Timothy Hallinan - Skin Deep

"Honey," he said, "I'm tired of these clothes."

Janie whispered something that sounded like "Shit."

Betsi swallowed. "You look great, Toby. You always look so nice."

"Not as nice as when you help. Come on, Betsi. You know how much I like your taste." He made it sound truly disgusting.

"I can't," Betsi said. "Please, Toby, not today."

"It's either that or no more watch the birdie. And with this puffiness, I may have to kill the whole session."

Betsi glanced around jerkily, as if she hoped no one was listening. She looked drawn and five years older. She picked up her cigarettes and pulled one out. Her hand was shaking.

"Now come on, Betsi," Toby said. "Even you can only suck on one thing at a time." He put his arm around her and led her to the trailer. The unlit cigarette dangled forgotten from her fingers. Bert managed to look very busy. At the door to the trailer, Toby waved at the crowd and said, "Be right back, folks." They went in, and Big John took up a stance in front of the door, his arms crossed like an Arabian genie who wanted to keep his hands near his scimitar.

"Congratulations, hero," Janie said.

My mouth tasted foul. "What happens now?"

"You want my best guess?"

"I suppose so."

"He makes her go down on him. He pulls her hair a few times to keep him interested. Then he makes her swallow it."

"There's nothing she can do?"

"Sure, she can get her pictures. No pictures, no job."

"This is what you meant when you said he had something to look forward to today?" I asked Dixie.

Dixie didn't look at me. "She's been around a while," he muttered.

"There are worse things than no job," I said to Janie.

"Simeon, she's been working for the fannies for seven years. Where do you go from there, CBS News? It's not like it was really journalism."

"Point taken," I said. "Screw it anyway."

I headed toward the door of the trailer. Big John shifted on the balls of his feet as I approached and uncrossed his arms. He looked vaguely alarmed.

"John," I said, "beat it."

"You," John said. A lot of people seemed to be calling me "you." "You beat it."

"In a minute." I moved to the left and then sidestepped around him to the right, hearing him grunt as he grabbed at where I'd been. My hand was on the doorknob when his arm went around my throat. He hoisted me like an empty nylon suitcase, bent my spine nearly double, and dumped me over his hip. I landed in the dirt at his feet.

"Get out of the way, John," I said, flat on my back. My words didn't seem as menacing as I'd meant them to be.

"Hnuh," he said. It could have been a laugh. He leaned down over me. I grabbed a bunch of pebbles and dirt and threw them at him and heard them ricochet against the trailer. John grabbed my belt buckle and tugged me up like a sack of rice, and Dixie's pale hand landed on his shoulder.

"Stop it," Dixie hissed at both of us. There wasn't much I could stop, but John dropped me back into the dirt and resumed his guardianship of the door. "Get up," Dixie said to me. "For Christ's sake, there are people over there. This isn't what Norman is paying you to do."

"It isn't?" I got up and dusted my trousers. My heart was drumming wildly in my throat. "Then what am I supposed to be doing, Dixie?"

"Not getting into the papers," Dixie said, looking wildly to right and left as though he expected the Associated Press to emerge from the bushes, cameras flashing. "There could be leaks here. She'll be okay, honest."

I looked at John, who was glaring at me, and then back at Dixie. "You want to change places with her?" I asked him. I started back toward John, who gave me a low-wattage grin.

"Do you want me to ask her?" Dixie demanded.

"Yeah, Dixie," I said, trying without much success to grin back at John. "Let's see you ask her."

Dixie gave me a schoolteacher's upraised index finger. "Stay here," he said. He advanced toward the door. "John," he said in an entirely different tone, "it's just me. I'm going to knock on the door. It'll be okay, John."

John looked from Dixie to me and then stepped aside as Dixie climbed the step and knocked. "Betsi," he said.

I used the moment to bend down and pick up some more pebbles and dirt, lobbing them at the trailer. If nothing else, I figured, the noise might scramble Toby's hormones. Dixie turned to glare at me, and the door opened from inside. Betsi peered out, her hair awry.

"Betsi," Dixie said as though he were talking to the mentally disadvantaged, "do you want to come out?"

She looked at him and then through him, and I took a step, and she looked at me and through me. She made a sound like a strangled garden hose and closed the door.

"Okay?" Dixie asked me.

"Dixie," I said, craning past John, "how do you sleep?" Three large men from the crew had materialized next to John.

Dixie's features got very pinched, squeezed from both sides by a vise I couldn't see. "Welcome to Hollywood," he said. He stepped around John and walked past me, and I glanced at John and his new allies and calculated my chances twice. Both times they came up nil.

I looked at Big John and at the closed door of the trailer that said TOBY VANE on it. "Jesus Christ," I said to Janie. "Has he always been like this?"

"Not exactly," Janie said. "Most stars start out nice and then get awful. But not our Toby. He started out awful and then got monstrous."

"But what's going to happen? He can't go on like this."

"Sure he can," she said. "He's a star, remember?" Someone called her, and she walked back to the set. I stood there watching the trailer. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

Janie was right about Toby. When, ten minutes later, he emerged from the trailer with a flushed and shaken-looking Betsi behind him, he was a different man. He didn't meet anyone's eyes, and he never glanced in my direction. After he finished giving Betsi her pictures, he went over to the crowd to sign autographs. He honored the middle-aged woman who had approached him earlier. He posed for a picture, kissing a little girl of three or four in her mother's arms. For the rest of the day, until the light faded and the shoot ended, he was a model of docility.

As they packed up the equipment, Toby went back into his trailer. I checked the set for Dixie but couldn't find him. His Mercedes was gone. I was walking back, looking for Janie, when Toby came out of the trailer.

"Champ," he said. He sounded tentative, like a kid trying to make friends.

"I quit, Toby."

He stood silent for a moment. "Please don't," he finally said.

"Betsi said please," I said. "Remember?"

He drew a hand across his eyes and then ran it through his hair. He looked forty. "Help me," he said.

"You don't need a detective, Toby. You need a doctor."

"I've had doctors. I've had doctors up the wazoo. Stay with me, Simeon, just for the next week or two. I promise, I'll be good. You can help me to be good. I'll even see another shrink if you want."

I thought about Betsi. I thought about Nana. I thought about Norman Stillman's check in my pocket. I thought about the rent, for about the sixth time that week, and I gave up.

"Oh, Christ, Toby," I said. "If I stick around, what are you going to do?"

"You mean tonight?"

"That'll do for a start."

He threw his arm around my shoulders, as though everything were settled at last. "Let's go to the Spice Rack," he said. "Let's go be nice to Nana."

My knees were up somewhere around my chin, and my heart was competing with a hamburger for space in my throat. Toby drove even worse than Dixie said he did.

The roof of the Maserati was about four feet above road level. The console looked like a transplant from the space shuttle. Toby used both hands and both feet constantly just to keep us on the road, which, unfortunately for my peace of mind, was Laurel Canyon.