The Bone Polisher

by Timothy Hallinan

  “We’re not talking about—”

  The grin broadened. “Most men your age don’t blush so easily.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got a lot to blush about.”

  “A blush is just the higher nature showing through.”

  “Poking its big fat nose in,” I said.

  “The higher nature is always with you. All of you is always with you, the little dirty secret things and the big grand ones, too. Whatever snapshot you think you’re posing for at the moment, it’s all with you.”

  “Max,” I said, “if you want to keep all of you with you, stop picking up street kids.”

  “I’m safe,” he repeated.

  “Christopher doesn’t think so.”

  Max drained his unsweetened lemonade and gave me an encouraging look. “Maybe Christy knows more about what kind of danger I’m in than he told you.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d surprised me. “I considered that.”

  “A cynic like you, I’m sure you did.”

  “And I didn’t know then that he had a lifetime habit of ripping off older men.”

  “Well, now you do.”

  I replayed my conversation with Christopher Nordine. “I think he cares about you,” I said.

  “And so do I, about him. But a sociopath—you know about sociopaths?”

  “I’ve met a few.”

  He beamed at me. “Interesting, aren’t they? They can hold two completely conflicting views simultaneously. Like politicians. Or saints.”

  “The multiple murderer Emil Kemper,” I said. “Talking to the psychiatrists, he said, ‘When I meet a pretty girl, part of me is saying what an interesting girl. I’d really like to get to know her. And part of me is wondering how her head would look on a stick.’ ”

  “I don’t think Christy wants to see my head on a stick,” Max Grover said seriously.

  “Probably not. Emil Kemper was a special guy.”

  “But still, let’s say Christy wants to kill me. Let’s say part of him says, ‘Oh, I love Max. He’s been so good to me.’ And another part of him is saying, ‘That disgusting old man, there’s nothing but his rotting body between me and his money.’”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Of course not. But think about it. First he hires a detective to tell me that my life could be in danger, and then he kills me. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Like most prophecies, actually; prophecies are no big deal. Makes him look good, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Especially since he’d be the obvious suspect.”

  “The will,” Max Grover said. “He told you about the will?”

  “First thing.”

  “Very prompt of him. A bit Victorian, the will. Still, people have killed for less.”

  “But, as I said, you don’t believe it.”

  Grover rattled the ice cubes in his glass and pressed its sweating surface against his cheek. “Not at all.”

  “Then why bring it up?”

  He wiped the moisture from his cheek and dried his hand on his blue shirt and smiled at me again. “I’m just having fun,” he said. Then he reached out the bejeweled hand and tapped me on the knee. “I see a wedding in your future.”

  I fingered the ring in my pocket. “You certainly do,” I said.

  3 ~ Point-Blank Lohengrin

  Weddings seemed to be the theme of the day.

  I’d grabbed the latest batch of mail on my way down the driveway to the car, and I thumbed through it as I sat outside Max Grover’s house, waiting for a breath of relatively cool air to bumble into the car through the open windows. It came as no surprise that marriage was a profitable enterprise for what economists like to call service industries—travel agents, department stores, florists, insurance companies—but I’d never realized what a boon it was for paper manufacturers and four-color printers.

  YOU TIE THE KNOT, WE’LL GIVE THE BASH, prodded a group of professional merrymakers based in Santa Monica, couching their message in words of one syllable, thoughtfully printed in type big enough to read through cement. People of many ethnic backgrounds and several religions celebrated with decorous abandon in the accompanying color photographs. In one shot, the female guests were wearing saris: market research at work. YOUR MARRIAGE WILL LAST FOREVER, predicted another brochure optimistically; SHOULDN’T YOUR PHOTOS? This one was hawking a sort of stainless-steel album that would preserve the visual record of your nuptials against fire, flood, earthquake, and, by implication, atomic attack.

  A third, less romantically, urged me to give thought to a prenuptial agreement. “All of us at Schindler & Spink share your joy at having found love,” it began before getting down to business. “In California, the land of community property…” Beneath that, on a loftier plane, was a fanfold with an idealized drawing of a lamb on it, exhorting me to bring Christ into my new home: MAKE YOUR RELATIONSHIP COMPLETE.

  Beneath the brochures was what I’d been looking for, my one and only tie, fresh from the cleaner. The last time I’d seen it, it had looked like the entire Mafia had used it for a tablecloth. When I unwrapped it and put it on, sweating uselessly against the dry heat, I was pleased to note that most of the spaghetti stains had vanished. Blooming yellow in the rearview mirror and knotted in a single Windsor, it almost made me look respectable.

  Okay, I thought, starting the car, I’d done what I was asked. It had turned out exactly as I’d thought it would, and I was pleased that I hadn’t taken any of Nordine’s money. Max Grover’s house had been on my way to the real business of the day.

  Max had been a surprise, though. From Christy’s description, I’d expected a gay version of the pathetic sixty-five-year-old movie executives who rent themselves a new eighteen-year-old every week. Instead, Max had revealed himself to be much more complicated. Cheerful, confident, and manipulative, he lived more dangerously than his insurance company probably would have liked, but he seemed to do it because he actually believed he could help people. I had once believed the same thing.

  Both Max and the junk-mail hucksters had seen a wedding in my future, but I was certain none of them had seen anything even remotely resembling the wedding I was going to.

  I parked in a public lot downtown, near Parker Center, and hiked to the lobby, where I was issued the standard crack-and-peel badge, the kind that leaves stickum on your lapel. Since I could wash my face more easily than I could wash my lapel, I stuck the badge on my forehead. I thought it made me look festive.

  “You must be for the wedding,” said the weary-looking female cop at the desk.

  “I’m the best man,” I said proudly.

  “Yeah?” she asked. “In what group?” She made a note and waved me past. “Elevator to your left, down three stories, get off at P.”

  A pistol range was an odd place for a pair of cops to get married, but Al Hammond and Sonia de Anza were an odd pair of cops, and the LAPD pistol range was where they’d met. He was the cop I’d picked for a friend when I decided to ignore my various postgraduate degrees and become a private detective, and she was a distractingly beautiful Hispanic whom Al had discovered while his divorce from wife number one, Hazel, was cranking its way slowly through the courts, a marital version of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. Hazel had taken everything, including their child, Al, Jr., but Al had gotten Sonia. I’d met Al, Jr., the kind of child anti-abortion activists never mention, and I thought Hammond had gotten the better deal.

  The elevator doors opened onto a wave of noise and a sea of LAPD blue. Across the room was a tight huddle of Latinos in civilian clothes, whom I recognized as the bride’s family. They looked as abandoned as the Last Platoon, surrounded by Saracens. The sea parted before my brown suit as though the color might be contagious, and I saw the groom sweating aggressively in my direction.

  “Get over here,” he bellowed, waving a Gold’s Gym arm.

  I did as I was told, proud of not breaking into a laugh. Hammond, now a lieutenant of detectives, hadn’t been in uniform for years, and he obviously didn’t have
a tailor. The blues fit him like a sausage skin, just before it splits in the frying pan. Hammond was big in a way that turned defendants’ best friends into prosecution witnesses in moments, but I’d never realized that he had love handles. Now I saw that he had love handles so pronounced that they formed blue parentheses around his middle.

  He followed my gaze down to his midsection and turned even redder. “Uniform shrunk.”

  “Congratulations, Al,” I said, hugging him in the approved New Age fashion. He backed away from the hug, an Old Age cop, and I resisted the urge to kiss him on both cheeks. “Where’s the bride?”

  His red face creased into a topography of previously unsuspected fault lines. “In hiding, like some federal fugitive. You know, I’m not supposed to see what she’s—”

  “Al,” I said, “we both know what an LAPD uniform looks like.”

  The faults crinkled and threatened to collapse inward. “Do I know anything about women?”

  “This is a swell time to ask.”

  “You’re not doing so great, either. I think you guys have met.”

  He stepped aside to reveal my ex-girlfriend, Eleanor Chan, migraine-inducingly beautiful in cream-white silk and an antique necklace of garnets that I’d given her back when we were still giving things to one another. “Hike,” I blurted, something suddenly closing my throat. I cleared it and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi, yourself,” she said coolly. Eleanor was getting a lot of practice speaking coolly these days. “Nice to see the stripe in your tie again.”

  The hope that had momentarily taken flight at the sight of the garnets made a bumpy landing. “How’s Horace?” I asked. Horace was her brother and the father of the three-year-old twins she worshipped.

  “Who cares?” she said shortly. “How are you?”

  “I’m fike. Fine, I mean. You look, you look…”

  “I should,” she said. “It took long enough. How’s whatshername?”

  “Who?” I asked hopelessly. I actually couldn’t think of her name.

  “If you don’t know, why should I? And you’ve got something on your forehead.”

  “Take that fucking thing off,” Hammond contributed. “You look like a Chinese ghost.”

  “Lord, Al, how do you know about Chinese ghosts?” Eleanor asked as I peeled the badge away from my skin. It took a handful of hair with it.

  “Hong Kong movies,” he said. “Orlando loves them.” Orlando was the bride’s significantly precocious younger brother, winding up a four-year career at UCLA at the irritating age of eighteen.

  “Her name is Wayde,” I said, “and she’s nothing to worry about. I told you she’s just—”

  “Wayde?” Hammond demanded. “My best man’s turned faggot?”

  “Wayde is a girl,” Eleanor said, “and a very young girl, at that.”

  “Oh, well,” Hammond said relievedly, waving off statutory rape.

  “She’s seventeen,” I said to Eleanor, “and she just likes to use my deck to sunbathe.”

  “Geez,” Hammond said, one man to another, “can’t you think of anything better than—”

  “He’ll have to think of something that explains her being stark naked in his living room.” She turned to Al. “I’d really thought I was over being upset by things like this,” she said as though I weren’t present. “God knows I’ve had enough practice.”

  “I wasn’t even there,” I said.

  “Better and better,” Eleanor snapped, the garnets around her neck throwing off mad red glints. “You let this nude child into your house, and you’re not even there.”

  Max Grover came to mind. Christy’s phrase had been living like a fool. “I’ve known her since she was eight,” I said defensively. “She’s got time-retarded sixties parents who tell her it’s okay to walk around naked. Her real name is Freedom, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Freedom,” Eleanor said, rolling her eyes. “ ‘License’ would be more like it.”

  An invisible orchestra struck up the wedding march from Lohengrin.

  “Mother of God,” Hammond muttered, soaking wet. “Have you got the ring?”

  “The ring?” I asked, looking blank.

  He reached out a hand and grabbed my newly clean tie. “The ring,” he said feverishly.

  “Got it,” I croaked.

  “And you two,” he barked, releasing me as the cops divided into two groups to create an aisle, his cops and her cops. “No bullshit. I’m getting married here.”

  “So’s she,” Eleanor said, gesturing toward a double door at the far end of the pistol range. Hammond turned to look, and his mouth fell open.

  Here came the bride. Sonia de Anza was in uniform, but the sharply pressed blues were topped with a bridal veil of gossamer or tulle or something flimsy and ethereal that fell almost to her waist. Walking with her, in the position of the man who gives the bride away, was her brother, Orlando. Orlando had always been a good-looking kid, but in a tuxedo he was resplendent.

  “He’s beautiful,” Eleanor whispered.

  I couldn’t see Sonia’s face beneath the veil, but I could see Orlando’s. He didn’t look left or right as they marched forward: His eyes were fixed proudly on his sister.

  “Here’s the deal,” Hammond said hurriedly. “We walk toward the targets.” Twelve paper men with black circles drawn around their pulpy vitals dangled at one end of the room. “When I stop, you stop.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then you just stand there until Sergeant God calls for the ring.”

  A police chaplain in full uniform, plus collar, had emerged from between the targets. He stood there a bit nervously, as though awaiting a hail of bullets from the agnostics in the crowd.

  I scratched my head, looking puzzled. “And then?”

  “And then you give me the ring, asshole.” Hammond was redder than the bulb of a thermometer.

  “Al,” Eleanor said, “relax. If there’s anything Simeon knows about, it’s other people’s weddings.”

  “Yeah,” Al said, not listening. “Isn’t she gorgeous?” He couldn’t see her face through the veil any better than I could. Then he drew a long, profoundly shaky breath. “Let’s get it over with.”

  We followed Sonia and Orlando down the improvised aisle toward the targets. I suddenly realized I was nervous. Lohengrin was bouncing back and forth between the walls of the pistol range, and someone, probably Sonia’s mother, was weeping copiously—possibly over the choice of venue—while cops looked embarrassed. Cops see mayhem and mutilation every day of their lives, but the tender emotions embarrass them. Well, they embarrass me, too.

  I could feel Eleanor walking behind me, feel the pull of her emotions. Eleanor has a vast capacity for emotion. She’s capable of entertaining eight or nine simultaneously, wearing every single one of them on her sleeve. The last time I’d glanced at her, I’d seen anticipation, happiness, regret, and anger, at least two of which were directed at me. Since I was walking with Al, I couldn’t turn to face her, but I reached my left hand behind me, and after a moment she brushed my palm with warm fingertips and then gave my wrist a fierce little pinch. The woman was an emotional mosaic. Something inside me uncoiled and relaxed, leaving me free to focus on the ceremony.

  The chaplain, a wispy-looking man in his fifties with damaged skin that suggested a teenage addiction to chocolate, gave Sonia a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. The smile revealed about six teeth up top, each separated by a gap he could have put his little finger through, teeth that seemed to have fought for territorial imperative, the kind of teeth I usually associate with British National Health.

  “Sonia and Al have written their own ceremony,” he said, and something like a muted groan went up from the cops massed behind me. “But before we proceed, I’d like to say a few words.”

  “Only a few?” somebody whispered, and Hammond jerked his head around with a glare that could have knocked down a building.

  “When I was told that Sonia and Al wanted to be married her
e, I have to admit that it threw me for a loop. A big loop. What do love and weapons have in common? But then I thought about it. Sonia and Al trained here to gain the skills that keep them alive in the field. Alive on the job. What could be more important to each of them than that their partner should remain among the well and, um, the living, able to give the love and support each deserves? They have chosen this job, our job, for society’s sake, a job that will take them out of the home they will create together and into the streets of madness. For each of them there will be many long and frightening nights and days when they can only hope that their partner’s survival skills will prove adequate to the danger of the hour. The bride and groom whose love we have come here to celebrate are veterans. Veterans who know how hard it can be to survive. Now they have, together, a new reason to live. Here is where they trained to live.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” a cop said softly from behind us.

  “And then I also thought about marksmanship. Cupid’s weapon was a bow and arrow. If Cupid were a modern-day mythical figure, his weapon would probably be a service revolver. The metaphor would remain the same: Love must take accurate aim. It must not only strike the heart, it must strike the right heart. Love wrongly given, wrongly received, has no place at this altar.”

  Hammond shuffled, probably thinking about Hazel.

  “And so I say to Sonia and Al, paraphrasing the pop songwriter Elvis Costello, ‘May your aim be true.’ ”

  Sonia sniffled, and I thought, Elvis Costello?

  “Sonia,” the chaplain said, “Do you have something to say?”

  “I have come—” she began, in little more than a breath.

  “Can you please speak up?” the chaplain asked. “I’m sure everybody here would like to hear you.”

  “I have come,” Sonia repeated more boldly, “to give to one man something no other man can ever have. I know it is precious, but it can only be given freely, and only once. There are people here today who love me, and whom I love, and they know that the love I give today to Al can only make me love them more.”

  The woman I guessed was Mrs. de Anza gave out a teary little whoop, and Orlando put a finger to his eye.