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through the dark entryway and into the eight-story-high atrium lobby with its familiar iron railings around each floor, its rickety iron-barred elevator and its familiar smell of Lysol.
    A serious-looking pretty young blonde with what appeared to be a script in her hand hurried past me. The usual symphony of creaks accompanied me when I started the elevator. As I rode upward, laughter and shouting echoed off each floor, and there were sounds of music from a few of the offices where lessons were given.
    I made it to the office of Sheldon Minck, D.D.S., S.F.C., L.M.O., on the sixth floor. Most of the initials under Shelly’s name on the pebbled glass of the office door had no meaning. My name was in much smaller letters: Toby Peters, Confidential Investigations. I changed the wording from time to time, but not as often as Shelly changed the initials.
    I expected, based on Verte’s story, to find the door locked. But it wasn’t, and the lights were on. Violet was sitting behind her little desk in the tiny reception/waiting room.
    She was pretty, in her early twenties. She was also waiting for her husband Rocky to get back from the war. He had been a promising middleweight. I wondered if he’d have any fight left in him when he got back.
    Violet looked worried.
    “A man was here,” she said.
    “I know.”
    “I had the door locked,” she said. “I didn’t let him in. Then I thought, hey, I can’t just hide in here forever so I opened the door, but he was gone. How’s Dr. Minck doing? You see him? He all right?”
    “He’s all right,” I said. “I’ll be in my office.”
    “La Motta’s fighting Fritzie Zivic.” She looked down at a sheet of paper on her desk, pencil in her right hand.
    “I’m not betting,” I said.
    Violet had completely destroyed my confidence as a boxing expert. She was a dark-haired temptress who rivaled those mermaids who lured sailors to their death. I didn’t want to listen to her.
    “Suit yourself.”
    “Okay,” I said. “What’s on the table?”
    “I take La Motta. You take Zivic. La Motta wins in five or less or you win the bet,” she said.
    “Zivic’s going to get knocked out in five or less?”
    “Five or less,” she said, still not looking up. “Even money. Five dollars.”
    I had Joan Crawford’s money. I couldn’t resist. Zivic could easily go more than five rounds. He even had a good shot at winning. The odds were seven to five for La Motta.
    “Five dollars,” I agreed.
    She looked up, smiled, and held out her right hand to shake. I took her hand. She had a firm grip.
    I reached for the inner door.
    “Jeremy’s waiting for you in your office,” she said.
    “How long?”
    “About ten minutes. He was here earlier, too.”
    I nodded and went into the big room that was Shelly’s office. The lights were out. The place looked clean and ready to rent. A dental chair and stainless-steel table stood in the middle of the room. An X-ray machine with a flexible arm and a cone with a glass in the middle that made it look like a hostile Martian took up space, too. There were metal cabinets against the wall to the right, and a double sink to the left, by the door to my office.
    The place lacked something. It lacked the presence and racing emotions of Shelly Minck. I went to my door and opened it. The light wasn’t on, but there was plenty of light from the single window. The former storage closet was just big enough for my small desk and chair and two extra chairs. The walls were decorated with a large painting of a woman with an infant in either arm and a photograph of me and my brother when we were kids with our father between us, an arm around each of our shoulders. At my brother’s feet was Kaiser Wilhelm, Phil’s German shepherd.
    In one of the chairs, more than filling it, sat Jeremy Butler. He was the owner of the Farraday, a former professional wrestler turned poet who lived with his wife, the former Alice Pallice and their two-year-old daughter, Natasha, in