The Bone Polisher sg-6

by Timothy Hallinan

  “None of that,” he said. “We got real women here.”

  “I am a real woman,” the man said. He was dressed as Barbra Streisand, complete with three pounds of putty on his nose. “Real enough for you, any day. Who in the world is doing your hair?” Barbra made a peace offering of air kisses and swayed her way back to the ballroom while Henry fluffed up his wig.

  I pushed the rear door open and came face to face with Batman. “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “No problem,” Batman said. “Nobody in the lot but the parking attendants. Okay if I smoke a joint?”

  “Have you got marijuana in your utility belt?” Henry demanded, still working on his hair.

  “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve got in my utility belt,” Batman said, patting a complicated system of pouches surrounding his washboard stomach. “I don’t know how I’m going to get along without it. Maybe I’ll keep it when I return the costume.”

  “No grass,” Henry said sternly. “No poppers, no coke, no nothing. I’ll bring you some white wine, but that’s it.”

  “Nobody talks to Batman like that,” Batman said. “Who are you supposed to be?”

  “Never mind,” Henry snapped. “Whoever I am, I can tell Batman to go climb a pole, and if Batman don’t get his ass up that pole fast enough, then I give ol Batman a ticket home. You know what that means?”

  “No money?” ventured Batman.

  “You got it, Bat.”

  “Batman knows the value of a dollar,” Batman said.

  “One wine, coming up,” Henry said. “You got your walkie-talkie?”

  “In my utility-”

  “Well, take it out of your utility belt, Bruce, how you gonna get to it if you need it? Geez,” he said to me. “I always hated Batman. Even when I was a little kid. All you had to do was look at Robin, you knew the dude was in deep trouble.”

  “Get personal, why don’t you,” Batman said sullenly.

  “I ain’t even started,” Henry said. “And don’t trip on your cape.”

  “Testing, one, two-” someone squeaked over the P.A. system in the ballroom, and I went back up the hall, past Mickey Snell’s office, empty now, and the rest rooms, to see what was going on.

  The Bottoms were congregated at the back of the stage, unplugging their instruments and calling to friends in the crowd. Mickey Snell tapped a muscular thumb on the microphone, making a noise like someone doing a cannonball into a vat of tapioca. Someone yelled, “It’s on, Mickey. Do something about the air.”

  “Testing,” Mickey Snell said implacably. “This little piggy went to market-”

  Two of the Seven Dwarfs, complete with little peaked cap and granny glasses, were patrolling the catwalks, looking down on the crowd. One of them made a thumbs-up sign at me, conveniently pointing me out to anyone who might be wondering who was in charge, and I looked behind me, pretending to think the signal was intended for somebody else. Henry was right there.

  “Okay, Doc,” he called. “You and Grumpy trade off with Dopey and Sleepy in half an hour.”

  The sun came out. Ferris, basking in a circle of light with Candy Toy, and with Charlie the cameraman limping in tow, walked past me, pausing to give a glad hand and an encouraging word to people who had no idea who he was. Toy held her microphone inches from his lips, catching every historic syllable for the benefit of the guys who would edit it out back at the station.

  “When do the eulogies start?” Ferris asked me. I turned my back to Charlie’s camera and brought both hands up behind me with one finger extended in an ancient insult. Charlie’s lights died.

  “You know damn well when they start,” I said. “And keep me off camera. Where are the dog tags?”

  “Right here,” he said. He reached into his jacket and withdrew a long thin red velvet case, like something a bracelet might come in.

  “Remember words?” I asked, pushing the case back into the recesses of his jacket. “Use them.”

  “Aren’t we touchy,” Hanks said. “Opening-night jitters,” he explained to Candy Toy.

  Candy Toy jumped a foot and let out a muffled little scream, and I saw the Big Bad Wolf glaring over her shoulder at me. “He pinched me,” Candy Toy said to Charlie.

  “Be glad he didn’t eat you up,” I said. “What is it, Wolfie?”

  “In the back,” Spurrier said. “Got something for you.” The Big Bad Wolf’s mask had lipstick all over it, and someone had stuffed his jacket pockets with flowers. Spurrier’s eyes were narrow with rage.

  “Don’t take this wolf stuff too literally,” I told him as we fought our way through the crowd. “Just remember that most of these girls aren’t.”

  He stopped and turned, giving me a glimpse of the indignant little eyes through the slits in the rubber mask. “Getting chummy?” His fingers dug through my Donald Duck sailor shirt and found a nerve in my upper arm, and a barbed-wire worm crawled up my neck, in between layers of skin. “Don’t,” he said. “We’re not buddies.”

  “Ike,” I said, “how long do you usually go without someone telling you you’re an asshole?”

  He compressed the nerve again, and I reached out and grabbed his face through the mask, squeezing as hard as I could. The rubber mask pulled at the skin on his face, and he stepped back quickly, letting go of my arm. Tallulah Bankhead was staring at us, so I pinched the black bulbous nose of the mask and said, “Honk, honk.” Tallulah laughed her famous laugh, honking back at us, and I pushed in front of Spurrier and led him to Mickey Snell’s office.

  “Alone at last.” I closed the door, shutting out some seventies rock from the Silverlake Flyers, who had taken the microphone away from Snell by force. Spurrier pulled off the mask, showing me four angry welts on his cheeks.

  “When this is over,” he said, “You’re going to want to move out of Topanga.”

  “You’re not that big a deal,” I said. “I know half the deputies up there, and they just want to do their jobs. You’re an aberration, Ike, and good cops know it.”

  He planted his feet wide and brought up a hand, and for a moment I thought he was going to take a swing at me. Instead, the hand went inside his coat. “Just so you know. We’re a long way from finished.”

  I sat in Mickey Snell’s copious chair and looked down at the front of my Donald Duck suit. “Be still, my quacking heart.”

  “This is the guy,” he said, pulling out a folded sheet of paper. He opened it and dropped it onto the desk, just out of reach. I leaned over and picked it up, removing my mask for a better view.

  The kid looked no more than eighteen. He had shoulder-length blond hair, parted carelessly in the middle, and even in the fax I could see he was good-looking. Except for the length of his hair, he had the face of the soda jerk the girls mooned over in small towns in the fifties. The nose was straight and well-formed, the broad mouth was strong. The eyes were wide, friendly, and guileless.

  “Darryl Wilder,” Spurrier said. “Twenty-three. Ex- of Seattle. Living no one knows where for the last couple of years. McCarvey was his uncle.”

  So that, at least, was true. “And his victim?”

  “The drunk little missus sure thinks so. Something funny there, though. She didn’t want to talk about it, not even a little bit. Did a clam on me when I asked her why she thought he’d done it.”

  “Something sexual,” I said.

  Spurrier’s mouth went wide and straight in distaste. “Usually is.”

  “Well,” I said, “thanks for the information.”

  He picked up the paper and refolded it. “Don’t get all creamy. I figure you’re in charge of the Odd Squad, you oughta have it. This guy walks in here and walks out again, we’re all going to look like dog food.”

  “There were no stats with the photo,” I pointed out.

  Spurrier pulled it out again and looked at it as though he hoped I was wrong. Then he went through the folding routine again. “He’s a big kid. Six one or something, maybe two hundred. Lifts weights.”

  “Like eighty
percent of the people out there,” I said.

  “We’re looking for the hair,” he said. “Real pale blond. Longer than in the picture.”

  I looked up at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Fag bar,” he said, looking satisfied. “Grover took him into a place called The Zipper. Couple of hinks saw him.”

  “They should really put you into community relations.”

  He gave me the wet smile. “Two years, I’m outta here. Got a little place up near Eureka, right on the river. No more hinks. Just fish.”

  I looked interested. “The Russian River?”

  The smile faded. “Whatta you know about the Russian River?”

  “Big gay destination,” I lied. “The Raging Rafters, a club here in West Hollywood. They’re building a chain of bed-and-breakfasts up there. Named after actors. They’ve already got the Rock Hudson and the Rudolf Valentino open.”

  He literally paled. “You’re full of-

  “Next up is the Liberace,” I said. “Right near Eureka.”

  “I’m going to kill somebody,” he said.

  I got off the desk and opened the door. “Stayin’ Alive” pulsated down the hallway, sung in falsetto harmony. “Put on your mask, Ike,” I said. “We wouldn’t want anyone falling in love with you out there.”

  He yanked it over his head and shouldered past me. “I hope there’s trouble tonight,” he said.

  “There won’t be,” I said, thinking about the writing on Max’s will.

  The trouble started at eight.

  24 ~ Paragon (2)

  Considering the way the evening ended, it’s probably not surprising that my memories of the last hour or so are fragmented, hard-edged, and discontinuous, like an image reflected in pieces of a broken mirror.

  Spurrier and I circling each other and the partygoers, Donald Duck and the Big Bad Wolf, solo and conspicuous, each of us waiting without much hope for the arrival of the third outsider, searching the crowd for the gleam of blond hair above broad shoulders. Seeing it too often, crossing that one, and then that one, off the list. Trying to keep them straight as the groups formed and broke up and reformed in the arching space of the Paragon.

  A tap on the shoulder. Daisy wanted a dance with Donald. Daisy was big enough to wear Donald around her neck. Donald declined.

  Mickey Snell, hijacking the eulogies. At 7:50 he’d been planted center stage for more than fifteen minutes, clutching the mike in his left hand like a man who planned to take it with him into the next world and nattering on about Max, while people on the floor danced without music and chatted with each other.

  Beyond Snell, at the back of the stage and at the edge of the light, stood Ferris Hanks in his dour black agent’s suit. During Mickey’s eternal speech he had gradually developed a bag of tics: fiddling with his tie, smoothing his shirt over his chest, tugging at the bottom edges of his coat, combing his hair forward with his fingers, licking his lips. Once in a while, apparently at random, he gave his odd half-smile. He was, I realized, nervous, the host who sees his long-awaited party held in thrall by a bore.

  Doc and Grumpy were back on the catwalk. They’d switched shifts with Dopey and Sleepy, and returned to duty, and now they were lounging against the rail and looking as bored as dwarfs can look. There was no one in the Paragon who hadn’t been stricken from the whozzat list. Spurrier had paused at the bar, where he was putting a significant dent in the white wine supply and using both elbows to support himself.

  One of Spurrier’s deputies was over in the corner, chatting with Tallulah Bankhead. Tallulah reached out a handkerchief and mopped perspiration from the deputy’s brow.

  “…to thee, blithe spirit,” Mickey Snell was saying in a high, plummy Old Vic voice, sort of John Gielgud on helium.

  I was at Ferris’s font, avoiding Daisy, when a wad of rumaki struck Mickey Snell in the forehead. He blinked heavily, wrapped his other hand around the microphone-enveloping it completely-dropped to one knee, and began to sing “Feelings.” It occurred to me that Mickey Snell was very drunk.

  Ferris Hanks had had enough. He stepped forward, waving his hands for attention, and caught a stuffed grape leaf on his lapel. It made an interesting smear, like a snail’s track, down the front of his jacket.

  Suddenly Henry was on the stage. His wig had wilted. He interposed himself between the crowd and Ferris, lifted a fist, and dropped it casually onto the top of Mickey Snell’s head. Mickey Snell looked up at Henry with mild curiosity and then fell forward, on top of the microphone. There was a razz of static, followed by a snap like the world’s biggest rubber band giving way, and then silence. In the hum that followed, I started to work the room again.

  Kitchen, full of guys in French maid’s uniforms. Bathrooms, empty for once. Batman at the back door, working on another glass of wine. Me, pushing through the crowd, carrying an odd weight of despair, waiting for Darryl Wilder. The whole thing feeling dismayingly familiar, dismayingly old. Donald Duck on a quest. Not very brave and faintly ridiculous. Poking my way again into other people’s lives, lives that looked-from the outside, at least-fuller and more complete than my own.

  People kissing in the corner. The Supremes working on their Motown moves.

  Someone staring at me. Spurrier’s eyes, mad little lights through the holes in the wolf mask. I suddenly realized that Snell wasn’t the only drunk at the party.

  Back in the main room, Henry was still on the stage. “We’re running late,” he said, all business. He stepped aside and tucked the mike under his arm while he conferred with Ferris. I heard a bellow from the bar and saw Spurrier straighten galvanically, throwing off a glittering arc of white wine, and clutch his rear end. Candy Toy came toward me through the crowd, looking grimly satisfied.

  The front door was still manned, although the soldiers on duty had their backs to the street and their eyes on the stage. On the sidewalk, I breathed in the cooling air and watched the traffic. People drove by on the errands that take up so much of life, unaware of Max, ignoring the fact that someone could walk into their homes with a carpet cutter and, with one short upward swipe, turn all their plans, all their errands, into a bad joke.

  The parking lot was full of empty cars. It was nice to be where nothing was happening.

  “…these testimonials would have embarrassed Max,” Ferris Hanks was saying when I went back in. “He would have wanted us to have a good time. I’m going to suggest that you all write out your farewells, and I’ll buy a special supplement in Nite Line so my old friend Joel Farfman can print them, along with the pictures and stories from this party. A special supplement for Max. How does that sound?”

  “Expensive,” called his old friend Joel Farfman, who had an arm thrown around Tonto’s shoulders.

  “ Heek,” Hanks said perfunctorily, gazing at Joel as though he were a bad oyster. “That Joel. Now, before we raffle off the evening’s door prize, I’d like to turn the microphone over to Christopher Nordine, who has an announcement to make.”

  Zorro climbed the steps to the stage. Christopher looked great, slender and dashing in his black clothing. He was wearing a pencil-thin mustache beneath his mask, and it emphasized the strong curve of his jaw. I sagged against my post at Bernadette’s font and searched the room for Spurrier. Not at the bar, which was something.

  Blonde hair across the room.

  “Most of you know me,” Christy began. Then he stopped and looked up at the lights as though he’d lost his place. After the time it took him to draw three deep breaths he hooked his thumb under the black mask and pushed it up onto his forehead so the crowd could see his face. “You probably wonder what Max saw in me. Well, now that I’ve had a little time without him, a little time to think about it, so do I.”

  I worked my way toward the bright head of hair.

  Noise from the door, a sudden loud voice.

  “You’re a good guy, Christy,” someone called. There was a smattering of applause.

  “I’ve been a sorry excuse for a human being,
” he said. “I’ve been a taker and a user.”

  “And a whiner,” someone suggested, but not harshly, and Christy grinned and nodded.

  The blonde hair belonged to Marilyn Monroe, in her Seven Year Itch white dress. I’d checked her three times already.

  “And you know what?” Christy was visibly gaining confidence. “That’s what Max saw in me. Room for improvement. Miles of room for improvement. Enough potential for improvement, considering where I started from, to make it worth his time. Max wanted to fix everybody’s life.”

  A sudden ripple of movement from the direction of the street, jostling its way into the center of the room, and someone shouted again. I went up on tiptoe but couldn’t see anything.

  “Max left some money behind,” Christy said, squinting through the lights toward the door. “More money than-well, enough money to fix a lot of lives. And I’ve figured out a way to use it that will keep Max’s memory-

  A folding chair sailed over the heads of the crowd and smashed onto the floor of the stage. Christy jumped back at the same time that I jumped forward, toward the door.

  I couldn’t get there. People had turned their backs to the stage, trying to see what was happening, and they were being pushed backward into the room. I shoved my way through until I came up behind a kimono-clad geisha who must have weighed three hundred pounds.

  “Sorry,” I said. I put my hands on the small of his/her back and pushed, using her as an icebreaker, and we plowed through six or eight densely populated yards before the crowd suddenly gave way and she pitched forward, barely remaining upright, and collided with a very wide young man wearing a plaid shirt and oil-stained blue jeans who grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her around, and brutally threw her back into the crowd.