Skin Deep

it was matted into her dry, broken-looking hair. She had bled from a wound hidden by the hair. Her arms were outflung. Normally my attention would have been drawn to the angry-looking tracks on the insides of her elbows, but now I could only look at her hands. Her hands were horrible.

The fingers splayed back grotesquely, angling every which way in a gesture that was both humanly imploring and humanly impossible. Every one of her fingers had been broken. They had been broken at all three joints.

A noise behind me told me that Nana had come into the room. I couldn't be bothered to turn around.

There was something totally wrong about Amber. Something about her posture. First I registered that her hands hadn't been tied, and then I realized that her feet had been. I slipped my hand under her body to check the temperature-the lights would have kept her front warm. She wasn't much colder than I was. Trying to keep my eyes from her hands, I checked her wrists for rope burns, imprints, anything. There weren't any. Then I turned my attention to her bound ankles.

They were wrapped in several turns of rope. The rope was thin and cottony. I took it between my fingers, feeling the unshaved roughness of Amber's shins beneath my knuckles.

The rope was clothesline.

'Dead nudes,' I said.

6

Saffron Says

I backed away, a thin, reedy singing shrilling cricketlike in my ears, a fine violin string being drawn back and forth through my brain. My heart was battering madly against my ribs. The dead woman on the stage gazed up blankly at the pink lights, her wide-open eyes as empty as those of a dog listening to music. Behind me, Nana shuffled nervously from foot to foot. The sound of her shoes seemed to scrape their way straight through my skin.

'Dead what?' she said. 'Don't scare me.' She moved closer. 'Ducks in hell,' she said. Her swallow carried all the way across the garish, empty room. 'It isn't … she isn't…'

'Yeah, she is,' I said. 'Just hold it. Don't move, not a foot. Don't touch anything. Stay where you are. Goddamn it, Nana, where's the phone in this shithole?'

'Behind the bar. Over toward the left, under the bottles. Oh, Lordy,' she said. 'Oh, Simeon, I think I'm going to puke.'

'Puke outside. Don't do it here. And don't touch anything. Not anything, got it?'

I found the phone on a shelf underneath the cash register. A dirty slip of paper pasted crookedly beneath the buttons said is this call necessary? I guessed it was. I grabbed a handful of paper napkins and used them to pick up the receiver. I was swearing at myself.

'What's Toby's number? At home.'

'You mean you're not going to call the cops first?' Her voice was shaky, but she seemed to be getting herself under control. At any rate, she'd stopped sounding like she was going to hit the floor at any moment.

'In a minute. She's not going to get up and go home. What's Toby's number?' She gave me a couple of false starts and then the number, and I punched it up.

After what felt like five minutes the phone at the other end of the line rang tinnily, once, twice, three times. 'This stinks,' I said to no one in particular. Finally I heard the clatter of a receiver being lifted clumsily, and then Toby's voice crackled across the wire.

'This is Toby Vane's answering machine,' he began. He sounded sleepy and irritable.

'Toby? This is Simeon. Where have you been?'

Nothing for a moment. Nana skittered behind me, letting out a small cough. 'Toby,' I said again, 'I asked you a question.'

'Hey, champ,' Toby said. 'Easy. Do you know what time it is?'

'Yes, I do, Toby, and I don't give a shit. Answer the question.'

'Here, I've been here. For a couple of hours. What's it to you or anybody else? What am I, Information?'

'You haven't been answering your phone.'

'I don't, you know? It's not in my contract that I have to jump every time the phone rings. At least, not yet.' He paused while he located his personal switch for charm and hit it. 'Listen,' he said winningly, 'I know you're pissed off. I'd be pissed off, too, but I just had to get out of there. Nana was just way out of line, you know? Hey, you got free drinks and the prettiest Korean lady in Hollywood. So okay, so I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry.'

'You don't have any idea how sorry you are,' I said.

His voice changed. The charm evaporated as fast as the alcohol they rub on your arm before a shot. 'What's that supposed to mean?' He grunted as he sat up.

I tightened my left hand around the receiver until my knuckles cracked. 'Where's Amber?'

'Amber? Who cares? Home, I guess. That's where we left her. She was so skagged out she couldn't count her fingers.' I visualized Amber's fingers and fought it down again. 'No fun at all, you know what I mean? We ate a little something and then dropped her at her place.'

'Who's we?'

'We? Saffron and me. Who do you think, Linda Evans?'

'Is Saffron there?'

'Sure. We've been playing mumblety-peg. Great game. You should try it sometime.'

'Let me talk to her.'

He paused. 'You've already got Nana, haven't you? What're you after, a grand slam?'

'Toby. Put her on the phone. Right now.'

'Right now? You mean, right this very minute? This instant, so to speak? What's that, an order or something? I must have gotten something wrong. I thought you were the hired help.'

'Listen to me, Toby, if you know how. You want me to hang up the phone? Fine, I'll be glad to. You'll be in jail in about forty minutes. If you don't believe me, try it.'

'Jail? What are you talking about?'

'Put Saffron on the phone. You've got five seconds.'

There was some muttering on the other end and a whisper of movement behind me, and I became aware that Nana had somehow made it to the stage. She was staring down at Amber, her eyes glazed and her mouth wide open. She slowly reached out a delicate hand, as if to smooth the matted hair.

'No closer,' I said to her. 'You touch her and I'll leave you here.'

'Huh?' Toby said. 'Leave who?'

'You'll leave me here?' Nana said. 'So what? I don't give a fuck. You think I need the big strong man's help?'

She met my eyes defiantly and then looked away, back at Amber. 'She was my friend,' she said in a muted voice.

'Well, she's not your friend anymore. And I'm getting enough crap from Toby without you pitching in. Get away from her. Now.' She stepped back, staring at me as if she'd never seen me before.

'She's dead,' she said.

'Honey, she's not just dead, she's murdered. Now be a good girl and put your hands behind your back, knot your fingers together, and keep them there.' She shook her head helplessly, but she obeyed. From the sinewy movements of her arms, I could see that she was twisting her hands behind her back.

Toby said, 'I hope you know what you're doing. Here she is.' A woman's sleepy voice came on the line. 'What is it?' she said. 'What's happening?'

'Lots, and it's all bad. Saffron, I want you to tell me about your evening. Don't talk to Toby first. Tell me absolutely everything about your evening.'

'Who can remember?' she said. 'We ate at Johnny Rocket's, over on Melrose, you know?' Another hamburger. Toby was some sport. 'Then we took Amber home because she was so wasted. The girl was way past the end