Jeremy also called me the poor man’s Prometheus when he was feeling particularly fatherly. He had even given me a book of Greek myths to read, but I had put it aside before getting to Prometheus because a walnut farmer from the San Jose Valley hired me to find his son who had run away with the daughter of one of his walnut sorters. I found the two kids in Fresno, married and working in an Arthur Murray dance studio as instructors. The kid was eighteen but looked a lot older. The girl was twenty and looked a lot younger. They both smiled a lot and I told the walnut grower I couldn’t find them. Someday I’ll get back to reading about Prometheus.
We spent an hour on and near a park bench watching some kids in the playground and talking to an old guy in a gray cardigan sweater who seemed to live on the bench. He knew a lot about dogs and was willing to tell me. I knew nothing about dogs and wasn’t very interested, but I had nothing better to do so I watched the kids, heard about short-hairs, and kept asking him for the time.
“Good dog you got there,” the old guy said, pointing the stem of his pipe.
“Man’s best friend,” I agreed, while the dog lay on the bench next to us, following the conversation.
“Like hell,” said the old man, leaning toward me. “People always say that. Dogs are something special in God’s world. That’s a fact, but they are dumb sons of bitches, and I mean that literally. They do what you teach them and if you treat them good they lick your hand and stay out of trouble if something doesn’t itch away at them. But you ask me, I’d rather have a friend who can talk back and have his own ideas. Dogs are just yes-men or no- men. You want a friend who just licks your mitt and tells you you’re right all the time? Hell, that’s no friend, that’s a dumb dog.”
The old guy spat, nodded his head, and put his pipe back in his mouth as he crossed his legs and looked out at the kids in the playground. “And,” he added, remembering an important point, “you’ve got to walk them, clean them, and feed them.”
“A lot of trouble,” I agreed, reaching down to pet the dog looking up at me.
“And there’s worse,” the old man said, looking away from me. “They don’t live long. Slobber all over you, trick you into investing some feeling in them, and their goddamn life span catches up with them.”
“You’ve had a dog or two,” I said.
“A few,” he said, still not turning to me. “A few.”
He told me some interesting things about the dog I was petting and I got up.
The dog and I said good-bye to the old guy and he waved, puffed on his pipe, and didn’t turn to watch us as we made our way back to Wilshire.
I found a small hot dog stand shaped like a hot dog bun with a fake hot dog coming out of each end and bought a sack with fries and a pair of Pepsis. On the way back to the Farraday, the dog kept sniffing at the bag and I had to protect it with my right hand while driving with my left. I had to ease my defense when I shifted gears, but I managed to keep the pooch at bay.
It was a few minutes after five when I hit Hoover. Traffic was leaving downtown and not coming in. I found a parking space on the street without too much trouble, locked up, and made my way through the going-home crowd with the sack under one arm and the dog under the other.
A chunky woman in a gray coat was coming out of the Farraday and held the door open for me.
“Thanks,” I said, easing past.
“You’re Peters,” she said.
“Right.” I looked at her dark, heavily made-up face and didn’t place her for a second.
“You’re the new mind reader,” I said.
“Tante Kuble,” she said. “Moved in last week. On the third right below you.”
“Right,” I said, shifting my load. “Didn’t recognize you without the gypsy suit. How’s it going?”
“Could be better, could be worse,” she said. “Mostly I’m getting the kids-soldiers, sailors-wanting to know what’s going to happen to them.”
“What do you tell them?”
“I tell them they’re all going to be all right, that they’re going to live forever or close to it,” she said, looking hard into my eyes. “Some of them I can see things I don’t want to tell them.”
“See you around,” I said, feeling uncomfortable under her hard look.
“Peters,” she said as I turned my back. “Don’t eat with the dead and get the dog to the one who wants it as fast as you can. You know what I’m talking about?”
“I know,” I said, walking into the dark echo of the Farraday. “Good talking to you.”
“See you around,” she shouted. “Damn it looks like rain.”
Then she was gone.
Some days are definitely not the ones you want to remember when you take a hot bath and plan your future. This one had found me in Shelly’s dental chair for the first time and brought me face to face with an old man in the park who lost his dogs and a fortune teller who saw death. I let the dog down, and he trotted up the stairs behind me, his stubby claws scratching against the marble and metal.
My big fear was that Shelly might still be in the office, but the door was locked. No one had put my name back on it yet in the terms that Shelly and I had agreed on, but I’d given him a week to get it done. I opened the door and left it open as I went in. There was enough light coming through the windows so that I didn’t have to use any electricity.
I unlocked the door to my inner office, but I didn’t go in. Tante Koble might have hit on something. Instead, I tore open the sack, took out a couple of hot dogs for the dog, put them on a towel on the floor, and poured him a cup of Pepsi. He went to work on them in a manner unbecoming to the dog of a president. I should have cut the hot dogs up but it was too late now. If I tried anything I might lose a finger or two.
Climbing into Shelly’s dental chair, I took my time eating and reached over to flip on Shelly’s radio. Captain Midnight was on. I didn’t sound anything like him-or the guy who played Ichabod Mudd or the guy who played Ivan Shark, for that matter.
After our dinner I cleaned up and went into my office. Martin Lyle was sitting there as I had left him, eyes closed, a lot more pale than he had been before. I wanted to turn on the lights because the sun was dropping down fast and the sky was cloudy, but I resisted.
So in I went and got behind my desk, checked my.38 and waited, and that, my friends, brought me to the moment at which I started this story, just before the killer walked in and I promised to tell a tale.
12
I considered offering the killer a chair, but there was none available unless we threw Lyle’s body on the floor or out the window or I stood up. So the killer stood while I talked.
“You fooled me,” I admitted. “I was hot on the trail of Bass and Lyle, just where you put me. The way I figure it, you planned to put Lyle away from the start, and if Bass got me at Olson’s, you’d get rid of him too.”
“So far,” said the killer, “there’s nothing very interesting in this.”
“You wanted the fifty thousand and the dog to make another pitch for more money,” I said.
The dog watched the gun on my midsection and whimpered, head down in his paws. I reached over very slowly and patted his head.
“Accurate,” said the killer, “but …”
“I’m coming to it,” I said. “But it’s got to be a trade. I’ll tell you something you need to know if you tell me why you killed Olson and Lyle.”
The killer considered the request, decided there was nothing to lose, and said, “I only killed Lyle. He was on his way here to talk to you. We had tried to make a deal with him, but Lyle was a fanatic, all politics, the money didn’t mean a thing. The kidnapping of the dog had been his idea, not for money, but in the hope that it would be used to force Roosevelt into some kind of deal. He forced Olson to go along with it. We brought Bass in to keep an eye on things, watch, wait, see if there was some way to profit from it. Mrs. Olson found out. We didn’t want to kill her, but Bass got carried away with loyalty.”
“He’s just a big, loyal, dumb dog, is that it?” I asked.
“Something like that,” the killer agreed.
“Fifty thousand isn’t all that much for a possible murder rap,” I said.
