Melting Clock by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

was there, in front of a giant nude woman sitting with her back to me. The woman was looking at one of Gala’s clocks, the one I had seen in Place’s bedroom. The clock was melting. Dali was wearing his big red suit and slap-shoes. Behind him was Koko the Clown, who flapped his arms and flew up in the sky with the birds. Dali danced over to me, a paintbrush in his hand, and dabbed a smear of white on my nose. I couldn’t move my arms.
    He leaned over and whispered to me as Koko swooped down and stuck out his tongue.
    “Listen to me. There is no longer a second place, and there is no Thirteenth Street in the present tense. Time is death.”
    I wanted to shoo him away but my hands wouldn’t move. I didn’t want any more puzzles or riddles. My head throbbed from the sound of dead birds, and I longed for a simple missing senile grandmother, a play-around husband, or a murder for ten bucks by a dim-witted armed robber. My wishes were simple even in my dreams.
    Dali danced off and Koko landed in front of me. The birds filled the sky, blotting out the sun, and Koko opened his mouth to tell me the answer to the puzzle.
    “Get up,” he said.
    That wasn’t the answer and it wasn’t Koko’s voice. I opened my eyes and looked into the face of a uniformed cop with a freckled bald head. The sun was coming in through the bars, and I could smell something that might be food.
    “Up, Peters,” the cop said.
    I sat up.
    “No clowns,” I said.
    “Just you, bub,” the cop said wearily. “They want you upstairs. Got your legs?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Let’s go,” said the cop and we went.
    Up two flights of stairs and two minutes later with the cop behind me I saw my face in the mirror of a candy machine. The stubble was almost a beard and it was gray.
    “That door,” he said. “Left.”
    I went through the door and found myself in an interrogation room: one table, four chairs, one lieutenant I knew named Seidman, and my brother, Phil. Lieutenant Steve Seidman, tall, thin, and white-faced, not because he was a mime but because he hated the sun, leaned back against the wall, holding his hat in his hand. He didn’t have much hair left, but that didn’t stop him from patting it down and giving me a shake of the head that said, Toby, Toby, this time you’ve really done it.
    My brother, Captain Phil Pevsner, was not shaking his head. He sat in a chair behind the desk, hands palm down on a green ink-stained blotter, eyes looking through me.
    Phil was a little taller than me, broader, older, with close-cut steely hair and a hard cop’s gut. His tie always dangled loosely around his neck, as it did now, and his face often turned red with contained rage, especially when I was in the same room … or even on the same planet. Today’s tie was a dark, solid blue; standard Phil.
    For some reason, “How are Ruth and the kids?” were the magic words that usually brought Phil out of a chair, a corner, or a daydream and into my face and lungs. He had decided years ago that I asked him about his family just to provoke him. He had been wrong the first three times.
    “Happy New Year,” I said cheerfully.
    Phil came around the desk like a bear with a mission. I knew I had found three new words to drive him mad. Seidman moved quickly from the wall and got between me and my brother. Seidman was a pro with more than seven years experience of saving me from Phil Pevsner brutality.
    “Phil,” Seidman said, making it sound like my brother should remember something about his own name.
    “Move, Steve,” Phil said, looking past his partner and into my smiling face.
    “Phil,” Seidman repeated, holding his hands up but not touching my brother. Even he was not ready for that.
    “He’s laughing at me,” Phil said. “Does he know what kind of shit he’s in this time?”
    “He’s got a lot on his mind,” said Seidman.
    “He’s right,” I said sincerely.
    “Shit,” said my brother, holding up his hands to show his palms to Seidman and to