Read Online The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four) by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online Page B

cleaned and piles of tools in various states of rust. Shelly’s radio was playing Smiling Jack Smith. Shelly himself, in a once-white smock and thick glasses slipping off his moist nose, was working on someone in the chair. Shelly shifted his cigar and turned his fat, bald head in my direction.
    “Toby, you got a call. I don’t remember who.”
    “Thanks Shelly,” I said and moved across the office toward my own office, which had once been a small false-teeth lab.
    “Hughes” said a voice from the dental chair. It was Jeremy Butler. “The call was from someone named Hughes.”
    “Right,” agreed Shelly, pushing his glasses back and humming with Jack Smith as he looked for some instrument among last week’s newspapers.
    “Jeremy,” I said. “Since when do you let Shelly work on your teeth?”
    Butler shrugged his enormous shoulders and leaned back, resigned.
    “I was reading in the paper today,” Shelly observed pulling out a mean looking tool, “and I saw this big ad for that dentist, Doctor Painless Parker with offices all over the coast, and I said that’s what I’d do. I’d advertise. Where the hell are those pliers?”
    “What else d’you read in the papers?” I said, being friendly.
    “Dick Tracy’s caught in a snowstorm.”
    “Terrific,” I said.
    “You working?” Butler asked softly. Usually, Butler spoke barely above a whisper, but people listened. People usually do when you weigh 300 pounds and most of it is muscle.
    “Yeah,” I said, happy to have a sounding board. I pulled up a stool, removed the newspapers from it except for one little corner that stuck to something wet and sat down facing the dental chair. Shelly found his pliers and I gave a quick summary of the case, talking over Jack Smith warbling “Just One More Chance.”
    I pulled out the list from Hughes. Butler examined it slowly and Shelly took a quick glance.
    “It’s the Jap,” said Shelly, turning with his pliers to Butler. “If not the Jap then the Nazi dame Gurstwald.”
    “Thanks for clearing it all up for me, Shelly. You are invaluable.”
    He waved his pliers, indicating that it was nothing much and was about to attack Butler’s mouth when the big man rose.
    “I’ve changed my mind,” he said, removing the dirty white cloth from his neck.
    “We had a deal,” Shelly protested.
    “You can still take five dollars from your rent,” said Butler. “It’s getting late and my sister’s boy is coming to spend the night with me.” Shelly sighed and put his pliers down.
    I was curious about Jeremy’s nephew. I wondered if he resembled a bathtub like his uncle.
    “How is the new place working out?” he said, meaning Mrs. Plaut’s rooming house. I had been renting a small motel-like bungalow from Butler before that.
    “Fine,” I answered. Shelly climbed into his own dental chair with a newspaper.
    “Take care of yourself, Toby,” Butler said and out he went.
    “I’m closing down early,” Shelly said looking at his cigar. “Mildred and I are going to see that all-Negro musical at the Mayan, VooDooed . You want to come?”
    Jack Smith paused so I could answer.
    “No, I’m waiting for a call. Mind if I use your radio when you leave?”
    He said he didn’t mind, and I went into my office to check on the mail, which didn’t exist, look at the framed copy of my dusty private investigator’s license, examine the photograph of my father, my tall heavy brother and our beagle dog Kaiser Wilhelm. I hated and loved that photograph and the ten-year-old kid in it who had been Tobias Leo Pevsner. My brother Phil’s arm was around my shoulder in the photograph, my father looked proud. My nose was already smashed flat by Phil, and Kaiser Wilhelm looked sad as he always did.
    Shelly left just before six and I went down for three burgers from the stand at the corner and brought them back to my desk with a Pepsi. I put in a call to Hughes through Dean at the Romaine office and sat eating as I waited for Hughes to