Skin Deep

by Timothy Hallinan

  "Yeah, she is," I said. "Just hold it. Don't move, not a foot. Don't touch anything. Stay where you are. Goddamn it, Nana, where's the phone in this shithole?"

  "Behind the bar. Over toward the left, under the bottles. Oh, Lordy," she said. "Oh, Simeon, I think I'm going to puke."

  "Puke outside. Don't do it here. And don't touch anything. Not anything, got it?"

  I found the phone on a shelf underneath the cash register. A dirty slip of paper pasted crookedly beneath the buttons said is this call necessary? I guessed it was. I grabbed a handful of paper napkins and used them to pick up the receiver. I was swearing at myself.

  "What's Toby's number? At home."

  "You mean you're not going to call the cops first?" Her voice was shaky, but she seemed to be getting herself under control. At any rate, she'd stopped sounding like she was going to hit the floor at any moment.

  "In a minute. She's not going to get up and go home. What's Toby's number?" She gave me a couple of false starts and then the number, and I punched it up.

  After what felt like five minutes the phone at the other end of the line rang tinnily, once, twice, three times. "This stinks," I said to no one in particular. Finally I heard the clatter of a receiver being lifted clumsily, and then Toby's voice crackled across the wire.

  "This is Toby Vane's answering machine," he began. He sounded sleepy and irritable.

  "Toby? This is Simeon. Where have you been?"

  Nothing for a moment. Nana skittered behind me, letting out a small cough. "Toby," I said again, "I asked you a question."

  "Hey, champ," Toby said. "Easy. Do you know what time it is?"

  "Yes, I do, Toby, and I don't give a shit. Answer the question."

  "Here, I've been here. For a couple of hours. What's it to you or anybody else? What am I, Information?"

  "You haven't been answering your phone."

  "I don't, you know? It's not in my contract that I have to jump every time the phone rings. At least, not yet." He paused while he located his personal switch for charm and hit it. "Listen," he said winningly, "I know you're pissed off. I'd be pissed off, too, but I just had to get out of there. Nana was just way out of line, you know? Hey, you got free drinks and the prettiest Korean lady in Hollywood. So okay, so I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry."

  "You don't have any idea how sorry you are," I said.

  His voice changed. The charm evaporated as fast as the alcohol they rub on your arm before a shot. "What's that supposed to mean?" He grunted as he sat up.

  I tightened my left hand around the receiver until my knuckles cracked. "Where's Amber?"

  "Amber? Who cares? Home, I guess. That's where we left her. She was so skagged out she couldn't count her fingers." I visualized Amber's fingers and fought it down again. "No fun at all, you know what I mean? We ate a little something and then dropped her at her place."

  "Who's we?"

  "We? Saffron and me. Who do you think, Linda Evans?"

  "Is Saffron there?"

  "Sure. We've been playing mumblety-peg. Great game. You should try it sometime."

  "Let me talk to her."

  He paused. "You've already got Nana, haven't you? What're you after, a grand slam?"

  "Toby. Put her on the phone. Right now."

  "Right now? You mean, right this very minute? This instant, so to speak? What's that, an order or something? I must have gotten something wrong. I thought you were the hired help."

  "Listen to me, Toby, if you know how. You want me to hang up the phone? Fine, I'll be glad to. You'll be in jail in about forty minutes. If you don't believe me, try it."

  "Jail? What are you talking about?"

  "Put Saffron on the phone. You've got five seconds."

  There was some muttering on the other end and a whisper of movement behind me, and I became aware that Nana had somehow made it to the stage. She was staring down at Amber, her eyes glazed and her mouth wide open. She slowly reached out a delicate hand, as if to smooth the matted hair.

  "No closer," I said to her. "You touch her and I'll leave you here."

  "Huh?" Toby said. "Leave who?"

  "You'll leave me here?" Nana said. "So what? I don't give a fuck. You think I need the big strong man's help?"

  She met my eyes defiantly and then looked away, back at Amber. "She was my friend," she said in a muted voice.

  "Well, she's not your friend anymore. And I'm getting enough crap from Toby without you pitching in. Get away from her. Now." She stepped back, staring at me as if she'd never seen me before.

  "She's dead," she said.

  "Honey, she's not just dead, she's murdered. Now be a good girl and put your hands behind your back, knot your fingers together, and keep them there." She shook her head helplessly, but she obeyed. From the sinewy movements of her arms, I could see that she was twisting her hands behind her back.

  Toby said, "I hope you know what you're doing. Here she is." A woman's sleepy voice came on the line. "What is it?" she said. "What's happening?"

  "Lots, and it's all bad. Saffron, I want you to tell me about your evening. Don't talk to Toby first. Tell me absolutely everything about your evening."

  "Who can remember?" she said. "We ate at Johnny Rocket's, over on Melrose, you know?" Another hamburger. Toby was some sport. "Then we took Amber home because she was so wasted. The girl was way past the end zone. Then we came here and fooled around for a couple of hours. Then we went to sleep. Period. Why? What's so bad?"

  "What time did you drop Amber off?"

  "Ten, ten-thirty, eleven. Early, you know?"

  "What time did you get to Toby's?"

  "I don't know, about eleven, eleven-thirty. Maybe twelve."

  "Any phone calls?"

  "Oh, come on," she said. "It never stops."

  "Did he answer any of them?"

  "Not until now."

  "You've been with Toby the whole evening?"

  "Sure."

  "You're willing to swear to that?"

  "What do you mean, swear? Swear to who?"

  "So you weren't together all the time?"

  "Pretty much. He left me at the restaurant for about half an hour to score a couple of loads. That's all."

  "Did he find any?"

  "Sure. They were super, the best I've had in a week, real pharmies, not street shit. We're still rolling."

  "What time did he leave to get them?"

  "Who knows? Nine-thirty, probably. Listen, Charlie, that's enough from me. I want to know what's going on."

  "So nine-thirty to ten or so. That's the only time he wasn't with you. And Amber was with you then."

  "I just said so."

  "No," I said. "You said probably."

  "What do you think?" she said. "You think I've got a digital watch tattooed on my arm? You think I'm Big Ben? What is this shit, anyway?"

  "Let me talk to Toby."

  "First tell me what's happening."

  "Just give him the phone."

  There was a pause. "You creep," she finally said. She dropped the phone deafeningly onto a hard surface. After a moment, I heard Toby's voice.

  "I'm not really crazy about this, champ," he said. "I've just been sitting here at home, you know, lighting candles and burning incense and having a little private fun, and suddenly you're acting like Norman in one of his moods."

  "Amber's dead," I said. "She's been beaten to death. Guess who suspect number one is."

  Toby covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said something muffled. I could hear Saffron's voice, but I couldn't make out the words. Behind me, leaning against the far stage, Nana was crying.

  "Where are you?" Toby asked.

  "At the Spice Rack. She's laid out on one of the stages."

  "I'm with Saffron," Toby said quickly. "You know I'm with Saffron. We've been together the whole evening." He covered the phone again and said something else. "What do you mean, beaten to death?"

  "I mean, for example, that her nose was broken. I mean that all her fingers ha
ve been snapped backward. In about thirty places. Toby, she looks like something junior sadists look at to earn their merit badges."

  "You don't really think I could have done that."

  "Compared to some of the things I think you could do, this is a Valentine's Day card."

  "He did it," Nana said loudly. She had gotten as far away as possible by now, and her back was pressed against one of the glittering, blood-colored walls. Her slender back was mirrored behind her. "I know he did it."

  "I heard that," Toby said. "That's my old buddy Nana. Nice to know what people really think of you."

  "Great," I said. "You're agonizing over your self-image. Amber's been pounded into paste and you're worried about what people think of you."

  "Don't get dramatic," Toby said. "I know it's terrible, but I've been here, old buddy. I've been with Saffron since we dropped Amber off. What do you want from me, blood?"

  "No. We've got enough of that right here."

  "She's really dead?" His voice finally sounded a little thinner. The fear was beginning to float to the surface, and he couldn't keep it down, not even with his actor's training. "She didn't just OD?"

  "Sure she did," I said. "She OD'd on her own fists. Just before she broke all her own fingers." I realized I'd turned to stare at Amber again, and I tore my gaze away from her, swiveling my whole body to the left. I tried to focus on the wall in front of me. On it someone had written in pencil THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THE GARDEN OF EDEN IS BETWEEN A WOMAN'S LEGS. THE BAD NEWS IS THAT YOU CAN'T GET IN.

  Toby breathed heavily once or twice. "Jesus. So what do you want me to say?"

  "Right now, nothing. Not to anyone."

  "But you're not going to mention my name to the cops."

  "Maybe you can explain to me how I'm supposed to do that. Especially since everyone working here saw you leave with Amber."

  "Nobody saw me. Nobody except Tiny, and he won't say nothing," he insisted, his grammar slipping a notch. "Hell, Simeon, I'm more than an hour from there, even the way I drive. You want to talk to Saffron again? She'll tell you, we've been here all night."

  "I'll talk to her later," I said. "Now I've got to call the cops." The prospect was not an exhilarating one, but part of me was still capable of doing mathematics, and the math came out more or less in Toby's favor. One hour, I thought. One to two hours ago, Amber had been alive, or whatever imitation of alive Amber had been doing.

  "Toby," I said, "you'd better treat Saffron like a queen. She's the only thing between you and no more fan club, as far as I can see. Not to mention jail. You know how popular you'd be in jail, Toby? You know what a little delicacy you'd be in prison? You'd have to tie the soap to your wrist so you wouldn't drop it."

  "I'm treating her fine," Toby said a little shakily. "Saffron." I heard him snap his fingers. "Saffron. Any complaints?"

  An electronic version of a contented murmur insinuated itself into my ear. Saffron didn't sound too torn up about Amber.

  "Okay," I said. "You're out of it, at least for the moment. I'm going to hang up and call the cops now. But Toby, this is important. If I'm not going to mention you tonight, you've got to promise me. You're not going anywhere tomorrow, you're not going to take Saffron home, you're not going to go to the bathroom alone, you're not going to do anything by yourself before you call me. Otherwise, you're on your own. You're under house arrest, understand?"

  "I'm a suspect," he said dully.

  "You're the suspect," I said. "Sleep on that." He was talking, but I hung up.

  My arm ached as if the receiver had weighed fifty pounds. I put one hand on the sticky surface of the bar to steady myself and then turned around.

  "Nana," I said, "do you trust your buddy Saffron?"

  "It depends," she said in a low voice, "on whether I can see her or not."

  "Well, great. That's just great."

  The phone started to ring. "Toby knows this number?" She nodded. It rang again.

  "Well, shit," I said, "let him sweat."

  Nana's lower lip was trembling. "Poor baby," she said. "Poor little junked-out baby. She had so much bad luck."

  "Whatever it's worth, that's over now." The phone kept ringing.

  An enormous tear rolled down Nana's cheek. Another followed. She didn't bother to wipe them away. Her hands were still behind her. The tears dropped from her chin and left long dark tracks down the front of her blouse. She lowered her head. "That bastard," she said. "And you're going to protect him."

  "Nana." She sniffled, childlike, but she didn't respond. "Come here. Come here, please."

  She looked at me, but she still didn't move. The phone finally shut up, and I went to her, stepping wide around the stage with Amber on it. I put my arms around her. "I don't think he killed her," I said. "I could be wrong, but I don't think so. The cops will be here soon. They're going to ask a lot of questions. I'm not going to mention Toby, and I don't want you to, either."

  She had nestled into my arms, her hot, moist forehead pressed hard against the front of my shirt. She was trembling uncontrollably. When I mentioned Toby's name, though, she pulled away quickly and gazed up at me with accusing eyes. Then she lowered her head and spat on the floor at my feet.

  "Listen," I said again. She shook her head sharply. Then she made a convulsive movement, trying to shake my hands from her shoulders. She took a step sideways, edging along the wall to get away from me. I slapped her arms, and she looked up at me.

  "I'll get him," I said, meaning it. "Whoever it is, I'll get him. Even if it's Toby. Especially if it's Toby. I promise you by whatever you swear by, I'll get him. And if I have to, I'll kill him."

  My heart was pounding. I counted its beats for lack of anything else to do as she stood rigidly in front of me, her eyes fixed on the floor, her feelings a continent away. Then a long breath fled out of her, an impossibly long, serpentine kite of a breath. It seemed to empty her completely, leaving her small and frail in its passing. The trembling slowed and then stopped. My hands, wrapped around her thin shoulders, felt the fineness, the almost birdlike hollowness, of her bones.

  She looked back up at me. "You really promise?" she asked in the smallest voice I'd ever heard from a human being. She swallowed again. "You'll kill him?"

  "I swear."

  She blinked twice, quickly, and two more tears tracked their shiny ways down her cheeks. "Then call the cops," she said. "Call them." She shook an arm free to wipe the wetness away in a rough gesture. "They won't do anything." She sounded fierce. "They won't give a shit. She was only a nude dancer, anyway."

  She looked around the club and then back at me. "This place," she said between her teeth. "How I hate this place."

  "Hate it all you want," I said. "Just watch what you say to the cops." I went to the phone and dialed 911.

  II - NERVES

  7 - Dead Old Dad

  Three a.m. had said hello and good-bye by the time we were grudgingly allowed to leave. We'd forked over our names, addresses, driver's licenses, and telephone numbers, and we'd had an illuminating opportunity to watch L.A.'s finest at work, measuring, photographing, fingerprinting, and gossiping to their hearts' content. In the midst of all the abstract quantifying, Amber's death seemed like an incidental backdrop to the flurry of efficient, purposeful activity. Unless you looked at her face. I tried not to look at her face.

  Once the responding officers had decided we weren't Public Enemies Numbers One and Two, they'd identified themselves as Officers Strick and Losey and started to treat us with a passable semblance of common courtesy. Nevertheless, when we were allowed to leave, Losey had followed us out and ostentatiously made a note of Alice's license plate number.

  I'd wanted to avoid the kinds of questions they would have asked if they had known what my job was, so I'd put my license inside my sock before they arrived. Nevertheless, I'd screwed up early on, volunteering that the body had been warm when we found it and that Amber couldn't have been dead long.

  "Yeah?" Strick had said suspiciously. "And wh
at are your qualifications?"

  Nana had jumped in before I could even work up a stammer, saying that she'd touched Amber when we came in and that she knew all about loss of body heat. Then she'd told an appalling story about having come home one day when she was eleven and found the dangling body of her father, who had hanged himself in the kitchen. At first, she'd said, she thought he was just doing another one of his magic tricks. He always did magic tricks. She'd sat on the floor for a few minutes, waiting for the payoff. Finally she had cut him down and he'd still been warm. The Texas medical examiner, she'd said, bursting into tears, had told her all about body temperature. Strick and Losey had patted her ineffectually on the shoulder, big hulking men who had no idea what to say.

  We got into Alice in silence. As we turned right onto Santa Monica Boulevard, Nana sagged against me and rested her head on my shoulder. "Yipes, cripes, Maria," she said. "I thought it would never end."

  "It wouldn't have, if they'd learned what I do for a living." I blinked over scratchy eyeballs. "Thanks for yanking my foot out of my mouth."

  "I had to," she said. "You had your shoe on." She stroked my arm.

  I headed north up La Cienega, on the way to Sunset and her apartment. Nana stopped stroking my arm and said, "No."

  "No, what?"

  "I can't go home. You know I can't go home. Do you think I could go to sleep now?"

  "I know I have to. Tomorrow's going to be a year long. And that's if everything goes okay."

  She twisted to face me. "Maybe you don't understand this," she said. "That was Amber back there. She wasn't some fifth-rate whore, she was my friend. I talked to her tonight. I said hello, and she said hello back. I asked her how she was, and she didn't kick me in the teeth. She lied to me, like she did every night when I asked her how she was doing, because she wasn't looking for pity. So her life was a mess. Whose isn't?"

  Sunset was coming up fast, and I decided to dodge the question. "Where do you want to go?"

  "Where do you think? I want to go with you. Is that so unreasonable?"

  "I don't know. I don't know what you think I can do for you. I don't know what I can do for you."