Timothy Hallinan - The Bone Polisher

“Well,” I said, seeing Max in an ocean of blood, seeing Max’s chopped right wrist.

“I pay back.” The man was crying openly now. “One year, pay everything back. Try pay interest, Mr. Grover say no, no interest. Want my sister make him one dinner, bulgogi. Mr. Grover love bulgogi. Mr. Grover love everybody.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Ayyyyyy,” he said, a prolonged Asian syllable of unadulterated grief. “You wait.” He shuffled toward the back of the shop. “We make bulgogi,” he said without looking back. “We make bulgogi enough for one year.” He went into a room at the back of the shop and slammed the door. A moment later I heard him blow his nose with a sound like a tuba tuning up, and he reemerged. He’d washed his face, and his hair was spiky and wet.

“Mr. Grover cleaning,” he said, gathering plastic-wrapped clothes from the track that snaked around the ceiling of the shop. He bundled them against his chest like he was afraid someone might snatch them from him. “And for Mr. Nordine, too.” He lowered them to the counter and wiped his nose.

My antenna went up. “When did Mr. Nordine bring these in?”

He looked at the tag, blinking rapidly to clear his eyes. “Two days. Mr. Grover bring.”

I looked down at the pile, mostly long, loose-fitting shirts on hangers, shirts like the one I’d seen Max wearing. “Nothing else?”

“ Eigo,” he said. “Yes. Always. Mr. Grover never empty pockets.”

“Most people don’t.” I hoped I sounded calm.

“Not same Mr. Grover.” He fished around below the counter and came up with a package wrapped in blue paper. “Key, money, papers, rings, everything.”

I picked up the blue package and began to grapple with the things on hangers. He put out a hand to stop me.

“I carry clothes,” he demanded fiercely.

“That’s not necessary.” I didn’t want him to get a look at my car.

“I do, I do.”

“I’m parked a block away,” I said, which was true. “You can’t leave the shop that long.”

“I close anyway,” he insisted. “Today I go drink for Mr. Grover. Make remember for Mr. Grover.”

“Never mind,” I said, scooping up the clothes. “Have a drink for me.”

“Remember for you, too.”

“That’s great,” I said. “How much do I owe you?”

“Go now,” he said, blinking again. “Say hello Mr. Nordine. Tell him sorry, very sorry. Tell him I make farewell service for Mr. Grover.”

“I will.”

“Good-bye.” He turned his back on me and started banging things around: a clothes press, a big trashcan full of hangers. I left.

In the car, I opened the blue package. It contained thirty-two well-laundered dollars-two tens, two fives, and two ones-a heavy turquoise ring with white tape wrapped around it to make it smaller, a credit card receipt for a restaurant called The Fig Tree, dated three days ago, and a piece of newsprint, tightly folded. When I had it open, I was looking at perhaps a quarter of a page from a tabloid, carefully scissored around a block of four ads.

It was evidently a specialty paper. The advertisements were for a gay dating service called First-Class Male, an “adult” telephone line that identified itself as the Long John Connection, a bookstore named A Different Slant, and a bar called The Zipper. The other side was taken up with part of a classified section, maybe forty short notices, mostly along the lines of hard jock seeks same. Max had paid no attention to the borders of the classifieds; the ones at the borders were cut into fragments. Written in the bottom margin on the classified side, in pencil, was a string of digits: 237/10/21/6:2.

I wrote down the numbers on a pad I keep on Alice’s dashboard and turned the page over again. There was no way I could check forty classifieds. It was only eleven-thirty, and The Fig Tree probably hadn’t opened yet. I drew and then let out a long breath and headed for The Zipper.

The Zipper-I’m sorry-was open.

I’d never been in a darker room. Heavy, wide strips of black plastic, like the ones used to keep warmth out of a supermarket meat locker, hung in the front door to hold October at bay. When they flapped shut behind me, I found myself completely blind. Since my eyes weren’t doing me any good anyway, I closed them.

When I reopened them, a world appeared. A bar, lighted by seven or eight flickering Christmas bulbs, was to my immediate right. The man standing behind it wore a motorcycle jacket and an LAPD cap, complete with badge. He regarded me as though he was afraid I’d come in to sell him a vacuum cleaner. “You’re new.”

“I was a few minutes ago,” I said, sliding my shoes over the floor in case there was a step up.

I sat down on a squeaky stool, and the man behind the bar studied my face while I glanced around at nothing in particular and tried not to look like someone whose face was being studied. “About thirty,” he finally announced, with the muted pride of someone pulling a playing card out of his ear. “I’m Stan.”

“It’s dark in here, Stan,” I said, “and you’re being nice.”

“Been years since I saw anybody in the light,” he said. “Complimentary bullshot?”

“Why not?” After all the water with Christopher, I would have drunk Mogen David from a workboot.

“Interesting clothes,” he said, setting the drink down in a glass that looked uncomfortably like an erect penis on a flat, circular base.

“I thought so when I bought them.”

“Thirty-four?” he asked, squinting at me.

“Thirty-seven.” The bullshot was vile and wonderful at the same time. The glass felt silly in my hand. Somebody laughed roughly behind me, and I turned to see two men entwined in a booth.

“You’re taking care of your skin,” the bartender said, pursuing his theme, “but you want to watch the bullshots.”

I tapped the glass with a forefinger. “I’m keeping my eye on this one.”

“You know,” the bartender said, watching me carefully, “there are other bars up the street.” He mopped the surface of the bar with a rag that might have been Veronica’s Veil two thousand years ago. “Straight bars, you know? If that’s where you’d rather be.”

“Is it as obvious as that?” In some unweeded corner of my soul, I was dismayed.

“About two blocks up. Like I said, this one’s on the house.”

Everyone was offering me freebies today. “But I like it here.”

“You’re being asked to leave,” a new voice said, and I turned to see one of the men in the booth standing up with evident hostile intent. He was bigger than Godzilla and he was wearing most of Argentina’s annual export of black leather. “And you’re being asked real nice. Stan’s a lot sweeter than I am.”

The situation was slipping away from me, a familiar sensation lately. “You know Max Grover?” I asked the giant.

He paused for a count of five. “Max?” he said. “Everybody knew Max.”

“What’s Max to you?” Stan the bartender asked.

“Christy hired me,” I said. “The cops want Christy, and I’m his, um, his guy to, um, keep them away from him.”

“Prove it.” That was Stan.

I swiveled on my squeaky stool. “Oh, sure. Prove it. There’s no way I can prove it. I mean, I’ve got a card, but-”

“Let’s see it.”

I decided not to finish the sentence, which had been something to the effect that anyone could print a card, and pried one of my detective cards out of my wallet. I handed it to Stan, and he held it under one of the Christmas lights, reading it during blinks. This was obviously an acquired skill.

“Simon Grist,” he read aloud. “Private investigator.”

“ Simeon,” I corrected him. “As in ‘Simeon.’”