Skinflick

by Joseph Hansen

  2

  ANNA WESTOVER SAID, “ISN’T it tiresome how right folk wisdom always turns out to be?” In an empty schoolroom strewn with naptime blankets, building blocks, toy xylophones, little red tables, little red chairs, she stood, small, thin, and brittle, facing a window where the clear morning light showed every line of worry and disappointment in her handsome face. She smiled wryly, and more lines appeared to frame her generous mouth. “‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’” She sighed, looked at Dave, straightened her shoulders. “How much I would have done differently, if only I hadn’t been so sure of myself.”

  Outside the window, under old pepper trees, little kids in bright sweaters toddled and hopped, chirping and squeaking in a yard of grass-cracked blacktop, among gaudily painted swings, seesaws, jungle gyms. “It looks like a cheerful life,” Dave said. “There have to be worse ways to earn your living.”

  “I agree,” she said. “It’s the loneliness I feel sorry about. I might have had my father and mother again, but a choice was given me a long time ago, and I chose my husband. Now I don’t have him and I don’t have them.”

  “People who make either/or propositions to their children can’t be much of a loss,” Dave said.

  She had fine, clear, gray eyes, and they searched his face now skeptically. “Have you children, Mr. Brandstetter?”

  He shook his head. “I was one once. Does that help?”

  “Almost not at all,” she said. She crossed her arms on her breast, clutching her arms. She walked around the room on legs that were good and straight and must have been beautiful before they became too thin. “What you want for your children is that they never stumble and fall and hurt themselves. Suddenly emotions take charge of you that you never knew you possessed. It’s appalling how strong they are. Common sense hasn’t a chance.” She stopped and looked at him again. “But you mustn’t think it’s their fault—my parents, I mean. Of course they would be happy to have me back in the circle of their love again.”

  “Then, if you’re lonely—” he began.

  “I am also stubborn and ashamed. When I wanted to marry Chass, my father said he was no good, and that he would bring me sorrow and disgrace. He said he didn’t have any moral fiber. He acknowledged that he was brilliant. He admitted that he had charm, grace, good looks, all of which would take him far in the law. But he saw into Chass as I couldn’t see, and knew that intelligence, charm, grace, good looks don’t add up to a man.”

  “What about ambition?” Dave said. “That’s an expensive house out there at the beach. It takes hard work to earn a house like that. And he’s only forty-five.”

  “Oh, yes.” She nodded and smiled sadly with a corner of her mouth. “Ambition. Yes, indeed. The really dangerous ingredient for a no-good. That was what my father trusted least in Chass. Oh, yes.” She laughed grimly. “Ambition he did have. I thought it was wonderful. It wasn’t. It was a disease, a cancer.”

  A small oriental boy stumbled and fell in the yard. A mountainous black woman in a tent-size flowered smock swooped down, gathered him against her massive breasts, petted him, crooned to him. His cries from beyond the plate glass sounded like the reedy bleat of a squeeze toy.

  “I was so in love with him, so proud of him, so sure of him. I begged my father to help him. He thought he could make me let Chass go by refusing. Instead, I quit school myself, went to work, and paid his way through law school. He came out at the top of his class. I was vain, and I rubbed my father’s nose in it. Wrong, how wrong he’d been. Oh, was I vain and foolish.” Laughing sourly at herself, she began gathering up the small blankets, folding them, stacking them on the lower shelves of bookcases full of rubber balls, dolls, mallets, teddy bears. “And fond and foolish was my father. I thought, and perhaps he thought so too, that he was acting on the strength of evidence. He was a lawyer, after all. He took Chass into his firm, made him a junior partner. But it wasn’t the strength of the evidence, was it? It was guilt at having let me sacrifice my own education, my future—‘sacrifice’ would have been the word he used to himself—to put Chass through law school instead of helping him, as he could so easily have done, so easily. Guilt. And chagrin at having misjudged the man his daughter loved.”

  “He wasn’t with your father’s firm,” Dave said, “when this witness-bribing thing happened?”

  “Oh, no.” She began picking up the scattered small chairs and arranging them neatly at the tables. “Chass didn’t stay more than a few years. He chafed. Things moved too slowly. Then the chance to handle a big criminal case came his way. He begged my father to let him handle it under the firm’s umbrella. But it wasn’t that kind of firm. It was corporate law, civil law, property management, that tame sort of thing. My father distrusted criminal law. He wouldn’t hear of it. And Chass left the firm.” She opened a door, switched on a light in a washroom, came back with a sponge and, crouching, began to wipe off the tabletops. A faint smell of orange juice reached Dave. “He did well on his own. I didn’t much like the clients he sometimes brought to dinner. I didn’t like them in the same house with my children. But that didn’t often happen.” She gave a little dry chuckle. “Just too often. But”—she sighed, rose, moved to the next table, crouched again, wiped again—“he was happy. Things were moving fast. He liked the courtroom, the confrontations, the reality—that was what he called it—the reality of it all. And, of course, he loved winning. And he always seemed to win.”

  “And the money?” Dave said.

  “And the money.” She wiped another table, rose and took the sponge into the washroom. Dave heard water splash. Over the sound of the water, she called, “That was when we bought that pretentious house, where the damned wind never stops blowing. Serenity was six.”

  “And Lyle?” Dave wondered.

  She came out with the sponge. “Five. And a great worry. He couldn’t speak, he could only make funny noises. It turned out that was his way of speaking. It still is.”

  “Did you take him to therapists?”

  She was wiping tabletops again. “Oh, yes. I believe several of them went into other professions after encountering Lyle. At first, they insisted something was the matter with his brain.” She found a spill spot on the asphalt tile floor and wiped the shiny surface clean. “He has the brain of an Einstein.” She didn’t sound pleased about Lyle. “If he wanted to speak, he’d speak. He simply can’t be bothered.”

  “I’m told he’s a fine musician,” Dave said. “He was living with his father. Why was that?”

  “It was his choice,” she said briskly. “Ask him.”

  “Tell me where to find him and I will,” Dave said.

  “At Juilliard, in New York,” she said.

  “Not this winter,” Dave said. “You mean you haven’t seen him since he came home?”

  “Is he home? I thought you said you couldn’t find him.”

  “The boy across the street says he’s been home, playing music at night, working during the day, to help his father out. The house is in poor shape. What happened to all that wonderful money? Did it go for his defense?”

  “And he can’t earn any more,” she said. She stood in the washroom doorway, and smoked a cigarette. The motions she made were nervous. “He’s disbarred. You knew that.” She blinked. “The boy across the street? You mean little Scotty Dekker?” She laughed bleakly and shook her head. “How we misjudge children. I’d never have believed Scotty could understand a thing he saw or heard. A pretty little animal—that’s what I always thought about Scotty.”

  “He’s still pretty,” Dave said, “and he’s got eyes and ears, and maybe even a normal brain. But he evidently wasn’t any closer to Lyle than you are. And he doesn’t know where he’s gone or why. Or his father, either. Where would they go, Mrs. Westover?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t know why it’s so pressing. What do you care? I suppose Chass finally ran from all the people he owes money to. The house is heavily mortgaged, for one thing. I presume he owes you money?”

&n
bsp; “He doesn’t,” Dave said. “Do you hear from Serenity?”

  Anna Westover stared. “Has something happened to her?”

  “Do you know where she’s been these past two years?”

  “No. She never wrote, never telephoned. No.”

  “She wrote,” Dave said, “to her father.”

  Anna Westover turned, threw away her cigarette. Dave heard the toilet flush. She came out of the washroom, came straight to him. “You have a way with you,” she said, “like a good priest’s, a father confessor’s. But you aren’t a father confessor, are you? You’re something very different.”

  “Did your husband, ex-husband, come to you, or phone you for money at any time recently?”

  “He would know better,” she said. “After he got out of prison, he came once. But not for money. He wanted me to make love to him. I suppose he thought he could charm me back again, I don’t know. He seemed very sad and shabby. I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t let him do as he wanted. What is this about Serenity?”

  Dave told her, showed her the letter, the snapshot.

  “Dear God,” she said, and sat down on one of the little round tables. “That swine. That son of a bitch.” She was looking away. The window light was on her face again. Her face was taut. She turned it, lifted it to Dave. “You don’t believe it, I hope. Because it isn’t true, you know. It’s simply a way for him to raise money. He saw the story about those poor, tragic girls on television, and he remembered he had that letter from Serenity, that photo. Oh, I know so well how his warped mind works. I can see him digging out that insurance policy, rubbing his hands, sitting down at his desk to write that letter.”

  “Banner Insurance agrees with you,” Dave said. “But how can you be sure? You say you haven’t heard from her. The photo shows she was there. That is Serenity, isn’t it? Scotty Dekker says it is.”

  “Why would she go there?” It was a cry of protest.

  “She was on dope,” Dave said. “She went some pretty low places, even before she ran away. Scotty told me about the room with the mattress and the rats in Venice.”

  “That was playacting,” Anna Westover scoffed. “For my benefit. I was divorcing her cherished father. She was punishing me, trying to drive me back to him.”

  “And you weren’t having any,” Dave said.

  “I knew him,” she cried. “Serenity didn’t. It wasn’t reasonable. I’d forgiven him everything. There was a case where he won, and he was wild with elation—and the next day, the very next day, both principal witnesses were killed. Oh, certainly, by accident. Yes, of course. One drove off a cliff, the other set fire to his bed with a cigarette and immolated himself. I knew those weren’t accidents. So did the district attorney. Those witnesses had been bought, hadn’t they? And then killed to keep them from blackmailing Chass or his client later. They were not nice men.”

  “The district attorney couldn’t make a case?”

  “Not then,” she said bitterly, “but he remembered and he waited and he made a case at last. Chass bought one too many witnesses for those gangsters who paid him so well. I knew. But what did Serenity know? How could I tell her?”

  “You like folk wisdom,” Dave said. “How about, ‘The truth never hurt anybody’?”

  “You never had children,” she said angrily. “She was fifteen years old. You can’t reason with them at that age. The truth is the last thing they want to hear. He could do no wrong—don’t you understand? So if I was divorcing him when he was in the deepest trouble of his life, who was wrong? Chass?” Her laugh despaired. “Forget it.” She stood up. “And now you tell me she ran to that monster Azrael and he cut the living heart out of her and dumped her in a dirty hole in the desert. And that’s my fault, too, isn’t it?” She doubled her fists. “Oh, you are a horrible man. Get out. Get out of here.”

  “Just the messenger,” Dave said. “I don’t know that she is dead. No one knows. Why jump to conclusions?”

  “Because that’s she!” Anna Westover cried. “That’s Serenity. Standing right next to him in that snapshot. That is my little girl, mister.” And suddenly she was weeping. Hard and loud. She covered her face with her hands and ran stumbling into the washroom. She slammed the door and went on sobbing behind it. He went to the door and rapped gently. She quieted. He said:

  “Don’t cry. You could be right. He tried fraud, and when he didn’t get the check, he figured someone like me would be coming around for the facts, and there weren’t any facts, and anyhow what good was twenty-five thousand dollars going to do him? It wasn’t enough to go to jail for. And that’s why he disappeared. Where would he go, Mrs. Westover? Friends? His parents?”

  “The only friends he had were vicious. He’d saved their rotten skins for them, but when he got into trouble, did any of them come to help him? Be serious.” She opened the door, wiping her nose with tissues, wiping her reddened eyes. “He had no parents.” Her laugh was brief and rueful. “That was part of his charm for me, wasn’t it? An orphan. The pathos of it.” She touched Dave. “Find Serenity, Mr. Brandstetter.” Her hand trembled against his chest. “He doesn’t matter. Find her. Find her alive.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” Dave said, “but I have to find her father too. It’s my job. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” she wailed. “How many times must I tell you that? Don’t know, don’t care. I’m nothing to him anymore, nothing to Lyle. They’re nothing to me.”

  He didn’t believe her. He changed the subject. He said, “Was there a woman?”

  Her mouth opened in surprise. Then she laughed. Bleakly. “Sorry. He lied and cheated. But not that way.”

  “Sometimes the wife is the last to know.”

  “I’m not going to tell you how I know,” she said, “but I do know—believe me.”

  “Right. Thank you.” Dave crossed the shiny floor. When he reached for the doorknob, she caught up to him and gripped his arm. “Find Serenity,” she begged again. “I don’t want her to be one of those girls. That letter is old. She wouldn’t stay with that monster. Why would she?”

  “You tell me,” Dave said.

  “Don’t believe Scotty.” She shook her head, frantically. Tears were in her eyes again. “She wasn’t bad. She just couldn’t handle the breakup between Chass and me. That’s all. She’s a good child. Cheerful and bright.”

  “Try not to worry.” Gently Dave pried her fingers from his sleeve. “He was betting on a long shot. There hasn’t been a payoff. I don’t think there ever will be. You keep remembering that.”

  And he stepped out into the cold noon sunshine.

  3

  “SO HE’S MISSING,” SALAZAR said. He dealt with homicides for the L.A. county sheriff’s office. Dark-haired, honey-color, handsome, he looked sick today, sallow. His steel desk was heaped with files and photographs and forms. The photographs had ugly subjects, what Dave could see of them. “Does his family want him back?”

  “Nobody’s worried about him but me,” Dave said.

  “Signs of foul play?” Salazar drank coffee that steamed in a styrofoam cup. It burned his beautiful mouth. He breathed a little puff of steam. “Jesus,” he said, and pawed for a cigarette pack among the papers. It was empty and he crumpled it. Dave held out his pack and, when Salazar took a cigarette, lit it for him with a slim steel lighter. He lit a cigarette for himself. Salazar turned in his chair to look out at the cold blue sky. “You have any real reason to think he’s dead inside the house?”

  “He expected money,” Dave said. “Go look and see.”

  “His car there?” Salazar tried the coffee again, cautiously this time, eyeing Dave over the rim. “Did you check the garage?”

  “It’s empty,” Dave said. “The mailbox is full.”

  Down the hall a man began to curse in Spanish.

  “So he went someplace,” Salazar said, “and didn’t come back.” Salazar’s office was one of a row of cubicles that looked through plate glass at a broad room where fluorescent light fell c
old on desks where telephones kept ringing, and at some of which men typed, or leaned back in chairs, talking to other men who stood holding papers. Or the men at the desks talked into the insistent phones. They frowned and made notes on pads with pencils or ball-point pens. Now Salazar looked past Dave out into that room. A scuffle was going on out there. The Spanish curses were louder now, and there were shouts from the English-speakers. Furniture slammed. There was a crash. Dave turned to look. Far off across the big room, where everyone was now standing up to watch, two men in neat jackets and short haircuts were struggling with a fat, brown-skinned boy whose hair was long and held by a rolled bandanna. They all three fell to the floor and were hidden from view by desks. Some of the men from the desks headed for the fight. Salazar said to Dave, “I could check to see if he’s turned up dead after an accident. What kind of car was it, do you know?” He reached for his telephone.

  Dave shook his head. “Have you got a phone book that covers that area?” Salazar had the book. Stacked with others on the floor. He crouched for it, slipped it out of the stack, wiped dust off its slumped spine with his hand, laid it in front of Dave. Dave studied him. He was sweating and breathing hard. “You’re sick,” he said. “Should you even be here?”

  Salazar sat down, making a face of disgust. “Fucking flu,” he said. “Had it since Christmas. Makes you weak. I’m all right.” He wiped the film of sweat off his face with tissues from a torn, flower-patterned box almost empty. He nodded at the directory. “You going to call somebody?”

  Dave flopped open the book. In the big outer room, the fat brown boy stopped cursing in Spanish and began snarling like an animal. Metal furniture crashed again. Dave turned to look. A file cabinet lay on its side, spewing paper. Six men loaded the brown boy out of the room like a captive beast. Dave blinked at Salazar.

  “PCP,” Salazar said. “It takes them that way.”

  Dave located the name Dekker and found a Dekker paired with Sandpiper Lane in a gray column on a gray page. He punched for an outside line. He punched the Dekker number. Scotty had not gone to school. He told Dave what Dave asked to know, Dave thanked him, hung up, and passed the phone to Salazar. “It’s a Rolls, late sixties, a four-door hardtop, two-tone, brown and gold. Westover is five ten, hazel eyes, brown hair beginning to thin on top at the back, no extra weight on him, maybe one-forty. Lately, he didn’t always remember to shave.”