“You work in there?” he asked.
“Right.”
“You ain’t no cop?”
“I ain’t no cop,” I agreed.
“They’re giving out sugar ration books come Monday,” he said, breathing muscatel into my ear. “I got one coming. I’ll sell it for a price. I can get plenty more from guys, you know?”
“Not interested,” I said, walking down the street. He followed me.
“You know a guy who might?” he said. He was wearing a long coat under which I guessed there might be nothing.
“Dentist back in the Farraday,” I said. “His name is Minck. You and your friends might go see him.”
I moved faster and left the bum behind muttering his thanks.
My life is and was a series of lows, lows, lows, and highs. There weren’t many highs, but those that came were right up there with going a full round with Henry Armstong. The trouble was the lows. I legged it to Arnie’s and ignored his warnings about the scratches on the side of my car.
“The whole damn chassis is going to rust out in maybe a month, two,” he said, pronouncing chassis as chas- siss. “You better let me fix it up.”
“We’ll talk about it Arnie,” I said, moving past him. “I turn most of the little I earn over to you as it is and what do I have to show for it?”
“Transportation,” he said emotionlessly.
“A zombie line of wrecks without fenders, paint, working gas gauges,” I went on.
“Having a bad day, huh?” he said, spitting into a corner.
“You could call it that,” I agreed.
I had three boxes of cereal stashed back at Mrs. Plaut’s but I wasn’t about to go there. Instead, I stopped at a restaurant off of Melrose called Herrera’s, ordered two tacos, a bowl of shredded wheat, and a Pepsi. Herrera didn’t blink his lazy eyes. He brought the order and I downed it. Back when I was first married, Anne had spent two years coaxing, threatening, challenging, and tricking in the hope of getting me to change my diet. For the last two years of the marriage, she hadn’t cared much, though she had occasionally brought it up in her quite reasonable catalogue of my faults.
“You eat like a nine year old whose parents don’t give a damn,” she had once said. Since she was probably right, I hadn’t answered. I get along fine with nine year olds.
My stomach filled, I paid the buck I owed, including a dime tip, waved to Herrera and the belching guy who had taken up the stool next to mine, and set off to do what my brother had warned me not to do. My answers, if there were any, were back at Olson’s clinic or house.
7
One slow drive down the cul-de-sac alongside Olson’s animal clinic convinced me that no one was watching the place. There were no cars on the street and as far as I could see there were no cars down the narrow lane that ran back to Olson’s house. However, as far as I could see was not very far. There were many ways to handle this. Most of them involved exercising some caution. Caution was a word that, in spite of many attempts to engrave it on my skull and spine, had never made its way into my brain.
I found a driveway across from Olson’s, drove in far enough to be sure the car wouldn’t be seen from the street, and found a space between a pair of trees. I took out my little notebook and pencil and left a message under my windshield wiper for whoever lived there that my car had broken down, that I had come to deliver something to them, and that I’d be right back. That should hold off a call to the police, at least long enough for me to do whatever I was going to do.
It must have been around four. My watch was no help. The sun was bright and I was in a hurry. I walked straight across the street and up to the front door of the clinic. The door was locked and there was a sign on it saying the clinic was temporarily closed due to Dr. Olson’s death. It was spelled correctly and in an even hand.
In case anyone was watching from a nearby bush, I knocked at the door, tried to peer through the tiny window, and then started up the driveway. Out of sight of both the street and the house, I doubled back and circled the clinic from the rear, looking for a door or window.
There was a door, but it was locked. Behind it I could hear barking and some sounds I didn’t recognize. The first two windows I tried were locked and unforgiving. The third window was locked too, but the lock didn’t have its heart in the job. I managed to get my fingers under the bottom of the window, trying not to think of what would happen in the next second or two if Bass were behind the window and decided to lean his weight down on my fingers.
There was a guy named Stumpy Fredericks, California middleweight champ around 1924 or ’25. He had no fingers on his hands Stump’s were like rocks, fingers never got sore, but his seconds had a hell of a time keeping his boxing gloves from flopping around. I tried not to think of Stumpy, who never told how he had lost his fingers. I failed. Maybe it was the thought of those fingerless boxing gloves flapping in the face of some confused kid out of Monterey that gave me the extra push that broke the lock. The window flew up and rattled a dozen dogs into something like song.
Instead of jumping through the window, I stood still for a second listening, trying to hear if someone were inside, or if someone outside might have heard the noise. I waited, waited, and waited, and then I crawled in, closing the window behind me.
The dogs had calmed down a bit but the parrot I had seen in the office the day before was somewhere croaking “I’m Henry the Eighth I am.”
There was plenty of light from the window. I was in one of the surgery/treatment rooms. I moved around the metal table in the center and went to the door. The door wasn’t quite closed so I pushed it open slowly, carefully, and stepped into the hallway looking both ways. “Monks, monks, monks,” the parrot called and I followed his voice back into the building to a closed door. Even with the door closed I could tell from the smell that I had found what I was looking for. I opened the door and the barking and croaking started again.
“Shh,” I whispered. “Everything’s okeydokey. No one’s going to be operated on. Everyone’s going to be fed.”
One massive German shepherd in the cage on my right didn’t believe me. He rolled back his upper lip and showed some less-than-inviting teeth. The room was big, but the cages weren’t full. It took no more than a few seconds to scan the cages and see there was no black Scottie.
My next step was going to be a look through Olson’s papers. It would have been my next step if, when I turned, Anne Olson hadn’t been standing there. Her hair was combed straight. He slacks were dark and her sweater white. Her eyes were also clear and sober and the gun in her hand was blue. She was color-coordinated.
“What are you doing?” she asked. Her voice quavered and quivered a little but it was a reasonable question.
“I came to return the suit,” I said. “Is mine dry?”
She shook her head no.
“Well,” I sighed, “then I’ll come back some other-”
“That’s not why you came back. You’re looking for something. You killed Roy for something and now you’ve come back for it.”
“I didn’t kill your husband,” I said. “If the police haven’t told you that by now, you should figure it out yourself. Remember, the water was dripping? I ran up the stairs. How the hell fast could I have drowned him? And by the way, what happened to you last night? And since I’m asking questions, is your name Laura or Anne?”
The gun stayed on my chest and the parrot behind me cackled more about Henry the Eighth and monks.
Mrs. Olson said nothing.
“I came here looking for a dog,” I said, “a black Scottie. I think your husband took President Roosevelt’s dog and brought him to California. I think that had something to do with his being killed. If I can figure it out, the police can figure it out and they will. I’ve got a deal to make with you. You put the gun away and tell me what you know about what your husband did, and I’ll see that you get no trouble and a lot of credit for finding the dog.”
