Mildred Pierced by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online Page A

Geiger, professor of the Aeolian trafingle. I heard something inside, a twanging and a falsetto voice singing “Honolulu Baby.” I knocked.
    “Come in.”
    I opened the door. The professor was seated on a chair by the window of his large studio-office. He had a ukulele in his hands. There were chairs around the room, and in the center stood the bright metal box with rods reaching for the ceiling.
    “Therapy, respite,” Geiger said, looking down at the ukulele with a smile.
    It was hard to take Geiger seriously, not because he was dedicated to his musical creation, the trafingle, but because he looked so much like Larry Fine, the one of the Three Stooges with the bald head on top and the curly fringes that stuck out on each side. The professor’s hair was more or less tame, but it was still hard to shake the image.
    He was dressed in a suit and string tie.
    “I know you.” He pointed the uke at me. “You have that little office inside Sheldon Minck’s. You’re … don’t tell me … Tony … No, it’s right on the door. I pass it every day. Tony Peterson.”
    “Toby Peters,” I said.
    “Right.”
    He put down the uke and crossed his legs. He continued to smile.
    “You’re interested in learning the Aeolian trafingle?”
    “No,” I said. “I’m interested in Lawrence Timerjack and the Survivors for the Future.”
    Geiger was not smiling any more.
    “Why?”
    “Because you told Shelly about Timerjack and he joined them. Now he’s in trouble. The police think he killed his wife with a crossbow in Lincoln Park.”
    The professor uncrossed his legs and stood up, moving in front of the metal box in the middle of the room. He flipped a switch and there was a quick piercing electric buzz, replaced immediately by a low hum.
    “I warned him,” Geiger said. “I told him I had been a member of the Survivors for a few months. They taught me how to eat roots and build and use a blowgun. I quit after I almost swallowed a dart. Horrible experience. While I was choking, I could hear Timerjack talking to that woman about how they would hide my body. I coughed out the dart and walked out the door.”
    “Why would that story make Shelly want to join them?”
    “I don’t know,” Geiger said with a shake of the head and a tentative touch of one of the rods of the machine in front of him. There was a humming sound. He ran his hand along the rod and the humming sound rose and fell. Then he began to adjust the dials. “Has to be perfect or it won’t be under control.”
    “Why would Shelly join them if …?”
    “Ask him,” he said. “I think the idea of making and handling weapons, being part of such a group intrigued him. He was looking for something to belong to. I was the unfortunate bearer of the tale that drew him in. Had he talked to a defrocked priest, he might have converted to Catholicism. You want to try this?”
    He gently touched an upright rod with his left hand. The machine hummed in a wave of sound.
    “No, thanks,” I said.
    “My biggest problem is that people keep comparing my creation to the theremin. They are nothing alike. The Aeolian requires putting one’s hands on the tonal bars and, unlike the theremin, a skilled performer can imitate any instrument that exists and many which do not. It is a hands-on instrument, not a hands-off instrument.
    “My rates are reasonable,” Geiger said. “And for low payments over an agreed-upon period of time you could own your own Aeolian trafingle with individual lessons provided. It’s the musical instrument of the future.”
    “I’ll think about it,” I said. “What do you know about Timerjack?”
    “Know about him? He’s cuckoo. He’s nuts. He’s dangerous. If you ever meet him …”
    “I have,” I said.
    “That eye? Got hit in the head with a baseball when he was a kid. They wouldn’t let him in the army in the first war.”
    “Because of the eye?”
    “Because he was nuts. And maybe because of the eye a little, too. Who knows? He