Skin Deep

by Timothy Hallinan

"Where's he going?" I asked, watching him move toward the back of the club.

  "He's going to pack his cute little nose," Nana said. "He's fine until about six, and then it's a long downhill slide until midnight. I don't know how his system stands it."

  "What about your system?"

  "Fooey. Half a load or so every night. Listen, you think I could dance like that straight?"

  "What's the hardest thing to do?"

  "Smiling," she said. "The hardest thing is smiling. Listen, I haven't said thank you."

  "Nana," I said, "Toby really did come here to say he was sorry."

  "Too late," she said. "You know, the dumb thing is that he really is sorry. It just doesn't last." She blew some more smoke and looked critically at the coal on her cigarette. "Sooner or later even someone as turkey-stupid as I am has to figure it out."

  "Tell me something."

  "Let's hear it first."

  "How come you look like Madame Butterfly and sound like Tex Ritter?"

  She laughed. It wasn't a ladylike laugh. There was no apology for not covering her mouth or for letting her teeth hang in the breeze. It was a laugh that came straight from the belly, without detours. She drummed her feet on the stage by way of emphasis.

  "I mean, you're Korean, right?"

  "Fifty-fifty," she said, fanning her face. "Whoo, pretty good. But Tex Ritter? God, honey, you must be older than snails."

  "Half American," I ventured.

  "You know what's an army brat?" she said. She waved the question away. "Aaah, skip it. Daddy's American, Mommy's Korean. Daddy took his gonads to Korea during the war. Hell, there wasn't anywhere he could park them. So he came home with Mommy and me."

  "Home to Texas," I said.

  "Home to Killeen. Home to wherever they stuck him. And her, and me, by the way. And now I'll ask you one, okay?"

  "Shoot."

  "What are you doing with Toby?"

  "It's a job," I said for what felt like the fiftieth time. "I'm protecting the world from him."

  She nodded, thinking it over, and the music kicked in again. A new girl climbed onto the stage, blond and pretty except for a slight postacne moonscape that had been imprinted on her cheeks a couple of years ago, when she was maybe sixteen. Pepper followed, naked from the waist up, and went onto the other stage.

  "What kind of a job?" Nana finally said. "What do you do, anyway?"

  "I'm a private detective," I said, feeling as foolish as I always did when I told anyone.

  She sucked in her cheeks reflectively and nodded again, then looked up as Tiny rippled whitely across the room and disappeared into the dressing room. "Hope Amber's not doping in there," she said. "Tiny will kill her."

  "Of course she's doping," I said. "She has to stay up there or she'll fall apart."

  Nana patted my hand. "Honey, I know that. And he'd kill himself before he'd kill her. She used to be his girlfriend, and he hasn't got the faintest damn idea what to do about her. He can't fire her because he's afraid she'll kill herself all at once instead of slow, like she's doing now." She glanced over my shoulder and stood up. "Excuse me," she said. "Here comes the Dutch elm disease." She walked to the bar without looking back.

  "Somehow," Toby said, sitting, "I don't think a simple apology will suffice." He waved for another drink. "Counting down," he said.

  "To what?"

  "The climax. Don't you know? Every scene should have three stages, a beginning, middle, and end. You need a climax—we're talking dramatically here—to punch up the end of the scene. Otherwise, things get sloppy." He finished his drink and waved his hands around to demand the refill. "An actor's work is never done."

  Miss Spike put the drinks in front of us at the same time that Amber and Saffron emerged from the dressing room in street clothes and headed for the back of the club. Amber's blue jeans were tightly belted, making vast ripples of excess denim gather around her waist.

  "What gives?" I asked, watching them.

  "Probably a private party," Toby said, inhaling part of his new drink. "You know, bachelor parties and shit. They dance around, take off their clothes, sit on a few laps, and come back to the club a hundred bucks richer. Tiny lets them go when things are slow, like tonight."

  Tiny came out of the dressing room and looked angrily in the direction Amber had gone. Shaking his head, he went to the bar and talked to Nana, obviously asking her a question. Nana gave a negative, opening her hands to indicate her lack of information.

  "Nana does that, too?" Somehow I didn't like the idea.

  "Sure, champ. Who's Nana, anyway, the Virgin Mary? Believe it or not, I am going to make that girl happy with old Toby before we split tonight." He sounded full of cocaine confidence.

  "Give it a couple of days," I said.

  "It's a challenge. I'll do it if we have to stay here all night."

  Tiny came over from the bar and tapped Toby on the shoulder. He still looked upset. "I need a minute," he rumbled.

  "Tiny," Toby said, "I can't leave my friend alone in this environment. He might get corrupted."

  "That's his problem," Tiny said. "Now, Toby."

  "Watch my drink," Toby said to me, getting up to follow Tiny.

  I hit my own drink lightly. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night. The record ended, the girls left the stage, and Nana sat down next to me. "Give me a gulp," she said. "Some nights are rougher than others." I watched the fine working of her throat as she swallowed several times. "I think Tiny caught her," she said, lowering the glass. "Whoo, is he mad."

  "I don't think I'd get into a fight with Tiny," I said, "if I could borrow somebody else's body."

  "Borrow Toby's," she said absently.

  "So tell me about the parties."

  "What parties?" She lit another cigarette, beating me to the lighter. "Skip it. I got two hands, same as you."

  "The private parties, bachelor parties, whatever they are. Wherever Saffron and Amber went tonight."

  "There aren't any parties tonight," she said. "They're scheduled days in advance, and it's my turn."

  My stomach tightened. "Oh, Jesus," I said. "Oh, Jesus Christ. Hold on a minute, will you?"

  I got up, feeling more of the vodka than I had anticipated, and lurched toward the hallway. I opened the door, careened down the hall, and threw the bolts between me and the parking lot. Toby's Maserati was gone.

  I stood there like one of Faulkner's idiots, like Big John outside the dressing room, staring slackly at the empty space until I heard someone behind me. Nana put a hand on my arm.

  "The son of a bitch," she said. "He's taken both of them."

  Toby had engineered his climax.

  5 - Clothesline

  "I owe y'all a ride home," Nana said, plunking herself down next to me again. Half an hour had passed, she'd danced another three-song set, on my stage this time, and the club was still three-quarters empty. I was more bored by the sight of female flesh than I ever thought would have been possible. I don't think I could have gotten interested if one of the girls had unzipped her skin and stepped out of it.

  I felt like a counterfeit twenty. I'd been given the job of watchdogging Toby Vane, and I'd flunked out twice on the first day. I tried to blame the vodka and failed. Stillman's check sagged heavy in my pocket. It was probably the weight of all those zeros.

  "What time is it, anyway?" I said. "You can't just walk out of here, can you?"

  "I don't know why not," she said in her incongruous drawl. "If it were any slower, the place would start to decay. Anyway, Tiny better be nice to me. He knows Toby's my customer, and he set him up with Saffron and Amber." She tossed her head and ran a hand through the long tangles of her hair. "Besides," she said, "I'd like to see where you live. Never seen a detective's house before."

  "You won't tonight, either. All I need is a ride back to my car, over at Universal."

  "Well, that's just fine," she said. "I've never seen Universal, too."

  "I hope you enjoy parking lots."

  "I am
a connoisseur of parking lots. I grew up next to a parking lot. My lifelong ambition is to have a small house by the side of a parking lot and be a friend to cars."

  "You could plant Volkswagens in the garden."

  "Chromeflowers and hubcap bouquets. Exhaust pipe trees."

  "Maybe a bubbling stream of gasoline meandering through it all, with a few front seats placed strategically here and there for contemplation."

  "I prefer backseats," she said. "Don't you?"

  "Nana," I said, "or Cinnamon, or whatever I'm supposed to call you . . ."

  She gave her lower lip an experimental tug. "Nana's okay."

  "Is it your real name?"

  "I've got more names than I've got fingers. Nana's the name they gave me at the last place I danced. Hell, it's better than Cinnamon. Somebody calls me Cinnamon, I feel like an apple pie. And loosen up, okay? Nothing going to happen tonight. Between Saffron and Amber, if anyone gets beat up, it'll be Toby. Wouldn't that be nice?"

  "Terrific," I said. "I'm not supposed to let that happen, either."

  "Oh, foop. He's got the weekend to get over it. That boy has the constitution of a Mack truck. Just set here a while and I'll go rub some fat on Tiny, and then we'll hit the road. By the time you get home you can call Toby and tell him what a dickhead he is. He'll be home, I promise. He's too cheap to take those two anywhere else."

  "Cheap?" I said. "Gosh, he took you to McGinty's."

  "And that's the nicest place he ever took me. I'll bet you ten bucks that if you had dinner with him before you came here, you ate at McDonald's."

  "Drive-through," I said. "Do you want your ten now?"

  "Keep it. We didn't shake on it. You want to know the truth? I don't think Toby's got a nickel. He makes the earth, and he spends the solar system."

  "But not on women."

  "Oh, no. On Toby. You've seen his house."

  "And so have you."

  She looked me straight in the eye. "You already know that, and it's got nothing to do with you, so you don't have to say it. So far, I'm just somebody owes you a favor, right?"

  I felt myself smile at her. "Right," I said.

  "Then shut up and let me pay it back." She smiled back at me. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say 'shut up.' "

  "No problem," I said.

  "What I meant to say is stop acting like a drip."

  "That's better."

  "Well, you're not a drip, you're a nice guy, and Toby foxed you the first time out. Toby didn't fox people, he couldn't live, okay? Next time, he won't stand a chance."

  "Fine," I said. "You go talk to Tiny."

  Tiny was doing his Mount Everest imitation, looming whitely over the bar, his snow-capped peak rising in creased, pale-wrapped wrinkles of fat above his enormous waist, a lard avalanche waiting to happen. I wondered if his clothes were sewn from parachutes. Nana, whose entire outfit could have been cut from a single handkerchief with enough fabric left over to diaper a baby, went up to him languidly and put a slender hand on his arm. He glowered down at her and then, when he saw who she was, broke out into a paternal smile.

  I knocked off the rest of the vodka. I'd no sooner put the glass down than Pepper plunked a full one in front of me. "Compliments of the house," she said, "again." She tossed a sympathetic glance at the girl on the stage and said, "She can work her ass off, for all anyone cares. This has to be the deadest Friday night in history. Jesus, you'd think it was Tuesday."

  "Tuesday's usually bad?"

  "It's so bad I don't work Tuesdays. You haven't been in here before."

  "No." I handed her a five. "That's for you."

  "I didn't think you had." She dropped the five on her tray. "You don't look like most of these sad sacks, sitting around sucking up their orange juice whenever they can yank their tongues out of the straw. You like Nana, huh?"

  "How come all these free drinks? I gather that's not the usual policy."

  "And then some. Don't worry, there's a tab being kept somewhere. Toby told Tiny to keep you happy."

  "Happy?" I asked. "In here?"

  "Some folks manage. I guess it's all in what you expect out of life."

  Nana looked away from Tiny and toward us. She pursed her lips and then stuck out her tongue at Pepper.

  "I think I just got a cue," Pepper said. "See you around, kid. Nana doesn't work on Thursdays. I do. It's like, you know, she's not here on Thursdays, but I am."

  "Oh, no." I said. "I have my DAR meetings on Thursdays."

  "DAR?"

  "Daughters of the American Revolution. I'm one of the few male members."

  "Yeah, well, the male member is what it's all about," she said. "Thanks for the five."

  Over at the bar, Tiny reached down and benevolently patted Nana on her bare backside, and she headed toward us with a determined expression on her face. "Got to take care of all these customers," Pepper said hurriedly, edging away from me.

  Four chairs down she picked up a full ashtray and replaced it with a clean one from her tray.

  "So little Miss Jaws took a bite at you," Nana said. "One of these nights she's going to get a spike heel planted about four inches into her belly button."

  "She told me Toby was paying for these drinks."

  "Yeah, well, that's Toby. Do something shitty with one hand and make some lame apology with the other. Listen, no problem with Tiny. One of the girls who's supposed to be off tonight just had a fight with her boyfriend, and she called to ask if she could come in and work because she knows it ticks him off."

  "You're sure this is no trouble."

  She looked down at me with a perplexed expression. "Either you're very, very long on manners, or you're thick. I want to take you to your car. I will enjoy taking you to your car. Maybe I'll take you farther than your car. In fact, maybe I'll take you to dinner."

  "Good idea," I said. "I'm finally finished with Toby's burger. But I'm buying."

  "Bet your boots you are," Nana said. "What do you think I am, a feminist?"

  "He's still not home." I pulled out my chair and sat down. Some of the food had arrived while I was gone, and Nana was in it up to her elbows.

  "That's just good old Toby," she said happily around a mouthful of Thai noodles. "He never answers that phone. I counted fifty-one rings once, and he never even seemed to hear it. It would drive me crazy."

  "Why doesn't he answer it?"

  She helped herself to the pepper-and-garlic beef and spooned some white, sticky rice out of a carved wooden bowl. "Eat something," she said. "Don't worry your food cold, as my mama always used to say. Of course, she said it in Korean." She put a dollop of rice on my plate and pointed toward a sizzling iron platter of grilled prawns that I didn't remember ordering. "He doesn't answer it because it's always someone who wants something. They want to sell him dope or get dope from him. They want to invest his money or borrow some. They want him to do a part or help them get one." She worked on a prawn for a moment and then washed it down with some Singha beer. "He says that when you're a star, nobody ever just says Hello. They always say, Hello, listen, I've got this proposition."

  "I just want to know he's home, that's all. I want to know he's not on some baseball field, using Amber as the bat and Saffron as the ball." I drank some beer, too. On top of the vodka, I felt it immediately.

  "Maybe he's playing bird croquet," Nana said mushily. She swallowed. "Remember Alice in Wonderland? With the flamingos? I've always wanted to do that. I hate birds."

  "Why in the world would anyone hate birds?"

  "Because they're so stupid. Have you ever seen a flock of chickens? How they peck at each other? The one at the bottom of the pecking order is always bald from the wings back. Birds." She gave a mock shudder. "They give me the willies."

  "I've got two birds."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. Men should have big, fierce dogs, not teeny, stupid birds." She shrugged off the birds and wiped briefly at her mouth with her napkin. "I got to go to the toilet," she said. "I'll call him for you while I'm up. He
might answer this time."

  She sashayed across the room. There was a kind of liquid languor to her movement, as if she were walking underwater. All over the restaurant, Thai men looked up at her admiringly, and Thai women looked at Thai men sharply. The Thai men looked back down at their food. Thai women could be fierce.

  An hour earlier she'd driven me back to Universal and smiled at the guard until he'd let us in so I could get Alice. Then I'd followed her home to a little circle of cottage apartments surrounding a courtyard on Vista, a narrow street lined by one-story stucco houses just north of Sunset in Hollywood. It was the kind of street, left over from the twenties, where the dominant foliage is birds of paradise and decorative banana trees with their big, fringed, indolent, rubbery leaves. Very California. We'd left her car there and headed east on Sunset to Jitlada, my favorite Thai restaurant, to start in on the beer and noodles.

  The food was good, but I picked at it. I was worried, and beer was more to the point. Mine was almost empty, so I drained it and then grabbed Nana's, waving to the hurried waitress for two more. They were on the table before Nana got back.

  "Eleven-thirty," she said, consulting a big yellow plastic watch that encircled her right wrist. She was left-handed. "Still no answer." She hoisted her beer. "This is interesting," she said. "It got full while I was getting empty."

  "It's that kind of restaurant."

  "It's pretty fine. Nothing like this in Texas." She downed about six ounces of beer, directly from its brown bottle. Nana wasn't a glass girl.

  "How come you have this fund of information about chickens? You don't look like the farmer's daughter."

  "Toby told me. He grew up on a farm, you know."

  I felt myself get interested. "Toby told you about his childhood?"

  "He was pretty wasted. He usually doesn't talk at all."

  "I know. What did he say it was it like?"

  She stopped chewing and parked her food in one cheek, looking guarded. "Why do you want to know?"

  "Nana," I said, "even if I'm a screw-up, I'm still supposed to be looking after the boy. Maybe it would be a little easier if I knew something about him."

  "Stop knocking yourself. It's too pitiful. How'd a fragile soul like you get to be a detective, anyway?"