Timothy Hallinan - Skin Deep

As I put her down she moaned.

I touched her throat. The echoes of another shot slammed back and forth between floor and walls. Four. A pulse was beating there, slow and erratic, but a pulse, goddammit, a pulse.

It was no time for sentiment. I headed for the living room.

And got there just in time to see Dolly land on the floor near the door to the beach, next to Toby. Tiny stood a few feet away, heaving with the effort, pointing the gun at them.

"Stay where you are, on the floor," he said. He turned his head toward me. "You. Get over there. Move wrong and I'll kill you. I'll kill all of you."

"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.

"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."