Skin Deep sg-3 Page 5

  "Two weeks with Toby Vane," I said.

  "Say ten days," Stillman said.

  "Say two thousand a day," I said.

  Stillman looked at Cohen. Cohen looked at Stillman. "Okay," Stillman said. "But you'd better keep his ass out of trouble."

  "I'll wrap it in linen all the way up to the back of his neck," I said. "But I want to make one thing clear: if he gets out of hand, I'm going to deck him."

  "Don't hit him in the face," Stillman said.

  There was a moment of silence while we all listened to the echo. "I'll take the first five days on account," I said.

  "Ten thousand dollars." Stillman pulled a checkbook from one desk drawer and a gold Mont Blanc fountain pen from another. The pen scratched expensively. He blew on the check for a moment and then held it out across the desk. He didn't get up.

  I did.

  "Dixie will take you to the set," he said. Now that he'd bought me, he wasn't quite so polite.

  Ten thousand dollars richer, I followed Dixie to the door. I paused at the threshold.

  "Tell me one thing," I said. "Why me?"

  Stillman looked back up at me. "Don't you know, Mr. Grist? Toby likes you."

  3

  Panty Hose Oaks

  "It's a simple matter of crisis control," Dixie Cohen said, maneuvering the big Mercedes through suicidal freeway traffic. The air conditioner roared away. "Problem is, there's no time between crises."

  "Must be hard on the digestion." We were out of the Cahuenga Pass, heading for the Valley.

  "I wouldn't know. Last thing I digested was my backbone. If I still had it, I'd have clobbered Toby long ago."

  I looked over at him, figuring the odds on his decking Toby. His most conspicuous muscle was his Adam's apple. The hands on the leather-covered wheel were long, supple, yellowish, and fine-knuckled, a violinist's hands. It wasn't hard to imagine the sound of his fingers splintering on contact with Toby's jaw. He had a musician's profile, too. He looked like a guest conductor for a minor orchestra specializing in tragic opera.

  "He's in his mid-thirties or something," I said, trying vainly to turn the air conditioner vent away from me. "It's a little late for corporal punishment. Why should you have clobbered him?" I settled for rolling down my sleeves.

  "That's personal," Dixie said. It was as though he'd tugged a zipper closed between the front seats. He tightened his mouth like someone working up to a spit.

  The Ventura Freeway hurtled by, bordered by laurels, oleanders, and other poisonous shrubbery. The Oracle at Delphi had chewed laurel, and look where it got her. I was sighing, preparatory to changing subjects, when Dixie swerved the wheel sharply, dexterously cutting off a brown Japanese something in the lane to the left. We were awarded by an outraged beep.

  "Crazy woman," Dixie said, although he'd been at fault. "If Toby were with us, he'd be screaming back to her with his head stuck out the window, even if he were driving. Especially if he were driving."

  "Give me fifty words on Toby." It seemed like a safe subject.

  "Which fifty?"

  "Well, I already know his favorite color."

  Dixie sucked in his cheeks, looking more than ever like a man on the verge of a satisfying spit. "Toby's tough," he said. "He likes being a star, and he might even hold on to it. He works. Knows his lines, shows up on time, gets the job done. How many words is that?"

  "You've got a few left."

  "He's smarter than you think-correction-smarter than I think. I found that out right away. He's got charm down cold. He's very, very good at being the little boy who can't figure out what he's done wrong. No matter what it is. He can look so sweet. And way down in the middle of it all, under the grin and the skin, he's so sick that Freud would have gotten a job as a bricklayer. Getting to know him is like opening a big, bright Christmas package and finding a box full of snakes."

  "So," I said, "who was he before he was Toby?"

  "Officially," Dixie said, "he was born in South Dakota, raised on a farm, and encouraged by a kindly, white-haired old drama teacher who loaned him the money to come to Hollywood. When he got here he took a job in a gas station and paid her back before he went on his first audition."

  "Her? Hard to believe, Toby repaying a her."

  "Yeah. That's one of the reasons I don't believe the story."

  "What's the other reason?"

  "I wrote it." The Laurel Canyon off ramp flashed by. The sun was out, and it was beginning to look like July again. "It's junk, all the way," Dixie volunteered, focused on the road. "I'd bet that Toby had a bad time as a kid. He's got a wincer's eyes. He may have grown up on a farm, but there weren't any sun-dappled fields."

  "Where are we going, Dixie?" I didn't know the Valley very well.

  "Location. West of Van Nuys and south of Ventura. High rent all the way. It's so genteel the trees wear panty hose."

  "And you're setting Toby loose in it?"

  He sucked in his cheeks again, punching the accelerator as though he had a grudge against it. "He's got something to look forward to today."

  "Meaning?"

  He went through the preliminaries for another spit and then swallowed. "You'll see."

  The car was plusher than some of the rooms I'd slept in, and a lot colder. "So," I said, "Norman pays pretty good, does he?"

  "What I go through," Dixie said, swinging the wheel to the right, "it better. What's the matter, you short a few zeros?"

  "What do you go through, Dixie?"

  "You should live to be a hundred," Dixie said, "and not find out."

  We got off at Van Nuys Boulevard, a street that runs down the center of the Valley, as straight as the filling in a tamale. Dixie accelerated left through a red light and coasted across Ventura, heading south. The neighborhood did a quick-change act. Behind us were stucco storefronts and asphalt alleys, and in front of us were old oak trees, rolling lawns, dusty patches of ice plant, and ranch-style houses that rambled expensively through twelve to fourteen rooms.

  I put my hand against the window, and it felt hot. We were surrounded by money, but the money hadn't been able to intimidate the heat.

  "I hate locations," Dixie said, using up a little of the venom he'd been suppressing. "Hatteras, right?" He swung right, not waiting for an answer. "Wherever we are," he muttered, "here we are."

  An oak tree ancient enough to command its own complement of Druids divided the road in front of us. Tacked to it like a G-string on a dowager was a cardboard sign reading HIGH VELOCITY. Beyond the tree was a scattering of equipment-trailers, moving vans, arc lights, and cameras- and a knot of people who seemed to be focused on one of the larger lawns. "People," Dixie said bitterly, braking. "Airplanes, weather. The light changes by two f-stops every thirty seconds. Noise. Crickets, for Christ's sake. Any of them can screw you up, force you to spend even more time with the actors. Give me a sound stage any day."

  The wheels squealed against the curb, and we stopped. I threw open the door and climbed out, hot air slapping me in the chest. Dixie climbed out on his side, his face screwed up into a martyr's scowl. "The torture chamber," he said, indicating a van, larger than any of the others, that had MR. VANE painted on its side.

  As we approached the set, the confusion began to resolve itself. Lights and big reflectors were angled to illuminate an area of brick walkway that led from the front door of a big wooden house down to the street. Bushes in tubs had been placed on either side of it to make the scene more lush. Two people I'd never seen before, a middle-aged woman and a gigantic male, came out of the open door, strolled down the walk, and paused there, doing nothing. Lights were focused on a black circle of paper hanging from the giant's neck. I saw Toby standing on the sidelines, arms crossed, looking sour and critical.

  "Stand-ins," Dixie said. "They're lighting the shot."

  "Who's Paul Bunyan standing in for?"

  "Toby."

  "That's the best you can do? He's twice Toby's height."

  "That's John," Dixie said in a guarded voice.
"That thing around his neck is where Toby's face will be. You want Toby, you get John. He's dumber than dirt, but Toby likes him."

  "Hey, Simeon," someone called. A slim figure in blue jeans and a tank top came toward us, hugging a clipboard. As she neared she turned into Janie Gordon.

  "What are you doing here?" she and I asked simultaneously.

  Janie laughed, went onto tiptoe, and kissed me. "Working continuity," she said. "I've been on the show all year."

  "How's your mom?"

  It wasn't an idle question. Janie's mom was a seriously crazy lady who spent half her life driving away the people she loved and the other half trying to get them back. She'd hired me to bring Janie back, and I'd done it twice before we decided it wasn't doing anyone any good. We had more or less coerced her mother into therapy with an oily shrink who made his patients call him Howard, with the result that her mother had married and then divorced the therapist, and Janie had escaped into her own apartment. The last time I'd seen Janie, her mother was trying to get the therapist back.

  "About a week away from Thorazine," Janie said. "Doctor Fine, that's the new one, and he's so ugly I don't worry about him, Dr. Fine is on vacation. She's at the stage where coffee gets her manic and she starts calling every fifteen minutes. That starts after the third cup, about ten-thirty. First thing I do when I get home every night is spend half an hour erasing everything on my answering machine. Jesus, you look great. When are you going to get old, anyway?"

  "When I give up my bad habits. What's her complaint?"

  "Guess. Nobody loves her. The world has forgotten her." Janie rolled her eyes in an exact imitation of her mother. "She could have been a great actress if she hadn't given it all up for Daddy and me. Of course, she hadn't worked for years before she got married, but she doesn't remember that. And she sounds so alone."

  "She's not alone," I said. "She's got Snuggie." Snuggie was a loathsome little fox terrier, the only dog I'd ever met who should have been born a cat.

  "That's the problem. Snuggie ran away."

  I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't help it. After a reproachful glance, Janie joined in. She put her hand on my arm and dropped her clipboard. "At least," she said between giggles, "she's forgotten about Howard." She bent down to pick up her clipboard, then snapped back up as someone gave her rear end a loud slap.

  "Hey, champ," Toby said, letting his hand rest on the back of Janie's pants. He was grinning. "I see you've already met the beautiful Miss Somebody."

  Janie dusted his hand off her rear and picked up the clipboard. She looked from Toby to me, and she wasn't laughing. "Don't catch anything," she said to me, "that you can't cure." Looking betrayed, she turned and walked quickly back toward the cameras.

  "What a behind she's got on her," Toby said. "It's enough to make you believe in God. Almost. What happened to you last night?" The swelling on his lower lip had nearly subsided. His face was orange with makeup.

  "I had to go someplace," I said.

  "Hey," he said, throwing an arm around my shoulders and guiding me toward the set. "Don't wear yourself out apologizing. We could have had fun, you and your little bartender and Nana and me." He waved off a middle-aged woman who had materialized, autograph pad in hand. "Later, darling," he said. "Old Toby's working." He grinned at her sweetly and then turned to a beefy individual in a high velocity T-shirt who had apparently followed him. "Get that twat to the other side of the street." He was still grinning, but the steroid user jumped as though he'd been goosed with a cattle prod. The last I saw of the fan she was being hustled across the asphalt to the other side of the street.

  "Did she want that autograph for herself?" he asked rhetorically. "No. It would have been for her cousin or her daughter or the milkman." His arm was heavy on my shoulders. "It's like asking for an autograph is admitting you're a retard, but tucked away somewhere in some low-rent dogshit house there's someone who's just dumb enough to want one. Still, they ask, and I suppose that's something."

  We had reached the set, and people parted before us like the Red Sea in front of Moses. Toby plopped down into a canvas chair and stretched out his denim-clad legs. He was wearing lizard-skin boots. "A chair for my friend," he said, snapping his fingers in the direction of a nervous-looking girl wearing surplus-store military camouflage. Abashed that her cloak of invisibility hadn't worked, she scurried away and, seconds later, pressed a chair against the back of my legs. I sat, turning to smile thanks, but she was already in full retreat.

  "So," Toby said, poking me with a finger. "You're mine now."

  "Back off," I said. "Nobody bought me for you. I can go whenever I want."

  "Okay," Toby said placidly. "You're on loan. Norman doesn't have a lot of good ideas, but this is one of them."

  "You mean you like it? Why? I'd hate it."

  "Nah. I can use a baby-sitter. Hell, I know that. I don't like to get into trouble, you know." He sounded as though trouble descended on him from the skies unexpectedly and at random. "And besides, I've got a piece of the syndication bucks. I sold my residuals to Norman for a couple million, but I've got a contingency if the loot tops forty."

  A few yards away Janie Gordon glowered at us. I had evidently gone over to the enemy's camp. I gave her a reassuring smile, but the effort involved muscles that seemed to have their roots in my hips, and she turned away. "You sold your residuals," I said to Toby. "What does that mean?"

  "I keep forgetting you don't know anything," Toby said, fiddling with an expensive-looking watch. "Residuals are something that drudges like Norman pay us actors every time this crap gets boosted back onto the airwaves. My paycheck only covers the first two times. After that, someone has to send me a little check, whether it's a network rerun or some dinky station in Crooked Elbow, Montana. It takes a lot of little checks to make two million, and it means I've always got to be looking at someone's books to make sure they're staying straight, which nobody does, least of all the Normans. That part you probably know about."

  "For all that money," I said, "why don't you just put your hands in your pockets and keep them there? Why not buy big soft boxing gloves and punch out the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated?"

  He shifted in his chair. "I've gotta work in a second."

  "Fine," I said. "Duck it. Maybe, if you're lucky, the girls will duck, too."

  "Don't be dumb," he said, sounding as comfortable as a man who was having his prostate probed. "It's not all that easy. Christ, if it was. ."

  The girl in camouflage cleared her throat behind him. "Ready, Mr. Vane," she said.

  "And just in time," Toby said, getting up. "We were on the verge of a lovers' quarrel. Have I ever told you how pretty you are?" The girl laughed uneasily and led him up the walk and into the light. Toby's enormous stand-in came over and flopped into the chair Toby had vacated. I could feel him staring at me. The middle-aged woman stayed put as Toby joined her; I guessed she wasn't important enough to have a stand-in. With Toby in the shot, people all over the place snapped to attention, donning earphones, moving behind cameras, manipulating boom mikes. I started to get up, and a massive hand fell onto my forearm. I looked over into a pair of vacant blue eyes.

  "Who are you," Toby's stand-in asked tonelessly. Up close, he looked even bigger.

  "Well, hi," I said, trying to move my arm. No deal. He waited, the weight of his hand bearing down on me, giving me the patient gaze of someone for whom things have to be taken in order. "Urn," I said, "I'm Simeon."

  Right answer. He thought it over for a moment and then smiled. "I'm John," he said.

  "Toby's friend," I said, probably more slowly than was necessary. His smile broadened, but that was it. "I'm Toby's friend, too," I heard myself saying as I eased my arm free. John nodded, smile frozen in place. It looked like it would be there for some time. That seemed to be the end of the conversation. I smiled back, got up, and strolled in the direction of Dixie's car. A little cold spot on the back of my neck told me that John's eyes were following me.

 
Lights snapped on all over the set. Across the street the crowd of onlookers surged forward expectantly. This was what they'd been waiting for. The middle-aged woman with the autograph book was right up front, staring at Toby and the actress as though the Second Coming, long overdue, had finally clambered down the steps and off the plane.

  "So what the hell are you doing here, Simeon?" It was Janie, clipboard firmly in place against her slender waist.

  "Experiencing the pangs of guilt," I said. "Are we allowed to talk now? Aren't they shooting or something?"

  "No way. They'll rehearse it two or three times. For her, not for him. He always knows his lines."

  "One-take Toby," I said.

  "Well, well," she said acidly, "that proves it. There's something nice you can say about everyone. So you're his new buddy? What do you guys do for fun, tag-team matches against Girl Scouts?"

  "Sure. In between rounds we go out and molest plants. Who's this?"

  Janie turned to see a dusty Chevy station wagon pull in behind Dixie's Mercedes. A youngish woman got out. She could have been anywhere between her late twenties and her early forties, pretty in an exhausted way, her small face framed by a fluffy, outdated hairdo that fringed inward below her high cheekbones, below the dark circles that seemed to hold her eyes in place. Her clothes were determinedly young, a frilly blouse and a short skirt with a wide belt. Over her left breast was a large teddy bear pin that might have been made out of bread dough or hardened library paste, the kind of jewelry that got front-page placement in catalogs targeted to elementary-school teachers. A lanky man in a dark green shirt climbed out from the passenger side and opened the back. He began to pull out an array of photographic equipment.

  "It's the fannies," Janie said, giving up on hostility for the moment.

  "Fannies?"

  "Come on, Simeon. Fannies as in fan magazines. Fan as in fantasy, fantasy pipelines for adolescent girls. Toby's constituency, right? The chenille downside of the American dream."