A Fatal Glass of Beer Read Online Free

woman.”
    “There,” Shelly roared, with a yank of his right hand.
    The woman released Shelly, her legs going limp in the chair. He stepped back and held up a small dental tong clinging to a small bloody tooth. He brandished the specimen at the woman in the chair in a show of triumph. Her eyes were closed and she was doing her best to breathe.
    Shelly pushed his thick glasses back on his perspiring nose, placed tongs and tooth on his white table, and returned the cigar to his mouth. He was smiling broadly when he finally noticed me and my client.
    “You look almost like W. C. Fields,” he said.
    “I have the distinct though dubious honor of being William Claude Dukinfield, long known professionally as W. C. Fields,” said Fields, extending his hand as Shelly moved forward to shake.
    “My patients say I do a perfect imitation of you,” said Shelly.
    “Shel,” I warned, but the rotund dentist in the now-blood-stained smock ignored me.
    “Sir,” said Fields, “I am not a friend of the dental profession. Too many times have its barbaric practitioners charged me outrageously for piddling procedures. Even took one to court. Lost the case, though I kept my dignity. But I have been watching you and admiring your dedication to the fine art of excruciating extraction.”
    “Well,” said Shelly, going into his W. C. Fields imitation, which I had heard several times before, each time telling Shelly that it was terrible, “I may have received my lugubrious training in the fine art of oral hygiene in Philadelphia, but I have learned to overcome that obstacle and, with the help of candlelight as I read many a tome of dental history and care, became what I am today.”
    Fields looked at Shelly, showing no expression.
    “Pretty good, huh?” asked Shelly, returning to his own voice.
    “Pretty good?” Fields said. “I thought I was listening to my own mirror.”
    “We have to go to my office, Shel,” I said, touching Fields’s arm and motioning toward my door.
    “Besides,” said Fields, “I fear the poor woman in your chair has passed out or is dead. If she’s dead, I know a good lawyer. Or, I should say, I know a skilled and crafty lawyer. There are no good lawyers, only evil ones, the more evil the better. That is what draws them to their profession.”
    We moved toward my office and I heard Fields mutter to himself, “Just as the desire to inflict pain drew you to dentistry.”
    When we squeezed into my office, I caught a glimpse of Shelly smiling and relighting his cigar. The woman in the chair made a convulsive twitch, opened her eyes in panic, and then lay back.
    Fields looked around my office and took a seat across from me, glancing back over his shoulder at the photograph of me, my brother, my dad, and the German shepherd.
    “Dogs are not partial to me,” he said. “They are ungrateful and stupid beasts who have never responded to my gestures of armistice.”
    “His name was Kaiser Wilhelm,” I said. “He was really my brother’s dog.”
    “Should have called him Bismarck,” Fields said, putting his hat and cane on the chair next to him. “I’m a great admirer of old Otto.”
    “Aren’t we all,” I said.
    “I have a series of questions to ask you,” he said, pulling a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and laying it flat on the desktop. I leaned back. “First,” he said, “are you a man who takes pleasure in the occasional or even frequent imbibing of alcohol?”
    “I like a beer once in a while,” I said.
    “What kind?” he shot back, leaning forward.
    “Not particular,” I answered with a shrug. “Edelbrew.”
    “What is your critical assessment of the martini?” he asked seriously.
    “Sorry,” I said. “Just an occasional beer. Most of the time I’m fine with a cold Pepsi.”
    Fields frowned and made a notation with a short yellow pencil.
    “This is not going well,” he said softly.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “Mae West recommended you,” he said. “Damned fine