Read Online The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four) by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky
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parked in front of Hijo’s, but I didn’t pay any attention. I just watched Alex and Nelson in my rear view mirror. They stopped when the street turned to road, and Nelson stuck his hand out the window to wave goodbye.
I didn’t wave back.
CHAPTER FIVE
I found a Sinclair station on the highway, told the guy to fill it up and made a Groucho dash to the men’s room. The dash resulted in pain and relief, along with a feeling of satisfaction. I had some decent leads paid for with a firm belt in the kidney. Maybe that evened the score with Fate and the Gods. They let me have a little information and I paid for it in pain. It was a deal the Gods and I had had for almost thirty years, and we both understood it. I would have felt uneasy if things came without a price. I think I inherited that from my father. It was probably the only thing I inherited from the poor guy besides a watch that wouldn’t tell time.
I paid the gas station attendant who looked like Andy Devine, asked him the time and drove back toward Los Angeles humming “Chatanooga Choo-Choo.” My back was being reasonable.
I drove to Arnie’s garage on Eleventh Street and told no-neck Arnie, whose face was so thick with grease that he looked like something from the road show of The Jazz Singer , that he should get my bumper back on as soon as possible. Arnie shifted his stub of a cigar and grunted. He never asked how bullet holes, blood and ripped bumpers appeared. He just fixed and charged.
I legged it over to my office, trying to ignore the memory of Alex’s kidney attack and stand up straight as I walked. I made it to Ninth, passing Montoya the Dropper, a neighborhood character who would walk about thirty feet, only to repeat the thing over again. Montoya refused to acknowledge that he kept falling and became indignant if anyone confronted him with it. This affliction caused Montoya some professional difficulty since he made his meager living as a pickpocket. He was certainly the world’s most conspicuous pickpocket. I also passed Old Sol. Old Sol walked around with a whistle in his mouth and a book in front of his eyes. He blew the whistle whenever he came to a streetcorner and traffic stopped, green light or not. Since Old Sol was about seventy and he was still healthy, he was apparently doing something right.
They were two of the more savory characters of the neighborhood I met as I turned down Hoover to the Farraday Building, the four-story refuge for second-rate dentists, alcoholic doctors and baby photographers where I had my office.
As usual, the dark hall smelled of Lysol. Jeremy Butler, the former wrestler and present poet and landlord, spent a good chunk of each day fighting a losing battle to keep the building clean by carting squatting bums out the back door and slopping on pails of Lysol. He also changed the light bulbs regularly, but they were constantly being stolen or substituted for lower wattage by the tenants.
The Farraday Building had an elevator, but only the uninitiated took it. Few people could afford the time the trip took. I echoed up the steps and down the hall to my office. The window on the outer door had been cracked and replaced where my landlord had thrown a troublemaker through it, a troublemaker who tried to rob Sheldon Minck.
The neat black letters on the glass read:
SHELDON MINCK, D.D.S., S.D.
Dentist
TOBY PETERS
Private Investigator
The door was new, but the reception room had been embalmed years ago. There was enough space for two wooden chairs, one once-leather-covered chair, a small table with an overflowing ash tray and a heap of ancient copies of Colliers . There was a whitish-grey square on one greyish white wall, where a dental supply company chart showing gum disease had recently fallen after a decade of doing its duty and warning the populace.
I hurried along through the alcove into Shelly’s dental office, a single chair surrounded by old dental journals, coffee cups that should have been
I didn’t wave back.
CHAPTER FIVE
I found a Sinclair station on the highway, told the guy to fill it up and made a Groucho dash to the men’s room. The dash resulted in pain and relief, along with a feeling of satisfaction. I had some decent leads paid for with a firm belt in the kidney. Maybe that evened the score with Fate and the Gods. They let me have a little information and I paid for it in pain. It was a deal the Gods and I had had for almost thirty years, and we both understood it. I would have felt uneasy if things came without a price. I think I inherited that from my father. It was probably the only thing I inherited from the poor guy besides a watch that wouldn’t tell time.
I paid the gas station attendant who looked like Andy Devine, asked him the time and drove back toward Los Angeles humming “Chatanooga Choo-Choo.” My back was being reasonable.
I drove to Arnie’s garage on Eleventh Street and told no-neck Arnie, whose face was so thick with grease that he looked like something from the road show of The Jazz Singer , that he should get my bumper back on as soon as possible. Arnie shifted his stub of a cigar and grunted. He never asked how bullet holes, blood and ripped bumpers appeared. He just fixed and charged.
I legged it over to my office, trying to ignore the memory of Alex’s kidney attack and stand up straight as I walked. I made it to Ninth, passing Montoya the Dropper, a neighborhood character who would walk about thirty feet, only to repeat the thing over again. Montoya refused to acknowledge that he kept falling and became indignant if anyone confronted him with it. This affliction caused Montoya some professional difficulty since he made his meager living as a pickpocket. He was certainly the world’s most conspicuous pickpocket. I also passed Old Sol. Old Sol walked around with a whistle in his mouth and a book in front of his eyes. He blew the whistle whenever he came to a streetcorner and traffic stopped, green light or not. Since Old Sol was about seventy and he was still healthy, he was apparently doing something right.
They were two of the more savory characters of the neighborhood I met as I turned down Hoover to the Farraday Building, the four-story refuge for second-rate dentists, alcoholic doctors and baby photographers where I had my office.
As usual, the dark hall smelled of Lysol. Jeremy Butler, the former wrestler and present poet and landlord, spent a good chunk of each day fighting a losing battle to keep the building clean by carting squatting bums out the back door and slopping on pails of Lysol. He also changed the light bulbs regularly, but they were constantly being stolen or substituted for lower wattage by the tenants.
The Farraday Building had an elevator, but only the uninitiated took it. Few people could afford the time the trip took. I echoed up the steps and down the hall to my office. The window on the outer door had been cracked and replaced where my landlord had thrown a troublemaker through it, a troublemaker who tried to rob Sheldon Minck.
The neat black letters on the glass read:
SHELDON MINCK, D.D.S., S.D.
Dentist
TOBY PETERS
Private Investigator
The door was new, but the reception room had been embalmed years ago. There was enough space for two wooden chairs, one once-leather-covered chair, a small table with an overflowing ash tray and a heap of ancient copies of Colliers . There was a whitish-grey square on one greyish white wall, where a dental supply company chart showing gum disease had recently fallen after a decade of doing its duty and warning the populace.
I hurried along through the alcove into Shelly’s dental office, a single chair surrounded by old dental journals, coffee cups that should have been
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