Mildred Pierced by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

at getting out of this with minor burns. I was his second-best chance.
    “I think it would be a good idea,” I said.
    “Very well,” she said. “Where?”
    Marty stepped back and held out his right hand, palm up to show her the direction.
    “I’ll meet you at the car in ten minutes,” I said.
    “More like twenty,” Marty said.
    “Fifteen,” I said.
    “I suggest we stop haggling over my time,” Crawford said, definitely irritated. “I’ll get there when I can, and I intend that to be very soon.”
    She walked a few steps ahead of Marty so he could get a good look at her legs. Grable might be the pinup girl with the gams, but Crawford’s matched hers and more. Besides, Grable was pregnant now, and there hadn’t been a new pinup of her in two years.
    The elevator came. I went to the visitor’s room, checked in with the guard, and sat in the same chair as the day before. This time there were two other prisoners with visitors. One pair included the fat Negro man from the lineup. On my side of the mesh his visitor was an equally fat Negro woman with a straw purse perched in front of her on the counter. The other duo comprised an older guy whose white hair needed combing and who was listening to a man in a suit with slicked-back hair.
    They brought Shelly in, and he sat across from me.
    “You know what just happened to me?” he asked.
    “I was there,” I said.
    He did a triple squint and opened his mouth.
    “I’m a dead man, Toby,” he said. “Tell me, tell me the truth, I’m a dead man.”
    “You ever hear of Greenbaum and Gorman in Des Moines, Iowa?” I asked.
    “They’re involved? Now they’re making electric chairs and gas chambers?”
    “I don’t think so, Shel,” I said. “What do you know about them?”
    “Toby, can we please concentrate on trying to save my life here?”
    “I’ve got good news,” I said.
    Shelly stopped fidgeting and looked at me in anticipation of a reprieve.
    “What?”
    “Greenbaum and Gorman want to talk to you about your anti-snore gizmo.”
    “My … Greenbaum and Gorman? They’re the biggest.… Most of my office equipment comes from them. I’m going to be rich,” he shouted with a laugh. “I’m going to be rich.” Then his voice dropped. “And I’m going to be dead or in prison. You know what irony is?”
    The white-haired prisoner, whose head was still down said, “The agreement between two parties that an action or utterance which appears to be one thing is perceived by both of the parties and perhaps others as carrying a meaning other than that which appears on the surface.”
    Shelly and I both turned to look at him. He was now looking up at us.
    “Well,” Shelly began.
    “… taught English literature at U.S.C.,” the white-haired fellow said. “Now … this.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    Shelly, his voice now low, said, “Toby, you’ve got to help me here. I’m going nuts. I’ve only been here two days and the food is starting to taste good to me. I’m in a cell with two men who keep swearing at each other and threatening each other. And they keep having arguments, and they keep asking me which one of them is right. I try to even it out, but they both hate me. One of them is crazy. He eats shoe polish. Brown shoe polish.”
    “I’m doing what I can, Shel,” I said.
    “Well, do what you can’t ,” he said, looking around the room as if it had begun to close in on him. “What good is being rich if you have to spend your life in a cell with a lunatic who eats brown shoe polish?”
    I had no answer.
    “At least the food is good,” I said.
    “Actually, it’s not bad,” he said. “I’m worried about losing my patients, Toby.”
    “Try to keep calm, Shel,” I said.
    “Not ‘patience,’ ‘patients,’” he said with exasperation. “I have people who rely on me for healthy teeth and gums.”
    And they now have a reprieve, I thought. Instead, I said, “I’ll get you out of this. Just do what Marty says.”
    “Leib? He