Free Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten) by Stuart M. Kaminsky

him through my bleary eyes, looked, to use the psychiatric phrase, a little nuts. But I’m not in the business of humoring the mentally ill.
    “Can you type?” he repeated. “Let’s get your clothes off, some cuffs on your wrists, and I’ll go for a typewriter. How’d you like that?”
    I didn’t say anything, just watched the telephone book rise over his head in two blasts. I leaned to the right and caught the book on my shoulder as I threw my left hand into Meara’s unprotected gut. The book splayed into the corner, and Meara staggered back against the wall, gulping for air. I got up on wobbly legs to go after him, but Belleforte said, “Don’t move, Peters.”
    I looked at him and saw the gun. It was leveled at my chest and about six feet away. Even a cockeyed cop couldn’t miss at that distance.
    Meara inched his way up the wall till he was fully standing and gasped, “You … really are … a dumb son … of a bitch.”
    I got behind the wooden chair I’d been sitting in and grabbed the back. Meara tried to grin through his pain.
    “Ain’t we got fun,” he said, his breath coming back. “Pick up that chair and so help me God I’m going to put a bullet in you. I’ll aim for your kneecaps but I’ve just been attacked and I may not shoot straight.” His gun came out of the shoulder holster, and he showed even, false teeth as he aimed.
    “Sergeant,” Belleforte pleaded, but Meara wasn’t listening. School was out and it was my move. We listened to each other breathe for a few seconds, and I let go of the chair. Meara was taking a step toward me when Belleforte went flying across the room, his gun sailing out of his hand through the chintz curtain, through the small window, and into the afternoon.
    The door had blown open behind him and a man was standing in it, a burly man with a cop gut, an angry look, and short steely hair. He wore a suit and tie, but the tie was open around his thick neck.
    “Back off, Meara,” my brother said.
    “Get the hell out of here, Pevsner,” Meara said, his gun still out. “This isn’t your land.”
    The dazed Belleforte was on his knees, looking for his lost gun. I didn’t feel like helping him.
    “Meara,” Phil said wearily, “you call me Captain Pevsner. Captain. And I go where I want to go, and I want to be here and I don’t want to explain anything to you. Toby, you get the hell out of here.”
    I got the hell out of there and met my brother’s former partner, Lieutenant Steve Seidman, on the stairway. Steve was a cadaverous guy who never smiled, never seemed to be disturbed by the madness of the world, and always seemed reasonable. A recently botched dental job by Shelly Minck had shown a new side of Seidman’s personality, however, complete with threats to turn the myopic dentist into corn flakes.
    “Hi, Steve,” I said.
    He nodded and looked over at the door to the library. “Anne Howard called him,” Seidman explained. “I was on the way into his office. He turned me around and we got here in eighteen minutes, probably a new record.”
    Phil had kicked shut the library door, and we could hear his voice booming and Meara bleating back.
    “He never liked Meara,” Seidman explained. “They had a run-in back in about thirty-six or ’seven. Meara put Phil’s name on a list of cops who used unnecessary force in getting confessions.
    “There’s an irony somewhere in that,” I said, leaning against the wall and rubbing my head.
    “Telephone book?” Seidman said, looking emotionlessly at my bloody face and handing me his handkerchief.
    “L.A.,” I said, putting the cloth to my tender cheek.
    “Could have been worse,” he countered. “Could have been Chicago or Manhattan.”
    Phil came out, slamming the door behind him, gave me a mean look, and pushed past me, spitting, “Come on.”
    Seidman and I followed him through the station and into the late afternoon.
    “Get in the car,” said Phil.
    We got in the car. Seidman drove, and Phil sat