Free The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Bresnahan, was handcuffed to the trench-coated guy, who wore a little white cap. The trench coat flopped open for a second as the man teetered, revealing nothing but his scrawny body.
    “Toby, how’s it going?” Bresnahan said, yanking the flasher up to his feet.
    “Fair enough,” I said. “There’s an Army Boxing Show at the Hollywood Legion Wednesday.”
    “Naw,” said Bresnahan, who had done some amateur fighting. “Their hearts aren’t in it unless rankings are on the line. I’ll wait till the war’s over and the guys with heart come back.”
    Behind me I could hear Cawelti explaining to Patterson how John Wayne got his nickname “Duke.”
    “It was his dog,” Cawelti said seriously, as if explaining history to a dense student. “He had a dog named Duke when he was a kid. Glendale firemen started calling the kid and the dog Duke and it stuck.”
    Someone moaned behind me as I went out the squad room door. I would have put my money on Bresnahan’s flasher, but Cawelti’s good moods didn’t last very long and Patterson might be on the floor with remnants of some cop’s Italian beef dinner and the blood of the guilty and innocent alike.
    Cawelti had given me two things I hadn’t had when I came in, a headache and the information that Teddy not only had my gun and Vance’s corpse but $10,000. Ten grand was a lot for a dump like the Alhambra to have in the safe. I’d have to ask Straight-Ahead about it when he was up and marching.
    I got my first death threat of the day when I got back to my office in the Farraday. I had parked in No-Neck Arnie’s garage, answered politely when he asked me how the car he had sold me was doing, told him I wasn’t ready to fix the door that wouldn’t open, and hiked the two blocks to the Farraday. My back jingled nervously and I told myself to call Doc Hodgdon, the old orthopedic specialist who I played handball with at the Y on Hope and who, occasionally, got me back on my feet when my limbs creaked or cracked.
    The office I shared with Dr. Minck was on the top floor of the four-story Farraday Building on Hoover near Ninth. The Farraday was owned by Jeremy Butler, a mountain of a bald man who had made a reasonably good living and a good name for himself as a professional wrestler before retiring to write poetry and manage property he had bought with his sweat. He lived at the Farraday and dedicated himself to keeping the building clean of dust, decay, and neighborhood bums who found their way into the cool recesses of the building.
    The steel elevator sat on the main floor, waiting for the unsuspecting to climb in and be trapped into the longest ride this side of the Orient Express. I started slowly up the fake marble stairs, listening to the early afternoon sounds of tenants, the distant whirl of a printing press, the sound of arguing voices, and someone who might have been singing or might have been calling out for help.
    On the fourth floor I wandered through the not unpleasant smell of generously sprinkled Lysol and opened our outer office door. The pebbled, opaque glass window had a neatly printed notice in black letters:
    D R . S HELDON M INCK, DENTIST, D.D.S., S.D.
    PAINLESS DENTISTRY AND PERFECT
    PLATES SINCE 1916
    T OBY P ETERS, INVESTIGATOR
    Shelly had agreed to this compromise after pleas, promises, and threats from me. His idea of door lettering was much more fanciful and less given to truth.
    The small anteroom held two chairs, a small table, overfull ashtrays, and a pile of magazines in disarray and with covers missing. Jinx Falkenburg looked up at me from one of the magazines. She was everywhere. I wondered if it was time for me to write her a fan letter, maybe try to talk her into trying Pepsi. I pushed through the anteroom door expecting to see Shelly torturing a patient or sitting in his dental chair reading, but the room was empty and silent except for the dripping of water into a cup in the sink near my office. The sink was, once again, piled with