Melting Clock by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

question he was about to ask. “I said things. I was crazed, Toby, crazed. There is just so much a man can take, even if he is a board-certified dentist.”
    What is there to say in the face of such wisdom?
    “Anyway,” he said, “I think I told Mildred I was not coming home. So, here I am.”
    “Here you are,” I agreed.
    We sat in silence for about a minute and then he remarked, “It was a nice party.”
    “I’m sure. Who would expect less from Murray Taibo?”
    “Right.”
    “I’ve got work to do, Shel,” I said, looking down at the thief’s note. “And time’s running out.”
    “You want something to eat? I brought stuff from the party.”
    “Let’s take a look.”
    He went out, leaving the door open, and returned in a few seconds with a grease-stained brown paper bag which he placed on the desk in front of me. I opened it and fished out a quartet of hors d’oeuvres on little slices of stale white bread shaped like hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades. The stuff on them was creamy, orange, and sad. There was also a slice of chocolate cake. I ate a busted flush and the cake while Shelly, having paid for the time with leftovers, went on about the beauty of Mildred and the pangs of jealousy.
    “You want to help?” I interrupted. “Take your mind off your troubles?”
    “Why not?” He shrugged.
    “Take off the hat,” I said.
    He took off the hat and put it on the corner of my desk. I gave him a shorthand version of the little I knew about the Dali theft.
    “Now look at this,” I said, handing him the note.
    He held his glasses to keep them from falling and squinted at the note. The writing was large and clear. He handed the sheet back to me.
    “Well?” I said.
    “You’ve only got three hours,” Shelly answered, looking at his watch. “I’ve been gone almost two nights. I think I’ll go home.” He got up and headed for the door.
    “Thanks, Shel,” I said, dropping crumbs into the now empty brown bag.
    “Dali’s the painter who does the crazy stuff, right?” asked Shelly, turning toward me with an idea.
    I nodded.
    “You think you could talk him into painting a big tooth for me? You know, a tooth with a smile?”
    “No, Shelly.”
    “How do you know? You haven’t asked him.”
    “I know.”
    Shelly, unconvinced, retrieved his hat and went out, leaving the door open behind him. I looked at the note a few thousand times more and wondered what the second place in Los Angeles was. I wasn’t even sure what the first place was—the Brown Derby, Paramount, M.G.M.? I knew it wasn’t Columbia or Warners. Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard? The Beverly Hills Hotel? A little after ten and hungry again, I stuffed the note in my pocket, closed the window, turned out the light, and left the suites of Minck and Peters.
    I was on the way down the stairs when I heard something move in the sixth-floor shadows. I stopped and waited a beat. Jeremy Butler stepped out.
    “This is not a day of work,” he said. He was wearing dark trousers and a black turtleneck shirt. He had put on a few pounds in the ten years since he had stopped wrestling, but the arms and shoulders were still solid as a telephone pole.
    “I’ve got a deadline,” I said.
    “If we do not accept the events that mark the mythical passage of the year, if we do not honor the rituals and landmarks of time, great and small, seasonal and personal, we demean existence and its meaning. We demean ourselves.”
    I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but shook my head and smiled as if I did.
    “What are you working on?”
    I told him quickly and he listened quietly.
    “Salvador Dali is a tormented man,” he said when I finished. “When one lives the lie of madness long enough, one inevitably becomes mad and it is no longer a lie. One is trapped within the illusion that he can remove the mask, but he dare not try for fear that he will be unable to do it. The tragedy of Salvador Dali is that he thinks he is a clown claiming to