To The Bone

by Neil Mcmahon

  "I know I should get something more sensible," Monks said. "She's like an old dog I can't bear to part with."

  "Hey, I hear you. I had a seventy-five. I've been kicking myself ever since I sold it." He patted the Jaguar's hood. "Although I've got to admit, I wouldn't mind having one of these."

  "It's a beautiful machine," Monks agreed.

  "Only for the rich and famous. I try to take care of it for the doc. Especially, like now. He's pretty bummed out."

  "So I've gathered."

  "Yeah," Todd said, and this time Monks imagined accusation in his tone. He wondered if Todd had overheard his conversation with D'Anton, and – like everyone else – blamed Monks for troubling the great man; if his seeming friendliness had only been a setup to take a shot.

  But then, Monks thought, he was imagining all kinds of things by now. He waved good-bye to Todd anyway.

  Monks started the engine, sorting through his impressions. It seemed clear that Gwen Bricknell and Julia D' Anton knew each other well. Not many physicians' receptionists would feel comfortable shaking and scolding their boss's wife.

  And it seemed that Eden Hale had been more than just another patient, whom Gwen remembered only because of her unusual name. The way that Julia had blurted it out, with Gwen picking up on it instantly and hushing her, suggested familiarity there, too. Monks had intended to lead the conversation in that direction, to see what he might uncover. But Gwen had headed that off.

  Monks remembered the tattoo on Eden's rump, and Ray Dreyer's sleazy persona. These did not jibe with the elegant world of women like Gwen and Julia. He wondered what relationship they might have had with her.

  Wondered why Gwen Bricknell had lied about it.

  D' Anton stepped into an empty procedure room and slumped back against the wall with his face in his hands. It was the room where he had operated, yesterday, on Eden Hale. A few more sessions of sculpting her face, and the perfection within her would have shone forth.

  He knew female flesh as very few people ever had-by sight, by scent, and, above all, by touch. He knew the strength and tone of the muscles under his fingertips, the suppleness of the skin. How best to enhance them, and how long that would last. Most of his patients were attractive, and many were beautiful.

  But Eden was far beyond that.

  To the uneducated eye, she had been nothing really special. But D'Anton had seen deeper the instant he first had noticed her. She had an ideal bone structure, a superb musculature, and a quality to her flesh that was the closest to perfection he had ever found – precisely the right combination of firmness and yielding, seeming to give off an energy of its own that spread through his hands and made touching her almost hypnotic.

  He would never feel that warmth again.

  He pushed away from the wall and strode to a conference room where Gwen Bricknell and his wife, Julia, were talking in low, urgent tones. At the sound of the opening door, both swiveled to look at him.

  'That scum of a boyfriend left Eden alone last night," D'Anton said to Gwen. "Why the hell did you let her go with him?"

  Gwen's eyes went fierce in return. "It's not up to me to make that judgment, Doctor. She chose him. He's a competent adult."

  "He's neither of those things!"

  "Then from now on, you can vet them yourself." She tossed her head defiantly.

  "Blame yourself, Welles," Julia cut in. She was glaring, too, her earlier shock turning to rage, her voice trembling. "If you'd left Eden alone, none of this would have happened."

  D'Anton stifled the urge to snap back at her. There were other pressing worries to be dealt with, and the most immediate one was Monks. D'Anton had gone through the charade of not remembering the name, but in fact he knew perfectly damned well who Monks was.

  "Call that Dr. Monks," D'Anton said to Gwen. "Tell him I apologize for being rude. Stress, all that. He's welcome to look at Eden's records. We'll have them ready if he cares to drop by."

  Gwen's eyebrows rose. "Mind if I ask why the sudden chumminess?"

  "Because he's got a reputation for causing trouble. I want him to know I have nothing to hide. To leave me the hell alone." He looked at his watch. It was 9:47 a.m., a time when he would normally be brimming with energy, even excited, lost in the full swing of the morning's work. "How many more appointments?"

  "Three."

  "Send in the next one," he said. "Let's get this day over with."

  Monks drove toward nowhere, heading west out of a vague wish to get near the ocean, as if that would ease the constriction he felt around him. He kept turning on unfamiliar streets, working his way farther from the city, until he topped the bluffs that crested the coastline to the south. He was not familiar with the area; it was somewhere in Pacifica.

  He found a place to pull off the road and got out of the Bronco, leaning across the hood on his forearms. He watched the long white-capped breakers roll in, remembering some thirty years ago, when he had shipped out to tend the wounded in Vietnam, and come home with his own inglorious million-dollar wound, delivered by the tiny saber of an anopheles mosquito.

  To the east, the traffic on Interstate 280 streamed nonstop down the long depression of the San Andreas Fault, an endless speeding line of hot little bumper cars darting in and out of clusters of eighteen-wheelers, sleek luxury European sedans, RVs towing boats or second vehicles. They all had one thing in common, the one thing that, right now, looked better than just about anything in the world. They were all on their way to someplace else.

  There were plenty of things bothering him about Eden Hale's death, but now he pinned down an elusive one that had been growing underneath the others. Several different people had weighed in so far, all with their own very different perspectives. Most of their interests were self-oriented – Baird Necker's in protecting the hospital; Gwen Bricknell's, the plastic surgery clinic; D'Anton's, his reputation. Ray Dreyer seemed mainly concerned about the marketable commodity he had lost. And a lot of what was driving Monks himself, he admitted, was a desire to justify his own actions in the ER.

  But in this shuffle, Eden had gotten lost. She was the seed that had started it all, but then she had been pushed aside, ignored, while the players squared off to pursue their own aims.

  Monks got behind the Bronco's wheel and punched a number on his cell phone. While it rang, his gaze fixed on a welded patch on the opposite door panel, where on a rainy evening last fall, a 9-millimeter bullet had exited while he lay huddled on the floor, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other frantically jamming down on the accelerator, trying to escape the ambush he had driven into.

  After four rings, he got the answering machine of Stover Larrabee, a private detective and Monks's partner in insurance investigations.

  "I need a favor, Stover," Monks said. 'There's a young actress named Eden Hale. It looks like she's going to figure into my life, so I'd like to know more about hers."

  Monks paused. "Did I say 'There is'? I should have said 'was.'"

  Chapter 6

  In Stover Larrabee's darkened office, a computer screen was showing a video. A pretty young woman, wearing a fiery red wig and nothing else, was down on all fours, mouthing the erection of a panting man with a weight lifter's torso. Another, similarly built, young stud mounted her from behind, pelvis slapping her rump with rabbitlike quickness. Her muscles were tensed, displaying their fine definition, and her breasts shimmied with each impact. Her eyes were closed, not with faked passion, but rapture that seemed real. All three players had tattoos in evidence, including one of a snake-wrapped apple on the woman's left buttock.

  "That her?" Larrabee said.

  "Yes." Monks had not been certain during the clip's opening moments. Eden Hale – starring as Eve Eden in the video – had obviously been a few years younger when she had made this, and she looked a lot better on-screen than she had last night in the ER. But when her tattoo came into view, that clinched it.

  Monks saw now how striking she was physically. Her body was strong and ye
t graceful, waist and hips forming a perfect hourglass, legs long and tapering. Her not-yet-augmented breasts were pear-shaped, not large, and like most women's, a little uneven – lovely by his standards, but not the symmetrical jutting orbs that many men worshiped. But the bar to real beauty was the way her face looked from certain angles – nose somewhat thick at the bridge, and cheekbones protuberant, giving the impression of coarseness. It had probably not helped her acting career.

  "Seen enough?"

  Monks nodded. Larrabee clicked the video off and lifted the shades on his third-story windows. They were many-paned, old enough for the glass to have rippled from settling, and etched with grimy salt from the storms that blew in from the Bay they overlooked.

  Neither man spoke for a moment. There was a sort of guilty weight in the room. Monks had no objection to seeing attractive women unclothed, nor to the occasional glimpse of pornography. But watching someone who had just died in his hands had a ghoulishness to it.

  "She was a rising star, huh?" Larrabee said. He was burly, forty-five, with a mustache and roosterlike shock of dark hair.

  "That's what her fiancé said."

  "What was your take on him?"

  "Some kind of small-time operator."

  "Pimp?"

  "On that edge."

  Monks leaned his shoulder against a window jamb and stared out toward the Bay. Larrabee's immediate neighborhood was a holdover from industrial days, when this part of the city had belonged to factories and shipping. But a few blocks south, gentrification had come in big-time, with expensive high-rise apartment buildings and fancy plazas. Sunlight flashed off the glass and metal of the cars crowding the Embarcadero. Flocks of pedestrians were drifting toward the afternoon Giants game at Pac Bell Park, with the masts of the China Basin yacht fleet spiking the skyline behind it.

  "Lots of creepy people in that porn world," Larrabee said. "You remember Iris?"

  "Sure." Iris had been a girlfriend of Larrabee's a few years ago, a stripper at the North Beach clubs. She had some things in common with Eden Hale, Monks realized: physical beauty, breast surgery, and a stage name – Secret.

  "There were always guys after her to make porn loops," Larrabee said. 'They create a fan club. Seems that men get a lot more interested in watching a girl dance if they've seen her horizontal. She draws bigger crowds and higher pay."

  Monks knew that Iris had left San Francisco, and Larrabee, for Las Vegas and a better career. He decided not to ask whether porn loops had figured in.

  The Internet references Larrabee had found showed that Eden Hale had had several roles as a mainstream actress, bit parts in soaps and sitcoms. She had also made a few adult films. Someone had seized on the connection as a marketing ploy – the thrill of watching a legitimate actress, even a comparative unknown, having sex. A search of her name brought up several items along the lines of: watch eden hale get a facial… A credit-card number and a few clicks of the mouse would then deliver action like they had just seen, with the star billed in the film credits as Eve Eden.

  'This girl must have had money, huh?" Larrabee said. "Maybe her family?"

  "I don't know. Why?"

  "Because that guy D' Anton doesn't take on anybody who doesn't. But if she was rich, why would she do the porn? For kicks?"

  Monks had not thought about that, obvious though it was. "I don't know anything more about her."

  "I'm sure there's more to her story," Larrabee said. "I can keep looking, if you want."

  "I don't think so, Stover. It's not like it matters. Just me being sappy."

  "Well, let me know if there's anything else." Monks said thanks and left. There wasn't anything else, but to wait – for Roman Kasmarek's appraisal, for the medical examiner's autopsy, and to find out if the beating Monks had taken over the past hours was going to continue.

  Chapter 7

  Afternoon sunlight filtered through the tall windows of Julia D' Anton's studio, illuminating slowly drifting particles of limestone that settled onto the dusty old hardwood floor. Her strong fingers worked at the stone with a wooden mallet and the hand-forged iron chisels she had brought back from Tuscany more than twenty years ago.

  The block was one-quarter life size. Julia had started by sketching a live model, then roughing out the sculpture in clay. Now the model was back, to lend living nuance to the flow of the stone. Her name was Anna somebody, a softly pretty and somewhat sulky girl in her late teens, full-bodied and large-breasted. In the past, Julia had preferred working with marble, and women with lean, well-defined musculatures, but now she did not want to look at either – maybe ever again.

  She had been shaping the face with small tooth chisels, trying to render expression from the blank oval. It was not going well. Her hands were getting tired. When that happened, they started to tremble and lose control. Anna was posed nude, sitting up, with her legs curled beside her. Her face was turned in profile and down, as if she were contemplating a flower in the garden where the sculpture would probably end up. She looked like she was almost asleep.

  Julia gave the chisel a delicate tap along the bridge of the nose. A hairline crack appeared, a tiny fault in the stone that she had not seen. She pressed a fingertip over it, but she knew already that it could not be repaired. She thrust the clawed chisel in and gouged out a chip the size of a small nailhead. It would mean a restructuring of the entire face. Hands shaking now with anger, she slammed down the tools on the workbench.

  Anna's body jerked with the sound, her eyes flicking open.

  "Is something wrong?" she said.

  "It's all wrong. All this work I've gone to, and it's just getting worse. You are wrong. Your bones might be all right, but everything from there out is impossible."

  The girl's mouth twisted in a little grimace of resentment.

  "Is there anything I can do?"

  "Try to look a little less bovine."

  Anna's face turned suspicious. "I don't know what that means."

  "Like a cow, darling."

  Anna's mouth opened, then her eyes went teary. "You have – no right," she blurted out. She stood, grasping for her robe and flinging it around her shoulders, trying to look dignified but without the necessary presence.

  "It's no use going knock-kneed trying to hide your bush," Julia said coldly. "It only makes your thighs look fatter."

  Anna turned away with a flounce and started toward the studio's changing room.

  "I didn't say the session was over," Julia said.

  "You can't keep me if I don't want-"

  "If you leave here without my permission, you will never come back. Do you understand?"

  Their gazes met, but only for a second. This was no contest of wills. Slowly, Anna took her seat again.

  "The robe," Julia said.

  Eyes downcast, she shrugged it back off her shoulders and laid it aside.

  Julia walked to stand behind her. She caressed Anna's neck lightly, feeling her shiver in response. Julia's fingers moved on in slow exploration, feeling the lack of tone in the deltoid muscle, tracing the flaccid triceps down the back of the arm, then moving across the smooth padded rib cage and up, to cup one full soft breast. She squeezed the nipple gently, tugging it erect. The girl relaxed a little, settling back against Julia's thighs.

  Then, suddenly, Julia pinched hard with her nails. Anna flinched and gasped, tried to rise, but Julia's other hand on her shoulder held her where she was. Julia could feel her panting. She held the pressure of her fingernails steady, just short of drawing blood.

  "Did I say cow?" Julia said softly. "I meant sow." She released her grip and gave the breast a contemptuous slap. "Get out."

  The girl hurried across the room, almost running, the robe left lying on the floor. Julia watched her, breathing hard with anger. But it was not really at Anna – she was only a place to put it.

  Julia closed her eyes, remembering the alluring innocence of Eden's face, the restless energy in her finely shaped limbs. The dark fire that came into her eyes when
she was caressed.

  Julia had thought it would help, having another young woman here today. But after Eden, mere creatures like Anna were intolerable.

  Outside, a car started and pulled away with a spray of gravel. Anna might never come back – or she might come back pleading. Either way, there were always others.

  Julia walked through the studio, her gaze moving restlessly, looking for a project to interest her. But all her fine stone looked bleak and without promise now.

  Then the door into the main house opened, and her husband stepped through. She was surprised, and not pleasantly. She could not remember the last time he had been in her studio – years ago, surely. It had been that long since they had shared much of anything.

  "I was almost run over by a young woman driving out of here," D' Anton said. He was stiff, formal, still dressed in the business suit he had worn at the clinic this morning.

  "She was modeling for me."

  "Yes, I assumed so. She looked very upset. What happened?"

  Julia shrugged. "She was unsatisfactory. Since when are you so interested in my work?"

  "This isn't about your work. It's about your losing control of yourself."

  "I have a temperament, Welles," she said haughtily. "It comes from having warm blood in my veins, instead of ice water."

  D'Anton walked farther into the room, toward her. His face was concerned, understanding – the kind of look he used with his patients.

  "I know you were in love with Eden," he said. "And that you're very, very angry."

  "Don't you patronize me," she snapped back. D' Anton flinched a little. She began to step slowly around him, circling.

  "Yes, I gave her love," Julia said. "But she went with you, because you promised her candy. You don't have any love to give."

  "I didn't try to take her love from you. I saw what I could do with her."