Skin Deep

by Timothy Hallinan

  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."

  It was time to try frank. "I got the address from the police."

  She put both hands into the pockets of her robe. "Police," she said. "Rebecca's not in trouble. I'd know. I always know."

  She sounded so positive that I had to ask. "How do you always know?"

  "Psychic linkage. Don't look skeptical, it's common between mother and daughter, if both women know how to tune in to it."

  "You can read her mind?"

  "Mind reading is a charlatan's stunt. No one can read anyone's mind. But people who have an affinity can feel strong emotions that the other person in the link experiences."

  "Feel them how?"

  "Why did the police give you this address?"

  "Same answer as before. Because I asked."

  "Why?"

  We looked at each other for a moment.

  "Well," I said, "we both want to know something, don't we?"

  She tilted her head upward and studied me. "What exactly do you want to know?"

  "How you feel the other person's emotions."

  She gave a patient, well-bred sigh. "Hell, the same way I know that you don't mean any harm to Rebecca. If a person is open enough, the strong feelings of others resonate in her. Your emotions are part of the total electromagnetic field of your nervous system. Every thought, feeling, or dream you have is a scattering of electrical impulses, jumping across millions of synapses between the nerves. When you're extremely agitated or gripped by a powerful emotion, your electromagnetic field becomes stronger and more agitated. If a person is receptive, her nervous system will sense the other's static, producing a faint sensation of joy or fear or sorrow."

  Since I couldn't think of anything to say, I nodded.

  "It happens all the time between mothers and daughters, even at long distance. Does that explanation make sense to you?"

  "Sure, I guess so. It's like magnetism. You can't see it, but you can see its effects."

  She smiled again. "Amazing," she said. "Even the most skeptical person will accept an explanation if it's dressed up in enough electromagnetic mumbo-jumbo. There's no scientific explanation of gravity, either. Does that make you doubt its existence?"

  "Not as long as the change in my pockets feels heavy."

  "Money is heavy beyond its physical weight. Gram for gram, money is the heaviest thing in the world."

  "Grams?" I said. "You're metric?"

  "Ten is a powerful number."

  "What about metric astrology? Which two signs of the zodiac would you eliminate to get it down to ten?"

  For a moment I thought she was going to laugh. "Gemini and Cancer."

  "Why?"

  "My ex-husband was on the cusp." The laugh decided not to show up. "And now that we've finished playing, why did you ask the police how to find Rebecca?"

  "I'm interested in something that happened four years ago. At Ontario Motor Speedway."

  She closed her eyes for a long moment. When she reopened them they were fastened on mine. "We've let go of that," she said. "That's not part of our baggage anymore."

  "I may have to ask Rebecca to reclaim it."

  "Why would you do that?"

  "Maybe to keep some other little girl from having to go through what Rebecca did."

  She pulled her hands from her pockets and surprised me by cracking her knuckles. Large semiprecious stones sparkled on her fingers. "Well," she said, "you can't talk to Rebecca. She's at college, and I won't tell you where, so don't ask."

  "Look. You've already figured out that I'm not dangerous. Is there someplace we can sit down?"

  Her eyes burned into mine for a moment. Norman Stillman would have killed for that gaze. Then she walked briskly past me and reached into the window, turning around the open sign. Before she did, I read the other side. It didn't say CLOSED. It said THE FLOW IS TEMPORARILY INTERRUPTED. PLEASE COME BACK.

  "The flow?" I said.

  "Skip it," she said shortly, heading for the back of the shop. I followed her through a door behind the counter and into a back room. The smell, if anything, was more powerful in there. The shelves were jammed with stock, and what seemed like millions of identical books were stacked everywhere. She pulled out a chair, angled it around toward one of the stacks of books, and sat in it. "Take a load off," Chantra Hartsfield said.

  "Where?"

  "There." She pointed and let the smile bloom. "Don't worry, they'll hold you."

  I sat on the books. They sank slightly beneath my weight and gave off a vaporous sigh of aroma that literally made my eyes water. "God in hea
ven," I said. "I feel like I've been sentenced to life imprisonment inside a flower."

  "These are my catalogs. I'm going national."

  I looked around at the stacks. "If you'll excuse my saying so, they don't seem to be moving very fast."

  "It's a problem. I can't figure out how to market them."

  "What do you mean? Buy a mailing list from the Scientologists or somebody and send them out."

  "Yeah," she said, "that's just it. They're something brand new. They're the first scratch-and-sniff aromatherapy catalogs."

  "Smells like a great idea."

  "I think it is. But how do you control it? I mean, if an ounce of, let's say, chamomile will cure cancer of the colon in the right person, what effect would a scratch-and-sniff have on the common cold? I could put myself out of business."

  "Ah," I said sympathetically.

  She offered up a helpless smile. "I'm not really much good at business."

  "Well," I said, "if you're selling chamomile to cure colon cancer, the profit margin must be pretty impressive."

  "I'm not selling dink," she said without taking offense. "You're sitting on my catalogs."

  I shrugged, a mistake in judgment that released several pounds of perfume directly into my nostrils. "I'm not much good at business, either," I said, fanning it away. "Hey, do you know anything about computers?"

  "I can't work a calculator," she said. "It's a dilemma."

  We commiserated silently for a moment, one failed businessperson to another. I shifted again, with the same result. "Listen," I said, "why not sew them into pillow slips and sell them as whoopie cushions?"

  She thought about it, shook her head, and dusted her hands together in a workmanlike fashion. "So. Tell me why you're here."

  "Our friend Toby Vane. I've been assigned to keep an eye on him."

  "Assigned by whom? And for what reason?"

  "By the company that produces his shows. To keep him from slamming any young women around for the time being."

  "Since when do they care? What do you do for a living?"

  "I'm supposed to be a detective."

  "And you work for the production company?" There was an undertone in her voice I didn't understand.

  "Yes."

  "For Norman Stillman Productions?" The undertone was pure acid now. She said the words as though she had to get them out of her mouth before they dissolved and choked her.

  "Right." I waited.

  "Do you mind if I smoke?" she said. It was about the ninth time she'd surprised me.

  "Not if you give me one, too."

  I got arched eyebrows. "You don't look like a smoker."

  "Neither do you. But I'd smoke a highway flare to muffle these damned aromas."

  She gave me a staccato laugh, crinkling appealingly around the eyes, and opened a drawer in a little wooden desk to withdraw a package of the same long cigarettes Nana smoked.

  She handed me one and lit them both with practiced precision. "I can't smoke in the shop," she said. "Bad for the image. I learned about image the hard way. Image is the reason the geniuses at Norman Stillman Productions would want to keep me quiet."

  I parked that one for the meantime. "What happened?"

  "Very bad energies. Rebecca was just a kid. She had a crush on Toby Vane. Her stepfather told her about the thing at Ontario, and she wanted to go. I figured what the hell, and we went."

  "And Toby got his hands on her."

  "Well, that was easy under the circumstances. He was all charm. She was right in the front row, naturally."

  "Why naturally?"

  She gave me her level gaze. It made me want to ask her out to dinner. "That'll keep," she said, waving a dismissive hand and fanning some lavender toward me. "So he asked her if she wanted to see the car up close, and she did. Then he asked if she'd like to see his dressing room. I wasn't near her at the time. It was a big trailer that was parked right near the track."

  "I've seen it."

  "And the next thing I knew I felt something terrible sweep over me and found myself running toward the trailer. I was about a hundred feet away when the door opened and Rebecca fell out of it, down the stairs, and onto the ground. Her face was covered with blood."

  "He'd hit her."

  "He'd hit her many times. Her nose was fractured and her lip was split, and two of her teeth were broken. When I took her in my arms she coughed the teeth into my lap." She gave me an apologetic smile. "I don't mean to be dramatic, but that's what happened. She was hysterical. This was her hero. She had his pictures all over her room. They were signed. They said 'To Rebecca with love, Toby.' When I got home I tore them all down. She'd been taken to the hospital by then."

  "Where was her stepfather?"

  "Oh, he was busy. He was busy for hours. He had to clean up after Toby. When he got home I told him I was leaving. By the time I got Rebecca out of the hospital I was already gone. I'd taken the apartment over this shop."

  "Who is he?"

  "You really don't know?" I shook my head.

  "Hartsfield is my first husband's name," she said. "In addition to being a widow, I'm deliriously happy to be the ex-Mrs. Dixie Cohen."

  I sat back, and the books creaked and let out an aromatic gust. The two of us smoked in self-defense. The silence stretched around us. In the street someone laughed drunkenly.

  "So," she said. "Is there anything else?"

  "Yeah," I said. "Charge for the catalogs. Three bucks each. That way you're ahead either way."

  She gave me a full-bore smile. "I knew I liked you," she said.

  16 - La Maison

  My third stop of the evening was in the Valley, so I had plenty of time to think as I drove. I needed it.

  The main hope, of course, given the source of my almost fictitiously large paycheck, was that someone was trying to frame Toby. Unless, that was, Toby really had killed Amber, a notion that even an eyewitness couldn't altogether drive from my mind, given what I knew about the lad.

  Even if he'd had nothing to do with Amber, there were plenty of people who might have wanted to put a big black period at the end of his life. When you live like Toby lived, there are always going to be people who want to pop your cork for good.

  Heading west on Ventura Boulevard, a cherried-out old Buick, vintage 1953 or thereabouts, blew a fishtail kiss at Alice and began playing tag with me. First it tailgated me, and then it passed me, got in front, and slowed down. What looked like four very large kids kept glancing back, waiting for me to hit the horn or give them a bump in the rear. In Los Angeles that's a good way to get shot, so I just pulled into a service station and earned a disappointed finger from the kid in the front passenger seat. Hell, maybe they killed Amber. Three days on the case and I hadn't ruled anybody out, not even the golden boy himself, and new possibilities were blooming like wildflowers.

  At two thousand a day I felt overpaid.

  And I was curiously fuzzy about things. My mental state wasn't helped any by the fact that everybody who was involved seemed to have made up a name just for me. Toby, Nana, Dixie, Tiny, Saffron, certainly Chantra—almost everybody had an AKA; nobody had the Christian name he or she was born with. And the few who did, Norman Stillman, for example, had invented personalities instead.

  It didn't delight me that I was now on my way to an encounter with the most improbable name of all.

  Dixie, back in the good old days when I thought he was leveling with me, had given me the names and numbers of four of the pros he and Stillman had hired for Toby to knock around as a safe outlet for his boyish energies. One of the numbers had also popped up on the yellow pad I'd used to copy the contents of Tiny's phone book. Hookers move even more frequently than the average Angeleno, and that was the only number out of the four that was still good. My call had reached a machine that informed me that business hours were ten in the morning until twelve midnight and that she'd be at something called La Maison. I was headed for La Maison, and the woman I was going to see called herself Mistress Kareema.
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  Ventura Boulevard is a sad street. Back in the days of the third or fourth real estate boom, when Bob Hope and Bing Crosby owned everything the Chandler family didn't, the Valley had been positioned as paradise: no smog, an orange tree or six in every yard, the grime and crime of the city at a safe remove across the mountains. Ventura Boulevard was the artery of optimism, the pioneering east-west street, the first to be developed, with stucco storefronts and palatial motion picture houses. After fifty years, Ventura was a dotted line of prosperity and decline. No building material in history has ever decayed with quite the speed of stucco.

  Mistress Kareema, whoever she might be, practiced her trade on a street named Sunny Vista, which, as I might have expected from the way things were going, was one of the few shady spots in the Valley. It was a narrow ribbon of asphalt that gnarled and knotted its way south of the boulevard, overhung with oaks and eucalyptus that had grown to an antebellum, Edward Gorey thickness. Even the moon couldn't peek through. The storefronts extended south a couple of blocks, and La Maison was the last commercial establishment before the houses took over.

  La Maison had all the discretion of accomplished vice: whatever happened there, it happened inside a pale, anonymous stucco box with two windows in front that could have been installed to display anything from guitars to tires. The windows were masked with brown paper, new territory for Stillman's timeline. The sign was about the size of a piece of legal paper, and the building was as anonymous as the French Foreign Legion. The front door looked solid and locked. Junk newspapers littered the doorway. As I pulled through the driveway to park Alice in the rear, I wondered if it were even open.

  I had started on foot toward the front of the building when I saw the back door. The sign, larger than the one in front, said La Maison. La Maison looked like the kind of place one entered through the back door, and I gave it a try.

  It wasn't locked. A bell rang as I opened it, nothing electronic, just a regular old bell that got slammed by a piece of metal every time the door opened. I was in a dark corridor, not that much different from the Spice Rack. A single naked light bulb in a bare porcelain socket flung its forty watts valiantly into the gloom. The gloom won. I stood there in it, waiting for someone to answer the bell's summons.