yellow.
The next step was clear, but I didn’t want to take it. I’d make some calls to the not too affluent but not yet decayed hotels around Los Angeles, where I knew the house detectives to see if any of them needed some part- time help or someone to fill in while they went on vacation or had a nervous breakdown. If they had the breakdown, I could steer them away from Fresno Mental. If that didn’t pan out, I could call a guy named Buddy who did skip- tracing in Sacramento and take on some of his dirty jobs for a percentage. Before I did that, however, I’d spend another day in my office waiting for the mail or the phone to ring.
Everything was fine on the drive down to Hoover. The car was running; my watch wasn’t. The radio was playing, but just two stations, the gas gauge was jumping all over the place, and my bumper was back on along with both headlights.
