Skinflick

by Joseph Hansen

  “He’s probably had that already,” Delgado told him.

  “That’s a sexist remark,” Dave said. The children were picking up gear and starting to leave. “Don’t go anywhere. He’s your friend. He gives you booze and grass. Don’t walk out on him when he needs you.”

  A girl and a boy went anyway. The others stood as they were, doubtful, looking at Dave and Delgado, then at each other. The boy named Ricky said, “Okay. What’s it about? Who are you?”

  “Private investigators,” Dave said. “Working for the insurance company that Jack Fullbright’s partner had a life policy with. He was murdered. It’s serious, right? So you will wait, won’t you?”

  They murmured, took steps this way and that way, then one by one sat down. Dave went down the companionway. At the foot of it he stopped. Delgado bumped against him. “Sexist or not,” he said, “I was right.” He pointed.

  The door in the bulkhead separating the cabin with the leather couches and bar and music system, from the cabin with the beds was open, and it showed Dave naked legs waving happily. Slim, shaved legs tangled with muscled, hairy legs. The music was very loud down here. Dave went and turned it off. In the sleeping cabin, a boy like Ricky, long blond hair in his eyes, tumbled onto the floor between the beds. He lay on his back, laughing. He was naked, and a naked girl fell on him. It was Ribbons. They started wrestling, or it might not have been wrestling. Then Jack Fullbright’s voice said sharply:

  “Wait a minute. Shut up, will you? Something’s wrong.”

  He stepped over the suddenly stilled bodies on the floor and was framed in the doorway. He wasn’t wearing anything, of course, except the little silver chain around his neck and a wide slice of adhesive tape holding thick folds of gauze over his nose. The tape went far out across his cheekbones. The flesh around his eyes that wasn’t covered by the bandage was black and blue and swollen. He could only open his eyes as slits. They glittered.

  “What the hell is this? What do you want?”

  He reached around the door for a white terrycloth robe. Ribbons stared amazed at Dave and Delgado between Fulbright’s legs. So did the blond boy. He’d tilted his head far back. That it was upside-down made his alarm look comical. Fullbright stepped out of the sleeping cabin and shut the door. He flapped into the robe. It was floor-length and had a hood. He didn’t put up the hood. Dave studied his motions. They were slow. He had to be full of painkillers. There was no way, without them, that Fullbright could have amused himself as he’d just been doing only a day after smashing his face on those steps. The pills would have hampered his capacities, but Dave suspected it had taken time and diplomacy and luck to set up this date. Fullbright wouldn’t have canceled for anything less than a coma.

  “Still the same thing,” Dave said. “To know where Charleen is. You lied before. You knew her. You asked Spence Odum to put her in a film. It would cost you but you didn’t seem to care. She meant something to you. So where is she, Fullbright?”

  Beyond the door behind the man in the long white robe there was a rattling noise. Somebody stumbled on stairs. Dave looked a Delgado and Delgado pushed Fullbright aside, yanked open the door to the sleeping cabin, lunged through. Dave saw the boy’s naked legs disappear at the top of a companionway at the far end of the cabin. Delgado had hold of Ribbons. She had on jeans now but no top as yet. She squirmed in Delgado’s grip and let out little gasps with words muffled inside them of fear and outrage. She tried to hit Delgado with little thin blue-veined fists. Beyond the far companionway, there was a splash. The boy must have gone overboard forward.

  “I’d like the truth this time,” Dave said.

  Fullbright didn’t answer. He watched Delgado bring the struggling, whimpering Ribbons into the after cabin. Delgado set her down hard on the couch. She crossed her arms in front of her little breasts and glared up at Delgado through her tumbled hair. Her mouth pouted.

  “I guess you’re going to get it, aren’t you?” Fullbright dropped disgustedly onto the couch opposite Ribbons. “Or you’ll have the vice squad down on me.”

  “You’re a poor judge of character,” Dave said. He reached into a pocket and brought out the sheaf of invoices he’d gone off with the last time he left this boat He flipped them at Fullbright “I’m going to get it by offering you these back.”

  “Or you’ll take them to the IRS.” Fullbright nodded.

  “And the police, and the district attorney, and any other agency I can think of that frowns on theft and cheating and embezzlement—to say nothing of murder.”

  Fullbright shut his eyes, shook his head, grunted, slouched down on the couch, hunching up his shoulders. “I didn’t kill him. I felt like it, but I didn’t I figured out another way.” A wise smile twisted his mouth at one corner.

  “I’m cold,” Ribbons said.

  “To shut him up and back him off,” Dave said, “after he discovered you were renting equipment to porno filmmakers and not even giving him a share of the take.”

  “It wasn’t the money,” Fullbright mumbled. “It was the sinfulness of it all. He was going to destroy me.”

  Dave stepped to him and shook his shoulder. “Don’t go to sleep on me. Explain this.” He held in front of Fullbright’s face the fuzzy photo of wanton Charleen on the motel-room bed. The slits in the bruised swellings opened for a moment and closed again. “You took it, didn’t you? Don’t tell me why; let me guess. Dawson was with her.”

  Fullbright nodded slowly. His voice was almost inaudible now. “You know already. Why ask me?” He raised a very slow hand and very gingerly touched the bandage across his nose. “Leave me alone, all right?”

  “I’m cold,” Ribbons whined, and Delgado went into the sleeping cabin and brought back a white Irish hand-knitted sweater. She put it on. It must have belonged to the boy or to Fullbright. It was much too big for her. She huddled down in it, glowering, sulking.

  “You’re welcome,” Delgado said.

  “I found him looking at magazines in his office one night when” he thought I’d gone home, only I remembered something I needed and I came back.” Fullbright blew out air wearily. “They had pictures of naked little girls in them.” A sound came from Fullbright that was almost a laugh. “He put them away fast and I made believe I hadn’t noticed. It really shocked me.” He looked at Dave for a second and shut his eyes again. “I actually believed the son of a bitch was what he claimed to be. Until then.”

  “And he thought you still believed it,” Dave said, “when he went over to Spence Odum’s studio and tore it apart and snatched back all the stuff that belonged to Superstar Rentals. And threatened to wipe you out.”

  Fullbright nodded even more slowly this time.

  Dave looked at Ribbons. “Take Mr. Delgado to the galley and come back with some coffee, please. On the double, as we say on shipboard.”

  Ribbons gave no sign of doing what he asked. Delgado pulled her to her feet. He pushed her ahead of him through the sleeping cabin.

  Dave didn’t watch where they went. He asked Fullbright: “You already had Charleen for a little playmate by that time, right? Where did you find her?”

  “You wrecked my face,” Fullbright said. “It hurt like hell. I’m full of dope. I can’t go on with this. I can’t figure out what the hell to say.”

  “Try the truth,” Dave said.

  Fullbright drew a deep breath and pushed himself a little more erect on the couch. He said loudly, “I found her in a place on Sunset called the Strip Joint, where kids dance and drink soda pop and hustle sex for bucks, for pot, for cocaine, for auditions, for whatever you promise them.”

  “And you rent stuff to filmmakers,” Dave said. “So you have connections with producers. She thought you could get her into the movies.”

  “Also I had a boat,” Fullbright said. “She hadn’t been on a boat before. She thought it was glamorous, only if I took it out she got seasick and if I didn’t she got bored.” His voice ran down. He blew out breath again and shook his head again. He was having tr
ouble holding it up. “She was about to quit me. Then Jerry found my private records and ripped up Odum’s studio and all that.” Fullbright shut his eyes and shuddered, hunching down inside the big robe. He fumbled for the hood and pulled it crookedly over his rumpled hair. “Man, I have to sleep. I can’t go on with this.”

  “They’re bringing coffee,” Dave said. “So you got Odum to promise to put her in a picture by offering him everything he needed free. And in return for that, you got Charleen to lead Dawson into temptation—remembering all those skinny girl children in the sex magazines that Dawson found so attractive, right? And you stationed yourself outside the motel room window and snapped photographs of Dawson he wouldn’t like featured in his church bulletin.” Dave bent to touch a drawer under the couch. “Using one of the cameras you keep here.”

  “Most people,” Fullbright said drowsily, “don’t realize they can have their picture taken in the dark.” He smiled wanly to himself. “It shut him up. It backed him off.” He whispered a laugh, opened his eyes to the extent that he could open them, and looked at Dave. “It also hooked him on Charleen. He couldn’t get enough of her—even though he knew she’d agreed to frame him for me. Nothing mattered but sex with Charleen. He’d gone around all his life lusting in his heart after grammar-school girls—what’s the word?—nymphets, right?”

  “And keeping hands off,” Dave said.

  “Yeah, well—” Fullbright’s eyes closed again and his chin rested on his chest. “He’d have broken sometime. He sure as hell broke completely when he broke.”

  Delgado came in with a big Japanese pottery mug of coffee. The hand that didn’t hold the mug held Ribbons. Dave took the mug. Ribbons and Delgado sat on the couch again. Rick stood in the companionway. He didn’t speak. He only looked. He appeared worried.

  “Drink some of this,” Dave told Fullbright. He seemed always to have to be doctoring the man. He put the mug at Fullbright’s mouth. Fullbright jerked up his head. “I don’t want it. There’s nothing more to tell.”

  “Where did Charleen go after Dawson was killed?”

  “I never saw her again.” Fullbright, as if his hand weighed almost more than he could lift, tried to push the mug away. “I swear it. Think what you want, do what you want. I never saw her again.”

  “You were going to take those records out to sea and drown them. Is that what you did with Charleen? She was a witness to Dawson’s murder, wasn’t she? And you couldn’t depend on her to keep quiet. You had to get rid of her.”

  “No. I didn’t kill him.” Fullbright rubbed his forehead. “What night was it?”

  Dave named the date. “Between ten and midnight.”

  “I was here. I picked up a film from Cascade after I left work and brought it straight here. You can check their records.” Fullbright numbly took the mug. He blew at the steam. He sucked up a little coffee and flinched. “Hot. It was Deep Throat.” He pointed overhead. A rolled-up movie screen was hooked to the ceiling inside its brown metal tube. “The projector sits over there.” He looked at the companionway and saw Ricky. “What is it?”

  “I was here that night,” Ricky said. “Jude and Pepe were here.” He turned and called up the companionway. “Hey! Deep Throat. You remember when Jack showed it?”

  Jude was the girl in the Levi’s jacket and not much else. Pepe was a brown boy a little bit overweight. He was chewing. A smear of white was at the corner of his mouth. Jude numbered the night when Gerald R. Dawson was killed. “It was a Monday,” she said.

  “I remember because that’s my tennis night with my yuck little brother. Believe it, I canceled when I heard what was going down.”

  “Yeah.” Pepe rubbed his crotch and grinned. “Going down. Es verdad!”

  Jude looked at Dave with her eyes very wide open. “How does she do that?”

  Ribbons, huddled down inside the big sweater on the couch, kept her sulky look. “Did you ever hear of special effects?” Then she giggled. “Trick photography?”

  The children in the companionway laughed.

  21

  A CAR HE DIDN’T know was parked in the dark by the piled cement bags, the sand heap, the stacked lumber in front of the French doors. He went into the courtyard. The fencing room was lighted up. A stranger was in there. He sat on the bed, phone on the floor at his feet, receiver at his ear. The light in the room was overhead, two hundred watts, a naked bulb, bleak. Dave stood under the white flowers and trailing tendrils of the vine at the back of the courtyard and watched the man through the open door. He was half turned away but he looked young and spare. He wore a brown double-knit suit and shoes that gleamed. His brown hair was cut 1930s style, neat, the latest. He spoke into the phone and Dave thought he knew the voice. He went through the doorway and walked to the bed.

  Randy Van looked up and smiled. He picked up the phone, rose, handed Dave the phone, handed Dave the receiver. Dave took them dumbly, staring. There wasn’t a trace of makeup. There was no enamel on the nails. Dave said “Brandstetter” into the phone.

  “The soil samples from the closet floor at unit number thirty-six,” Salazar said, “match the stuff from the clothes of the deceased, Gerald R. Dawson.”

  “Dandy,” Dave said. “Anything else?”

  “A lot of fingerprints. Who knows how long it will take to sort them out and get a line on them? Your witness, Cowan, told me she brought pickups there. She must have been busy. She sure as hell was too busy ever to clean the place. But he wasn’t murdered there, anyway, Brandstetter. When the neck is broken—”

  “The muscles that control bladder and bowels let go,” Dave said. “I know that. I also know it doesn’t always happen. Only almost always.”

  “Almost is good enough for me,” Salazar said. “I don’t want this case and I don’t get this case.”

  “Don’t hang up,” Dave said, and put a hand over the mouthpiece. Randy was sorting through a stack of record albums on the floor. Dave asked him, “How long have you been here? Any other calls?”

  “About an hour. Yes. A Lieutenant Barker of the LAPD. He got the report from the lab where we left that envelope of Karen’s. They phoned him, like you asked.”

  “Did he tell you what they said?”

  Randy nodded, studying a glossy color caricature of Mozart with a croquet mallet. “It’s decomposed granite. It doesn’t match. The other was alluvial.” He looked up at Dave. “He’s going to the district attorney about it.”

  “Thanks,” Dave said. “You look very nice.”

  “I feel ridiculous in these clothes,” Randy said. “Does that mean the one with the horses gets out of jail?”

  “That’s what it means,” Dave said. “Why don’t we drink to that? The cookhouse is over yonder.”

  Randy got to his feet, and put a kiss on Dave’s mouth. “You’re a nice man,” he said, and went away. He didn’t sway his hips.

  Salazar whistled into the phone. Dave took his hand off the mouthpiece. “Sony,” he said, and told Salazar about getting the soil sample from looker’s place in Topanga and about what the lab had said and about Barker’s reaction. “Now—I can ask him to do it or I can ask you to do it, but somebody has to do it,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Salazar said.

  “Test Bucky’s shoes,” Dave said.

  “To see if what’s on them matches what was in the closet?” Salazar asked. “You know, I don’t see how just eating lunch with a guy could do this to somebody, but I’m starting to think like you. And it hasn’t helped. I checked out the kid’s shoes. Negative. I even showed the kid to Cowan. Cowan isn’t so sure now. He says Bucky looks smaller. But maybe it was the light. It was dark before.”

  “It’s still dark,” Dave said. “I don’t know. I just damn it don’t know.” He sat on the bed, scowling to himself, chewing his lower lip. Salazar asked him if he was still there. “I don’t know where I am,” Dave said. “Look, thanks very much. I’m sorry to have put you to all the trouble. I appreciate your cooperation, your help.”

/>   “Any time,” Salazar said.

  “Somebody killed that man,” Dave said.

  “Not the widow and orphan,” Salazar said. “Write them their check and forget it.”

  “Sure,” Dave said, but he wasn’t listening. He was thinking about Bucky’s size. He asked Salazar, “Are you going to be there for a while?”

  “I’m already into my fifth hour of overtime,” Salazar said. “I’m going home to bed.”

  “What about your stolen-property office? Can you leave word with them that I—”

  “Nine to five, Brandstetter,” Salazar said. “Somebody in this crazy place keeps normal hours.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Dave said and hung up.

  Randy came back carrying stubby glasses with what looked to be scotch over ice cubes. He handed Dave one of the glasses. “Does that mean we’ve got all night?”

  “I have something to do before sunrise,” Dave said.

  “You mean besides right here?” Randy said.

  “After right here,” Dave said. “You know, you should get dressed up funny more often.”

  It wasn’t sunrise. It was after. But the old black man in the starchy tan uniform sat upright and wide-eyed in his faded blue Corvair next to the driveway ramp down into the garages under Sylvia Katzman’s apartment complex. The street was steep and the worn right front tire of the car was turned hard against the curb. Dave put the Triumph into the lowest gear he could find with the stubby shift knob and climbed the hill. He got lost on twisting, narrow, shelflike streets but he found the place he wanted finally, and parked and got out. It was the place where the chain-link fence was cut at the bottom, the corners folded back. He looked down. There were the kitchen windows of the top row of apartments. The one on number thirty-six was still open the way he’d left it on his first visit. It was plain from here that climbing had taken place up the bank. The slant of the early sunlight, already promising heat again, showed up the marks of dug-in shoes or boots. And of something heavy having been dragged. He got back into the Triumph and lost his way again getting back down to the parked Corvair. The old man was drinking coffee out of a red plastic cup that was the cover of his Thermos bottle.