Timothy Hallinan: The Bone Polisher

He lifted a hand above the covers. “I said I’d pay for the wake before I learned anything about the tags.”

“Hell, Ferris, the wake was a chance to pay Darryl anyway, if he showed up. Or kill him. Have Henry kill him, I mean. You tried that once, didn’t you? Henry had orders to go into that apartment ahead of me. If he’d killed Wilder, would you have gone through with the wake? Or would you have begged off, saved a little money?”

“That’s a low blow.”

“I couldn’t aim low enough to hit you.”

The Yorkies were sensing Hanks’s agitation now, getting up and changing their positions on the bed. One of them jumped down, raised a leg, and started licking itself nervously.

“Stop that, Dolly,” Hanks commanded. “It’s disgusting.” He turned his neck, allowing me a view of his battered profile. His face was an unhealthy yellow, made more livid by the dark circles incised beneath his eyes. “And if I had done any of this feverish nonsense, why would I have done it? What did I have to gain? Have you taken it that far?”

Something moved behind me in the hallway. I kept my eyes on Hanks’s face. “Max left you. Max was the only person who ever left you. You tried to destroy him in the press when he quit the show. Then, after years without contact, you started trying to reach him. Maybe you had a fantasy of forgiving him. You have to have a lot of power over someone to forgive them. And he stiffed you. No response. No power, Ferris. After all those years of waiting, after all you’d done for him, after you condescended to fall in love with him, you couldn’t get Max Grover to pick up a telephone.”

“You think this was about power?” His position had to be uncomfortable, but he held it, the muscular neck rigid with effort.

“I think you’re about power, Ferris. I think it’s what keeps your heart beating. Orchestra conductors live to be older than anyone. They say it’s all that arm waving, but I think it’s the naked exercise of power.”

“Wait a minute.” His broad mouth stretched into a taut straight line and he closed his eyes, and moved beneath the blankets. The mouth opened just wide enough to emit a moan. Veins popped into relief beneath the yellowish skin, and then his upper lip lifted in a grimace, revealing his teeth, and I saw why he’d perfected the half-smile. His teeth were as false as George Washington’s. When he let his head fall back on the pillow, he was lying on his back. He opened his eyes and aimed them at me, as flat and opaque as buttons.

“Max sentenced me to death,” he said. His forehead and upper lip gleamed with sweat. Behind him, on the television screen, someone moved in the hallway outside the door. “After Max, there was nobody else for me. For years I lived with it. I had no choice, so it became one of the things I had to learn to live with. One of many. You have no idea, at your age, some of the things we have to live with.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“People,” he snapped. “Men and women. Every year you learn to live with something else, some failing or limitation, some sickness, some sin. They hang around your neck like chains, like weights. But you go on. If you’re strong, you go on.”

He tried to shift his position slightly, displaying the plastic teeth again, and his head twisted impatiently, trying to pull his weakened body with it. He gave up and looked at me out of the corners of the long eyes. “It’s bearable to be alone when you’re young,” he said. “When you’re old, it’s death. No one should be alone when he’s old. Max wouldn’t return my calls. I gave up. I’m old. I’m sick. I was ready to die. The chains were too heavy for me to carry any more. Then Darryl Wilder came through my gate.”

“Killing Max kept you alive?”

“You can never question what keeps someone alive. You’ll find that out sooner or later.”

“It would have been better if you’d died,” I said.

He gave me the familiar half smile. “As I’m sure you’ll allow, that’s a matter of perspective.”

“They probably won’t kill you for this,” I said. “Not at your age.”

“ Heek heek. Excuse me for laughing in your face, but with your face, you’re probably used to it. Heek heek. We’ve just been talking, that’s all. You’ve been entertaining a sick man. You told me a story and I improvised a coda for it. It was a good story, too, except for the letters. But you can’t prove anything, not anything at all.”

“No,” I said. “But he can.”

I stepped aside and Henry came through the door.

Hanks’s eyes widened briefly and then narrowed again. “Where have you been?”

“You sposed to say, ‘ Et tu, Brute,’ ” Henry said.

Hanks lifted his head an imperious two inches. “Get rid of this man.”

“No way, Ferris,” Henry said. “I cut a deal.”

“You ignorant jungle bunny,” Hanks said. “No one can prove-”

“Maybe, maybe not. If they couldn’t, I made a mistake. If they could, though, I got to think about old Henry.”

“What about me?” Hanks demanded. “What about loyalty?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Ferris,” Henry said, “but you don’t inspire much loyalty.”

“I’ll leave you two to chat,” I said.

“What Henry tells them isn’t worth anything,” Hanks said to me, raising his voice. “He’s trying to protect himself. No jury will believe him.”

“You could be right,” I said. “They’ll believe you, though. I’m wired, Ferris. Every word we said was recorded in a Sheriffs’ van parked in the street. They’ll be up any minute now. Oh, and let me give you a tip. The one with the awful sport coat is named Ike Spurrier. I wouldn’t get too cute with him. Bye, Henry.”

I passed Spurrier and three deputies in the living room. It seemed like a lot of force for one old man with two bullet holes in him. Spurrier brushed past me as though the room were too small for the two of us, which I suppose it was.

Sitting in the car, I lifted my arms to the steering wheel. They weighed eighty pounds apiece, and I let them drop to my lap. Getting old, I thought. Too old for the likes of Ferris Hanks, anyway.

Two more deputies came through the gate, toting a stretcher between them. I didn’t want to see any more. I started Alice and turned her around, and the two of us put-putted down Sunset Plaza to Sunset and headed toward the Pacific. Alice wasn’t young any more, either.

At the Pacific Coast Highway I sat at the light and looked out at the flat black expanse of the sea. When the person behind me hit his horn I turned right, to the north, toward home. Toward my house and my view and my life. Toward everything I’d built for myself, intentionally and accidentally. I’d built it the way some mollusks build their shells, picking up pieces of debris here and there on the seafloor, and fitting them together to create a suit of armor that’s too rigid to be crushed, too spiky to be swallowed, and virtually impossible to shed. Collector shells, they’re called. Some of them are beautiful.

At Topanga Canyon I pulled over to the side of the road and waited until the traffic had passed so I could make the U-turn that would take me south. Toward Eleanor. Maybe she’d let me in.