Skin Deep

He looked blank. 'Scripts,' he said, thinking about something else. 'Do you think she'll let you in?'

'Toby will let me in. Whether she'll let me stay in, that's the question.'

'Well, I know that,' he said for the second time in two days. I made a mental note to use it the next time I had nothing to say. 'Good luck,' Stillman said, pushing the door open.

'Do you think the young people of America have learned anything from High Velocity!' said a thickening blond lady with four-inch fingernails as the door closed behind me. She glanced up at me with irritation and gave the tiny tape recorder in front of her a businesslike shake as though she thought my intrusion might have caused its circuits to malfunction. Then she turned her attention back to Toby, who was seated in front of a mirror framed by globular white light bulbs. Dixie hovered behind him, looking fatally apprehensive.

'Joanna,' Toby said, 'this isn't Ibsen. Half the show is cars crashing into other cars.' Dixie wilted visibly, and Toby caught it in the mirror. He gave Joanna Link a budgeted grin, sort of an amplified smirk. 'We're doing entertainment here. But every episode has a moral: Crime doesn't pay; Drugs aren't good; Sooner or later, virtue triumphs.'

'Usually later.'

'Albert Schweitzer chatting with Pope John Paul for an hour isn't going to hold the people we're talking to. That's public television. People who watch public television don't get into trouble. Kids don't watch public television. Maybe it would be better if they did, but they don't. They watch us. And, week after week, we make a point that Parents magazine couldn't disagree with.'

'So you think the departure of High Velocity will leave a moral void on television?' The tone was so snotty that I felt like giving her a handkerchief so she could blow her voice.

Toby ignored it. He reached out and took one of her extravagantly clawed hands between his. 'We'll be around in reruns,' he said. 'And even if we weren't, television is a responsible industry. As long as there are producers like Norman, the medium won't be a source of moral decay.'

'This isn't quotable,' she said, withdrawing her hand but giving his a coy little pat as she did it. 'And who's he?' She indicated me, Chinese style, with her chin.

'Who, Simeon?' Toby said, his face as open as a freshly washed window. 'He's a friend. We're going out together after we wrap today.'

'He's not a PR man, is he? Dixie's more than enough PR for now.' Dixie shrugged philosophically. He looked as if he were trying to get his suit high enough to hide him completely.

'Does he look like a PR man?' Toby asked in his most reasonable voice.

'No,' she said. 'He looks like something the hippies left behind.' She had one of those decayed little-girl faces that always made me think of Shirley Temple on cortisone.

Dixie laughed despairingly. 'Joanna,' he said, 'you're priceless.'

'By which you mean unbuyable, I assume.'

'How do you type with those fingernails?' I asked.

'Oh, we've heard from Toby's friend,' she said, flexing her fingers. 'These aren't nails, they're talons.' Over her shoulder, Dixie waved frantically. She looked up at me and narrowed her puffy eyes. 'At least that proves you aren't PR,' she said. 'No one in PR thinks I type my own stories.'

'Simeon Grist, Joanna Link,' Dixie said with more than a trace of desperation in his voice. 'Joanna, Simeon.'

Joanna Link turned her back on me. I might as well have been a heating vent. 'So what about this girl, Toby?' she said.

Dixie's face slammed shut like the gates of heaven before Attila the Hun. Toby was better. 'Girl?' he said. 'What girl?'

'The stripper who was killed a few nights ago. This Amber something or other.'

'Stackheimer,' I said, volunteering the name Nana had given me. 'Amber Stackheimer.'

Now Dixie looked truly frantic. Even Toby's composure slipped a notch. Link turned slowly to face me.

'I'm talking to Toby,' she said. She chewed her lower lip, leaving a scarlet smear of lipstick on her teeth. 'You knew her?' she asked after a moment, scratching at the inside of her left arm with the claws on her right hand.

'We were dating,' I said. 'Terrible thing. She was just about to get her life in order. There are so many lost souls out there.' I made a gesture in the general direction of East. 'In L.A., you know.'

Joanna Link looked from me to Toby and then back to me again. 'Wait,' she said. 'We all know about Toby's little problem, even if we haven't written about it yet.'

'And that's a good idea,' Dixie put in, 'unless we've got proof. And lots of very good insurance.'

'Shut up,' Joanna Link said absently. She chewed at the inside of her cheek. The woman was clearly orally fixated, probably an ex-smoker. 'You were her date? You weren't in the pictures.'

I shrugged. 'I'm not a star.'

'No,' she said, 'you're not. But how do I know you're not a liar?'

'That's an insulting question,' I said. 'Aren't journalists supposed to have manners?'

Her eyebrows rose until they almost disappeared into her hairline. 'Dixie,' she said, 'am I supposed to have manners?'

Dixie managed a strangled consonant or two before I cut him off.

'We're all supposed to have manners,' I said. 'That's what they tell us differentiates us from the apes. Or maybe just from newspaper writers.'

Joanna Link looked at me while Dixie made a suffocating sound. Then she tilted her head back a degree or two and laughed. It wasn't really a laugh, more a hog-tied chuckle. 'Honey,' she said, 'just hope you're never a star. I'll barbecue you.'

There was a moment of silence. Then Joanna Link leaned over and shut off her tape recorder. 'You know I've got nothing,' she said to Dixie. 'It's a shame, really. I've got a great picture of Toby to go with my lead item, but I haven't got a lead item.'

'Maybe next time,' Dixie said.

'Next time,' Joanna Link said, 'if there is a next time, your boy could be in the jug. Nothing personal, Toby.' She patted Toby's hand. His grin was as permanent as the smirk on the Apollo Belvedere. 'And then I probably won't have an exclusive. Will I?'

Toby leaned in to her. 'Joanna,' he said, 'if I commit murder, I promise I'll call you first.' He kissed the air in her general direction.

After a beat or two, she blew a kiss back.

13

The Wake

At seven p.m. it was still hot; July had finally dug in its heels. Waning sunlight angled through a few scraggly eucalyptus trees and threw the trash in the parking lot into a sharp, melancholic relief. A crow coughed overhead. Out on Santa Monica Boulevard the rush-hour traffic was finally beginning to peter out.

The chain across the driveway to the Spice Rack dangled a bright yellow sign that said closed, private party. Below that someone-Tiny, I guessed-had taped a piece of cardboard that said until 8:30. At eight-thirty, life, or what passed for life inside the Spice Rack, was scheduled to resume.

Toby and I had come in separate cars. He had driven his Maserati, with Dolly presumably clinging for dear life to the dashboard, and I had brought Alice. This way, at least, he couldn't leave us without wheels.

The parking lot, which we'd had to enter from the side street, was almost full. That was a surprise: Amber had some mourners. Nana's car wasn't there, and that caused me an involuntary twinge of worry. I did see Tiny's filthy white Continental, squatting in a double-size space that said reserved in big pink letters.

After I parked Alice I locked the doors against the unlikely eventuality of someone actually wanting her. I was