Skin Deep sg-3

by Timothy Hallinan

  "Well," Dolly said, "it's your money."

  At eight-twenty that evening I got the first busy signal.

  I'd been active, staying in motion to fight the feeling that I was chasing my tail. Tomorrow's edition of the Daily News had hit the streets with Saffron's death on page one, in the lower right-hand corner to be sure, but page one nevertheless. The lead mentioned Amber, and there were pictures of both women. Amber's looked like a snapshot taken on one of her bad nights, but Saffron's was a studio still from the seventies, the kind actresses pay too much for, all hopeful eyes and carefully disarranged hair. I was right: she had been beautiful.

  Things of the Spirit was unaccountably closed at seven o'clock. Chantra's message about the flow being interrupted hung in the door. The shop was dark, and an iron grid inside the window protected the crystals and aromas from the fingers of unevolved beings who might have wanted to snatch them without paying the proper karmic price. Five minutes of hammering on the door had brought no response, and I didn't see a light in the apartment windows above the store.

  I'd spent twenty or thirty minutes circling the block outside the Spice Rack, watching a large number of cops come and go. Customers had turned away at the sight of the squad cars. It was getting so I recognized some of them, among them Ahmed, the Middle Easterner with the yo-yo dollar bills, and a couple of sad sacks from my first night there. I couldn't very well go in, so after my tenth or eleventh pass I gave it up and choked down a hamburger up at the Sunset Grill. I'd phoned Nana from there, and she'd answered, sounding a little high.

  "Don't go all Puritan on me," she'd said. "It's just red wine."

  "Did you find anything to eat?"

  "Sure. Tunut and penis butter." She'd laughed "Whoo. Is that a Freudian slip, or what? I mean tuna and peanut butter."

  "Not together, I hope."

  "Why not? All goes to the same place eventually."

  My burger threatened a reappearance. "Any calls?"

  "Not so's you'd notice. Couple of wrong numbers, but they hung up when they heard the machine."

  "Well, don't answer."

  "You're the only one I want to talk to. Hurry home before I get crazy."

  Eventually I fetched up at Fan Fare to flip through Wyl's stack of clips again in the hope of finding something I hadn't found before. Wyl hovered anxiously over me as though he were to blame.

  I'd finished my first pass through the material when I got the busy signal on my own number. Oh, well, I thought, I hadn't told her not to call anybody, just not to answer the phone. All the same, I didn't like it. I flipped back through the stack of clips and started again at page one.

  "Honey," Wyl said, "you'll ruin your eyes in this light. It's not like TV, you know. It's not different every time you turn it on … well, neither is TV, for that matter, except for the evangelists, but you know what I mean. You can read it from here to Valentine's Day and it'll always be the same."

  I pushed the paper away. "Wyl, do you ever feel like you don't know what you're doing?"

  "Literally all the time. The last time I really knew what I was doing was back when Mother was still alive. Taking care of her, right? Trying to pay back a little of what she'd given me. She was so old and helpless, it made me feel terrible, but at the same time I remembered when I was young and helpless, and she was always there, even when I was just awful to her, even later when she realized I was, well, you know, different, as people used to say." He sat down opposite me. His tattooed eyes were shining wetly.

  "She knew?"

  "Of course she did. I was her son. She knew all the time, I guess. And she never said anything, not a word to make me feel bad. I just took off the makeup every night so I wouldn't make her any more uncomfortable about things than she was anyway." He gestured improvisationally with both hands, trying to make a snowball out of air. "They always know, mothers," he said. "Maybe it's a good thing that there are some people you can't keep secrets from."

  "Maybe it is," I said. "Depends on the secrets. May I use your phone again?"

  "Need you ask? But then, you were always polite. So few people are polite these days. Far be it from me to discourage it."

  I dialed my number again. Still busy. Then I called Universal and got a security man with no public relations skills whatsoever. First he stonewalled me with a rigidity the Watergate crew would have envied. When I said I worked for Norman Stillman and that he could be back patrolling parking lots in Reseda tomorrow morning if he didn't tell me what I wanted to know, he paused and recalibrated his attitude. High Velocity had shut down, he told me grudgingly. Everybody was gone. Did I want to leave a message?

  "No," I said, "I don't want to leave a fucking message." I hung up.

  "That wasn't polite," Wyl said. "That wasn't polite at all."

  I apologized and climbed into Alice. It was finally dark enough to take another look at the other half of Toby's alibi. For some reason there wasn't much traffic as I headed south toward Fountain, and it gave me too much time to think. Something's moving, I'd said to Nana, and it felt like it was moving too fast, like it was gaining on me from behind. I kept checking the rearview mirror, I didn't know for what, and almost rear-ended a car turning left off of Highland onto Fountain. Chastened, I followed it to 1424.

  A streetlight, the only one on the block that worked, glared down at me as I sat at the curb. There had been plenty of light for the Peeper to see Toby and Saffron in the car when they let Amber out. I looked up at the window and didn't see him at his usual post. So he didn't watch all the time. So maybe he'd gone to the bathroom. Or, on the other hand, maybe he watched the centerfolds on his walls until he heard something.

  The only thing to do with a theory is to test it. I got out and slammed the door. Still no one at the Peeper's window. Counting seconds in the classic "one thousand, two thousand" style, I headed up the walk, and when I got to five I looked up, and there he was. I waved up at him, but he was still watching my car.

  And no wonder. The streetlight was about fifteen yards up the street. I was standing in almost complete darkness, cut off from its rays by the edge of the building. I shuffled my feet and cleared my throat, and he finally looked down toward me. I could see his face clearly. His window, the one nearest the street, was illuminated. The hard, dark edge of shadow made by the other wing of the V climbed the wall just to the left of his window.

  He was looking into the light. I was in the dark. I had to wave again before he saw me. When he did, he let the curtain fall back into place. He hadn't lifted it again when I fired up Alice and pulled back into traffic.

  At the first phone booth I saw, I called home again. Still busy. Ants were walking up and down my spine. I tried again, with the same result, and then started to try again. I dropped in my quarter and stood there, listening to the buzz of the dial tone. It reminded me of something, but I shouldered it away. Who could Nana be talking to? The dial tone buzzed in my ear again, steady and sure, and I barked my knuckles hanging up the phone. I knew what it reminded me of, and I ran toward Alice.

  Hollywood isn't very big. I pulled up to the curb of Saffron's apartment house six minutes later and pulled a little flashlight from the glove compartment. No one was around, no peepers were at the windows, and the only things I heard were the hum of traffic and the thump of my heart, which seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my ears. I marched in time to the heartbeat all the way to the pool.

  Nana had wanted to leave, wanted to see Saffron right away and get out of there. If she hadn't, maybe I'd have checked the pool. And maybe not. It seemed like weeks since I'd done anything right. I hoisted myself down the ladder at the shallow end and waded through the trash until I was beneath the diving board.

  The flies were gone, until morning, and they'd taken their buzz with them. The beam of the flashlight played over the junk at the deep end. I could only use one hand to toss things aside because of the flashlight, but most of the stuff down there was large, cardboard cartons and pieces of what might once
have been pool furniture. Within a minute I was looking at the bottom of the pool.

  Except that I wasn't looking at the bottom. I was looking at a large, rust-colored stain that tapered off on the downhill slope toward the drain. The irrelevant fact that the drain still worked flashed across my mind. There must have been quite a lot of blood. How much did the human body hold? Six quarts? Eight? How much difference did it make if the body was a small one?

  The math calmed me as I climbed back up the ladder. In the car, I made myself breathe slowly for two minutes and then headed up Highland toward the Ventura Freeway. Toby was with Dolly, I told myself. So was John. Why hadn't I told her where to take them for dinner? At least I'd know. Just before I got to the freeway I saw a coin phone in a minimall, one of the thousands that now scar Los Angeles, and shoved the same old quarter into the slot.

  My number was busy. It couldn't be busy that long.

  I got the operator on the line. After we'd negotiated the price for an emergency break-in and I'd fed the last of my remaining change into the phone, she left the line. When she came back she said triumphantly, "That phone is out of order."

  "No way," I said.

  "Then it's off the hook. You've overdeposited," she said. "I told you fifty cents. If you'll give me your full name and number, I'll see that it's credited to your account."

  I left the receiver dangling and sprinted to Alice.

  There wasn't much traffic at that hour, but there was too much. More than thirty minutes had passed before I turned off Topanga Canyon onto Old Topanga, swearing at Alice for not being a Porsche. Her springs creaked on the curves, and I nearly burned out the clutch going uphill on Topanga Skyline. I jumped out at the bottom of the driveway, left the door open, and went up as quietly as I could.

  All the lights were on.

  I circled the house before I went in, but the windows were too high for me to see anything. They'd always been too high. Why should tonight be different? I grabbed a shovel and headed up the little corridor that led to the front door.

  It had been kicked in. It sagged from its hinges dispiritedly like a shot sentry. It had been broken in two places, both above and below the latch.

  My foot hit something as I went in. It was an empty bottle of red wine. I watched it roll reproachfully away from me before I lifted my eyes.

  Devastation.

  The coffee table was overturned. The throw rug was crumpled against the far wall. The couch was halfway into the middle of the room, as if someone had tried to take cover behind it. The door to the sun deck hung open. It creaked as a breeze stirred it.

  Hefting the shovel in both hands, blade forward, I went into the bedroom. Nobody. Nobody in the bathroom, just a tap dripping water. I shut it off and went out onto the sun deck.

  The lights of Topanga stretched below me, each light representing a little room where people sat together, safe from the night. To my right and far away, a coyote howled at the moon. I knew there was no one in the room beneath my feet, but I went outside and down the hill to check anyway. I was right.

  Back in the living room, I sat down on the floor and tossed the shovel halfway across the room. It landed with a thump and a clatter. A flash of bright blue near the overturned table caught my attention, and I crawled over on my hands and knees to look.

  It was Hansel. His head had been torn off. There was more blood on the floor than Hansel's body could possibly have held. I put an exploratory finger into the nearest pool. It was thick and tacky.

  Something chirped, and I looked up. Gretel sat on top of a curtain rod, looking down at me. She cocked her head for a better look and then chirped again.

  "Good for you," I said thickly. I looked over at the birds' cage. It was battered and broken. The door was gone. Suddenly the hair on my arms stood straight up, my heart slammed against my throat, and I was bathed in sweat-and I realized that I was angrier than I'd ever been in my life.

  The anger focused me. I got up and picked up the phone, putting the receiver back on the hook. The red light on the answering machine blinked at me steadily, and I hit the button for playback.

  First I got Eleanor. For the first time since I'd known her, I fast-forwarded the machine past her message. Then I was listening to Nana and me. "Tunut," Nana said. I hit fast forward again and then pushed the play button.

  "Nana," a male voice whispered coarsely. "Nana, pick up the phone. I know you're there, Nana." Then nothing, just the hum of the line. Whoever it was had disconnected with a sharp click.

  I waited. "Wednesday, eight-oh-three p.m.," the machine said tonelessly. The tape continued to roll.

  Then the whisper was back. "Nana," it said, "pick up the phone. Something has happened to Simeon. Pick up the phone."

  "Hello?" Nana's voice said. "Hello? Who is this? What's happened? Is he all right?"

  No answer. Just the wind howling through the phone lines again. "Is he all right?" Nana said insistently. There was a click.

  "Wednesday, eight-oh-five p.m.," the machine said.

  Then there was nothing. Nothing at all.

  I sat there, feeling my blood pressure subside and listening to the silence. Crickets made cricket noises. The house creaked. There was one other sound, one I couldn't identify at first. A kind of whirring. The refrigerator? No, not the refrigerator.

  It came from the computer.

  I went over to it, stood over it. The screen was dark, but the machine was on. I touched a key. Screensave, Nana had called it. The message leapt into life before me on the screen.

  IT'S ABOUT EIGHT, it said. SIMEON, SOMEONE CALLED HERE. SAID SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH YOU. WHEN I ANSWERED HE HUNG UP. SIMEON, SOMEONE JUST CALLED AGAIN. IT'S A LITTLE AFTER EIGHT NOW. SIMEON, I'M SCARED.

  There was a blank space on the screen, then some more words.

  SOMEBODY'S HERE. I HEAR THEM OUTSIDE. I HEAR

  That was the end of it.

  I paced the length of the living room. The pool of blood caught my eye. Then I had an idea and went back to the computer. I pushed the key that said Page Down.

  A single word appeared neatly centered in the middle of the screen. It was all in capital letters. It said:

  TOBY

  21

  Murder

  First I called the police and reported Toby's Maserati stolen. The license plate was easy, since the last time I'd seen it I'd been flat on my back and it had been two feet from my chin: TOBY 1.

  I could think of only one place he might have taken her, but if I was wrong, they could still be on the road. They couldn't have been gone much more than forty minutes. Red Maseratis aren't that common, even in Los Angeles; some alert cop might get lucky and spot the car. And I might win the state lottery next month, too.

  Then I ran back down the driveway, leaving the broken door sagging open behind me, to check out the only remotely likely guess I had.

  I coaxed extra speed out of Alice down the winding roads of the canyon, keeping my mind blank and my breathing even. Halfway to the coast I got stuck behind a necking couple with more eyes for the moon and each other than for the road. I hit the horn twice and got an aggressive slowdown from the lovesick creep at the wheel, a display of automotive macho for the little lady. I waited for a right-hand curve, gunned Alice, and slammed into the driver's side of the creep's rear bumper. He fishtailed off to the right, and I passed him on a blind curve and left him stalled out most of the way onto the shoulder.

  By the time I ran the red light on the PCH and headed north at seventy miles per hour, fourteen minutes had elapsed since I left the house.

  Try as I might, I couldn't keep my mind from working. I was doing the only thing I could think to do, but there was a tickle in the back of my head that I couldn't ignore.

  I knew Toby hadn't killed Saffron.

  I had bet Nana's safety on the assumption that he hadn't killed, or at least intended to kill, Amber, that he wasn't a cold-blooded murderer. And, except for Nana, Toby was the only person involved who knew where I lived. Even
Dixie only had my phone number.

  And then, as Malibu Canyon receded behind me, that particular security blanket ripped right down the middle.

  Saffron had known. She'd been there.

  Whoever killed Saffron had played with her for a long time.

  I tried to accelerate, but my foot was already pushed to the floor. To the left the Pacific rolled in as black as blood. Something like drowsiness kept slipping over my consciousness, and it took too long for me to identify it as defeat. The minute I'd found Saffron dead I should have known I couldn't take Nana home.

  You've killed her, a voice said in my ear.

  I shook my head and shoved vainly at the accelerator.

  There was so much blood, the voice said. Hansel's headless body popped into my mind's eye. She's dead, the voice said.

  "Fuck you," I said to the voice, and turned left into Encinal Canyon. The turn had caught me unaware, and Alice almost spun out. It had been more than thirty minutes.

  I parked partway down and ran the rest of the way to the house. From the driveway the house looked dark, but there was enough moonlight to show me that Toby's car wasn't there. There was a car there, though, pulled crookedly into the drive with both its front doors open.

  I knew whose car it was.

  The tide was out, so I went around to the beach side of the house, climbing over slippery, still wet rocks, falling once before I got to the picture windows. The curtains were drawn, but lights burned inside. Then there was a flash, like small-scale lightning. But from inside. Then another.

  He was taking pictures.

  A surge of pure adrenaline joined forces with another flashbulb to carry me through knee-deep water and up onto the beach to the front door. It was open.

  It would be. She couldn't walk, not after all that blood. He'd had to carry her inside. He didn't plan to stay long.

  I listened: not a sound. No more flashes. Then I heard footsteps across a hardwood floor, and a door opened somewhere in the house.