Tomorrow Is Another Day

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  I parked behind the Farraday and gave Big Elmo two bits to watch the Crosley. Big Elmo was the latest in a string of derelicts who lived in the alley behind the building. There have been poets, fools, crazies, grumblers, dreamers, the dazed. One guy had returned for two seasons. Most hung around a few months, sleeping in rusted-out abandoned cars. All were willing to take a quarter or two to watch the Crosley and keep it safe from each other.

  Big Elmo wasn’t big. He was a straw in an oversized yellow dress shirt cut short at the sleeves. The shirt was dirty. Elmo was dirty. His wisps of hair were unruly, but his manners were the best.

  “Think I need a shave?” he asked, pocketing my coins.

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” I said.

  Elmo looked around his alley domain. Cars beeped and chugged on Main Street beyond the Farraday. Elmo seemed to listen and then touch his face.

  “Just need another tomorrow,” he said. “And who’m I trying to impress, I ask you.”

  “You’ve got a point,” I said. “But if you put the shave together with a bath, some clean clothes from Hy’s or Chi Chi’s Slightly Worn on Hoover, you might be able to line up a job.”

  “Had one once,” Elmo said with a smile. “Makes me itch. Got no patience. Most guys out here …” He looked around, but there weren’t any guys. “Most guys have a story. What they were. What they walked away from. You know?”

  “I know,” I said.

  Elmo jangled the coins in his pocket.

  “I got no story. No ambition. What the hell. You’re born one day. Sixty, seventy years later you’re dead. You know?”

  “I know,” I said.

  Elmo shook his head.

  “So,” he went on, “the way I figure it, why waste the sixty, seventy with work, trying to get something you can’t keep anyway. I’m not starvin’. I’m not cold or wet most days. I get plenty of time to read over at the library or wherever.”

  “I get your point, Elmo.”

  “You think I could really get a job?” he asked, looking away from me. “I mean if I cleaned up okay?”

  “Lot of jobs, Elmo. The gravy’s in the navy.”

  “Cash money and room with a door,” he said, more to himself than me. “Might be I’d want to try it. Never tried it.”

  “You know Manny’s around the corner on Main,” I said. “He’s looking for a dishwasher. There’s a sign in his window. I’ll put in a word for you.”

  “Maybe,” said Elmo.

  I went to the Crosley, opened the door with my key, and reached into the cramped back seat. My gym bag was there. I pulled it out while Elmo watched me find a rolled-up pullover shirt and safety razor already loaded with a fresh Chancellor single-edged blade. I handed shirt and razor to Elmo, who took them with dignity.

  “You don’t like it, you can always quit,” I said.

  “What about your car?”

  “I’ll take a chance,” I said.

  I left Elmo standing in the rubble behind the Farraday, deciding if he had the heart to take a step into the 1940s. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to feel as if I was saving a lost soul, but I wasn’t sure. I also wanted to take the edge off of what I was feeling, a combination of excitement, fear, and anger. They were still with me when I went through the back entrance to the Farraday and closed the door behind me.

  When you step into the Farraday from the back door, you’re plunged into a darkness without shadows. I’ve tripped over sleeping bums and debris. I’ve stepped into slick splots of who-knows what. Jeremy and Alice worked with buckets, brawn, and chemicals to stay ahead of the jungle, but it was a never-ending job, and time off for the baby or poetry only meant the streets would slouch under the door or through a window for a new assault.

  I moved around a corner and made my way to the lobby door, marked with a red bulb. I pushed into the lobby and felt the same tug I always feel. Something a little sad, something I knew someday I would miss. The open tile space with a wide stairway and dark-metal railings climbing floor by floor to the sixth floor and the dirty skylight. The iron elevator next to the stairway, clanging gently from a sourceless breeze. Voices one-two-five-six flights up through the doors marked as the homes of one-man and one-woman businesses that couldn’t make it in the nicer buildings a few blocks north.

  Something moved above me as I headed for the stairway. I looked up and saw Alice Pallis at the first-floor railing, holding Natasha in her arms. The baby was patting her mother’s head with a pudgy palm.

  “Jeremy told me to look for you,” Alice said. “He wants you to call him in Encino.”

  “Thanks, Alice,” I said.

  “Toby, I asked you and you said you’d leave Jeremy out of your work.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, starting up the stairs. “I don’t think there’s any …”

  “… and we figured out your puzzle,” she said.

  I kept coming up the stairs. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d figured it out too, at least most of it.

  “Great,” I said as she moved toward the stairway landing.

  “If it’s not French,” a man’s voice shouted from above us, “I can’t sell it. You get me French, I’ll get you cash.”

  I got to the first floor, not even panting. Natasha reached for me and Alice handed her over. She smelled like innocence and baby powder.

  “The initials of each victim,” Alice said. “Charles Larkin, Al Ramone, Karl Gouda, C.L.A.R.K. G. And in his last note, he says he ‘began lame but I’ll end able.’ ABLE. Clark Gable.”

  Natasha was pulling at my ear. She wasn’t more than four months old, but she had inherited her father and mother’s strength. Alice reached over, removed her hand from my ear, kissed Natasha’s palm, and took her back. She immediately began to pat her mother’s head again and gurgle.

  “Your killer is issuing a warning to Clark Gable, taunting him,” Alice said. “Maybe wanting him to feel responsible for the deaths of these men for no other reason than to spell the name of a movie star.”

  “I don’t like crazies,” I said.

  “Who does unless they’re funny?” she said.

  A grinding machine sound began a floor or two above us. We had to raise our voices.

  “‘I’ll be there e’er the Ides and right those wrongs and claim his prize,’” Alice went on. “Jeremy thinks he wrote that to let you know that he plans to do something before the fifteenth, the ides. Jeremy had me read Julius Caesar. Caesar is warned about the ides, but he ignores the warning, and then he’s murdered on the ides, stabbed by former friends.”

  “The king,” I said. “Gable’s called the king.”

  “So, it could be that he plans to murder Clark Gable before the fifteenth,” said Alice. “‘My father wept to be so cut from fortune, fame deservéd.’ Suggestion, Toby. We think his father didn’t get something that could have made him rich and famous, something about Clark Gable. And he plans to get his revenge before the fifteenth. Jeremy thinks your killer’s father had something to do with Gone With the Wind. All three victims had something to do with the film.”

  All this I knew, but I didn’t have the heart to tell Alice. Natasha was solemnly exploring her mother’s nostrils. Alice paid no attention.

  “We’re still puzzled by some of his comments,” Alice said. “Who am I? Just ask what I am d.o.i.n.g.”

  “Spelling,” I said. “He’s Spelling. His name is Spelling.”

  “How can anyone be expected to figure that out?” Alice said, nestling her nose into Natasha’s stomach. The baby giggled.

  “Maybe we’re not supposed to figure it out till it’s too late,” I said.

  “Then why play the game?” Alice asked.

  “To show he’s smarter than me, smarter than Gable,” I said. “To make us feel that we should have figured it out, when it’s too late.”

  Alice gently put Natasha’s head against her neck and patted her back softly to calm the giggling baby.

  “He’s sick, Toby,” Alice said. “I’ve got to g
o change Natasha and give her a nap.”

  “He’s sick, Alice,” I agreed.

  Alice started to walk away and then turned to me, her homely face serious.

  “I don’t want Jeremy near him,” she said.

  “I’ll …”

  “Listen,” she said, shifting the baby slightly so she could hold her with one hand while she plucked a sheet of paper from the pocket of her dress. Natasha stirred and did a baby sigh and went quiet again. Alice shook open the sheet and read,

  “Blake thought he found God

  in the wake of a tiger, the burst of sun, the flower,

  Shakespeare in the wit of words

  the recognition of the power

  of well-put passion.

  Pound pounds his Nazi chains

  against the steel drum of fear

  while I take issue, take pains

  to find the postured dignity

  that holds my hand through doubt

  and lets me reach back with earthy

  strength to those I love and say,

  ‘Take my hand for I will hold you fast

  through time to come and which has past.

  We are not first but we’ll not be last.’”

  “Well?” Alice challenged, folding the sheet with one hand and dropping it back in her pocket.

  “Impressive,” I said.

  “If Jeremy gets hurt, Toby, I’ll crush your head with my bare hands. I will.”

  “I know, Alice.”

  There was nothing more to say. She and the still-giggling baby vanished into the shadows, and I went back to the stairway and made my way up to the office of Sheldon Minck and Toby Peters.

  There were voices beyond the waiting room: Shelly’s, though it seemed unnatural somehow. The other voice was a woman’s. I opened the door and found Shelly standing next to a girl who stood a good six inches taller than him. She was slender, dark, with a short Louise Brooks haircut and wearing a green dress with fluffy sleeves. She also wore a smile and too much makeup.

  Shelly was showing her drawings and trying to keep his glasses from slipping off as he pointed to details with the dead end of his cigar.

  “… in your office,” he said, pointing back at my office.

  She saw me first. Then Shelly’s eyes came up, filled with magnified guilt behind the thick lenses. The girl smiled. She was cute, maybe a little empty, but cute.

  “Oh, Toby,” Shelly said, quickly dropping his drawings on the dental chair. “This is Mrs. Gonsenelli, Violet.”

  Violet Gonsenelli held out her hand. I stepped forward to take it. It was slender, warm, and definitely did not belong, along with that face and body, in the less-than-spotless offices of Minck and Peters.

  “Pleasure,” she said.

  “Mrs. Gonsenelli applied for the receptionist job,” Shelly explained. “I told her the ad was old, but she has some great ideas and she needs the job.”

  “Husband’s in Europe,” she explained.“Fighting the Nazis.”

  “Best reason to be there,” I said.

  “Business is growing, Toby,” Shelly said nervously. “Wouldn’t be bad to have someone keep track of things, straighten up.”

  “You were talking about my office,” I said.

  “Your …” Shelly began, looking at my office door as if he had never seen it before. “Well, it was just a possibility, you know. Violet would need an office and …”

  Violet looked confused.

  “Mildred,” I said. “Mildred gets one look at Violet and she’s on the way to Reno.”

  “This is business,” Shelly said with indignation. “Mildred would just have to understand.”

  “Mildred?” Violet asked.

  “Mrs. Minck,” I explained.

  Violet nodded in understanding. I had the feeling this was not the first job interview foiled by a Mildred Minck.

  “Maybe I’d better go,” Violet said.

  “Wait,” said Shelly. “Toby?”

  “Your marriage, Dr. Minck,” I said. “We can clear out the waiting room for Violet, put in a small desk. Patients and clients can wait in the hall. You put two or three chairs out there and maybe, who knows, if you’re lucky, they won’t get stolen. You’d better check with Jeremy and Alice to see if they’ll let you do it.”

  Shelly was beaming.

  “I don’t …” Violet began.

  “You don’t have to,” Shelly said. “You just make appointments, answer the phone, straighten up, learn about the dental business. I tell you what. I’ll train you to be a dental assistant. Clean teeth, X rays. A career.”

  “What about Mrs. Minck?” Violet said, looking at me.

  I shrugged.

  “I got it,” said Shelly, snapping his pudgy fingers. “Toby hires you. You’re his idea. I pay my share of your salary, but …”

  “You pay all of Mrs. Gonsenelli’s salary and she works for both of us,” I said.

  “But …”

  “And I give you permission to tell Mildred I hired her,” I threw in.

  “It’s a deal,” said Shelly.

  “I don’t know,” said Violet.

  Violet was cute. Violet could be more than cute. This was probably a rotten idea.

  “Forty a month, plus a free white smock,” said Shelly. “Good pay, career opportunity. Flexible working hours.”

  Violet looked at me.

  “Can we make it a kind of trial?” she said, looking back at Shelly again. “Till I can ask Angelo.”

  “Angelo?”

  “My husband. I’ll write to him tonight.”

  “Angelo Gonsenelli?” Shelly said to himself.

  “Middleweight contender,” I said. “Went six rounds with Tony Zale in ’42. Zale couldn’t put him down.”

  “Angelo has heart,” Violet said, nodding her head.

  “And a wonderful nickname,” I added. “Mad Angelo Gonsenelli.”

  “When do I start?” she asked brightly, her bright-red lips parted to show amazingly white and even teeth that would be the envy of any potential patient.

  “Start?” said Shelly in a daze.

  “Tomorrow will be fine,” I said. “Dr. Minck will help you get things in shape.”

  “Nine?” she asked.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  And Violet Gonsenelli, wife of Mad Angelo Gonsenelli, was out the door, heels clicking as she headed for the elevator.

  “You knew,” Sheldon said, moving to his dental chair and sitting on top of his drawings.

  “When I heard her name,” I said brightly.

  “Cruel, Toby,” he said.

  “Sheldon, you were about to give her my office. Where the hell did you think I was going to go?”

  Shelly adjusted his glasses, looked at his cigar, and shrugged.

  “I like your idea about turning the waiting room into a reception area—office.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Give Mildred my best tonight.”

  “She hates you, Toby,” Shelly said.

  “Lucky for you, Shel,” I said. “I’m mad about her. I’d steal her out from under you and run with her in my arms all the way to Tijuana if she’d have me.” Mildred was odds-on favorite to win the witch-in-the-middle contest, if the May Company sponsored a Halloween event.

  “You’re being sarcastic,” Shelly said, lighting his cigar.

  I took a step toward Shelly and said, “I want to know about Spelling.”

  Shelly blinked at me. “What’s to know? A few rules but mostly memorizing,” he said. “You got a problem, keep a dictionary on your desk. Sometimes, Toby, you come up with the damndest … what happened to your head?”

  He pointed to the small Band-aid on my forehead. I pulled it off and threw it toward the overflowing white trash can near the sink.

  “This morning,” I said, “someone you know tried to kill me.”

  “Mildred?”

  “Your patient. A guy named Spelling.”

  “Good teeth,” said Shelly.

  “And good aim,
” I went on. “He shot a man this morning. Stabbed one last night and killed another one three days ago. I think he’s also planning to kill me and Clark Gable.”

  “Just because I made a little mistake with a novocaine injection?” asked Shelly.

  “No, Shel, because he’s out of his mind. I think he came here this morning to find me, to follow me. I think he’s playing a game.”

  “No wonder his teeth were in such good shape,” said Shelly with a stroke of understanding that made no sense to me.

  “Shel, I doubt if it will do any good, but I’d like to see your card on Mr. Spelling.”

  “That’s confidential information, Toby,” Shelly said seriously. “Patient-doctor, priest-confessional, lawyer-client, that sort of thing.”

  “Give me the card, Shel, or I’ll call Mildred and tell her about your hiring a receptionist who looks better than Rita Hayworth.”

  Shelly leapt from his chair in indignation and stumbled forward, almost falling to the floor.

  “Blackmail,” he sputtered.

  “The card, Sheldon,” I said.

  Shelly gathered his dignity, adjusted his soiled smock, and moved to the file cabinet next to the cluttered, dripping sink. He opened it, looked at me in the hope that I would change my mind, and then came up with a card.

  “Right here on top,” he said. “Chronological system. Latest patient on top.”

  He pushed the drawer shut and came to me with the card held out.

  “Thanks, Shel,” I said, looking at the card.

  The name he had given was Victor Spelling. There was something vaguely familiar about the address. There was something very familiar about the place of birth. I turned the card to Shelly.

  “Read it, Shel.”

  “Tara, Twelve Oaks, Georgia,” he read. Then he looked up. “So?”

  I went on reading. According to the card, Spelling was thirty-one, was five-eleven, weighed 190, and had no cavities.

  I brushed past Shelly, went to my office.

  Behind me Shelly was mumbling, “What did I do?”

  I kicked my door closed and picked up the phone. Sarason at vehicle registration wasn’t in, but Grace Smull was.

  “Price is up, Peters,” she said. “Five bucks. And I haven’t got much time.”

  “Victor Spelling,” I said.