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plucked them up and deposited them in the back of the building. Butler had been a professional wrestler. Since he retired after investing in real estate, he had devoted himself to plucking bums from his lobbies and writing poetry. Some of Butler’s poems had actually been published in little magazines with names like Illiad Now and Big Bay Review.
    Butler was in the lobby plucking a bum when I arrived. He nodded to me and headed to the rear of the building. His footsteps echoed away and I felt at home as I went up the stairs. There was an elevator, but a crippled spinster on relief could beat it to the fourth floor without even trying.
    I hiked up the stairway past three floors of offices belonging to disbarred lawyers, bookies, second-rate doctors, pornographic book publishers and baby photographers. Far behind I could hear Gorilla Butler dumping the bum and closing the fire door.
    Chipped letters on the pebbled glass door to my office read:
    Sheldon Minck, D.D.S., S.D.
    Dentist
    Toby Peters
    Private Investigator
    I opened the door and carefully avoided the pile of outdated magazines on the table in the alcove we called a waiting room. The waiting room had two chairs that had come with the place before Shelly moved in. One of the chairs had once been covered with leather. Someone had knocked over the room’s lone ash tray. The alcove wall was decorated with an ancient drawing from a dental supply company showing what various gum diseases look like.
    I pushed open the inner door and entered the office of Dr. Minck. Clients for me had to pass through his office where he was often working on a neighborhood bum or a raggedy kid. I had rented the office space from Shelly after I did a small job for him. We got along, and he let me pay what I could afford, almost nothing.
    Shelly had a stubbly faced bum in the chair. The bum looked like a startled old bird. No, he looked like Water Brennan imitating a startled bird.
    Shelly – short, fat, in his fifties and desperately myopic – was humming and puffing on his everpresent cigar while he tried to read the label of a small bottle over the rim of his thick glasses. When he heard me, Shelly turned and nodded a greeting with his cigar. He was, as always, wearing a once white smock which had stains of both blood and jelly on it. Shelly didn’t introduce me to his patient. Walter Brennan just popped his eyes open and darted them between me and his dentist. I couldn’t see a tooth in the guy’s head.
    â€œAny calls?” I said.
    â€œNo calls, some mail,” replied Shelly satisfied with the label on the bottle. He turned to his patient and patted his head reassuringly with the same hand in which he held his cigar.
    â€œMr. Strange here and I are engaged in a mission of mercy,” Shelly said plunging a hypodermic into the bottle in his hand. Reddish liquid burbled into the syringe. Shelly pointed to the old man’s mouth with the needle. “Mr. Strange has a toothache. We know exactly which tooth it is because Mr. Strange has only one tooth. That right Mr. Strange?”
    Mr. Strange gave a birdlike nod of agreement. He was petrified with fear but Shelly didn’t seem to notice.
    â€œWe are going to save that tooth, aren’t we Mr. Strange? We are going to perform something called a root canal. We are going to do it because one tooth is better than no teeth and because I have not performed a root canal in some time, and I need the practice. Now open up Mr. Strange.”
    Shelly shifted the cigar in his mouth and forced the old man’s mouth open with his strong, sweaty fingers. The hypo plunged in and the old man gurgled.
    â€œThat’ll kill the pain,” whispered Shelly. “Now we’ll just let that go to work for a little while.”
    While we were waiting for the shot to work on Walter Brennan, I told Shelly about my morning at Metro. He listened while he groped around for an instrument he wanted. He found it