Skin Deep sg-3

by Timothy Hallinan

  "Your hip pocket," I said. "Dolly, you've got thirty seconds left on this job if you don't get behind your boyfriend Toby right now."

  Dolly lunged as Toby reached for the pocket of his jeans. Their arms tangled, and then Dolly came up with what looked like a square of white paper with color at its center. She pushed Toby up against Alice and pinned him there, using all two hundred pounds.

  "Simeon," Toby shouted, "I can explain"

  He twisted in Dolly's arms, and she let him go. Once released from constraint, Toby wilted. I actually thought he was going to slump to the pavement, but he caught himself. Without looking up, he said again, "I can explain."

  "Give it to me," I said. Dolly put it into my hand.

  I was looking at nothing: black surrounded by white. I turned it over, and it became a Polaroid photograph. Amber, caught by the flash on stage. But this was no publicity picture; her arms were twisted behind her, and her feet were bound by clothesline. She was exactly as I'd found her.

  I heard a hiss behind me and saw a flash of red as Nana launched her nails at Toby's eyes.

  14

  Wastebaskets

  Squawking, Dolly damn near caught Nana on the fly. Toby, scrambling backward faster than I would have believed possible, bumped up against Alice hard and sat down on the pavement. Nana's momentum carried Dolly back a few steps, and she stumbled over Toby. The two of them went down on top of him, a pile of female elbows and feet. It looked like the closing moments of a tag team wrestling match.

  I grabbed Nana by the belt loops on the back of her pants and yanked. She came up swearing and crying and turned to take a swipe at me. Behind her I saw Dolly's face. Her eyes were wide with betrayal, and three bright red lines ran down one cheek. Toby had rolled away from beneath her and was scrambling to get under Alice.

  I started to laugh, but Nana slugged me in the chest. She pummeled me furiously with both fists, making terrible little "oof" noises. By the time I'd gotten my fingers untangled from her belt loops, a blow had caught me full on the throat. I choked. She kept on swinging at me, emitting a high, thin, shrilling sound, her eyes shut tight. I didn't think she had any idea who she was hitting.

  Dolly got up, but instead of trying to help she backed away with a hand clamped flat over her bleeding face. She'd had enough of Nana. So had I. I hauled back and slapped her hard, twice, snapping her head left and then right. My nervous system was so hyped up that the slaps sounded like shots in my ears.

  Nana just stopped. She let her arms go limp, and her hands fell to her sides. She didn't cry out or look at me or touch the burning red marks on her cheeks. She gazed down at the general area of my feet for a moment, her face closed and tight. Then, slowly and deliberately, she extended the middle finger of her right hand, stepped around me, and walked away, toward the entrance to the club.

  "That girl's crazy," Dolly said from behind me.

  "Did you look at this?" I still had the picture crumpled in my hand.

  "No."

  "Then shut up. Get your boyfriend out from under the car if you can."

  She pulled her hand away from her cheek and looked at it, wincing when she saw the blood. "You won't scar," I said. "And if you do, you can say you got it in a duel. Toby, come out from under there."

  No answer. I bent down and peered under the car. No Toby, either.

  "Shit," I said as I heard the Maserati's engine catch.

  I grabbed Dolly by the collar of her grungy T-shirt and hurled her in the general direction of the driveway, then sprinted toward the noise of Toby's car. "Don't let him get past you," I shouted.

  Toby's tires smoked as the car shot in reverse out of its parking space. I was so close that his rearview mirror clipped my hip. It hurt. The car swerved wildly to reverse direction and came to a stop pointed at the driveway. I jumped in front of it.

  Toby leaned on the horn, and I backed away, but the lot was too narrow: he couldn't get around me. If he was going to leave, he was going to leave over me. Dolly wailed something, but I couldn't make it out. All I heard was the car.

  It revved once to a howling, red-lining rpm and then dropped, then revved again. Then Toby popped the clutch, and the thing pawed the ground and hurtled at me.

  I backed up fast, and then it was my turn to trip. I went down hard on the seat of my pants, hearing the scream of the engine and the squeal of the tires. The next thing I knew, the Maserati was on top of me.

  I threw myself flat on my back, cracking my head on the pavement. The front end of the car passed over my legs and suddenly stopped. I was most of the way under it, and the front bumper was at my chest.

  Hands looped under my arms and pulled me free. I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn't hold me. Dolly tried to steady me, but she was shaking herself, and we both sat down directly in front of the Maserati.

  "You fucking idiot," Dolly said. "How you going to pay me? Come on." The two of us managed an undignified, crablike scramble away from the car.

  The next thing I knew, I was standing up and Dolly was brushing things off my back like a worried wife. "Never mind," I snapped. "The wheels didn't get me." I went over and pulled at the handle on the driver's door. It swung open, and I saw Toby with his head resting on the steering wheel. His hands were in his lap. "I can explain," he said again.

  I hung on to the door for what seemed like a week. Toby didn't move. I took a deep breath. "So explain," I said.

  "I got it today," he said. "It came in the mail." He still hadn't looked at me. "I had a late call for work, and I picked up the mail as I left. Dolly will tell you."

  "He did get the mail," Dolly volunteered. "The mailbox is at the top of the hill, and he stopped there on the way out."

  "So you got your mail today," I said. "So did I. So did most people. How do I know the picture was in it?"

  Toby didn't say anything. Finally he looked up at me. "You don't," he said. "But it's true."

  "Let's say it is. Just for the hell of it, let's say you're telling the truth. When did you open it?"

  "At the studio."

  "Where?"

  "In my dressing room." He moved his hand.

  I panted. "What time?"

  "I don't know. I'd finished with makeup, but I hadn't worked yet."

  "Say one, one-thirty," Dolly volunteered.

  "Were you alone?"

  "No." Toby glanced at Dolly. "She was with me."

  "You said you hadn't seen it."

  Dolly gave me a look of startled innocence. "I didn't. He opened a bunch of stuff. I didn't look at any of it. You didn't tell me to read his mail."

  "No reaction?" I asked. "No raised eyebrows, no nothing?"

  "Not that I noticed." She sounded ashamed of herself.

  "I'm an actor," Toby said.

  "Why didn't you show it to her?"

  His face twisted. "Don't be dumb. I would have shown it to you when I got a chance." Dolly tried not to look hurt.

  "Toby," I said, "the death penalty is alive and well in California. If it weren't for Saffron, you'd be talking to lawyers right now."

  "I was going to show it to you," he said insistently. "It just didn't seem like something to do in a parking lot."

  "So you tried to run over him," Dolly said. She was well past the stage of hero worship.

  "He didn't," I said. "If he had, I'd be dead."

  "Champ," Toby said earnestly, "the last thing I want is for anything to happen to you."

  "No," I said. "The last thing you want is for anything to happen to Saffron."

  "Well, sure," he said listlessly. "That goes without saying."

  "What kind of an envelope did it come in?"

  "An envelope, you know? Kind of brown, I think."

  "What postmark?"

  "Hollywood. I checked that."

  "What does that tell us?" Dolly said. "Zilch."

  "Right. But I want to see the envelope. Do you have it?"

  Toby shook his head. "I threw it away."

  "Well," I said, "that's real
ly brilliant. Here's a piece of nice, tidy physical evidence that any half-wit cop would jug you for, and you throw away the envelope it came in. Amateurs," I said in disgust. "Just wait here. Dolly, you make sure he waits."

  I hiked back up the driveway and went into the club. Rock music blared, and the heavyset Tiny clone stopped me as I lifted the curtain. "Seven dollars," he said.

  "Don't be an idiot. I just left."

  "No reentry without paying."

  "I was here for Amber's funeral."

  He shrugged. "I don't care if you were here for Washington's birthday. Seven bucks."

  His jaw hung slack. I picked up a corner of the red curtain and jammed it in his mouth. "Eat this while I'm gone," I said. "I'll be back for dessert." He pushed it away with both hands and came up off his stool at me. A white arm billowed past me and shoved him back down, and I turned to look at Tiny.

  "I don't need trouble," he said. "Not tonight."

  "I want a minute with Nana."

  "That'll be seven dollars for a minute, then."

  I paid him. It didn't feel like a good idea to feed the curtain to Tiny.

  Nana was at the bar, with her back to me. As I came up behind her, she said, "Go away."

  "I am going away. Can I come back later?"

  "If you can afford it."

  "I'm sorry I hit you."

  She shrugged. I was provoking a lot of shrugs. "I been hit before."

  "He didn't take the picture. He got it in the mail."

  "Yeah, and they find babies under cabbage leaves."

  "Have it your way. I'll be back in a couple of hours."

  "How will I stand the wait?" she said.

  Tiny's hand landed on my shoulder. It was like standing under a falling redwood. "Minute's up," he said. The bartender glowered at me. Nana wouldn't give me a glance.

  "Fine," I said. "Gee, everybody, have a good night."

  It was getting dark when I reached Toby's car. The driver's door was still open, and Dolly was leaning against the front fender, looking like a hundred kilos of scorned woman. Toby hadn't moved.

  "What time do they empty the wastebaskets in the dressing room?" I said.

  "How do I know?"

  I went around and got in on the passenger side. "Well," I said, "you're about to find out."

  Twenty-five minutes later I was looking at a square, buff-colored envelope with a Hollywood postmark. The stamp had Susan B. Anthony on it. "Nice sense of irony," I said.

  Toby was doing a line of cocaine. "Fingerprints," he said without much hope. "What about fingerprints?"

  "It's rough paper. If I were the cops and I had a couple of billion dollars' worth of image-intensifying laser equipment, I might be able to lift a partial off the gummed strip. And you know what? It'd be yours."

  "But the picture's smooth," Dolly said.

  "Photographs are a great surface for prints, one of the best. But I'd bet my fee that Toby's are the only prints on it. And mine, of course, and yours. Nobody's a big enough schmuck to handle a photograph bare-handed after he's committed a murder."

  "Swell," Toby said. "I'm so glad we've got a specialist."

  "Toby," I said, "why would anyone send you that picture?"

  For a second I thought I was going to get my third shrug of the evening. But then he shook his head. "To freak me out, maybe. To threaten me." He glanced up at Dolly and then back at me. "Maybe to tell me I'm next."

  "No," Dolly and I said simultaneously.

  "This probably won't come as a complete surprise to you, Toby," I said, "but somebody hates your guts. I want a list. Everybody you've hurt, everybody who's related to somebody you've hurt." I glanced up at Dolly. "You might as well sit down," I said. "This could take a while."

  15

  Things of the Spirit

  The Spirit, according to the people who believe in it, never sleeps. That was probably the reason the dreary little storefront with "Things of the Spirit" scrawled across the window had a large open sign in its door at nine-fifteen on a Monday evening.

  I'd checked my notes twice. This was the address that Hammond had grudgingly given me for Rebecca Hartsfield, the teenager whom Toby had matriculated in the school of hard knocks at the Ontario Motor Speedway. Things change fast in Hollywood, but things of the Spirit are eternal, and the shop certainly looked as though it had been sitting right where it was, on one of the scuzziest blocks of Hollywood Boulevard, for all eternity.

  The window was crammed full of things of the Spirit. Crystals glittered from transparent nylon fishing lines that suspended them in space. Garish mandalas challenged my equilibrium with confusing permutations of concentric circles, looking like targets for spiritual archery. Reassuringly thick books offered answers to all the eternal questions between fake vellum covers embossed with confused combinations of crosses, pentacles, and symbols for infinity. Tiny glass vials filled with colored liquids glowed prismatically. In the whole window there wasn't anything I knew how to use.

  I backed away to the curb and looked up. Like so many Hollywood storefronts, this one had once been the bottom floor of an apartment house. Two stories of apartments still squatted above it, lighted windows set in a plain brick wall. Maybe Rebecca Hartsfield lived in one of them.

  A decidedly earthly buzzer announced my intrusion. Once it quit, I heard what I'd learned against my will to identify as new age music. Aimless and spacey, it meandered from unresolved keyboard chord to unresolved keyboard chord with some somnolent noodling in place of melody. Drooling pianos, music to sleepwalk by.

  The music was almost immediately drowned out by the smell. Things of the Spirit stank like an old-fashioned whorehouse. The smell suggested that every bouquet ever picked had been reduced to its essence and crammed somehow into a single aerosol can, and that can had then been emptied into the store. It was enough to make a bee sneeze.

  And I sneezed. "God bless you," someone said with more emphasis on the first word than on all the others put together. I heard a whisper of fabric, and I turned.

  She was something to look at. Her age was impossible to guess. The skin on her face was as smooth and unlined as a girl of twenty, but her hair was snow white. At first glance it seemed as though there were yards of it, cascading over her shoulders and down her back. Framed by all that white, her face looked like an apple in the snow. The eyes were that pale, low-horizon sky blue that almost disappears in black-and-white photographs, giving the impression that, for once, the windows to the soul are two-way instead of mirrored from the outside. A seamless robe of blue, embroidered at the neck with what looked like amber snow-flakes, hung straight from her shoulders to the floor.

  She was smiling. I felt myself smiling back. "It's the concentration of aromas," she said as though we'd been talking for half an hour.

  "What is?"

  "Your sneeze. People used to believe that the soul could escape during a sneeze and be claimed by the Devil. That's why we still say 'God bless you.' " Again the emphasis on the first word. "If the soul were to escape here, though, I don't think the Devil could snare it. There's enough positive energy here to keep him or her miles away."

  "Or at least across the street."

  She looked puzzled for a second and then looked over my shoulder and through the shop window. Then she laughed. Her laugh was in the same key as the piano. "The porno theater, and the massage parlor, you mean. Well, yes. That's why we're here."

  "It is?"

  "Why carry coals to Newcastle? Why set up a fourth gas station at an intersection where there are already three?"

  "I've wondered why they did that. They always seem to."

  "The analogy isn't precise, I'm afraid. Credit cards is why. Faced with a choice of gas stations, people will use the card they carry. But the soul carries no credit cards."

  "And it requires a different kind of fuel."

  "Yes." She looked pleased. "That's exactly right. What people buy here powers them upward as well as forward. How may I help you?"

  "What
are the fragrances? I've never smelled anything like them."

  "Aromatherapy. We have the largest stock on the West Coast. If you don't count San Francisco, that is."

  Since San Francisco is on the West Coast, and will be until it finally shakes loose and floats picturesquely into the Pacific, the answer was less than ingenuous. On the other hand, she'd popped the balloon herself, and I was willing to give her credit for it.

  "And aromatherapy does what?"

  "Aromas are the cutting edge of holistic medicine. Given a proper spiritual balance in the subject, aromas can strengthen the body's defenses against any kind of infection. Would you like me to show you some?"

  "Sure," I said, "if you think you can show someone an aroma."

  The seraphic smile wilted slightly. "A literalist. Well, why don't you tell me what it is that ails you?"

  "Insatiable curiosity."

  She pursed her lips, sending the leftovers of the smile into some parallel universe, glanced down at my shoes, and then looked slowly up at the rest of me. It wasn't so much a look as a survey that mapped my clothes and placed them precisely in a low-rent district. I felt like I'd been denied admission to the new age.

  "Curiosity," she said slowly. "I don't know that I've got a cure for that."

  "Actually, I sort of hope not. Without curiosity, where would we be?"

  "Happier, probably. What is it you're curious about?" We weren't having fun anymore.

  I took the plunge. "Rebecca Hartsfield."

  "Rebecca?"

  "Hartsfield," I said.

  "I heard you. I know the name. I'm Chantra Hartsfield. What do you want with Rebecca?"

  "You're her sister," I said chivalrously.

  "Ease up," she said. "Don't work quite so hard. Try mother."

  "She's here, then."

  "No. She's not."

  "Where is she?"

  "Not here."

  "You already told me that." I tried a smile. No dice.

  "Yow haven't told me anything," she said severely. "Not why you want to see Rebecca, not how you got this address. Nothing at all."