The Bone Polisher sg-6

by Timothy Hallinan

  He dropped the pad to the table and ran both hands through his hair, pressing down as though he was trying to keep the top of his head from floating away. “It’s what I’m going to do. For Max, for everybody. You were dead right, you know. I haven’t done anything that was really mine. I’ve sort of floated along behind other people, like, do you know what slipstreaming is?”

  “Getting behind a truck or something,” I said, “using its drag to pull you along. It’s always sounded like a dangerous way to save gas.”

  “Well, that’s what I’ve been doing. Telling myself I didn’t have any gas, poor deprived little me, shortchanged at God’s filling station. Get into someone’s orbit, Max’s for example-I’m mixing metaphors-and use their velocity, their life force to sort of slip through the world. Trailing behind them like icebreakers.”

  “Reflecting their light,” I said, “as long as we’re mixing metaphors.”

  “Sit down,” he said, clearing papers from the couch. One of them was a stapled bundle on white bond covered from edge to edge with angular black handwriting. He laid it on the table and dropped the others to the floor with a thwack.

  “Here’s the idea,” he said, plopping back down as I sat. “We’ll institutionalize what Max did, but on a bigger scale. We’ll get kids off the street, gay, straight, I don’t care, and we’ll put them up in apartments and fill their refrigerators with food, on one condition: They go to school. It can be college or night school or vocational school, whatever they want, but they have to keep going. If they drop out once, we arrange counseling. If they drop out twice, they get a warning. Third time, boot ’em, use the money on someone else.”

  “This is your idea?” I asked, sipping Robert’s coffee.

  “Of course not,” he said. “It’s Max’s idea. Oh, I mean, the details are mine, and I thought of the name-do you like the name?” He looked away, suddenly uncertain.

  “I think it’s a great name.”

  “ Isn’t it?” He balled his hand into a fist and slugged me on the thigh, hard enough to leave a dent. “Old Max. All his life he did this, one kid at a time. Now we’re going to be able to open it up. Ten, fifteen at a time. Get them warm, get them clean, get them educated, get them jobs. Then they become our… our examples. They can come in and talk to kids who think they’re staring at a wall, they can show them there’s a ladder over the wall. Maybe, as they begin to make money, they’ll even kick some in, do you think they might?”

  “You’re giving back,” I said. “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “I am, aren’t I?” Christy’s color was high. “ Goddamn, I feel good.”

  “You look good, too.”

  His eyes went down to his shirt, and he straightened a button that was already straight. “So Alan says. Did you know that Alan’s been HIV positive for eight years? He says it makes him use every minute like it’s precious. Did you guys talk?”

  “About you? No.”

  “He sounds like you, I thought maybe-’Do something for somebody,’ he said, ‘and you’ll do something for yourself.’ You know, I could just kick myself black and blue. I had Max right there, right in front of me, all that time, and I never figured it out. Max was the best-looking, happiest old man in the world. It wasn’t anything magical, nothing he brought back from India or anything like that. He was just-he just knew why he was doing what he was doing. He knew it every minute of the day, and there I was, with not too much time left, just stumbling my way through it, furious half the time and fretting about poor little Christy and actually getting jealous whenever Max gave somebody a hand. What a wuss. All that time, I could have been helping him, I could have been-”

  “You could have been Mother Teresa, too,” I said. “You’re not. Most of us aren’t. Most of us are just like you. Or a lot worse.”

  “Well,” he said, taking one of my sugar cookies, “you’re not.”

  “Christy. I go to bed so I can get up. I get up so I can get tired enough to go to bed again. I drink too much so I can stop wondering what the hell I’m supposed to be doing between the times I’m in bed. You met me in detective mode, which is the only mode I’m even remotely effective in. If you followed me around in my private life, you’d be deeply disillusioned.”

  “You don’t know yourself,” he said.

  I changed the subject. “Is Max’s house worth enough to pay for all this?” I waved a hand over the table full of pads.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. The cookie snapped in half in his hand, sending up a sparkling geyser of sugar. “I haven’t told you, have I?”

  “You haven’t.”

  “And they didn’t? Of course they didn’t. You wouldn’t be asking if they had, would you, Max put money in the bank all the time he was in that show. When he quit, he had more than three hundred thousand dollars. He just left it there. From 1959 until now. It’s more than two and a half million, now, and it’s all mine. Add the three hundred fifty thousand dollars Alan says the house is worth, and even after taxes-’

  “Hold it. How do you know all this?”

  “The will,” he said, blinking. “We got the will. That’s why we were at the bank today.”

  “You went into the safe-deposit box.”

  “Sure. That’s what I’m telling you. Alan did his lawyer thing-”

  “Was anything else in it?”

  “Nothing that matters. A bequest to his sister and some little stuff, family pictures and some old contracts from the show. If there’d been anything important, anything that might have told you anything, I would have called you. In fact, I did call you, twice, but you weren’t-

  “No,” I said. “I wasn’t. May I see it?”

  “Sure.” He reached over and picked up the stapled document he’d taken from the couch. “Here.”

  I looked it over, feeling something heavy and hard growing in my gut. It was written with a calligraphy pen with bold, disciplined vertical strokes, semi-Spencerian, like an invitation to a White House dinner. The old-fashioned approach extended to the numbers; Max had crossed his sevens and supplied little horizontal bases for his ones to stand on.

  “Is this his handwriting?”

  “He was proud of it,” Christy said. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “What?” I hadn’t heard a word.

  “I said it’s beautiful.” He was looking at me as though I had a smear of jam on my face.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I said, getting up.

  “Where are you going? Are you okay?”

  “I’m peachy,” I said. “Keep working on the foundation, Christy. Max would have loved it.”

  He nodded and put out a hand for the will, still peering at me. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Too much coffee. I’ll see you tonight.” I stood there, irresolute, looking down at the will. “That’s really great.”

  On the way out, I saw Alan and Robert sitting on the living-room couch. Alan was icing his lip. I waved to them and went outside and stood on the doorstep, wondering where to go. For the first time, I didn’t think the Farm Boy would be at the wake.

  23 ~ Paragon

  It was, in a sense, my party, but I felt like an outsider, the stranger at the christening, the bee at the picnic. For one thing, I was virtually the only one there who was alone. Spurrier and I, the stags at the wake.

  The parking lot behind the Paragon Ballroom was half full even before the sun dropped below the low flat roofs to the west. The temperature had not dropped with it. At 6:50 it was almost ninety degrees, and the parking attendants were running themselves ragged as car after car disgorged its overheated cargo of perspiring nuns, super-macho cowboys, Latino vaqueros, conquistadors, geishas, languid vampires, underdressed Aztecs, Chinese Mandarins, African tribesmen, sailors, hanging victims, motorcycle cops, wizards, mermaids, mustachioed men wearing chiffon dresses, muscle boys in jock straps, and a man in a Marie Antoinette ball gown topped off with a headpiece modeled on the New York skyline. With twinkling lights.

  From my vantage po
int near the curb I had the impression that someone had skimmed the multicultural stew of Los Angeles and come up with everything that floated, the airiest and most buoyant bits, the postcard images that glitter like bits of mirror embedded in the dreary grouting of everyday life. In addition to folks in national costumes representing every major civilization since Abyssinia, we had three Carol Channings, two Judy Garlands, two Diana Rosses, two Carmen Mirandas, one postaccident Jayne Mansfield carrying her head under her arm, one Hispanic possessed by the soul of Maria Montez, an indeterminate number of Terminator clones, and a variety of superheros in skintight spandex in every color.

  Hanks’s flurry of calls, probably reinforced by the breathless story about Max in People — titled “A ‘Tarnished Star’ That Shone Bright”-had brought out the lights and the microphones of the press, and even a few rumpled paparazzi. The TV and radio crews worked the area around the door, blinding people with the bright lights called sun guns and sticking mikes into faces, while the paparazzi flocked to the arriving cars in the eternal hope that one of them contained Madonna or Richard Gere. So far they’d had to make do with a couple of second-tier television actors and one of Madonna’s rumored ex-girlfriends, and the television reporters were showing sportsmanlike signs of settling for a human-interest story.

  Our identification system, such as it was, was working smoothly. As the McGuire Sisters, say, or Robin Hood and his Merry Men pulled to the curb they were greeted by the parking attendants. The McGuires or whoever had to mill around on the sidewalk until they received their parking stubs, which gave our outside watchers time either to identify them by sight or to make a note of their costumes and add them to the list of those who were to be kept in view as much as possible. Some of these question marks were eliminated as they passed through the door, pausing to get their lottery ticket, or when they bellied up to the bar. Another watcher was stationed at the holy font-now bathed in a submarine blue light that did strange things to the colors of the orchids and pouring an endless cycle of H2 Blessed O from Lourdes.

  Hanks had been right. Virtually everyone made a stop at the font.

  Spurrier’s three young deputies were in uniform, drawing admiring glances. I’d bought three pairs of cheap mirrored shades at a Sav-On drugstore and insisted the cops put them on, partly for that over-the-top touch that turned their uniforms into costumes and partly to hide their eyes. Cops’ eyes are unmistakable. Spurrier was dressed in his invariable sport coat, topped off by a rubber Big Bad Wolf mask. My pleasure at his embarrassment was tempered by the fact that I was costumed as Donald Duck. Eleanor had surprised me with the outfit, claiming she’d chosen it because it was nonthreatening. When I put it on, though, she’d literally fallen onto the bed laughing. By way of getting even, I kept it on and showed her what I thought Donald probably did to Daisy between shows.

  I’d been discreet. I’d told only about ten people who the Big Bad Wolf was, and made each of them promise to tell no more than five others, and only people they knew well. I wanted Ike to have an evening he’d remember. He’d already been goosed twice. The gay community, I’d been assured, considered goosing outre, but an exception was being made in Ike Spurrier’s case.

  I’d just finished a tour of the perimeter when a chauffeured Rolls-Royce purred its way to the curb and Hanks himself got out, blinking in the glare of the television lights. In the midst of the leather cowboy outfits, plus a covey of sequined Supremes, he looked like a rock in a bowl of M amp;M’s. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and dark tie. Something bright gathered itself in the gloom inside the car behind him, and Henry emerged into the light wearing a boxy, shiny, blue silk shantung suit, black-rimmed spectacles, and a gray fright wig that streamed straight up, as though he were standing under a giant vacuum. He warranted a few flash bulbs.

  “You, I get,” I said to him. “Don King.”

  “I told him it was too obvious,” Hanks said, checking the crowd. He waved to a tiny Chinese woman holding a microphone, whom I recognized from one of my rare brushes with local TV news.

  “But what are you supposed to be? The undertaker?”

  He gave me the half-smile. “ Much more subtle than that.” He looked down at the suit with satisfaction. “I’m Mike Ovitz.” He made his heek heek noise, and the Chinese woman, dressed head to foot in a lipstick red that would have been eye-catching anywhere else, pushed her way through the crowd toward us.

  “He wish,” Henry said.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hanks,” the Chinese woman said to Hanks, licking her lip gloss with a pointed tongue.

  One of the Supremes elbowed her way up to Henry. “You’re what?” she asked, “Buckwheat?”

  “Ho,” Henry said, a man with a secret.

  The Supreme bridled. “I am not. I’m one of-”

  “As in ho, ho, ho,” Henry amended quickly. “Like a Santa laugh.”

  “Mr. Hanks,” said the Chinese woman.

  The Supreme stopped glaring. “That’s okay then. I’m the tragic Supreme, the one who killed herself?” She studied his wig. “Honey, you standin’ at attention all over. You must be glad to see me.”

  “What a tragic Supreme needs,” Henry said, leaning over and brushing her face with the flying hair, “is a literary advisor.”

  “Henry,” Hanks said sharply. “I’m not going to be abandoned at the dance, am I?”

  “Oh, help.” The Supreme took a step back. “You’re with Mr. Hanks? Honey, you could be bad for a girl’s career. Mr. Hanks doesn’t forget.”

  “Thirty years ago Mr. Hanks didn’t forget,” said Joel Farfman, coming through the door with Tonto in tow. Tonto was a beefy fifty, plain and graying, but the pride in Farfman’s eyes when he looked at him was almost heartbreaking. “These days, Mr. Hanks is lucky to remember to swallow after he chews.”

  “Are you here?” Hanks asked haughtily. “I knew we should have sent invitations.”

  “Mr. Hanks, can we have a few words?” asked the Chinese reporter. To her cameraman, she said, “Get over to the curb, Burt-I mean, Charlie-that way you’ll see the crowd behind me.” She waved him back and gave her hair a preparatory fluff.

  “I have to hand it to you, Ferris,” Farfman said as Charlie backed over the edge of the curb and fell into oncoming traffic. “Bernadette’s pissoir is really packing them in. If only they knew what they’re dabbing on their foreheads.”

  “Goddamn it,” the Chinese woman said bitterly as Charlie untangled his legs from the cables. “I knew I should have brought Burt.”

  “How we doing with the whozzat list?” Henry asked me.

  “Only about twenty so far. Almost enough to keep an eye on. The font helps. Most of them lift their masks when they splash themselves with miracle juice.”

  Charlie was up and unscathed, eye pressed to his view-finder, and the Chinese woman raised her microphone to permanently wet lips, assumed an expression of Deep Human Concern, and said, “This is Candy Toy in West Hollywood, where joy and sorrow go hand in hand tonight.”

  A battered pickup truck, going too fast, bumped a wheel over the curb and knocked Charlie about four feet sideways. We all jumped back, the Supremes squealed a chord, and Candy Toy said, “Shit.” A banner on the side of the truck read BLACK AND BLUE IS BEAUTIFUL. The passenger door opened and Little Bo Peep, pastorally resplendent in crinolines and shepherd’s hook, got out and curtsied to us. Beneath the blond wig, with its Mary Pickford curls, was the face of the man at the table from The Zipper.

  “Where’s your sheep at?” Henry asked.

  “Driving,” Bo Peep said in his sweet breeze of a voice. “If I don’t let him drive he won’t let me shear him.” He gave Charlie, who had skinned a knee, a look of concern.

  The leather giant came around the truck wearing a woman’s full-length sheepskin coat backward and black spike-heeled shoes on his hands and feet. When he reached Bo Peep he dropped to all fours and Bo Peep took hold of a leash dangling from the black patent-leather collar around the sheep’s neck. The sh
eep looked up at me and his brow creased in perplexity.

  “Thought you were straight,” the sheep said.

  It wasn’t worth explaining. “I was visited by three spirits,” I said.

  “Where’s Christy?” asked Bo Peep. “Oooo,” he squealed in mock alarm, catching sight of Spurrier, who’d just come through the door. “The Big Bad Wolf. You better stay away from my little sheep, Mr. Wolfman.”

  “Christy’s inside,” I said, brushing past Spurrier, who was immediately swallowed up by a squealing nimbus of Supremes. “I’ll go in with you.”

  Candy Toy grabbed Ferris Hanks by the arm, curled a baleful lip at Charlie, and said, “This is Candy Toy in West Hollywood, where joy and sorrow-’

  Henry joined me as I followed Bo Peep and her sheep into the ballroom. “Looks okay, huh?” he asked.

  “You couldn’t have done better,” I said. The ballroom was completely transformed. Pinlights picked out the bar and the stage, where a warm-up band called the Bottoms played slow country and western. The lead singer, a woman with a brush cut and penciled sideburns down her cheeks, was doing her third k. d. lang song in a row while people near the stage danced or just swayed back and forth, hugging. Costumed men had formed a circle around Bernadette’s font, waiting patiently to anoint themselves.

  Ferris’s handsome Roman slaves, decked out in short white tunics with a Greek key motif and wearing brass bands on their ankles and upper arms, wove through the crowd with trays of rumaki, petit fours, and other appetizers that had apparently been on ice since the fifties and that made me wonder how long it had been since Ferris had been to a party. The door to the kitchen swung open every few seconds as a newly laden tray was borne into the room. The ballroom’s primitive air conditioning was already showing signs of giving up for the evening, and the slaves were sweating with effort.

  “They in for quite a night,” Henry said. “You wouldn’t think it, looking at all these little-bitty waists, but this crowd is murder on free food.”

  “I’m going to check the back,” I said. Henry stayed with me as we passed the kitchen and went down the dark hallway to the exit. The door to Mickey Snell’s office was open, and he was seated at his desk, blowing cigar smoke and directing a stream of squeaky chatter at one of Ferris’s Roman slaves, who was spreading tan body makeup on one of the whitest legs I’d ever seen. Henry stopped halfway down the hall and took hold of a man coming out of the ladies’ room.