Timothy Hallinan - The Bone Polisher

“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.

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.