Free Melting Clock by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

“no,” he screamed. A nearly hysterical “nooooooooooooooo.”
    “I’ll get back to you as soon as I have anything,” I said when the wail had played itself out.
    “I am plagued,” he wailed anew. “Who is this Wollowa Beckstine on the radio who they keep telling the time?”
    “What?”
    “It’s five o’clock Wollowa Beckstine,” he said solemnly.
    “Bulova Watch Time,” I explained.
    “Bulova Watch Time,” Dali repeated. And then, “Dali can’t work.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Dali’s work is an obligation, a burden.” It was almost a sob. “Do you know how difficult it is to shock the world every twenty-four hours?”
    “It’s the curse of painters and politicians,” I said.
    “You are making a joke? You are joking at Dali?”
    Gala took over the phone, her voice shaking. “Dali does not like to be the ass of jokes.”
    “The butt of jokes,” I corrected.
    “No, he says ‘ass’ of jokes. In the world of Salvador Dali, all jokes are made by Salvador Dali.”
    She hung up.
    There is nothing like an appreciative client.
    I went in search of Jeremy Butler. He’d solved the riddle of the first message for me. Maybe he could solve the second one in time for me to save a painting and maybe a life. Besides, I needed to hear a reasonably sane voice.

5

    M ost women would have been wary about answering a door to an apartment in a nearly empty downtown L.A. office building, but Alice Pallis did not hesitate. Alice feared neither man nor beast … nor robot Alice was a formidable creature of no mean proportions who, less than a year ago, when she was still in the porno business, had hoisted a two-hundred-pound printing press and carried it four flights down the fire escape when the cops came calling.
    When I stepped in, Natasha was lying on a blanket on the floor of the huge open room, which only a few months earlier had been brown, leather, musty, and filled with books. Since Alice and Jeremy had married, the room had brightened considerably. Alice had replaced all of the furniture with flowered sofas and a huge pink and purple rug covered the floor.
    Natasha lay gurgling and playing with the pages of a thick blue-covered book.
    “How’s she doing?” I asked.
    Alice smiled beautifully at her infant daughter. Natasha nibbled gently at the corner of the book.
    “She absorbs,” said Alice.
    “What’s she reading?” I asked.
    “Fairy tales. Andersen. Jeremy believes that she should be surrounded by the proper books; that the words, the stories, come alive in the hands of one who is prepared to learn.”
    “You believe that?” I asked.
    “I’m learning,” she said.
    “I need Jeremy.”
    “It’s his meditation time,” said Alice. “He’s at Pershing Square. When he comes back he’s going to read a fairy tale to Natasha.”
    Natasha stopped gnawing and looked up at me. She smiled. I left feeling a little better than when I had walked in.
    Finding Jeremy was no great problem. I walked over to Pershing Square, which wasn’t quite deserted, but it wasn’t as crowded as it usually was, possibly because it looked like rain. A little guy who was shivering in spite of the eighty-degree temperature was standing on a box, a Chiquita Banana box, pounding his left fist into his right palm and shouting.
    Jeremy and about five other men stood listening. Jeremy towered over the others and seemed to pay the most attention to the little guy. I started to say something to Jeremy; he put a finger to his lips to quiet me. I noticed a magazine under his arm. We turned to listen to the little man who was saying:
    “… and the first step will be a temporary prohibition of alcoholic beverages based on wartime need. That’s the way the Eighteenth Amendment came last time, after the war, and they’re talking about it again. Temporary will become permanent and the bootleggers, gangsters, and politicians will lobby to keep it that way, and the country will agree to keep it that way because it will add to