Skin Deep

by Timothy Hallinan

  "Why?"

  "Why not? Who needs the All-American boy when his idea of a sex toy is a Louisville Slugger?" She tried a laugh, but it didn't work. "It's enough to make you wish you liked girls." One strap of her nightgown fell loose over her shoulder. She left it there.

  I leaned over and straightened it. She pulled away from me, regarded me darkly for a second, and then went back to work on the cigarette.

  "Did he rough you up?"

  She exhaled vehemently and coughed, doubling over on the bed. "Toby can't say hello without sticking his elbow in your eye," she said when she'd caught her breath. "It's like a character flaw."

  "It's a blemish the size of Van Nuys. You're an actress?"

  She looked surprised. "Sure," she said. "I'm really Meryl Streep." She waved her cigarette around to indicate the apartment. "All this is just part of getting into character."

  "But you came here—to Hollywood, I mean—to be an actress."

  "Who says?" She sounded suspicious.

  "You. You said we'd already done this scene. No payoff, you said. Real people don't talk like that. What do the folks back home think you're doing?"

  Saffron started to stub out her cigarette and then thought better of it. She used it to light another and dropped the butt into an already overloaded ashtray. She sucked up the smoke from the new one. Wrinkles creased the area around her mouth.

  Closing her eyes to get away from me, she exhaled. "They think I wait tables," she said after a moment.

  "Well, you do, in a way."

  "Yeah, and the pope's a Protestant. Stop sucking around and get to the point."

  "Did Toby tell you he'd help you?"

  Something that might have had a smile as a distant ancestor flitted across her tired face. "Well, he really did help, you know? That's the worst thing about Toby. We all know he's an asshole, but sometimes he comes through. He actually got me a part on High Velocity. Two parts, in fact, but they cut one of them out. Anyway, that was before."

  "Before what?"

  "Before he got what he wanted."

  "And what was that?"

  The smile was gone. "Never you fucking mind what he wanted. It's not anything I like to talk about. And don't play shrink with me."

  "So he got you a couple of parts."

  "The only ones in fourteen years. You know, after a while a girl begins to wonder whether she's got any talent, aside from what she can do with her feet pointed at the ceiling." She took another deep drag. "I wanted to be Julie Harris," she said, looking embarrassed. "You know, not a big star or anything, but someone who did good work. Trouble is, I've got the wrong equipment. All knockers and no brains. Why am I talking about this?"

  "You're talking."

  "It's the coke talking. And you're not my friend. You're just somebody who wants to keep Mr. Teen-cream from getting what's coming to him." She worried one of her long fingernails with her teeth, making a gritty little chewing noise.

  It was time to let her think, so I got up and navigated the landscape of clothing until I reached a corner that I'd been glancing at since I first came in. It looked like a corner from another apartment entirely that had been grafted surgically onto Saffron's space. Stones from the seaside, rubbed smooth by the waves, had been piled carefully to create a kind of shrine. Plants grew from the center of the pile and cascaded down its sides. Above the plants, on the wall, was a vertical Zen garden: flat, vaguely rectangular stones with holes worn through them. Nails had been driven through the holes to hold the stones in place. They hung in an apparently random arrangement that nevertheless had a kind of finality about it. You couldn't have moved one without ruining the effect.

  "Who did this?"

  "Who do you think? Nobody here but us chickens."

  "It's very nice."

  "I don't look at it anymore. I don't remember the last time I turned on the lights."

  "You water the plants."

  "Sure. You have to water plants. If you don't, they die. Even a detective should know that." Her voice was flatter than plane geometry.

  "Why are you so upset at Toby? Because of something he did to you or something he did to Amber?"

  "He started treating me like shit the minute we left your house," she said. Then she heard the rest of my question, and a current of alarm straightened her spine. She shook her head, bleached blond hair stiff over her shoulders. She had very nice shoulders. She must have been a beautiful girl once. "Toby didn't do anything to Amber. You know that."

  "No, you know it. Or else you don't. You're his alibi, and he's yours. That's a tidy arrangement, but it's not very satisfying."

  "We took her home." Her pitch had risen.

  "I know you did, but the cops don't. They could be very unpleasant while they're figuring out that you're telling the truth."

  She reached down under the mattress and came up with a small purse. "I'm not worried. And the cops don't have to know anything. Nothing happened, remember?" She pulled from the purse a small purple jar and twisted the lid off. It was full of a white cream. Taking the outside of the jar between her fingers she twisted again. The inside of the jar came loose, and she pulled it out. Beneath the shallow false bottom that held the cream, white powder glistened.

  "We were straight with you," she said. "You can stiff the cops. We were straight with you." She dipped a fingernail into the powder and held it under a nostril, then sniffed sharply. She repeated the ritual for the other nostril. "Hey, what do you want from me? You bust in here before the birds get up, get me talking about stuff I never tell anybody, and then you try to screw me over." She did another couple of snorts.

  "Amber was okay when you dropped her off?"

  "I guess she was okay by Amber's standards. I hope to God I never get like that," she said, wiping her nose. "But you know something? I thought she was totaled then. After you called, when Toby said she was dead, I figured it was an overdose."

  "But nobody messed with her."

  She'd dipped her nail into the jar again, but now she looked up at me. "Nobody messed with her," she said. "What do you think we are, sadists? I mean, what do you think I am? We both know about Toby." The nail came halfway to her nose.

  "Where'd Toby get the loads?"

  "Some street corner, Adams and Crenshaw, maybe. You can always get them there." The fingernail completed its trip, and she sniffed.

  "He wasn't gone long enough."

  "Hollywood and Highland, then. Who gives a shit?"

  "Did he get them at the club? At the Spice Rack?"

  Saffron looked at me for a long moment. Then, very deliberately, she screwed the top of the jar back on. "Goodbye," she said. "Close the door behind you."

  "Is that where he got them?"

  "Nobody scores at the Spice Rack. Now get out of here."

  "The Spice Rack's clean, huh?"

  "Cleaner than Betty Crocker. I thought you were leaving."

  "If the Spice Rack is Girl Scout Central, how come you're so nervous?"

  "Nervous? Who's nervous? I need to sleep. I'm dancing tonight. I've got a public to worry about. Now get out of here, or I really will call the cops."

  "You can't. You'll be in detox before you can spell your name, whatever it really is."

  "You're right," she said petulantly. "You're just so very clever. I can't call the cops. But I can call Tiny, and if I do, you'll wish I had called the cops. If you're not afraid of Tiny, you're not brave, just stupid."

  An image of Tiny popped unbidden into my mind's eye. "I try not to be stupid," I said.

  "Keep trying, you may make it yet. And remember, nobody scores at the Spice Rack."

  I was going to have to face Tiny sooner or later, but later seemed to have a lot to recommend it. I went to the door and pulled it open. "Write down my phone number," I said.

  "For what?" She sounded weary.

  "Just in case. Get a pen and write it down." She fished something that could have been a pen out of a drawer, and I gave her the number. "Listen. If anything goe
s wrong or if things just get too crazy, call me. If you even just think things are getting crazy, call."

  She flopped down on the bed and covered her eyes with her forearm. "Crazy?" she said. "In my life? Just close the door. I'll lock it later."

  "Sleep well," I said. I closed the door. I was skirting the pool, looking down at the trash when I heard the locks being yanked into place.

  On Sunset Boulevard I pulled Alice, gleaming her usual rabid horsefly iridescent blue, into a gas station. "Fill it up," I said to the Persian at the pump.

  "This one, she takes gas, eh?" he said. He had a widow's peak that was about to exert territorial imperative over his eyebrows.

  "No," I said. "She runs on Islamic fervor. I just give her gas once in a while to remind her of the good old days when all the oil came from Texas."

  "You pay more here at this pumps. Self-serve are more cheaper."

  "A receipt, okay? Do the pay phones work?"

  "Sometimes. You know, punks." He pronounced it "ponks." "Sometimes they works."

  I called Bernie first. No Sprunks in either of the Dakotas, he told me, sounding satisfied. Also no Sprunks in Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, or Wyoming. One Sprunk, a widow in her seventies—I didn't ask how Bernie knew how old she was, but if he said so, it was right—in Montana. Minnesota had too many people to check. I told him to try it anyway. Then I called Wyl.

  "Dear boy. It's all here and organized to a fare-thee-well, the total scope on Toby Vane. Such a terrible boy, really. It's enough to make you doubt appearances."

  "Anything interesting?"

  "Depends on the point of view, don't you know. A lot of the photos are absolutely riveting from my perspective, although I doubt you'd linger over them for very long."

  "Jesus, how much is there?"

  "More than you'd think. Most of it is fannies, of course. Since you're going to be kind enough to return it to me, I've broken it down into categories. The newspaper clips should be the most interesting. I don't think you really care what his favorite color is."

  "Blue," I said.

  "You almost never cease to surprise me. Are you going to pick it up?"

  I looked at my watch. I had more than an hour before the dreaded Joanna Link was due at Universal. "Sure," I said. "Be there in ten minutes."

  "I'll go in the back room and put my bells on," Wyl said before he hung up.

  He was right. The newspaper clips were the most interesting. The second page I read told me something very interesting: it told me that both Stillman and Dixie had lied to me.

  "May I use your phone?" I asked Wyl.

  I had only one friend in the police department. Al Hammond was a sergeant, a prototypical middle-aged desk cop with a problem belly and creased skin on the back of his neck that was thicker than the average catcher's mitt. When I first decided that I had chosen a career that was going to put me into uneasy proximity to the police—uneasy for me, at any rate—I'd started drinking at a couple of police bars downtown. Hammond and I had gotten pulverized together four or five times before I told him what I did for a living. He wasn't thrilled, but he'd kept drinking with me.

  "Records, Sergeant Hammond," he snarled. Then he remembered departmental public relations. "Oh, yeah, and how may I help you?"

  "Your bedside manner is impeccable," I said. "This is Simeon."

  "Would you spell that, sir?"

  "Simeon," I said. "S-i-m—"

  "Not that, shithead. Impeccable."

  "With three different vowels."

  "Are you still drinking?"

  "Only when I'm thirsty."

  "Thought maybe you'd gone to the Betty Ford Clinic or something. Seems to me it's been a few months since I saw you throw up."

  "You've never seen me throw up. By the time I begin to get queasy, you're unconscious. Listen, I'm looking for a girl. Her name is Rebecca Hartsfield."

  "Has she got a sheet?"

  "I doubt it. She's more in the victim line. She got knocked silly about four years ago at Ontario Motor Speedway. A police report was filed."

  "But not with us. You're talking to the LAPD, remember? You want the Ontario cops or the sheriffs, if Ontario's in L.A. County."

  "I was hoping that you had some sort of relationship with the Ontario cops. You know, brotherhood of the blue or something like that."

  "Yeah, well, they won't hang up on me if I call them. But four years ago? For battery? Jeez, Simeon, that's ancient history. If it was murder . . ."

  "The weapon was fists. The fists belonged to an actor named Toby Vane."

  "Oh," Hammond said. "My daughter likes him."

  "On the other side of the TV screen, he's no problem. Just don't let her get any closer."

  "Is this important?"

  "Have I ever asked you to do anything stupid?"

  He gave forth with a mirthless laugh. "How much time have we got?"

  "I've got all day. I thought the police were busy."

  "Are we involved?" "We" was the LAPD.

  "No," I said. It was a lie I might have to answer for later.

  "So what do you want?"

  "A phone number, an address, whatever."

  "Call me later. About four, okay?" He hung up.

  "People are hanging up on me today," I said to Wyl.

  "I can tell. Your left ear is getting callused."

  I hefted the stack of stuff he'd given me. "Thanks for the archives," I said. "I'll get them back to you in a day or two." Yellow stick-it papers protruded from the pile of magazines and newspapers. Each was meticulously labeled with a date. "Must have been a lot of work," I said.

  "It was fun, actually. I don't think he's got staying power, though. Steve McQueen he's not."

  "Wyl," I said, "he's not even Butterfly McQueen."

  "Oooh," Wyl said, "Gone With the Wind. She was terrific." "Tara's Theme" rang out behind me as I left.

  Toby had caused hospital-scale injuries to a sixteen-year-old girl named Rebecca Hartsfield during a shoot at Ontario Motor Speedway four years ago—two years before the mayhem in Northridge that Dixie and Stillman had described as his first "problem" incident. As I pulled into the Universal lot I decided not to ask them about it until I'd talked to the girl, if I actually got to talk to the girl. People move in Southern California more often than they do anywhere else in the world, and a four-year-old address could be more outdated than the pillbox hat I remembered my mother buying because she liked Jackie Kennedy's.

  When the guard pushed open the door to the closed set where High Velocity was filming, Norman Stillman himself greeted me. The requisite blue blazer and white slacks had been augmented by a captain's hat, but Stillman's expression was not that of a seasoned sea dog hardened by misadventure on the bounding main. He looked like the anxious, if overage, freshman who had sat down in Dixie's class all those years ago.

  "Here you are," he said in a highly keyed stage whisper. "They're already in his dressing room. She came early, the bitch."

  "How early?"

  He steered me across the sound stage. "Half an hour."

  "Good policy," I said. "She's no dope."

  "Don't mention dope," Stillman hissed. "So far, no problem." The lights on the set were off, so his insistence on speaking sotto voce was an affectation, but it was an effective one. I found myself lowering my own voice in return.

  "What are they talking about?"

  "Before she kicked me out, she was asking about how he'd feel when High Velocity was finished."

  "Not much news there," I said, wishing I'd been around when Joanna Link kicked Norman Stillman out of his own star's dressing room.

  "That's what's worrying me. You don't talk to a star about his series when the ratings have dropped unless you plan to slip him a shiv."

  "Shiv?" We were most of the way across the sound stage.

  "You know, a knife. Unless you plan to stab him in the back," he explained with an air of exaggerated impatience. "Jesus, you don't know what a shiv is?"

  "Sure. I was wondering how
you knew." We were at Toby's door.

  He looked blank. "Scripts," he said, thinking about something else. "Do you think she'll let you in?"

  "Toby will let me in. Whether she'll let me stay in, that's the question."

  "Well, I know that," he said for the second time in two days. I made a mental note to use it the next time I had nothing to say. "Good luck," Stillman said, pushing the door open.

  "Do you think the young people of America have learned anything from High Velocity!" said a thickening blond lady with four-inch fingernails as the door closed behind me. She glanced up at me with irritation and gave the tiny tape recorder in front of her a businesslike shake as though she thought my intrusion might have caused its circuits to malfunction. Then she turned her attention back to Toby, who was seated in front of a mirror framed by globular white light bulbs. Dixie hovered behind him, looking fatally apprehensive.

  "Joanna," Toby said, "this isn't Ibsen. Half the show is cars crashing into other cars." Dixie wilted visibly, and Toby caught it in the mirror. He gave Joanna Link a budgeted grin, sort of an amplified smirk. "We're doing entertainment here. But every episode has a moral: Crime doesn't pay; Drugs aren't good; Sooner or later, virtue triumphs."

  "Usually later."

  "Albert Schweitzer chatting with Pope John Paul for an hour isn't going to hold the people we're talking to. That's public television. People who watch public television don't get into trouble. Kids don't watch public television. Maybe it would be better if they did, but they don't. They watch us. And, week after week, we make a point that Parents magazine couldn't disagree with."

  "So you think the departure of High Velocity will leave a moral void on television?" The tone was so snotty that I felt like giving her a handkerchief so she could blow her voice.

  Toby ignored it. He reached out and took one of her extravagantly clawed hands between his. "We'll be around in reruns," he said. "And even if we weren't, television is a responsible industry. As long as there are producers like Norman, the medium won't be a source of moral decay."

  "This isn't quotable," she said, withdrawing her hand but giving his a coy little pat as she did it. "And who's he?" She indicated me, Chinese style, with her chin.