Melting Clock (7 page)

Up two flights of stairs and two minutes later with the cop behind me I saw my face in the mirror of a candy machine. The stubble was almost a beard and it was gray.

“That door,” he said. “Left.”

I went through the door and found myself in an interrogation room: one table, four chairs, one lieutenant I knew named Seidman, and my brother, Phil. Lieutenant Steve Seidman, tall, thin, and white-faced, not because he was a mime but because he hated the sun, leaned back against the wall, holding his hat in his hand. He didn’t have much hair left, but that didn’t stop him from patting it down and giving me a shake of the head that said,
Toby, Toby, this time you’ve really done it.

My brother, Captain Phil Pevsner, was not shaking his head. He sat in a chair behind the desk, hands palm down on a green ink-stained blotter, eyes looking through me.

Phil was a little taller than me, broader, older, with close-cut steely hair and a hard cop’s gut. His tie always dangled loosely around his neck, as it did now, and his face often turned red with contained rage, especially when I was in the same room … or even on the same planet. Today’s tie was a dark, solid blue; standard Phil.

For some reason, “How are Ruth and the kids?” were the magic words that usually brought Phil out of a chair, a corner, or a daydream and into my face and lungs. He had decided years ago that I asked him about his family just to provoke him. He had been wrong the first three times.

“Happy New Year,” I said cheerfully.

Phil came around the desk like a bear with a mission. I knew I had found three new words to drive him mad. Seidman moved quickly from the wall and got between me and my brother. Seidman was a pro with more than seven years experience of saving me from Phil Pevsner brutality.

“Phil,” Seidman said, making it sound like my brother should remember something about his own name.

“Move, Steve,” Phil said, looking past his partner and into my smiling face.

“Phil,” Seidman repeated, holding his hands up but not touching my brother. Even he was not ready for that.

“He’s laughing at me,” Phil said. “Does he know what kind of shit he’s in this time?”

“He’s got a lot on his mind,” said Seidman.

“He’s right,” I said sincerely.

“Shit,” said my brother, holding up his hands to show his palms to Seidman and to me. He backed up, went around the desk, and sat heavily. The chair made a rusty squeal as he turned away and found a fascinating squashed beetle to look at on the wall. I had the rush of an idea that Phil and Dali might have a lot in common. I hoped they would never have the chance for a discussion of contemporary art. It would either end with Dali dead or Phil in a straight-jacket.

“Sit down, Toby,” Seidman said, moving back to the wall and patting down his wisps of hair.

I sat down in the chair across from Phil.

The war had been Phil’s big break. He had been promoted right up the ladder from Homicide Sergeant to Detective Captain of the whole Wilshire District. Seidman had moved up with him. The rise hadn’t been because of Phil’s skills, but in spite of them. Phil was a basher. Phil hated criminals, sincerely hated them. Phil wanted to end all crime but knew it would never happen. The resulting frustration meant that every time he came face-to-face with a felon he became enraged. Other cops loved Phil. He was the one you frightened suspects with. No one in homicide had to play bad cop. They just called Phil or, if the criminal had been around a while, they just evoked his name. But the armed forces had taken the younger, ambitious police talent and Phil had been promoted to a job he hated, sitting behind a desk dealing with complaints from vendors about cops taking avocados, filling out forms, talking to visiting Chambers of Commerce from Quincy, Illinois. He had lasted about a year as boss of the Wilshire and then had been booted back to homicide after too many complaints. Seidman had asked to go back to homicide with him. Phil had been happy with the demotion. His wife, Ruth, with three kids in the house, had resumed worrying about her husband’s high blood pressure.

“I appreciate your coming,” I said.

Seidman shook his head; Phil said nothing and kept staring at the bug.

“Did you kill him?” asked Seidman.

“No, Steve. Am I a killer?”

“Toby, don’t answer my questions with questions. Phil and I leave and two guys who don’t know you are going to come through that door and put you on the top of page two of the
Times.
”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said.

“Ask him about the handkerchief,” said Phil, very softly.

“You had a bloody handkerchief,” said Seidman, who was back to playing with his hat.

What could I say? It was bloody because I used it to fish Adam Place’s wallet out of his pocket and put it back and then wipe my fingerprints off the doorknobs?

“I didn’t do it, Phil,” I said to my brother’s back.

“Ask him about breaking in,” said Phil.

“Did you—” Seidman began, but I jumped in.

“Can we eliminate the middleman here? Maybe we can save a little time and you can find the killer.”

“If I talk to him, I kill him,” said Phil. “He’s made my life a toilet.” Phil leaned forward and punched the wall about two inches above the bug, leaving a depression in the general shape and size of a fist.

“I can deal with a middleman,” I said. “I went into Place’s house because I was on a job. I had reason to believe a valuable piece of property had been taken by Place and would be destroyed by midnight. I knocked at the door. He didn’t answer. I went in through the window, found him, and called the police immediately.”

“You pick up a Hunky accent during the night?” said Phil, forgetting immediately that we had agreed on a middleman.

“I didn’t want to get involved.”

“What about the painting?” asked Seidman.

“My client’s. It was stolen.”

“It was a mess,” said Seidman.

“I was going to give it back anyway,” I said. “You got me for picking up stolen property and trying to return it. By the way, the clock in Place’s bedroom—that was my client’s, too.”

“We got you for breaking and entering, burglary, homicide, and attempting to leave the scene of a felony,” said Seidman, ignoring my addition of the clock to the problem.

“I wasn’t leaving. I was going outside to wait for the police.”

“Were you going to talk to them in Bohemian?” asked Phil.

I didn’t like it when I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t know if he was boiling up or cooling down.

“I made a mistake,” I said.

“Maybe your client got there first, and when he saw what Place had done to the painting he went nuts and killed him,” Seidman suggested.

“No, not this client,” I said.

“Who is he?” Phil said, so softly I almost missed it.

Now I was scared. Just before Phil completely lost control he made one last effort, always a failure, to be so calm and quiet that the unwary might think he had dozed off. But I had almost half a century of experience.

“Come on,” I said. “You know I can’t tell you.”

Phil spun around and looked at me. He was grinning. I had never seen that before.

“He’s a suspect,” Phil said. “And we’re going to get him or you’re going to go up on charges of interfering with a homicide investigation.”

“What about murder?”

“Medical examiner says Place was shot before eight,” said Seidman. “Both your landlord at the Farraday, Butler, and Minck say you were in the Farraday till eleven.”

“The bullet, Steve,” I said. “Is it from a thirty-eight? My gun’s a thirty-eight and I haven’t fired it. You can take it to ballistics.”

Seidman shifted and looked uneasy.

“Can’t match the bullet. No known make or caliber.”

“Look for the second Place in Los Angeles to find the first painting. You have till midnight on New Year’s Day,” said Phil, looking directly at me with that new grin. “We found the note in your wallet. You were too late, Tobias.”

“We’re playing with a wacko,” said Seidman. “Did this guy kill Place just because he had the second name in the phone book?”

“Which of you figured it out?” I asked, my eyes fixed on my brother’s face for the slightest twitch that would tell me he was ready to attack, and that neither Seidman nor the Fifth Army would stop him.

“It didn’t take much,” Phil said. “We had a clue you didn’t mention. Place’s dead body.”

“Look—” I started.

“No, you listen,” Phil said. “You’ll find the next on Thirteenth Street at midnight tomorrow.”

“In the town of the spectator,” I added.

“What?” asked Phil, sensing a needle.

“The writing on the painting. It ended with ‘the Town of the Spectator,’” Seidman explained.

“Who gives a shit?” said Phil. “There is no Thirteenth Street in Los Angeles. There are only seven listings for Street in the phone book and there’s no Thirteenth Street. Pico is Thirteenth Street. There’s a Thirteenth Avenue.”

“He says Street, he means Street,” I said.

“How many paintings are there, Toby?” asked Seidman. “Are they all by Dali? Who’s the guy who owns the paintings, the guy you’re working for?”

I sat up a little and pulled at my underwear. I was fragrant from the night in the lockup, fragrant and hungry.

“Come on, Steve,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound like a whine. “If I give you the name of my client, I’m out of business. My reputation will be shot. It’s what I’ve got to sell.”

“You can sell apples on the street in front of Union Station,” said Phil. “I’ll buy a dozen.”

“Phil, you’re my brother, and I really love you, but you’ve got no sense of humor.”

This time the fist came down on the desk. Everything on the blotter and beyond, the in-box, a few pencils, the photograph of somebody’s wife, danced around. Phil went cold blank, a very bad sign. Seidman saw it and stepped away from the wall again, motioning for me to get up. I figured he planned to block his partner, not enough to do much good but enough to give me a start out the door. I wasn’t sure where I’d go when and if I did make it beyond the Coke machine.

“Phil,” Seidman warned.

I started to get up.

“Let him go,” said Phil, folding his hands in front of him on the desk, his knuckles going white.

“What?” asked Seidman.

“Let him go,” Phil repeated. “Go downstairs with him and tell Liebowitz to let him go. Tell him I said so.”

“Mike Liebowitz isn’t going to—” Seidman began.

“Mike Liebowitz owes me his job,” said brother Phil. “If he gives you a hard time, tell him to remember the Pacific Electric case in ’36.”

“Steve,” I said. “It’s a trick to get you out of the room.”

“No trick,” said Phil with a laugh. “I’m not in the mood for tricks.”

He turned the squeaky swivel chair so he was facing the wall, and Seidman and I exchanged what’s-going-on looks. Seidman shrugged first. Then he went out the door. Silence. The room needed a window.

“Phil,” I said.

“Ruth’s got a growth in her left breast,” he said. “The doctor says it doesn’t look good.”

“Shit, Phil, I’m—”

“Just shut up, Toby,” he cut in, holding his hammy right hand up.

I shut up. More silence.

“She needs surgery,” he said. “Day after tomorrow. The boys don’t know. Surgeons are fucking butchers. You know that?”

“Some of them—”

“They’re butchers,” he repeated.

“I play handball with a surgeon,” I said. “Good one named Hodgdon. He’s kind of old, specializes in bones, but he’d know a—”

Phil shook his head.

“Found out Wednesday,” he said. “Hell of a New Year’s present. We haven’t told anybody, not even Ruth’s mother.”

“I’m sorry, Phil,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Give her a call. Don’t let her know you know.”

“I will,” I said. “Can I have Doc Hodgdon give you call?”

Phil shrugged. “Ruth’s got great teeth,” he said. “The kids all have her teeth.”

“Wouldn’t be so bad if they had our teeth,” I said.

“You know how old mom was when she died?” he asked.

“Forty-three,” I said. I wasn’t likely to forget. She died giving birth to me, which, I was sure, was one of the reasons Phil had decided before he even saw me that he would make my life miserable.

“Ruth is forty-three,” he said.

“Come on, Phil. It’s …”

The opening door stopped me.

Seidman. He looked at me and then at Phil’s back and then back at me. I shrugged.

“You can walk,” he said to me, and then to Phil, “Liebowitz says he’s doing the papers and wants you to sign off. He says you answer to the D.A.”

Phil laughed. It didn’t seem very important to him. I got up and moved to the door.

“I’ll call Ruth,” I said.

“Thirteenth Street, Town of the Spectator,” Phil answered. “You got till midnight.”

There should have been more, but there wasn’t. Phil didn’t want more and I didn’t know how to give it.

I moved past Seidman, went down the hall past the Coke machine and down the stairs to the desk to pick up my things. I signed for everything and got it all back except for the note to Dali. I didn’t complain.

I took a cab back to Lindberg Park, paid with Dali’s advance and made a note of the payment and tip as an expense item in my notebook. Across the street a cop was standing at the door to Place’s place. He looked at me suspiciously. My khaki Crosley had been sitting there all night and was hard to miss. I got in the passenger side of the Crosley, which I had not locked the night before, and slid into the driver’s seat. I was halfway down the block before the cop got into the street. In the rear-view mirror, I could see him writing my license number. I hope he got a merit badge.

It was Saturday. Kids were out playing. Lawns were being watered and I had till midnight to find a painting on Thirteenth Street.

Manny’s was open for breakfast. Since it was a weekday and a little after eight in the morning, I had no trouble finding a parking space right on Hoover. Two days in a row. How lucky could I get?

Manny’s Saturday breakfast crowd was there, including Juanita the fortune teller, who had an office in the Farraday. I liked Juanita, a shapeless sack of a woman who dressed as if she were trying out for a road company production of
Carmen.
Out of Juanita’s overly painted lips sometimes came a zinger that made me think she might be the real thing.