Skin Deep

first surprise when he opened the door himself.

'You're Mr. Grist,' he said enthusiastically.

I agreed. He took my elbow to lead me, and I took it back. 'I can see okay,' I said.

Stillman laughed as if I'd said something funny. He was the sort of man who is always a little shorter than you remember him being, as though he'd shrunk while you weren't looking. I got an economical glimpse of immaculate white teeth that must have cost a fortune to straighten and cap, set off by a sunlamp tan and a pair of very small dark eyes huddling furtively beneath eyebrows that had, just possibly, known the sting of a tweezer. He'd traded his blazer for a hand-knitted sweater with a sailboat on the front. Still nautical, but not so formal. His balding head gleamed.

'Dierdre and Pauline are at lunch,' he said, indicating a couple of empty desks with a careless wave. 'You're certainly punctual. I appreciate that.'

He continued to appreciate me as we passed through the secretarial area and into a short hallway. The closed door at the end of the hall said MR. STILLMAN on it in letters the size of the Hollywood sign. 'Here we are,' he said in case I'd missed them.

The room on the other side of the door looked bigger than the entire bungalow had looked from outside. I stepped onto Wedgwood blue carpeting that an iron-shod Percheron could have galloped across in silence. The window shades were drawn to keep the day at a tasteful distance, and the lighting was indirect. The mahogany- spoked wheel of a yacht hung on the opposite wall, behind a desk that looked like a bowling alley on legs. The only object on the desk's polished surface was a huge brass ship's compass.

'I don't know why,' I said, 'but I'd be willing to bet you've got a boat.'

He laughed again and went to stand possessively behind his desk. 'Half-right, Mr. Grist. In fact, I've got two of them. One's in the Marina, and one's on her way here from Hong Kong.' He gestured at a large map of the Pacific that filled most of one wall. Two red pins were the only blemishes in its pale blue surface. 'The Cabuchon. At this precise moment, she should be pulling into Honolulu.'

'Lucky her.'

'This is Mr. Cohen. Dixie, this is our hero, Mr. Grist.'

I didn't see Dixie Cohen until he stood up; he had that kind of negative charisma. He'd been perching on a captain's chair near the door, and now he held his hand out to me, a thin, worried-looking, nearly completely bald little man on whose corduroy shoulders the angel of despair almost visibly perched. 'Terrific work,' he said mournfully. He wore professorial leather patches on the elbows of his jacket.

'Not on purpose,' I said.

'The result is the same,' Cohen said.

Sitting down, Norman Stillman briskly rubbed his smooth, tapered hands together. They made a dry, powdery noise.

'Nothing in the press,' Cohen murmured lugubriously to the carpet, looking at it as though it were an old friend who had just died. 'Good all around.'

'Good for whom?' I fought off an urge to pat Dixie Cohen comfortingly on the shoulder and looked around for someplace to sit.

'For us, Mr. Grist.' Stillman followed my glance. 'Dixie,' he commanded, 'give Mr. Grist your chair.' Cohen shuffled off across the carpet to grab one from a matched platoon lined up against the wall.

'What's so good?' I said, sitting. 'Who cares if the little bedbug gets tossed in the can? It's better than he deserves.'

'Let's not get sidetracked into a discussion of Toby's character,' Stillman said. He looked down at the schooner sailing across the front of his sweater, spotted a wrinkle in the mainsail, tugged it straight, and then treated me to another million-dollar smile. The smile was as meaningless as Toby's, just something that staked claim to the lower half of Stillman's face whenever it felt like it. 'Toby's approach to life is not the topic of the day.'

'And what is the topic of the day?'

'Employment for you, Mr. Grist. I think I said that on the phone. Highly lucrative employment.'

From behind me I heard Cohen lug a chair across the carpet. He sat down behind me and breathed resentfully once or twice.

'Would it be vulgar,' I asked, 'to mention an actual number?'

Stillman gave me his light chuckle. 'That'll come. First, let's explain our little problem and see if it interests you. From what Toby's told me, I gather that's very much in your line. Quite the White Knight, Toby says.' He cut off the chuckle and tapped the surface of his desk with a polished nail. 'Dixie?'

Dixie stood up with a deep sigh that seemed to have its roots in his knees. He put his hands in his pockets and walked to the edge of Stillman's desk. Then he looked off into space until Stillman cleared his throat significantly.

'How much do you know about Toby Vane?' Cohen said to the room at large.

'He's an actor. He's on a lot of magazine covers. He's a certifiable sadist.'

'That's succinct,' Dixie Cohen acknowledged, staring at a spot above my head. 'But you left one thing out. He's not just an actor, he's a star.'

'I left out that he's an asshole, too,' I said.

'Ah, yes,' Dixie Cohen said sadly, 'but he's our asshole.' He eased his rear end onto the corner of Stillman's desk.

'Dixie,' Stillman said sharply. Cohen straightened up as if he'd sat on a stove. Stillman reached over, way over, and brushed at the spot where Cohen had sat.

'High Velocity is in its sixth year,' Cohen said with all the enthusiasm of a kid reciting the alphabet on command. 'It's never been in the top five, but it's stayed out of the bottom thirty. This is, hip hooray, year last.'

'Excuse me,' I said, 'but what's High Velocity?'

Stillman's mouth opened. Cohen couldn't have looked more surprised if I'd squatted on a lamp and started spitting maraschino cherries.

'It's Toby's series,' he said. 'You must have seen it.'

'Nope.'

'Even if you haven't, you must have heard of it. The publicity. .'He spread his hands in sheer incomprehension.

'I've missed it,' I said. Stillman looked at Cohen, and Cohen made a helpless gesture. Of course, I thought. He had to be the publicity man.

'Well,' Cohen said, dredging up a mortician's smile, 'most people who haven't spent the last six years at the bottom of a lead mine know about High Velocity. A hundred million or so of them have even watched it.'

'Great show,' Stillman said automatically. 'Lots of action, but wholesome action. Nobody gets killed onscreen, or if they do, we cut away just before the plug gets pulled.'

'Good role models,' Cohen said. 'Citation from the White House and everything.'

'I get the point,' I said. 'It's a TV show.'

'A very successful TV show, Mr. Grist,' Norman Still-man said. 'And it's all Toby Vane.'

'A hundred percent,' Cohen said. They sounded like Laurel and Hardy.

'And. .?'

'And we've got a problem.' Dixie Cohen's face was even more furrowed and worried-looking than before.

'To hazard a wild surmise,' I said, 'Toby Vane.'

'Exactly.' Cohen looked hesitant. 'Oh, well,' he said. 'Here goes. During the third season we were shooting on location in Northridge, you know Northridge?' He seemed to expect me to say no.

I said I knew Northridge.

'We were out near the college there, and the kids kept coming around to watch us work. Just regular Valley kids, you know? And, naturally, some of them were girls.'

'Come on, Dixie,' Stillman said, drumming his fingers on his desk. 'Get on with it.'

Cohen swallowed, and I suddenly recognized his discomfort for what it really was: he hated to be there. He would have given his life to be able to float straight up, through the ceiling, and into some pure, clear stratosphere