Skin Deep

by Timothy Hallinan

  "You can't," I said, getting as close to them as I could. "You're a bullet short, fatso."

  The word registered. "Then you're first," he said, pointing the gun at me.

  Behind him Big John pulled himself slowly to a sitting position.

  "Well, that's a problem, isn't it?" I said. "Who's first? It really ought to be old Toby here. He's the one you're after. He's the one who killed Amber."

  Tiny's eyes zigzagged sluggishly between me and Toby. He was dripping perspiration, and his face was green. Then the gun started to move. Toby crawled backward frantically.

  John was on all fours now. He shook his head to clear it.

  "On the other hand," I said, "maybe you ought to kill the one who's most likely to go for you after you shoot Toby. That's got to be me, you disgusting, porno-eating, obese piece of shit, you fat, ridiculous dope. Why'd you think that Amber or anybody could love you? She laughed at you, lard-ass. Who wouldn't? You tub, you perverted gob of spit masquerading as a human being, you . . ."

  The gun was aimed directly between my eyes.

  My voice failed.

  "She loved me," Tiny said in a hoarse whisper. Then John's arm encircled his neck, just as it had encircled mine, and all hell broke loose.

  Tiny's head snapped back, and the gun went off. The bullet sang past my right ear and thunked into the wall behind me. Toby and Dolly were trying to scramble to their feet, and Tiny was hunching his back, heaving his body to throw John off.

  John was just too big. Tiny's face turned red and then purple. His gun hand sagged. Toby was already up. He reached out and took the gun from Tiny's dangling hand.

  He pointed it at Tiny. "Simeon," he said, every inch the television hero, "is Nana okay?"

  "She's alive," I said. "Give me the gun, Toby."

  He pointed it at me. Tiny was emitting small wet gasps as John's arm tightened. His eyes had disappeared completely.

  "In a minute," Toby said. "Let go of him, John."

  John did as he was told. Moving like a zombie, he took two or three steps back and then sat down. He was covered in blood from shoulders to waist.

  Tiny raised both hands to his throat and sank to his knees. He managed somehow to get his eyes open and looked up at Toby.

  "You're right," Toby said with his biggest, broadest grin. "She did love you." Then he pulled the trigger.

  A red hibiscus blossomed in the dead-white center of Tiny's chest. He looked down at it as though astonished, lifted his gaze to Toby, and fell.

  Toby looked at him, fascinated. The grin had frozen on his face, and his nostrils flared as if he were sniffing the moment. He exhaled slowly, closing his eyes, like a man who had just put down something heavy. Then he turned to me. He held out the gun. "Now you can have it," he said.

  "No, Toby," I said. "It's your trophy. You keep it. You've earned it. Hasn't he, Dolly?"

  Toby glanced over at Dolly, and I took one step and blindsided him backhand with both fists, fingers laced together. The shock of the impact traveled all the way up my arms to my shoulders. Toby went down, and I put a foot on his throat. He made a strangled sound and tried to bring the pistol up at me.

  "This is where we began," I said. "The gun's empty, by the way." Then I stepped back and kicked him in the stomach, twice.

  "That's for Amber and Saffron," I said. He curled into a ball, arms clutched over his midsection. I lifted my right leg and kicked his face. If his skull hadn't been attached to his neck, it would have been a field goal in any football stadium on earth. His head snapped back, an ear squeaking on the hardwood floor.

  "That's for Nana," I said. "You want to take one, Dolly?"

  Looking bewildered, Dolly extended her hands, palm up, and shook her head.

  "Well," I said, "duty is duty. Someone's got to do it." I kicked Toby in the face again. "That's probably for Tiny. And this one"—I kicked him one more time—"this one is for Jack, you asshole. For sending him in first." I started to walk away, toward the telephone, but something red and hot came over me. "One more for me," I said in a voice I didn't even recognize, turning back.

  "No, Simeon," Dolly squealed. "You'll kill him!"

  I looked down at him. Red bubbled in the corners of his mouth, but he was still conscious. "How I wish," I said. "Oh, how I wish. This protozoan, this virus. How I wish it were that easy to kill him."

  Dolly was looking at me as if I were the Loch Ness monster come ashore. "Right," I said, fighting for control. "The telephone." I picked it up and started to dial.

  "If you want to finish him while I'm busy, I won't tell," I said. Dolly knelt down beside Toby and put her hand under his head to cradle it. Hero worship dies hard.

  "Too bad we're out of bullets," I said.

  My first call was for an ambulance for Nana and John. Tiny didn't need an ambulance. The second call was to the police.

  "I'm calling from Toby Vane's house in Encinal Canyon," I said, hating every syllable. "I want to report a shooting. Please come quickly."

  After we'd finished with the details, I called Dixie. His voice was thick with sleep. "Get up," I said. "You know where Toby lives?"

  "Sure," Dixie said. "What's going on?"

  "Toby just shot the guy who's been killing these women," I said. "We've got at least one dead body. Get your ass over here and make your boy into a hero."

  I dropped the phone onto the floor and went into the kitchen to hold Nana until they came.

  22 -The Last Session

  "That's an extra five thousand," Norman Stillman said with a generous smile, dropping a check onto his immaculate desk and looking as jaunty as ever. His blazer looked like the winning entry in the national dry cleaner's playoffs.

  "What's it for?" I asked. Dixie hovered in the background, looking vaguely embarrassed.

  "A little bonus. Value given for value received. Toby's price, I mean High Velocity's price, went up yesterday, thanks largely to you. And they bought it without a murmur, didn't they, Dixie?"

  "Everybody wants the hero's show," Dixie said, sounding as though he were choking on his heart.

  I picked up the check and looked at it. Then I dropped it back onto the desk.

  "I'll need more," I said. "Eight thousand more."

  Stillman's smile got a lot more muscular. "What does that mean?"

  "It means the girl's hospital bills are almost eight thousand. And that's just for emergency care."

  Stillman gave me an elaborate shrug. "Oh, well," he said, "you can't expect me . . ."

  I looked at Dixie. "I can't?" I said.

  Dixie met Stillman's gaze. "Under the circumstances," he said. He still had an obstruction in his throat.

  Stillman pursed his lips. It made him look like a little old lady. "Seems pretty stiff," he said.

  Neither Dixie nor I said anything, although Dixie swallowed twice.

  "Still," Stillman said unconvincingly, "if it's the right thing to do." Then, slowly enough to preserve his dignity, he slid open the drawer in front of him and pulled out his gold Mont Blanc pen and a checkbook. He filled in a check and tore it loose. "I do this out of the goodness of my heart, not because of any threat," he said. Placing a hand protectively over the check, he pulled a sheet of typewritten paper out of the drawer and slid it over the polished wood toward me. "Just sign this," he said. "It's only a formality."

  "What kind of formality?"

  "Nothing," he and Dixie said at the same time. Stillman gave Dixie a glare, and Dixie subsided. Whatever resentment had flared inside him seemed to have burned itself out, probably smothered by the damp mass of his paycheck. Stillman provided an unnecessary coup de grace in the form of a barely audible sniff.

  "As I was saying," he continued. "It's nothing. It's like a contract, I suppose. Nothing you wouldn't do anyway. You're a man of honor, we all know that. You wouldn't violate it even if you didn't sign it." He gave me the smile again.

  I gave it back. "Then why sign it?" I said.

  "For peace of mind."

  "Wh
ose?"

  "Everyone's. It's just a promise that you won't tell anyone what really happened." He spread his polished hands in a gesture of pure reason.

  "For how long?"

  "Forever," he said in a firmer tone. "For always."

  "Or what?" I'd stopped smiling.

  Stillman leaned forward and crossed his hands. "Or it gets sent to the cops," he said. "It's . . ." He leaned back ruminatively. "It's an account of the facts in the case. What really happened in the last week or so. Nothing that isn't true. I'm sure you won't object to signing it."

  "If it became public," I said, "I'd lose my license."

  "Faster than instant coffee dissolves," Stillman agreed. "Still . . ." He picked up the check and gave it a little wave.

  I pulled the document closer to me and looked at it. "It's all true?" I said.

  He nodded.

  "And all I have to do is sign it and I get the thirteen thousand?"

  Stillman put the check down again and said, "Yes."

  "Dixie," I said, "have you read this?"

  "Sure," he said. "Sure I have. I wrote it, with some help from the lawyers."

  "Everything in it is true? I mean, man to man, it's all accurate?"

  "Truer than the history books," Stillman said.

  I looked at the piece of paper again. The language was direct enough. The facts seemed straight. I put out a hand.

  After a momentary hesitation, Stillman handed me the Mont Blanc.

  "I'm just a country boy," I said. "I sure hope I'm doing the right thing."

  I snapped the Mont Blanc in two. Stillman gasped, and ink flooded over my hands and the desk.

  "Gosh, I'm sorry," I said. I picked up the contract and wiped my hands with it. Then I used it to wipe up the pool of ink on the desk, crumpled the blackened paper into a ball, and flipped it at Stillman. It caught him right on his embroidered anchor and bounced into his lap. He looked at me, his face dark and still.

  "I will take the checks," I said, reaching over and picking them up. "And don't bother telling me I'll never work in this town again. I might have to laugh, and I'm not sure I've got the energy."

  I went to the door. "Don't worry," I said. "You won't hear anything about this unless you do something truly stupid, like stopping payment. You poor dumb soul, do you really think I'd talk about this? Don't you know I'm ashamed of myself for having had anything to do with it? Or with you, for that matter?"

  He just glared at me. Dixie had his fists in his pockets again.

  "Jesus," I said. "Producers."

  I had to let more than a week go by before I could finish. Wounds take time to heal, and at least some of them had to heal by the time I could wrap things up.

  The eight thousand went to the hospital. It was short, so that took care of another thousand of the bonus. I paid Kareema and Alma a thousand for their part in what I had planned, although they offered to do it for free.

  A hundred and fifty went to rent a van with a ramp. It had to have a ramp. Twenty-five hundred took the form of a donation, in Toby's name, to a West Hollywood institution. Toby would get the tax break, not I, but he was welcome to it.

  That left me with three hundred and fifty bucks from my bonus on Sunday morning when I stepped into ABC Discount Premiums on Beverly Boulevard. When I came out I had less than two hundred left, but I also had a paper bag in my hand.

  It was a beautiful day.

  I took the freeway through the Valley to avoid the beach traffic and then drove through Malibu Canyon to the coast. It was still early, but the PCH was full of cars carrying surfers and sun-crazy high school kids to the sea. Here and there was a family in a station wagon packed to the roof with coolers, towels, inflatable rafts, meals big enough for Henry the Eighth and all six of his wives. In the twentieth century families take as much to go from the Valley to the beach as their great-great-grandparents carried on the long trek across the plains toward paradise.

  Toby's red Maserati was in the driveway, parked next to a car I'd never seen before. Next to that was the van. As I climbed out of Alice and trekked toward the house, the van's occupants waved at me. I lifted the bag above my head and waved it back at them. Tinny applause sounded from inside.

  Heading for the house, I heard the van's ramp drop into position.

  The front door was open, as it was supposed to be. I took everything out of the bag and went into the living room.

  Toby had acquired a new piece of furniture. It was made of bright and shiny aluminum, and it still looked like a cross between a sawhorse and a medieval torture rack. Toby was strapped to it, as naked as the day he was born.

  "Simeon!" he shouted, trying to twist free. Then he saw the expression on my face, and he stopped shouting.

  "He can't get loose," Alma lisped. She was wearing a red corset with black stockings and a Victorian garter belt. Above the neck she looked like a Sunday-school teacher. "Look. His wrists and ankles are cuffed, and there's this cute little loop around his neck that tightens if he tries to turn his head. Not to mention the silk cord around his teensie little wienie. Here, watch."

  She reached down and tickled Toby's ribs. Toby arched and twisted his neck, and then his face went red and he had to stop.

  "Kootchy kootchy koo," Alma said sweetly.

  "That's enough, Alma," Kareema said, coming out of the kitchen, a glass of water in her hand. "Don't wear him out." She was wearing an outfit that could be best described as Nazi nightmare nurse: low and strapless, cut high above the thighs, all in black leather with a cute little black leather nurse's cap to match. "You're late," she said in her usual commanding voice. She handed the water to Alma.

  "Sunday drivers," I said. I was exactly four minutes late. I got down on my knees and studied Toby. He avoided my eyes. "How's the face, Bobby?"

  He started at the name and looked up at me briefly and then down at the floor. Most of the swelling had gone down. His lower lip was puffy—again—and one eye was partly closed, but the girls had put makeup over the worst of the bruises, and there was no question that it was Toby's face.

  "I'll get you," he said in a low voice.

  "No, Bobby, old boy. We'll get you. And then you'll never get anybody again."

  His eyes dropped to the thing I had put on the floor, and his skin went ashen. "No," he said. "You can't."

  "Can't I? Do something to him, ladies. But turn your faces away."

  Alma and Kareema did something to him. I suppose to some people it would have looked like fun. I waited until the girls' faces were averted and Toby's tongue was sticking out, and then I took a Polaroid. I waited for it to develop.

  "Honest to God, Bobby," I said to pass the minute. "Boy, it's hard for me to get used to calling you Bobby. Well, whatever your name is, how gullible can you be? Why would Alma run away from you for months and then call you up all hot and bothered? Didn't you suspect anything! Who said, 'Vanity, thy name is Woman'? How wrong can you be?"

  I looked at the picture. "Very good, for a beginner. Look, Alma. There's old Toby, and there are all the little Tobys on the magazines. The big Toby looks okay, doesn't he? Good enough for the National Enquirer, at any rate."

  "Good enough for the cover of Time, if you ask me," Alma said in her little-girl voice.

  "You flatter me," I said. I heard a sound from the hallway. "Ah," I said. "The rest of our guests. Say hello, Toby."

  He couldn't help but look. Then he closed his eyes and let his head droop.

  Janie Gordon came in first. Her first glance was an equal mixture of surprise and concern, but then she looked at me and started to laugh. She was still laughing when Betsi, the woman from the fan magazines, came in. She was followed by Chantra Hartsfield. She hadn't let me invite Rebecca.

  Toby opened his eyes just in time to see Dixie. He started to brighten, and then he saw what Dixie was pushing, a wheelchair. Nana was in it.

  "Don't just mill around," I said. "That's the trouble with parties, that moment of awkwardness at the beginning. This is Alma
in the red corset and Kareema in the whatever it is.. ."`

  "It's a dress," Kareema said. "Hi, how are you all?"

  "And you already know our host. You'll understand if he doesn't get up to greet you."

  "He's all tied up at the moment," Alma said, "ho, ho, ho."

  I went to Nana and kissed her on the largest piece of available skin. "You're beautiful," I said.

  Most of her face was bandaged, and her right arm and leg were in casts.

  "I look like the Invisible Man," she said. "But I look better than Toby."

  "And that's the point," I said, raising my voice. "Toby. This is a working party. We're going to shoot Toby Vane's new publicity pictures. Alma and Kareema, who have their own reasons to want to be here, have volunteered to help out. This is our set, and we've already taken care of makeup. Costume, as you can see, is going to be no problem."

  Betsi came and stood behind me. "You're going to shoot from here?" she said critically.

  "I thought so."

  "Well, you want to catch the pictures on the wall, but you ought to move him toward the corner. No reason to get the kitchen door."

  "Can we move him?" I asked.

  "No sweat," Kareema said, glancing at Betsi. "Nice to know we've got a pro here." She popped four little levers at the bottom of the rack, and wheels snapped out.

  "Hi-tech torture," Alma said, giggling. The two of them wheeled Toby into the corner. Toby's eyes had remained shut since he'd seen Dixie. They were still shut.

  "Here." I handed the camera to Betsi. "No reason to trust to beginner's luck any farther than we have to. Just don't catch Alma's and Kareema's faces."

  "You'll never see them." Chewing her lower lip, she looked down at Toby. "What about his face? I mean, he has to look up or you'll never recognize him."

  "Honey," Kareema said, "believe me, we can make him look up. We can make him sing the 'Marseillaise,' even if he doesn't know the French."

  "Trust them," I said. I clapped my hands twice for attention.

  "Okay, this shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes, and then we'll all go to lunch at Gladstone's. As I've said, this is a photo shoot, and first I want to explain to our star just how important it is."