“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.
I parked behind the Farraday, locked the car, looked around for marauding bums, and went in. I saw Jeremy talking to Alice Palice on the second-floor landing. He held a bottle of Lysol in one massive mitt and a rag in the other. Alice was speaking with passion, and Jeremy was nodding. I couldn’t make out the words, but they made an impressive couple, minimum of 450 pounds of muscle between them.
In the lobby of the offices I shared with Shelly Minck I stopped to examine the dusty picture of a decaying tooth. I wondered what would happen if my teeth went bad. Would I turn to Shelly for help or kill myself? I went through the reception-room door, pushing one ratty waiting chair back where it belonged and saw Shelly talking to a woman in the chair, who seemed to want to leave. She was a little, dark woman with brown frightened eyes, clutching a colorful beaded handbag to her chest.
“See,” Shelly beamed, removing the cigar from his mouth to face me. “That ad has been great. People from all over. I think this woman came all the way from Juarez to see me.”
“No,” said the woman. “No. No quiero que usted trabaja sur mis dientes.”
“See,” cackled the dentist, holding her back with a fat paw.
“She says she’s not here for you to work on her teeth,” I explained.
“Sure she is,” he said, touching her head to calm her and getting his ring caught in her hair. “She’s just frightened. Those teeth need work. Tell her I take pesos but I make my own exchange rate.”
“Que quiere, senorita?” I said.
At that point the woman told me in panicked Spanish that she had seen Shelly’s ad and had recognized him as the dentist who had ruined her husband’s bridgework ten years earlier in Yuma. She had come to demand her money back.
I explained to Shelly, who put his right hand to his chest as if he were going to pledge allegiance to the flag or have a heart attack. He did it with all the sincerity of a kid caught with his hand in the fudge.
“I’ve never seen this woman or her husband in my life,” he gasped. “Tell her to get out immediately. Vamoose.”
“How do you know you’ve never seen her husband?” I asked reasonably as Shelly tried to pry the woman out of the chair. Now she didn’t want to go.
“I have, as you know, an excellent memory,” he grunted, pulling at her and pausing only to marvel at her determination.
“Mi esposo se llama Martin Gutierez,” she said to me.
The name shot through Shelly like a double dose of Ex-Lax.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Out.”
“Recuerda,” she insisted. “Mi esposo es un hombre muy grande.”
“She says,” I told Shelly enjoying the scene, “that her husband is a big man.”
“Muy grande,” she said, wrestling with Shelly for her purse.
“Very big,” I translated.
He let go of the purse, wiped his sweating brow with the corner of his dirty smock, and gasped, “How much? How much does she want?”
“Cuanto?” I asked with my most pleasant smile.
She told me but I didn’t need to interpret.
“Fifty dollars?” he groaned. “Never.”
“Suit yourself, Shel, but I think she’ll come back some time with her husband, and it’ll cost you a lot more than fifty to move to another office. Besides, your home address is in the phone book.”
“Sneaky Mexicans,” he snorted, going to the drawers in which he kept his tools, old X rays, and a small box with cash. He grumbled with his back turned, found what he was looking for, closed the drawer, and returned with some bills. He handed them to Mrs. Gutierez, who counted them and shoved them into her beaded purse with a smile.
“See those teeth?” Shelly said with the trace of a grin. “They’ll be dropping like Nazi’s in Russia in weeks, and I won’t lift a finger to help her.”
Mrs. Gutierez thanked me and went out the door as fast as she could move.
“Damned ad,” growled Shelly, ambling over to pour himself coffee. “I’m going to pull it.”
“How many Gutierezes are there out there, Shel?”
“None. He’s the only one. A slight error in judgment. A slip. Everyone is entitled to one slip in an illustrious career. Even Joe Louis lost to Schmeling.”
Shelly grabbed his glasses just as they were about to slip from his nose and slopped coffee on his smock in the process. It joined a collage of other stains.
The outer door to our office opened and someone knocked at the second door.
“Yeah,” yelled Shelly and then to me, “it’s probably the South Pasadena Fire Department coming for my ears.”
“You treated the South Pasadena Fire Department and-”