Murder on the Yellow Brick Road by Stuart M. Kaminsky

wasn’t bad. I mean I wasn’t in total burning agony. I got hungry in an hour, but I didn’t want to get out of the car. I wasn’t sure I could. Just before noon I found a place near Santa Barbara where you could honk your horn for service. I honked my horn at the El Camino Drive-In, and a skinny, red-headed girl in a tacky red uniform approached me. She stopped when she looked at my stubble-covered and anguish-filled face.
    â€œYou all right?” she said.
    â€œWife just had a baby,” I explained. “Been up all night.”
    â€œCongratulations,” she said with an accent out of Missouri or Oklahoma. “Boy or girl?”
    â€œGirl. Eleanor Roosevelt Peters.”
    She took my groaned order: two egg sandwiches with mayonaise and a chocolate shake.
    When I finished eating, I pulled a buck out of my pocket, but Missouri wouldn’t take it.
    â€œBoss says it’s on the house. For the new daddy.”
    Her smile was crooked and nice, and I felt like an Italian in Ethiopia. I smiled back and left.
    Some time later in the afternoon I pulled in front of the Farraday Building into a no parking zone. The next trick was to get out of the car. While I was trying, Jeremy Butler stepped out for some Lysol-free air and saw me.
    â€œYou get shot again?” he asked, taking my arm.
    â€œNo, it’s my back. Can you help me up to the office?”
    Butler picked me up as if I were helium-filled and walked me into the building.
    â€œI’ve known lots of guys with bad backs,” he said going up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. I weighed a solid 165 pounds and it was dead weight, but he didn’t seem to notice.
    â€œKnow any body builders?” I asked.
    â€œSome,” he said moving steadily upward. “Different muscles from wrestlers. They’re top-heavy. No center of gravity.”
    The pain was still there, but I could tell Butler was doing his best to be gentle.
    â€œI mean personalities,” I said.
    â€œAll kinds,” Butler said. “Some fairies, some skirt chasers. A few momma’s boys. All exhibitionists. They want people to look at them. Someone. A mother, father, someone didn’t pay attention, and they’re making up for it. Some of them are good guys.”
    â€œYou’re a poet Jer,” I said as he elbowed his way into the alcove of Minck and Peters. The alcove was barely big enough for both of us. He hurried through. Shelly was eating a sweet roll and smoking a cigar while he read a Western in his dental chair. Butler told him to get up, and he deposited me carefully in the seat of honor. I groaned once for sympathy. Butler wasn’t even breathing hard.
    â€œGet shot?” Shelly asked with more curiosity than sympathy.
    â€œNo buddy,” I said through my teeth. “It’s my back. You got something to kill the pain.”
    â€œSure,” he said and went for the needle. “I’ll give you a shot and some pills, but you’re better off going to bed for a few days and letting it take care of itself.”
    â€œI may not have a few days,” I said. Shelly rolled up my shirt and gave me a shot in the lower back.
    â€œI use it on gums,” he said to Butler, “but it’s supposed to work anywhere.”
    He gave me an unmarked bottle with about ten pills in it. I took one out and swallowed it, gasping for water. Shelly turned on his dental chair water, and I drank out of the dirty glass cup. I curled over in agony waiting for the shot and the pill to do their stuff. While I waited, I told Shelly and the landlord about Judy Garland, the dead Munchkin and the two attempts on my life. Shelly had heard part of it before, but he had been so busy saving the tooth of Walter Brennan’s double that he had forgotten.
    â€œLet me try something,” Butler said picking me up. I didn’t want to be picked up; the dental pain killers hadn’t done their stuff yet. But I was in