Timothy Hallinan - The Bone Polisher

“I’m ordering you to disperse,” the deputy began nervously, and the wide man swung his bat.

It caught the deputy on the side of the neck, and he went over like a tree, hit the crowd, and bounced back again. The bat struck him beneath the rib cage this time, folding him in half. He emitted a strangled grunt and sank to the floor.

“Home run,” said one of the skinheads.

Three of them broke from the group and grabbed a nun, pulling her into the circle. Two of the three pinned the nun’s arms while the third seized the cloth over her head and yanked it down, revealing a crew cut with a bald spot at the back of the head. Suddenly the nun-Sister Victima, I recalled-was a struggling middle-aged man in an absurdly ostentatious habit.

I turned to get back into the room so I could signal the Seven Dwarfs and get Spurrier’s attention for his fallen deputy, but the crowd was too thick. I was pushed back into the circle, just in time to see one of the bashers, a pig-faced baldie with a Hitler mustache, bring a tire iron around with both hands against the nun’s left arm. I could hear the bone break ten feet away.

“You leave that nun alone,” said a familiar voice, and the tragic Supreme stepped out from the crowd, her sequins glistening in the light. “Y’all should be ashamed of yourself.”

The wide man tapped his bat against the side of his leg, major-league style, and said, “Well, well. A boogie. Double points.”

“Pretty little boogie, too,” said the man who had swung the tire iron. He stepped up to the Supreme and put his hand flat against her crotch. “Nothin’ here,” he said, playing to his friends. “You cut it off?”

“Maybe she’s a girl,” said another, a man fat enough to sustain a tribe of cannibals through a long winter. “You a girl, sweetie?”

“You got to check that yourself,” the Supreme said coyly. She hiked her dress and extended a long, shapely leg. The skinheads watched the dress inch higher. The Supreme wrapped carmine-tipped fingers around the arm of the man who had swung the tire iron and guided his free hand toward her crotch. At the last moment, she sidestepped, put a hand on his shoulder, and flipped him over her leg onto the floor.

“Motherfucker,” she said, raising a high-heeled foot.

The wide skinhead lifted his baseball bat, but he hadn’t gotten it any higher than his shoulder before three hundred pounds of geisha sailed into him, knocking him over the fallen deputy and into his friends. Someone shoved past me, and I saw Little Bo Peep going in low and planting a shoulder into the gut of the nearest of the intruders, who tried to back up, bumped into the man behind him, and got hoisted four feet from the floor and dropped on his back. Behind Bo Peep came her sheep, slashing at every shaved head in sight with the spike heels on his hands.

He landed one on the cheek of the pig-faced thug with the Hitler mustache, opening up a red slice from eye to chin. The wounded man stumbled back into his pals, who separated and let him fall and then converged on the attacking sheep.

They didn’t get a chance to do him much harm. A nearby cowboy raised his branding iron and imprinted the old Rocking-D brand on one shaven scalp, and after him came the deluge: A gaily dressed mob of Rockettes, vampires, Roman centurions, football players, cheerleaders, vestal virgins, Boy Scouts, killer bees, multiple Carol Channings, and Liza Minnelli clones charged the intruders with a roar. The last thing I saw, as I forced my way back through the crowd, was the three-hundred-pound geisha, kimono flying, planting both heels dead center in a plaid chest.

Hanks was calling for order from the stage, patting the air soothingly above the heads of the crowd with his free hand while Henry tried to stay in front of him. I waved for Henry’s attention and yelled for him to keep an eye on Christy, who was trying to climb down off the stage and get into the action. Henry reached down and scooped Christy up by the back of his shirt, like he was picking up a puppy, but Christy twisted around and knocked Henry’s hand away. Henry dropped him, and Christy, Zorro’s cape flying behind him, headed for the brawl.

Darryl Wilder hadn’t come in the front door; if he was here, that left the back. I passed Mickey Snell’s office, looked in long enough to see Mickey snoring on his desk, before I threw open the back door.

The door caught partway, and Batman looked in at me.

“Anybody come in back here?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Batman said. I pushed the door farther, struck an obstruction again, and looked down at a pair of bare feet. The screams behind me reached a crescendo.

“Simeon?” Batman asked.

“What is it?” I gestured at the feet. “Who’s that?”

“I’ve got a message for you,” Batman said, reaching into his utility belt and pulling out a small silver automatic. “From Max.”

The gun was aimed at my abdomen, where a bullet would do harm anywhere it hit.

“You put your mask on crooked, Darryl,” I said. “Your hair is showing.”

Wilder reflexively put up his empty hand, stopped it at chest level, and grinned at me. His teeth were white and regular. The grin, even beneath the mask, was friendly. “Darryl?” he said. The grin got wider. “You got me confused with someone else.”

“I doubt it. Mrs. McCarvey remembers you very vividly.”

“Mrs. McCarvey,” he said, shaking his head. “Old Auntie Sarah. She drinks, you know. Don’t you think it’s terrible when a woman can’t control her drinking? Such a waste of potential.”

“Did you kill him?” I asked, glancing down at Batman’s feet.

“Not enough time,” he said regretfully. “Those jug-heads just couldn’t wait to get inside. No finesse.”

“Pleasure postponed,” I said. “I guess you know all about that, Darryl.”

The gun made a tiny circle. “So you know my name. So what? Names are easy. And I don’t know much about pleasure of any kind. Take off your mask, and do it real slow.”

I lifted my mask to the top of my head. Someone came out of the women’s room behind me. I heard her sniffle as her heels clacked their way down the hallway, and then the sounds were swallowed up in a new burst of noise from the ballroom.

“Wondered what you looked like. That was cute, leaving through the window. Scared you, didn’t I?”

The door opened out. There was no way I could get my hands on it and pull it closed without giving him time to perforate my insides. “You’re crazy,” I said. “Crazy people scare me.”

“I am crazy,” he said calmly. “It’s smart of you to recognize that, Simeon. I hope you’ll keep it in mind as we negotiate our way through our next fifteen minutes together. Have you got a boyfriend?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, there’s someone for everyone in this world, so there’s certainly someone for you. Just be glad it isn’t me.”

Henry was up on the stage. Spurrier and his cops were probably in the middle of the fracas. The Seven Dwarfs were God only knew where. “Go away,” I said. “I’ll give you ten minutes to get clear.”

He made a kissing noise, two times, fast. “Is that a promise? Like ‘it won’t hurt’? Or ‘I won’t come in your mouth’?” Darryl Wilder laughed. Then he stopped, like someone turning off a tap. “Back up,” he said. “Just three paces. Stick your hands in the front of your pants and keep them there. Don’t do anything stupid, okay? You probably won’t believe this, but I’d really hate to hurt you.”

I did as I was told. The pressure of my hands against my stomach was oddly comforting, as though they might slow the bullet. Wilder put his free hand against the door and pulled, shoving Batman’s bare feet back across the asphalt. He stepped inside, forcing broad shoulders through the opening, and tugged the door closed. The gun was rocksteady.